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f67r1 and the supposed constellations |
Posted by: Anton - 09-05-2020, 02:03 AM - Forum: Astronomy
- Replies (39)
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f67r1 has a curious centre about which it is not easy to say whether it's Sun or Moon (or both at once), but it features twelve sectors filled with stars that "blink aboon" (as the old poem goes). At least I supposed these asterisks to represent stars several years ago, and the number of twelve being readily associated with hours, months or Zodiac constellations, I picked the latter option and tried to map the sector labels to constellation names in different languages - not directly, of course, but I mean - to find some pattern that could suggest a match. That to no avail.
Since then, the mnemonics discussion arose and went on, and now I'm inclined to think that the author heavily relies on mnemonics and the labels would be anything but the constellation names. So I dropped the labels for now.
Now, there's the symbol at 11 o'clock (marked with red circle below) which I always considered an arrow pointing rightwards. I took that for the direction of rotation or of some sequence that the reader is to follow. That made sense because this sector is clearly marked as the "initial" by the "separator" in the rings of text.
However, I noticed yesterday that this symbol, if rotated 90 degrees clockwise, resembles scales, only if the "pointer" of the arrow is considered grease (of which there is some in the folio) and excluded from consideration, because, on the other hand, this "arrow" contains a strange tail to the left, which, although, if the object is rotated 90 degrees clockwise, looks like the scales' handle.
The scales immediately suggest the sign or constellation of Libra. Note that this depiction of scales does not look as the traditional depiction of the sign of Libra, it just resembles scales schematically.
The "special" point that Libra would occupy in the figure (the "initial" position) is not inexplicable; at the verge of the AD era the point of the autumnal equinox was in Libra (while that of the vernal equinox was in Aries), so the point of the autumnal equinox has been traditionally designated with the sign of Libra since then, notwithstanding that currently the point shifted to Virgo. (The same story is with Aries and Pisces for the vernal equinox).
I then supposed that the asterisks in the sectors (which I considered stars for the sake of this investigation) represent respective Zodiacal constellations. Again, from the point of mnemonics, if you have set the point of Libra and you understand the direction (e.g. counterclockwise), you don't need to take trouble to depict individual constellations, since their sequence is perfectly known and thus can be reconstructed by any reader.
But what follows is based on the hypothesis that those are Zodiacal constellations. To test that hypothesis, I counted the number of stars in each segment (shown in figure). It's not clear whether the large stars should be added to the small stars or they are magnified references. From what we see roughly at 6 o'clock I'd say they are references, but in the table I provide two counts - one is just small stars, the other is small plus large.
Now, does the count match the number of stars in respective real world constellations? The short answer is no, since the number of stars in a constellation is really very very large, and no astronomer has ever discovered them all. Even back from modern astronomy to the times of Hipparchus and Ptolemy, the number of stars in constellations as catalogued in Almagest is much larger than what we find in f67r1. So I further supposed that the author used some handy contemporary reference (I don't know which, maybe somebody has better knowledge in that respect) which listed only the "major" stars of the constellations. Which stars would be "major"? Probably those with smaller apparent magnitude (that is, those which look brighter). So I took the tables of stars of Zodiacal constellations and counted how many of them have the apparent magnitude of 4 or less (the choice of this threshold was such that the count was more or less on par with what is observed in f67r).
Since there was no perfect match (and we don't know which threshold was used by that supposed contemporary reference), I check not for the absolute values but for the trend. Does the number increase when it increases in f67r, and does it increase when it increases in f67r, while following the circle? For most part it does, except for three cases: supposed Gemini to supposed Cancer, Cancer to Leo and Virgo to Libra. The supposed direction is counter-clockwise.
I did the count very late yesterday, so there may be errors, but I think not many. The first count is the real world, the second is f67r1 (small stars). What's in brackets is small stars plus large stars.
Virgo 10 7 (8)
Libra 6 9 (10)
Scorpio 20 12 (14)
Sagittarius 16 10 (12)
Capricorn 5 8 (10)
Aquarius 9 9 (11)
Pisces 3 8 (10)
Aries 4 11 (13)
Taurus 16 11 (13)
Gemini 13 8 (10)
Cancer 2 12 (14)
Leo 14 9 (10)
Another thing that does not fit is the fact that real-world constellations with small amount of bright stars, such as Pisces, Aries and especially Cancer, are matched, with this plot, to large figures in the diagram - figures that are higher than those of some other supposed "constellations" in the diagram. Note that if we suppose that some asterisks were situated in those half-sectors which are now painted over by the blue paint (a possibility I have in mind), this will make the situation even worse, not better.
Yes, I'm aware that apparent magnitude may change with time. And yes, I'm aware that magnitudes e.g. in Almagest are different from what we are used to today. And that borders of constellations changed with time. With Almagest, or other catalogue of yore, one would have different counts (and probably would need a different threshold). I haven't time to do the Almagest count, but a screening look tells me that it will not improve the situation for Cancer.
What I can imagine is that the author used some chart with graphical representations of constellations where the stars reproduced were chosen only in part in accordance with their apparent magnitude, while the other consideration was to "complete the picture" (of the constellation).
All this, of course, if my hypothesis is valid, to begin with.
67r_scales.jpg (Size: 1.37 MB / Downloads: 1237)
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The incredible unravelling of the Voynich Manuscript |
Posted by: RenegadeHealer - 08-05-2020, 10:36 PM - Forum: News
- Replies (96)
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You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. by Paul Weiler, published May 3, 2020 on Amazon.com.
