There seems to be a sentiment that it is especially the painting that makes some pages of the manuscript look rather "ugly."
The guy who did the lines wasn't too bad at his job. But then he or his colleague (or someone else entirely) came along with a large, bad painting brush and ruined various perfectly good drawings.
I was inspired by Rene's comment in another thread to take a look at places where the lines and the paint appear to tell a slightly different story. Just to name something, if You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. hadn't been sloppily painted, we would see more clearly that the horizontal cylinder te person is holding on to has two vertical bars as well. In this case, it seems clear that the linework was done first, and then the painting. The opposite would have been weird and impractical.
But then I saw You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.. Note how there is no actual outline of the leaves. If this was an uncolored sketch, the leaves would only be suggested by the "hooks" lining their edges. Could this suggest that the leaves were painted first, and then the hooks were added? Or that the hooks were drawn with the full knowledge of how they would be painted later? This suggests a close coordination between line and color.
Why is this important?
Well, take a look at You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. for example. The blue one was originally drawn with a long tail, which is entirely painted over. The tail being entirely submerged seems unlikely: the rest of the picture suggests shallow water.
If we assume the painter was either the line artist himself or his colleague, this would leave open the option of self correction. For example, maybe they wanted to draw a hippo and someone told them that hippos don't have such long tails, so they painted over it.
If, however, we assume the painter was some independent, manuscript ruining oaf, the self correction option would be ruled out entirely.
I do not know if this is the place, but i would like to ask some specific questions about his research and his paper (2014?)
Can not find another site where i can do this, i could try to email, but perhaps this works as well. Let's try. Is this the correct section?
I did not know about the paper until it was mentioned here, und i've read most of it this week.
It's an excellent approach and well written piece of research. Some points i do not fully understand and
other things i wonder if they can be improved.
Here is my informal translation of a passage from “Il Giardino Magico degli Alchimisti” by Vera Segre Rutz (pag. L -LIII).
As the pessage itself makes clear, this subject is not related with Alchemical Herbals in particular.
Images from Alchemical Herbal BNF 17848 (many thanks to Rene!).
I attach a slightly processed detail from the Naples Dioscorides f 78r (but the illustration is very dark, not easy to read). If someone had a link to the Vienna Dioscorides f 126r, I would be interested in seeing if it is clearer).
In addition to the geometrical simplification, there is another factor that contrasts naturalism and appears very strange to the modern eye: the prominent zoomorphic and anthropomorphic elements. Often, these elements correspond to analogies that are also expressed in the name of the plant, for instance You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. [Christ's Hands] (cap. 46), a kind of orchid [in Italian] still named “manine” (small hands) and scientifically “Orchis dactylorhiza”, because its roots remember the shape of a human hand. The plant named You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. (cap. 34) has been associated with the fish “lucius” (pike) and features a large fish as a zoomorphich root. This phenomenon begins with the Naples Dioscorides [600 – 650 ca] [footnote: in the text of Dioscorides the small flowers of You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. are described as similar to masks and they are illustrated as anthropomorfic in the Naples manuscript]. [In the alchemical herbal tradition] it extends to many plants, and sometimes this cannot be linked with the contents of the text. With the exception of “herba You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.” (cap. 3) the anthropomorphism or zoomorphism happens in the roots. Once again, the ancient Dioscorides manuscripts, from Wien and Naples, provide precedents, with the root of You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. presenting a human appearance. Vegetal images with anthropomorphic or zoomorphic roots appear in a number of medieval botanic manuscripts, of the same age but not directly related with the alchemical manuscripts [the earliest dated alchemical herbal was written in 1378]. For instance, Florence ms Palat. 586 (XIV Century) from Spain-Provence, Laurenziana ms Redi 165 and the very similar herbal in the Gambalunghiana Library, Rimini. This aspect has been explained as “drolerie,” i.e. as a purely decorative phenomenon, or as a derivation from the Arabic figurative culture, linked with legends and tales of oriental origin that had a wide circulation. We think the reference to the Arabic tradition is mainly relevant for the stylization and geometrization of botanical shapes, but it is vague in relation with anthropomorphic and zoomorphic roots. … Arabic botanic illustration is a little studied field, not very accessible to Western researchers, but from the sources I know, I would not say that the Arabs introduced specific zoomorphic or anthropomorphic iconographies. The anthropomorphism or zoomorphism of plants, in particular of roots, which are believed to have the higher pharmaceutical efficacy, is part of a magic-based idea of the vegetal world; it is a sign of the recognition of a personality of the plant, of its own powerful vitality. For the same reason, we find [in the text] prayers to be addressed to the plants, prescribed as a condition to benefit of their more or less occult powers. The magic-animistic view of the vegetal world has ancestral origins and is clearly mirrored in the language about plants. Anthropomorphic or zoomorphic metaphors are among the main universal principles in the classification of plants, with Italian names such as “bocca di ...” “lingua di ...” “piede di ...” “zampa di ...” “coda di ...”, in Latin “pes ….” “ungula ….” “lingua ….” followed by the chosen animal [in English houndstongue, houndstooth, snapdragon, cat's tail]. The human and animal body is the main model in the conceptualization of the natural world: a universal anthropologic phenomenon of particular importance for the idea of nature as animated, inhabited by demons and by plants having their own soul. Anthropomorphic and zoomorphic elements in the alchemical herbals visualize a magic and metaphorical mentality, which has left deep traces in our languages in the popular names of plants.
See also the Naples Dioscurides You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view..
Segre describes the flowers of Lonchitis as anthropomorphic, but they look like dog heads to me.
If we assume that the Voynich text is linguistic in nature, what alternatives are there to concluding that the script is an alphabet?
