| Welcome, Guest |
You have to register before you can post on our site.
|
| Online Users |
There are currently 611 online users.
» 8 Member(s) | 598 Guest(s)
Applebot, Baidu, Bing, Google, Yandex, BessAgritianin, eggyk, Lissu, pjburkshire, proto57, R. Sale
|
|
|
| How multi-character substitution might explain the voynich’s strange entropy |
|
Posted by: quimqu - 27-06-2025, 10:34 AM - Forum: Analysis of the text
- Replies (23)
|
 |
Correction
Originally, I described the transformation used as a homophonic cipher, but that label is misleading. What I actually applied was a form of multi-character substitution, where each letter in the original word is replaced by a randomly chosen variant (e.g., a0, a1, a2), simulating a kind of randomized expansion at the character level. This isn't a true homophonic cipher in the historical sense — which typically replaces plaintext characters with multiple possible cipher symbols without increasing the total character count. My version expanded the text significantly and altered its structure.
Despite the naming inaccuracy, the method did reproduce an entropy curve similar to the Voynich CUVA profile, especially in the characteristic “bump” around n=3–6. The results still support the hypothesis that some kind of structured substitution — possibly at the syllable or morph level — could account for the entropy behavior in the Voynich manuscript. However, any conclusions should be interpreted with this clarification in mind.
You can also check this post of mine where you can see the entropy bump comparing the MS in EVA and in CUVA versus natural languages texts:
You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
Maybe by accident, I’ve pulled on a thread worth following — I’ll keep exploring what really generates the bump.
------------------------------------------
In this experiment, I tried to simulate how different historical ciphers affect the entropy profile of a text, and compare the results to the Voynich CUVA (explained here You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. by René Zandbergen). The idea was to test whether the statistical behavior of the Voynich text—especially its distinctive “entropy bump”—could emerge from known cipher types.
Method
I took the Latin text De Docta Ignorantia and applied 10 classical cipher transformations likely known or possible in the 15th century:
- Syllabic substitution
- Homophonic cipher
- Caesar cipher
- Grammatical expansion
- Transposition cipher
- Contextual substitution
- Polyalphabetic cipher
- Cardano grille
- Relative-position encoding
For each version, I measured n-gram entropy per word (resetting after every word) from n=1 to n=14.
I then plotted these values against the Voynich CUVA section.
![[Image: uLOSZCq.png]](https://i.imgur.com/uLOSZCq.png)
This graph shows that most cipher types produce entropy curves that drop steeply after n=3–5, while the Voynich text declines gradually and smoothly. This is already unusual.
But there's one exception...
Homophonic cipher anomaly
Only the homophonic cipher (3+ variants tested) produces an entropy “bump” that matches the Voynich profile. Specifically, when using a homophonic cipher with 3 or 4 characters per symbol, the entropy curve is smoother and shows a slow decay, similar to the CUVA data.
This raises two hypotheses:- A system with homophonic encoding of syllables or morphs could recreate a Voynich-like structure.
- The smoothness of the curve may suggest internal rules or language constraints, not just random substitution.
![[Image: 4aEWNbM.png]](https://i.imgur.com/4aEWNbM.png)
Notice how the 3- and 4-character homophonic ciphers almost replicate the Voynich curve — both in shape and range. The 2-character version decays a bit faster but still mimics the bump.
Natural text vs. Voynich
To test if this was just a quirk of De Docta Ignorantia, I took four different natural texts (Latin, French, English):
- Ambrosius Medionalensis In Psalmum David CXVIII Expositio (Latin)
- La reine Margot (French)
- Romeo and Juliet (English)
- De Docta Ignorantia again
Each was encrypted with a 3-character homophonic cipher and compared to Voynich CUVA.
![[Image: kSTbMuI.png]](https://i.imgur.com/kSTbMuI.png)
Interestingly, when using a 3-character homophonic cipher on natural texts (Latin, French, English), the entropy curves become much smoother and more sustained. For several of them, the n-gram entropy remains high up to n=6–7, and only drops significantly past n=8 or n=9.
The curve shapes are now visibly closer to Voynich CUVA, with the most similar being De Docta Ignorantia and Romeo and Juliet. However, the Voynich text still has:- A slightly smoother and more consistent decay, without sudden drops
- A more gradual “tail” beyond n=9, where others still not flatten or zero out (except Romeo and Juliet)
This supports the idea that some homophonic structure — perhaps morph- or syllable-based — could explain the entropy shape. But it also reinforces the notion that Voynich words follow a more regulated internal logic, possibly due to morphological templates or position-based constraints.