This book came to my attention via a post book's author made on Reddit's r/voynich: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.. The author is very upfront about promoting a book he's selling; I find his candor refreshing. What follows is a lengthy and in-depth post which I found coherent, engaging and not noticeably gimmicky. It presents a subject -JKP- has researched and written about extensively: the derivation of Voynichese glyphs from medieval Latin scribal conventions.
I have not read the book. Paul Weiler is convinced he has worked out a system whereby Voynichese is abbreviated Latin, with Voynichese glyphs mapping to Latin syllables in a one-to-many fashion. This route of investigation has been explored quite a lot and has so far been a dead end. Seeing a couple of Voynichese-as-abbreviated-Latin theories get torn apart here on the Ninja has made me see this possibility as increasingly unlikely. From what I can gather on Reddit and Amazon, Paul Weiler appears to be a German fiction writer. His writing style is fun to read, and the overall tone of his Reddit post suggests someone giving and eager to share. But almost unnoticeably absent from the generous serving of good information he gives, is any actual demonstration of his decoding method. As intrigued and entertained as I am, in these lean times, I can't justify spending ~$20 to read a Voynich theory, without some hard evidence that it might actually be on the right track.
Google and DuckDuckGo searches for +"Paul Weiler" +Voynich turned up no hits. The Reddit user u/PaulWeiler is a new account, with no other posts.
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[split] Implications of multiple scribes |
Posted by: R. Sale - 08-05-2020, 06:09 PM - Forum: Voynich Talk
- Replies (53)
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So I'm at loose ends here. If the script was written by multiple individuals, instead of some aging wizardly nutter, who badly burned her index finger, then how might VMs creation have come about? Is the VMs complied of disparate sections, in which case divisions should very clear, or were there entries by several persons on a single page, as the tilted lines might suggest?
While reasonably considered valid in the early centuries of its existence, the interpretation of VMs text as a lost 'tribal' language doesn't hold much water any more. While there is the intention to create the appearance, there is no actual "lost culture" or society behind this. There was no culture from which different parts of a combined text could originate. Unbreakable encryption and meaningless content are also investigative dead ends. What possibilities are left? It's the combined work from a cabal of wizardly nutters using set of secret symbols to unintelligibly record their foibles and flights of fantasy in their own private language?
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Voynich Paleography article |
Posted by: LisaFaginDavis - 07-05-2020, 12:23 PM - Forum: News
- Replies (59)
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Well, friends, here it is!
Davis, Lisa Fagin. "How Many Glyphs and How Many Scribes? Digital Paleography and the Voynich Manuscript." [i]Manuscript Studies: A Journal of the Schoenberg Institute for Manuscript Studies[/i], vol. 5 no. 1, 2020, p. 164-180.
Under normal circumstances, it wouldn't be an open access article, but in the current circumstance Project Muse has made all of their content open access until June 30. So download it while you can!
You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
I will have a longer piece coming out next year in a volume called Digital Paleography, and I may make small refinements to these conclusions.
Also, something went wrong with the x-axis of figure 2...we ended up with multiple EVA-[f]s there, I'm not sure why. It will be corrected in the Digital Paleography version. But that figure isn't going to tell any of you anything you didn't already know anyway.
I know that some of you will have strong feelings about my work, and I'm happy to have a discussion here about my methodology and conclusions. Enjoy!
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Manuscript Studies: A Journal of the Schoenberg Institute for Manuscript Studies, Vol |
Posted by: ReneZ - 05-05-2020, 08:25 PM - Forum: Analysis of the text
- Replies (7)
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Lisa Fagin Davis wrote:
Quote:In other news, my paleography article in Manuscript Studies was published a few days ago. It will be available open-access on May 7, I believe
OK, it's not there yet, but I already like the cover of the issue. I would be happy to know which MS it is from.
Edit:
Oops, it's there:
University of Pennsylvania, Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts, MS Codex 1881, 35v
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The daiin |
Posted by: Anton - 03-05-2020, 11:50 PM - Forum: Analysis of the text
- Replies (25)
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I often quickly forget what was discussed in the forum, and, the more surprising, I'm also in habit of forgetting the discussions in which I myself took most active part. So please excuse me if what I write below was discussed earlier, we'll merge the threads then.
I collated two trails of thought from the gallows intrusion thread - first one, that daiin may be used as a meaningless (?) filler (though any other vord may be as well, of course). The second one, that the beginnings and endings of lines may be particular candidate positions to place fillers in.
So I took ten most frequent vords (daiin, as we know, is the first one on that list), and calculated the percentage of occurrences which correspond to the vord 's in question being the first or the last vord of a line.
The results are below (the counts are based on the You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.). The first number is the total count, the second number is the count as line-initial, the third number is the count as line-final, and the final number is the percentage of "(line-initial plus line-final)/total".
daiin 864 156 134 33,4%
ol 538 31 47 14,5%
chedy 501 6 38 8,8%
aiin 470 0 34 7,2%
shedy 427 6 20 6,1%
chol 397 19 6 6,3%
or 366 31 20 13,9%
ar 352 5 27 9,1%
chey 344 5 19 7,0%
dar 319 36 47 26,0%
It's seen that daiin exhibits particular (and almost equal) affinity to line beginnings and endings, with one third of its total occurrences being in those positions, while for most other vords of the top ten, excluding only dar, the count does not exceed 15%, and mostly is under 10%.
What about "variations" of daiin, such as dain and daiiin?
dain 211 47 30 36,5%
daiiin 17 2 4 35,3%
That's funny.
I suspect that daiin is a filler indeed, with dain and daiiin being its variations that occupy slightly less and slightly more space, respectively.
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