It is often considered that you can split most scripts up by the way they work into one of three groups:
1. alphabets where characters represent individual sounds;
2. syllabaries where character represent whole syllables; and
3. logographic systems where characters represent whole words.
The size of the character set is often taken to be diagnostic: alphabets have from 20 to 50 characters; syllabaries have from 50 to 100 characters; have logographic systems have many hundreds or thousands of characters. The number of characters thus reflects the number of underlying items which the characters represent: language have more words than they have syllables, and more syllables than they have sounds. Knowing that the Voynich script has 20-25 characters, we can rule out the language having only 25 words or 25 syllables, whereas 25 sounds is realistic.
Of course, not all characters must represent sounds. Some may be punctuation or ideographic. Also, some characters may represent more than one sound depending on the context. But the basic principle of any given instance of a character standing for a single sound should be mostly good. The question whether the script fully represents all kinds of sounds (that is, an abjad without vowels) would be unanswered, but abjads are still a kind of alphabet.
We might also have the count of characters wrong, however, with there being more or fewer distinction than we currently make. But there is no way a decrease in the number of characters would make an alphabet less likely, and any increase would have to be substantial before we could being to consider syllabaries.
What alternatives are there, if we believe the characters are a script to represent language, other than the script being alphabetic in nature? I'm genuinely looking for evidence to shake an assumption I've had for a long time.
(Note: I understand that the linguistic nature of the text is an assumption, but that's not the topic of this thread.)
I'm still relatively new to Voynich studies (couple of months) so there are some peculiarities I still have to learn about. I noticed on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. a row was added left of the text, and some (rather modern looking?) numbers. Is there a consensus about who did this or what it means?
I made some speculations about the eagle root on fol. 46v here
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D'Imperio describes it as "a bird with spread wings: an eagle!" in An Elegant Enigma. I have the plant id as costmary (Frauenminze) - in the old herbals we see it as the herb of Virgin Mary. I found couple of examples of Mary mixed with eagle with spread wings. I was wondering if somebody knows by chance any similar examples from early 15th century.
Thanks in advance.
Hello everybody!
I'm thinking about buying a printed copy/facsimile/reproduction of the vms but am unsure of which one to choose. The only one I've been able to find somewhat reliable reviews on is called "le code voynich", and I am curious to learn more about the alternatives.
Will you please post short reviews here? I'm interested in your opinions on, foremost, readability, flaws, price and availability. Please only hands-on reviews - no speculation.
One plant I find particularly fascinating is the one I aptly name the elephant plant. It strikes me as interesting because the elephant drawn here, blended to be hidden in a plant leaf, appears much more biologically accurate than elephants in comparable European manuscripts. In the picture below, I pit the Voynich elephant against the elephant from the Lombardy Herbal (Sloane 4016).
Other funny examples can be found here: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
Another funny one (no date provided):
Compared to these beings, the "no-skill-draughtsman" Voynich elephant is surprisingly "real".
There are exceptions, but as far as I can see those are made by people who for some reason got an actual elephant as a model:
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This site offers a number of examples as well, and also argues that realistic depictions of elephants can be linked to historical accounts of a live elephant being paraded through that particular European place at that particular time.
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Now my findings about the root-and-leaf section point strongly towards India, so I'd have no problem explaining this.
(Furthermore I agree with Diane's views about the manuscript being a copy of various earlier sources related to naval trade routes, which explains even more).
So what do you guys think? Why does the Lombardy herbal, which was written not long after the VM in Italy, depict an elephant as a sabre-tusked, lion-clawed furry monster while the plant hybrid in the Voynich does a much better job?
I decided that my paper was getting too big, so I will start publishing it in blog form. It's just activated today, so right now I have one reader, who was me when I accidentally logged out... I hope you'll forgive me this shameless promotion to get my first readers. I'm posting this here because it touches on imagery, test and provenance alike.
My first two posts are up, discussing a plant I identify as mango, and one I identify as saffron. Many more will be posted tomorrow and the days to come.
Make sure to first read the pages about mnemonics, which can be accessed through the stickied post or the top menu.
Link: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
If you're not convinced yet by these examples, don'y wory... There are more to come
Either way I hope you enjoy the read!
Now that I'm starting to publish mt research on mnemonics in the root and leaf section (I prefer Diane's term over "pharma section"), I was wondering what your opinion would be about this specific plant. In my research it's more of an aside, so I haven't studied it elaborately yet. I mention it on the You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. on my new blog.
There is "mnemonic activity" in the roots as well as in the leaves. If we first have a look at the roots, we see they are drawn like two "legs", with something rather strange in between. I think it's a foot, drawn in "running" position. It appears to have five toes and an ankle.
Now let's look at the leaves: the three leaves on the left are normal. Their tip is nice and round, like a good, decent leaf tip. Their position is as one would expect a leaf to behave.
But now look at the leaf on the right. Its "tip" is drawn totally differently. Also, it appears to hang more, like it's heavier than the other leaves.
Come on, it's a phallus.
But what does it mean? Some kind of hardwood?
My best guess, in the light of my other research, is that it has something to do with Hermes, who was both a messenger (running foot) and a fertility god (large phallus). I'm not certain though, so I wonder what you guys make of this.
![[Image: elephants.jpg?w=676]](https://herculeaf.files.wordpress.com/2016/03/elephants.jpg?w=676)
![[Image: 4befa663be28b3c609a7b097c10bffad.jpg]](https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/564x/4b/ef/a6/4befa663be28b3c609a7b097c10bffad.jpg)
![[Image: fallus.jpg?w=281&h=543]](https://herculeaf.files.wordpress.com/2016/03/fallus.jpg?w=281&h=543)