Interpretation
There are two key features that stand out:- The “Voynich bump” (sustained entropy around n=3–6) is only replicated by homophonic substitution.
- The smoothness of the curve in CUVA suggests an underlying linguistic system — natural or artificially constructed — rather than arbitrary encoding.
This doesn’t prove the Voynich uses a homophonic cipher, but it does suggest that such systems can generate statistically similar profiles, especially when applied at the syllable or morph level.
It may also support theories that posit an artificial language, a constructed morphology, or template-driven word generation, all of which maintain internal consistency over longer n-grams.
|
|
|
| Was the VM a failure? |
|
Posted by: Bernd - 26-06-2025, 02:31 PM - Forum: Voynich Talk
- Replies (28)
|
|
Many theories about the Voynich Manuscript portray it to be an ingeniously clever cipher or a novel method to encode a foreign or constructed language, often claimed to be invented by a famous person. Indeed all (serious) attempts to make sense of the text have utterly failed so far.
But is this hypothesis really feasible? Despite the countless things we do not know about the VM, we can make two statements with great confidence:
1)The mechanism by which the VM text was created did not gain traction and become widely used around the time the VM was made in the 15th century.
2)No even remotely similar encoding mechanism evolved in the next ~600 years until today.
3) Despite countless attempts since Wilfried Voynich's time a century ago, the 'code' remains uncracked.
This should raise some serious doubts.
While examples for brilliant inventions that were lost in time exist (Antikythera mechanism), I do not think this is a parsimonious hypothesis. Given the overall rather amateurish and provincial look of the VM, I think it is far more likely that:
.)If the VM contains enciphered information, the encipherment process is probably too cumbersome and ineffective for most scenarios.
.)The VM served a very narrow and probably personal purpose that did not require the decipherment process to be practical for a wider audience, maybe relying on a-priori knowledge of the contents like a mnemonic aid.
Or - the VM text was never meant to contain any information and was created for whatever different purpose altogether. Again we fail to find comparable examples.
I am not fond of deliberate hoax hypotheses, simply for the almost fractal complexity and level of details we can see in the VM text and imagery, unnecessary for a hoax. But it certainly cannot be ruled out. Yet, no even remotely complex hoax document was ever uncovered.
Regardless of the intention behind the VM, what we can say for sure is that it's creation process wasn't a success story that was frequently repeated. It may have served a purpose for the author or a very small circle, and I do believe it was important for its creator(s) because of the sheer work involved, but it appears unlikely the project was of any broader significance beyond that.
Had it been a ground-breaking and practical invention, it would either have spread fairly quickly or re-evolved in the next hundred years. I think we should keep that in mind.
|
|
|
|
| Phonetic Borderland Hypothesis |
|
Posted by: Oliver Martin Rarrek - 26-06-2025, 11:31 AM - Forum: The Slop Bucket
- Replies (15)
|
|
# ? A Multilingual Recipe Structure in the Voynich Manuscript
Dear all,
I'd like to share a new approach I’ve been exploring with assistance from a language model. It’s based on the hypothesis that the Voynich Manuscript might be written in a **phonetically encoded contact language** from a multilingual **border region**, possibly located in Central Europe (e.g., the Alps–Adriatic or Pannonian area). The working theory is that the text is **written as spoken**, without conforming to standardized spelling conventions of any known medieval language.
---
## ? Key Hypothesis
- The text reflects a **mixed oral vernacular** influenced by Romance, Slavic, and Germanic elements.
- The Voynichese words may be **phonetic spellings** (or ciphered approximations) of these spoken forms.
- Especially in the **recipe-like sections**, the internal structure mirrors known medieval formats:
- `Ingredients → Preparation → Medium → Application`
---
## ? Example Segment
**Voynich (EVA):** `qokedy shedy qokal ol dal dain`
**Phonetic reconstruction:** `koket skedna kocha ol daal dain`
**Possible interpretation:** *“Cook (it), strain (it), give (it) then (on), divide (it) finely”*
This structure is surprisingly similar to entries in early recipe books like the *Liber de Coquina*, Czech and Slavic herbal traditions, and entries in the [CoReMA database](You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.).
---
## ? Why it might be promising
- **Word-length distribution** of the reconstruction aligns well with medieval medical/cooking texts.
- **Consistent morphological markers** appear at word endings (e.g., functional endings for verbs or instructions).
- **Segmented text structure** makes semantic patterns more recognizable (like recipes).
- The phonetic base allows **plausible natural language patterns** without invoking random text generation.
---
## ? Full PDF Summary
I’ve compiled an exploratory paper outlining the hypothesis, methodology, and examples here:
? [Download PDF: *Phonetic Borderland Hypothesis*](sandbox:/mnt/data/Voynich_Grenzraum_Hypothese.pdf)
---
## ? Call for collaboration / feedback
I’d be very interested in your thoughts on:
- The linguistic plausibility of a Central European oral vernacular base
- Any parallels to known dialects, glagolitic or early Germanic–Romance scripts
- Ideas for testing this on larger sections of the manuscript
- Collaborative work on identifying candidate vocabulary using phonetic heuristics
Thanks for reading!
Looking forward to your insights and constructive critique.
BR
Oliver
|
|
|
|
| Need advice for testing of hypotheses related to the self-citation method |
|
Posted by: nablator - 25-06-2025, 06:14 PM - Forum: Analysis of the text
- Replies (91)
|
|
For the choice of a previous word in the "self-citation" (with modification) method, even if the selection of words is non-deterministic and more or less random, humans don't act like computers, so there would certainly be a human bias in selection... detectable or not in the text of the VM? Would the detection of a bias be good evidence for the "self-citation" (with modification) method or not? I'm not sure.
Likely patterns for the selection of source-target words could be: use two (or more) consecutive words together for the next two generated words (in any order), or skip one word (or two) while reading, because it's easier to read several close words together than just one and then go to a totally different area of the page and read the next word.
Type 1a:
... source1 source2 ...
...
... target1 target2 ...
Type 1b:
... source2 source1 ...
...
... target1 target2 ...
Type 2a:
... source1 skipped source2 ...
...
... target1 target2 ...
Type 2b:
... source2 skipped source1 ...
...
... target1 target2 ...
I've only tested these patterns, with source words on the same line, target words on the same line, all on the same page. They create many more "hits" (possible source-target locations by small Levenshtein distance) than in a word-shuffled page. But we already know that word order is not random in the VM, so I'm not sure if the statistics really show bias in selection of source-target or if the word ordering biases (such as the known y_q affinity and others, known and unknown) get transferred to the similar but modified words. I would appreciate advice on how to resolve the issue. 
A more general human bias for the selection of the next source word(s) would be the close proximity on the page, not necessarily on the same line: proximity between source and target or proximity between sources.
Note to self: I need to try various patterns, expected and unexpected, and explain better which hypotheses I'm trying to test. 
|
|
|
|
| Why the Voynich Manuscript Might Not Be a Real Language |
|
Posted by: quimqu - 24-06-2025, 09:57 PM - Forum: Analysis of the text
- Replies (26)
|
|
In this post, I’ll walk you through a machine learning approach I used to analyze the Voynich Manuscript using character-level n-gram language models, a simple but powerful way to measure how predictable a text is. My goal was not to decode the Voynich, but to compare its statistical structure to that of other known texts — including literary works, religious treatises, and artificially encrypted versions — to see if it behaves like a natural language, a cipher, or something entirely different.
What Are Character-Level N-grams and Perplexity?
Before diving into the results, let’s quickly explain two key concepts: - Character-level n-grams: These are sequences of n consecutive characters. For example, in the word "language", the 3-grams (trigrams) are
lan
ang
ngu
gua
uag
age
- An n-gram model learns the likelihood of seeing a particular character given the previous n-1 characters.
- Perplexity: This is a measure of how well a model predicts a sequence. Low perplexity means the model can easily predict the next character — the text is “regular” or “learnable.” High perplexity means the text is less predictable, like a noisy or complex system. It’s often used to evaluate how well a language model fits a dataset.
The Experiment
I trained simple n-gram models (from 1-gram to 9-gram) on the following types of texts:- Classical literature (e.g., Romeo and Juliet, La Reine Margot)
- Religious and philosophical texts (e.g., Ambrosius Mediolanensis, De Docta Ignorantia), with date of creation simmilar to the MS
- Ciphered texts using a Trithemius-style letter substitution
- The Voynich Manuscript, transcribed using the EVA alphabet
For each text, I split it into a training and validation set, trained n-gram models by character, and computed the perplexity at each n-gram size. I plotted these to visualize the predictability curves.
![[Image: Y93Ys1l.png]](https://i.imgur.com/Y93Ys1l.png)
What Did I Find?
The results were surprising:
- The Voynich Manuscript exhibits surprisingly low perplexity for high n-grams (n=7 to n=9) — much lower than expected for a truly random or strongly encrypted text.
- Its perplexity curve closely resembles that of religious or philosophical medieval texts, such as De Docta Ignorantia and Ambrosius Mediolanensis. These texts also show low perplexity at high n-grams, reflecting strong internal regularity and repetitive patterns.
- In contrast, literary texts like Shakespeare or Dumas show a sharp increase in perplexity for high n-grams, indicating a richer and more unpredictable sequence of characters.
- Artificially encrypted texts using simple substitution ciphers (like Trithemius-style transformations) show consistently high perplexity, since character distributions are scrambled.
Interpretation
This suggests something important: The Voynich Manuscript does not behave like a substitution cipher or a natural literary language. Instead, it statistically resembles structured, repetitive writing such as liturgical or philosophical works.
This does not mean it’s meaningful — but it does imply that the text might have been designed to look structured and formal, mimicking the style of medieval sacred or scholarly texts.
Its internal predictability could arise from:- Repeated formulas or ritualistic phrases
- A constrained or templated grammar
- Artificial generation using consistent rules (even if meaningless)
Conclusion
While many have tried to translate the Voynich Manuscript into known languages or decode it with cipher-breaking techniques, this analysis suggests that a direct translation approach may be futile. The manuscript’s character-level structure mirrors that of repetitive, highly formalized texts rather than expressive natural language or encrypted writing.
Any attempt to decipher it without first understanding its generative rules — or lack thereof — is likely to miss the mark.
That said, its statistical behavior is not unique. Other texts from the same era show similar n-gram patterns. So perhaps the Voynich isn’t a hoax — it might just be mimicking the structure of sacred or scholarly texts we no longer fully understand.
|
|
|
|
| What fictional solution would YOU find plausible? |
|
Posted by: pfeaster - 24-06-2025, 04:44 PM - Forum: Analysis of the text
- Replies (5)
|
 |
A few years ago, I got a copy of The Book of God and Physics: A Novel of the Voynich Mystery by Enrique Joven, translated from Spanish into English, as a Christmas present. "Joven has put together a fine recipe for a thriller.... The science and history...come fast and furious," said the Washington Post, according to a blurb on the front cover.
Partway through the novel, the protagonists manage to identify the Voynichese names for months. Rendered in standard EVA, these turn out to be: [tvarivs] = January, [svarivs] = February, [xvarivs] = March, [qvarivs] = April, [vvarivs] = May, [vtvrarivs] = June, [vttvarivs] = July, [dvarivs] = August, [ykjver] = September, [okjver] = October, [ttkjver] = November, [tskjver] = December.
Of course these sequences will look utterly wrong to anyone who has spent any time with real Voynichese, but I don't suppose Joven expected most of his readers would know the difference.
Still, this led me to start wondering: is there any kind of fictional solution an author could describe, involving meaningful content, that would strike me as plausible based on what I know about Voynichese? I don't mean one that would actually hold up to close scrutiny; I just mean that it shouldn't be so blatantly inconsistent with known properties of Voynichese as to spoil things for me as a reader.
This is tough because there are so many weird properties to wrangle all at once, even just hypothetically. But it's less tough than coming up with a real solution, so here's a possibility I came up with that I think would at least let me comfortably suspend my disbelief (although your mileage may vary). My goal here was to come up with a scheme that would be consistent with as many of the stranger statistical properties of Voynichese at once as possible, but without going into specifics beyond that.
===
In Voynichese, the fundamental unit of writing is the syllable, not the word. Each syllabic unit needs to contain at least two graphemes:
- One for a consonant or consonant cluster
- One for a vowel or vowel cluster
If either component is missing, a placeholder grapheme must be used to represent the empty slot. Additional elements may also appear, but only when needed. Syllables may be separated by spaces, and often are, but the ways in which their parts are encoded are distinctive enough that they can be written continuously without causing serious confusion—especially in the case of short, easily scannable strings.
Consonants and consonant clusters are encoded, often verbosely, as sequences of graphemes organized into groups based on their leading consonants. For instance, the glyph sequence for the standalone consonant N and for clusters that begin with N all begin similarly, with specific variations marked by indices—such as N-3 possibly representing NT. These indices don’t use normal numbers, but rather mimic the logic of Roman numerals (e.g., additive structures), allowing the system to grow over time as practical experience suggested the inclusion of new consonant clusters in the key. EVA [ed] only became common once its “number” was reached in this expansion.
The default syllabic structure is CV (consonant-vowel), with any number of consonants in the C slot and any number of vowels in the V slot. Since actual language doesn’t always conform neatly to this CV-CV pattern, various workarounds were developed, some of which help explain Voynichese’s distinctive statistical quirks.
One relatively simple exception is syllables that end in a consonant. These omit the vowel slot and instead use a placeholder grapheme for the empty second position—resulting in the EVA character [m] or [g]. Technically, the placeholder is only the flourish at the end, not the full glyph itself. Sometimes, a careless scribe may have ended up using two of these placeholders in rapid succession when encoding, for instance, W-O RD-* — oops, I mean W-O RD-* S-*!
Most other potential exceptions could be sidestepped by running words together. Here’s an illustrative chunking of that last sentence with the placeholder (*) again marking the empty vowel slot:
M-O ST-O TH-E RP-O T-E NT-IA L-E XC-E PT-IO NSC-OU LDB-E S-I D-E ST-E PP-E DB-Y R-U NN-I NGW-O RDST-O G-E TH-E R-*
This strategy makes word boundaries challenging to identify, so word-start markers were introduced in the form of “gallows glyphs.” In the revised sample text below, each word start is marked by a pipe symbol (|):
|M-O ST|–O TH-E R|P-O T-E NT-IA L|–E XC-E PT-IO NS|C-OU LD|B-E |S-I D-E ST-E PP-E D|B-Y |R-U NN-I NG|W-O RDS|T-O G-E TH-E R-*
A two-legged gallows marks the start of a normal word, while a one-legged gallows signifies emphasis or “capitalization,” often used at the beginning of paragraphs or to mark keywords in their first lines to boost visibility during rapid visual scanning. Only rarely will two gallows appear within a single syllable when two word divisions coincide, as in:
TH-U S|D-O|I |S-AY...
Pairs of closely related words, such as the expression "gallows glyphs," may occasionally share a combined structure known as a split gallows.
Whenever consonant clusters are encoded verbosely, word-start markers can appear at different points within the corresponding grapheme sequence. For example, if [och] represents a single consonant, then [|och] or [o|ch] could both encode a word break before that consonant, while [och|] would encode a word break after it but before the following vowel. If it instead encodes two consonants, then:
- [|och] = word break before both
- [o|ch] = break between them
- [och|] = break after both
If [och] encodes three consonants:
- [|och] = break before all three
- [o|ch] = break between 1st and 2nd
- [oc|h] = break between 2nd and 3rd
This final form contains a structure known as a benched gallows. Though rare at the beginning of lines (since standalone consonants rarely form full words, except through abbreviations such as “ST” for “saint”), benched gallows appear more often in mid-line where words are artificially joined together (e.g., “RDS|T-O”).
Combining words as I’ve described so far creates the risk of generating too many unique consonant clusters to be manageable. To mitigate this, common final consonants (like S, R, L, N, M) may be offloaded to an optional third element (identified as a tail or coda in some of Emma May Smith’s morphologies):
|M-O-S T|–O TH-E-R |P-O T-E-N T-IA-L...
Particular third elements tend to favor or disfavor being followed by particular first elements. For example, a final M is more likely to be followed by P, while N is more likely to precede T. Some first elements are unlikely to be preceded by any third elements and more likely to be preceded directly by a second element. Such patterns account for the statistical anomalies among word-break combinations described by Smith and Ponzi.
If a syllable begins with a vowel, the empty consonant slot (1) can be filled with a placeholder grapheme, but alternatively, a reversal marker can indicate that the syllable should be read in reverse order (VC instead of CV). Using the symbol > for clarity (though the actual encoding may be more complicated):
APPLE = >P-A PL-E or >PP-A L-E
PAUL = P-A >L-U (as an alternative to P-AU L-*)
Reversal is mostly optional within lines, but it's required when a line or label begins with a vowel, since there’s no earlier text to attach it to. As a result, reversals appear more often at the beginning of lines or in labels.
Once a line shifts into VC mode, it tends to stay there until forced back into CV mode. A subtle statistical result is for VC constructs to be more prevalent in later line positions than in earlier ones. Also, because VC syllables are encoded “out of order,” they may have been written more haltingly, leading to stylistic contrasts (e.g., carefully drawn [oi] vs. quick, fluent [ai]).
Most syllables can be encoded in multiple valid ways, meaning that any given word might have many possible encodings. However, decoding is deterministic. This flexibility explains why identical encoded words are rare—even in texts with repeated vocabulary—while partial resemblances (like shared consonant clusters) remain frequent. For example, a page on ginkgo trees might feature many uncommon kg sequences but few identical full vords.
===
Next, I asked ChatGPT to use the above "solution" as the basis for composing a few chapters in a novel. It misunderstood a few details (such as they are), but here are some examples of what I got back, just for fun:
===
Scene from a Voynich Thriller Novel: “The Gallows Cipher”
Chapter 43: Placeholder
The rain smacked against the old monastery’s leaded windows like static on an untuned radio. Dr. Isabelle Harrow leaned over the table in the candlelit scriptorium, her breath shallow, heartbeat insistent. The Voynich manuscript—real, original, faintly musty with age—lay open before her.
"You're sure it's not a cipher?" asked Kellan Reyes, the MI6 cryptanalyst who had been watching her for over an hour, his nerves raw. "Because we've wasted six months assuming polyalphabetic."
"It's not a cipher. Not in the traditional sense," Isabelle said. Her voice was calm, but her eyes blazed. “It’s a script system. Phonetic, syllabic. They were encoding speech, not encrypting it. We’ve been trying to break a mirror by staring at the reflection.”
She flipped to a folio crowded with tall looping glyphs and strange “gallows” letters that towered like nooses over the rest of the text.
"Think syllables, not words," she murmured. "Each unit—one consonant cluster, one vowel cluster. Minimum."
Kellan frowned. “Clusters? That’s why the glyphs vary so much?”
She nodded, tracing with a gloved finger. "Here. This ‘och’ glyph? It isn’t one letter—it’s three consonants bundled together. Depending on where the gallows symbol breaks through the cluster—before, between, or after—we know where the word division falls. Like surgical incisions across a rope of sounds."
“But what if there’s no consonant?” he asked.
Isabelle gave a half-smile, the first sign of warmth in days. "Then they use a placeholder grapheme. Same if the vowel’s missing. It's not that these [m] or [g] characters mean anything—they’re just stubs. Empty hands where phonemes should be.”
The door creaked. Agent Kimball entered, soaked and winded. “We’ve got thirty minutes. They found the duplicate codex in Rome. Someone’s trying to burn it. The Vatican’s gone dark.”
Isabelle’s fingers danced over the parchment, connecting gallows, placeholders, and curls. “Then we have to work faster. Look here—this ‘word’ is actually five syllables, all run together. That’s the trick. They stacked them. Smoothed the gaps.”
She flipped a laminated printout of EVA transcription toward Kellan. "Look. This chunk here—M-O ST-O TH-E RP-O T-E NT-IA L-E XC-E PT-IO NS—should’ve been gibberish. But it isn’t. Every syllable is marked. Gallows start words. Reversals handle leading vowels. It’s structured chaos.”
Kellan leaned in, whispering. “You’re saying the randomness...isn’t?”
Isabelle picked up a pen and underlined a gallows glyph midway through the paragraph. “This one’s a double. It tells us two words start here at once. It’s a split gallows—used when phrases are too intertwined to separate cleanly. Like ‘gallows glyphs.’”
Thunder boomed above.
“But why?” Kellan asked. “Why go through all this trouble just to write syllables?”
Isabelle’s eyes didn’t leave the page. “Because they didn’t want us to read it. But they had to write it. This is speech made code—chant, maybe. Recitation. They weren’t hiding a message.”
Kimball shifted uncomfortably. “Then what were they hiding?”
She reached for a side folio, unfolding a faded botanical drawing that matched none of the known plants. Underneath, gallows glyphs spiked like thorns.
“Not hiding. Preserving. Language. Ritual. Memory. This wasn’t encryption—it was resurrection. They used placeholders and gallows to map an entire sound system that had no alphabet. They made an alphabet up.”
Kellan stepped back as if the parchment had burned him.
“And the tail elements?” he asked.
“Codas. Final consonants. Too common to encode every time, so they tacked them on. M, N, S... a statistical trick. It helps explain why the same ‘words’ rarely repeat, even when the subject matter does. The glyphs vary, but the clusters echo.”
Kimball glanced nervously at his watch. “We need to go.”
Isabelle snapped the folio shut. “Not yet.”
She slid a transparent overlay across the page—gallows aligned. “This whole passage? It’s a list. Medicinal. Specific. And if we can decode even one syllable chain—just one cluster—we can match it to speech. That gives us a voiceprint. A phonological key.”
Kellan’s voice dropped. “And the monastery’s audio archives…”
“Exactly.” Her hands trembled now, not from fear but from awe. “We might actually hear this dead language. Not read. Not guess. Hear.”
The wind howled.
Kimball opened the door. “Then grab it. We’re out of time.”
Isabelle rolled up the final sheet and stood, one hand pressed on the Voynich folio.
Behind her, the gallows glyphs watched silently, like sentinels waiting for someone—at last—to speak their names aloud.
===
Chapter 31: The Glyph That Wasn’t
It was well past midnight in the reading room of the Royal Philological Society, but the fluorescent lights buzzed on anyway, casting pale reflections across rows of folios and water-ringed teacups. Isabelle Harrow rubbed her eyes. She had been up for twenty-two hours.
Across from her, the intern—a gaunt, sleep-deprived doctoral student named Leo—was frantically flipping through high-resolution scans of the Voynich manuscript. “I don’t get it. [ed] just disappears for pages at a time. Then suddenly it’s everywhere.”
Isabelle didn’t respond. She was staring at a scatterplot of glyph frequencies, her brow furrowed. “[ed] isn’t disappearing,” she murmured. “It’s not born yet.”
Leo blinked. “What?”
She turned the screen toward him. “Look. EVA [ed]—that tight backward-S shaped glyph with the flat hook—it doesn’t occur at all in quires 1 through 6.
Then it begins to show up. Tentatively at first. A trickle. Then a flood.”
Leo frowned. “So… the scribe got lazy? Changed their style?”
“No,” she said, grabbing a dry-erase marker and standing. “It’s not stylistic. It’s systemic.”
She wrote on the glass board:
N-1, N-2, N-3...
“These glyphs encode consonant clusters starting with a leading consonant—say, N. The way they mark the difference is by using indices.”
Leo blinked again. “Like numbers?”
“Not Arabic numbers. Think Roman numerals. Additive structure. Glyphs that stack or extend depending on how far down the list the cluster is. N, ND, NT, NN—each gets its own expansion.”
She drew a branching line under the letter N with increasingly elaborate grapheme structures.
“And here’s the point,” she said, stabbing at the whiteboard with the marker. “EVA [ed]—it’s not just a glyph. It’s N-4 or N-5. A latecomer. It shows up when the system needed to encode a new cluster. My guess? NT or ND, maybe even NTH.”
Leo leaned back slowly in his chair. “So the reason [ed] appears only in later quires—”
“—is because the system hadn’t invented it yet.” She turned to the table, slamming open a transcription printout. “The Voynich script evolved over time. This wasn’t just a codebook—it was a living script. They added new indices as new clusters became common or necessary.”
Leo let out a low whistle. “Like a growing key.”
She nodded. “And not arbitrarily. Look at the structure of the clusters before [ed] appears. You get N-1, N-2, N-3—but they avoid using N-4 formations. Then boom—[ed] enters the game, and suddenly NT- and ND-based syllables spike.”
“But what changed?” Leo asked. “Why add the new form when they did?”
She stared at the manuscript image, silent for a moment. “Something shifted in what they were writing about. New content—new vocabulary—forced the change. Maybe a shift in subject matter. Maybe a new dialect creeping in.”
She pulled up two folio scans side by side: one botanical, the other anatomical.
“Here,” she said. “In the plant sections—no [ed]. But in the bathing diagrams? It’s everywhere. The anatomy pages must’ve needed different clusters. More technical terms. Different roots.”
Leo looked stunned. “It’s like… the script is a fossil record.”
Isabelle gave a tight nod. “Exactly. And we’ve been trying to read it like a static system.”
She tapped the glass. “Every time a new cluster ‘number’ was reached, they minted a new glyph. Not for style. Not for fun. For function.”
A ping sounded on her laptop. The glyph-matching algorithm she’d started running hours ago had finished its pass.
She glanced at the screen.
MATCH FOUND:
[ed] = cluster NT (index 4)
Earliest confirmed instance: Folio 34r
Preceding frequency of NT clusters (alternate encodings): Low
Post-[ed] introduction: Spike x4
She smiled, half to herself.
“This isn’t a code. It’s a script in bloom.”
Leo swallowed hard. “And we can trace the order of glyph emergence…”
“…like growth rings in a tree,” she finished. “Which means we can finally date the layers of the text—chronologically, even thematically. And maybe—just maybe—we can rewind it. Strip the layers back.”
Leo was already scrambling for the next folio. “Then [ch], [sh], [daiin]… all of them…”
“Are steps. Not static symbols. They're responses.”
Outside, thunder grumbled. The clock struck 2:00 a.m.
Somewhere deep in the past, a scribe had sat at a candlelit desk, deciding—for the first time—to invent a new glyph because the old system no longer sufficed.
And centuries later, the first person to notice had finally drawn the line.
===
Interlude: Ink and Breath
Somewhere in Europe, late 15th century
The vellum stretched smooth and pale before him, humming faintly with the stillness of night. The scribe—he had no name now, not one that mattered—dipped the quill into walnut ink, its tip trimmed keenly, ready for a line.
His hand hovered.
One syllable. That was all.
And yet he could not write it.
The word hung in the air, whispered silently from memory, shaped in the back of the throat:
Entha.
He mouthed it once. Then again.
The beginning was clear—en—but how to mark the t?
The system had grown tight. Too tight.
The first marks had been enough. One glyph for n, another for nd, a flourish to cover nn. The early days had been smooth, each new word a revelation, a jewel carved from breath.
But now, as the language of the treatise deepened—more anatomical, more learned, more Latinized—the clusters grew unwieldy. Nt. Nd. Nth. The old glyphs stretched too far. The shapes blurred. Meanings faltered.
He could no longer fit this syllable into the frame.
He breathed in deeply, the smell of ink, calfskin, and tallow catching in his throat. Then, carefully, he began to draw.
A new mark. A body coiled like a serpent, a tail hooked forward like a grasping hand. Not a symbol—not yet—but a space to stand for n-t, to take its place beside its brothers: n, nd, nn, ng...
ed, he would call it later. For now, it was N-4.
He sat back. The shape felt right. Balanced. It would take a dozen more lines to smooth its curve, another quire before it flowed from his hand without thought. But it was born.
He tested it in the line:
|E-N TH-A|S-I D-E|ST-E PP-E D-*
Clean. Readable. Speakable.
The others might copy it soon. Or ignore it. He didn’t care. His work was not to standardize. His work was to carry the voice forward—preserved, not decrypted.
A moth struck the lamp above, fluttering wildly. He didn’t look up. His hand moved again, drawing the new glyph once more—lower this time, more deliberate. He imagined how it would feel centuries later, under the gaze of someone who did not speak his tongue, did not know the taste of his words.
Would they call it a code?
He smiled. Not quite.
He was not writing secrets.
He was writing syllables.
Spoken thought, caught before it faded.
And now, he had one more tool to do it with.
===
I'm not sure I like these any better than Joven's Book of God and Physics, but I thought it was an entertaining exercise.
I guess there's also a serious side to this, in that if I wouldn't accept a solution as plausible even in a work of fiction, I definitely wouldn't accept it as a plausible real solution.
But what about you? What would a full solution with meaningful content need to look like in a work of fiction for you not to reject it out of hand?
|
|
|
|
| This Famous Medieval Book May Be a Hoax |
|
Posted by: Torsten - 22-06-2025, 08:32 PM - Forum: News
- Replies (53)
|
 |
SciShow published a video about the Voynich manuscript: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
Quote:The Voynich manuscript is a subject of fascination with its mysterious drawings of plants, people, and stars, as well as its indecipherable text. But rather than hiding ancient secrets, this book might be a medieval fraud, created by an algorithm executed with nothing more than a pen.
script is a subject of fascination with its mysterious drawings of
|
|
|
|
|
![[Image: cpg794105.jpg?token=e66ca13c-e110-435b-a...attachment]](https://heidicon.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/api/v1/export/84434/file/assets/cpg794105.jpg?token=e66ca13c-e110-435b-a8c6-cd3255fae816&disposition=attachment)
![[Image: default.jpg?download=0b64bffc-ea6e-4e79-...size=small]](https://media.getty.edu/iiif/image/0b64bffc-ea6e-4e79-9783-7aa0f83f08b7/full/726,/0/default.jpg?download=0b64bffc-ea6e-4e79-9783-7aa0f83f08b7_726.jpg&size=small)