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My Queries about the Manuscript |
Posted by: caitlin_B200 - 31-01-2020, 12:34 PM - Forum: Voynich Talk
- Replies (17)
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Qurie 1 - How did the scientists working on the manuscript, decide that the manuscript was from Italy. I did some background research on the manuscript, and I found it was made out of cowskin vellum. Cow skin vellum was used predominantly in England and France, not Italy. In Italy, goats skin vellum was used instead.
Quire 2- Why do people think that Bacon wrote the manuscript? The manuscript has been carbon dated to the 15th century. Bacon was born and had died by the start of the 13th century, thats 2 century's to early.
From what I have gathered from some basic reading about the manuscript, I believe that it was written in France, not Italy. I don't know if this is helpful, but could someone please answer my questions?
Thank you
Caitlin
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More cleartext in the MS? |
Posted by: ReneZ - 22-01-2020, 07:28 AM - Forum: Analysis of the text
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This has been mentioned before, but I am not sure if it was in this forum.
On f68r2 there is a moon with a face near the top and a sun with a face near the bottom.
Both have circular texts around them. For the bottom one, there is one word, between 08:00 and 09:00, that does not look like Voynichese writing, but like cleartext. However, it is not all that easy to read.
Who can make anything of this?
EDIT: does it say 'sond' ? Could this be some dialect version of 'Sonne' (German for Sun)?
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[Results] State of the Voynich 2020 |
Posted by: Koen G - 21-01-2020, 10:58 AM - Forum: Voynich Talk
- Replies (4)
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With Wladimir's contribution, we reached 21 participants, beating 2017 by a large margin. Thanks to all who took the time to answer the questions. A few people submitted only a partial list, I included those whenever possible.
The purpose of this exercise was to find out where the people who frequent this forum stand as a whole, and how this evolves over time. Of course this is a gross abstraction, since people are forced to answer "yes" or "no". In future editions, maybe it would be better to use percentages to express to what degree one agrees with the statement?
Here are the results. The percentages reflect the amount of respondents who were more inclined to answer "yes" than "no" to the question. Behind the question I'll add the amount of increase or decrease compared to 2017.
18% Is the majority of the plants exotic? (-5 compared to 2017)
19% Is the manuscript any kind of hoax? (+19)
20% Is the manuscript authored by a known historical figure? (-3)
26% Is alchemy an important part of the manuscript? (+11)
30% Will there be any breakthrough in Voynich studies in 2020? (-63)
33% Have the images been made ambiguous or otherwise strange to conceal their true meaning? (+13)
47% Has the text been purposefully enciphered to conceal its meaning? (-20)
52% Have (part of) your views about the MS changed notably over the last few years? (new question)
55% Is medicine an important part of the MS? (-12)
70% Are the plants meant to refer to real plants? (-23)
71% Is the MS the creative product of one mind? (+4)
80% Do the images match the text? (-20)
84% Will we ever be able to read the MS? (-16)
85% Is astronomy and/or astrology an important part of the MS? (-2)
90% Does the text contain any meaning? (-10)
A thread throughout the results is the decrease of optimism and our belief that we can make sense of the manuscript. Only 30% of respondents expect a breakthrough this year, compared to 93% in 2017. Fewer respondents believe that the plants refer to real plants, that the images match the text, and that we will ever be able to read the manuscript. These statements still stand at 70% or more though, so we remain optimistic overall
The statement "is the MS any kind of hoax" went up to 19% (from 0), but this is one of the questions which should be rephrased or split by next edition since it covers a wide array of possibilities, and one may answer yes or no depending on the definition of hoax used. The same goes for example for the question about real plants.
The respondents who most often agreed with the majority opinion on polarizing questions were Anton, AgaTentakulus and MarcoP. The members who disagreed most often with the majority were DONJCH, Stephen Carlson and Wladimir.
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How could we approach the Pharma and Recipes? |
Posted by: Anton - 19-01-2020, 09:57 PM - Forum: Analysis of the text
- Replies (50)
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These are some methodological thoughts of mine. Since I'm unlikely to bring them to practice in the nearest future, I thought I'd better share them for someone to maybe pick them up.
Initially I approached the herbal section in the view that it may reveal some "template" of narration (which I was not able to find, but that does not mean it does not exist, because I tested it from one side only).
But the Recipes section (suppose these are recipes, to begin with) would perhaps exhibit even a more templated style. There are different types of recipes (not in the VMS, I mean, but in human practice). You have recipes to cook something, recipes to prepare medicines, recipes to cure the diseases. Each of those, however, would exhibit regularities. There will be some frequent words (such perhaps as "water" or "powder"). Some function words, such as e.g. "for", are not unlikely to exhibit positional affinities (e.g. in the titles: "for ...."). There will be measures and numerics (be that expressed by digits or by words). What is especially interesting, there will be established phrases, such as the "so nim" which we have extensively discussed in the You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. thread.
So what could we do?
Take some contemporary manuscript with recipes. You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. seems to me a good candidate, since it contains several recipe sections by different scribes (that is, by different authors, most probably) and of different types. Calculate word statistics for each section. Find most frequent words and word combinations, find positional templates. Do the same for the Recipe section of the VMS. Compare the results.
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Alchemy conference in Vienna |
Posted by: ReneZ - 19-01-2020, 12:30 PM - Forum: News
- Replies (7)
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From 19-21 February 2020, the beautiful city of Vienna will host the International symposium “Alchemical Laboratories. Practices, texts, material relics”.
Here is the web page with the most relevant information:
You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
I am planning / hoping to attend.
This is, of course, only marginally related with the Voynich MS. Perhaps.
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f65r - extensive attack |
Posted by: davidjackson - 19-01-2020, 10:16 AM - Forum: Analysis of the text
- Replies (25)
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I'd like to open a thread on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. to intensively attack it. The short reason being, it is a page with no more than three vords which one could assume have a direct relationship to the plant. I don't think any other page has less text on it than this one. Considering that all other plant pages have several paragraphs of text (an average of 89 vords per plant page - You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.), there must be a compelling reason for this plant to warrant a miserable three words. I have dashed off a series of observations and questions to get us started.
Plant identification.
The possible identification of this plant was recently discussed You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view..
Examination of the parts
Seeds
As ReneZ pointed out You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.the "seeds" are drawn branching out in opposition on the right hand branch, but in sequence on the left hand branch.
They are drawn a third way for the top branch - a single branch protrudes up before splitting into three with "seeds" at the end.
The very top of the folio has been trimmed and part of the image has been lost.
All the seeds are drawn in very similar fashion, regular fashion. They all have either five spikes and six balls, or six spikes and seven balls. No apparent reason.
Leaves
The leaves on the right hand branch are drawn incorrectly. The first two leaves appear to be part of the branch. I think this is a scribal mistake, at the third leaf this is corrected in an exaggerated fashion with the branch coming out at an angle.
In subsequent branches the leaves are drawn with greater distinction from the trunk of the branches. Possibly the right hand branch was drawn first.
Roots
Brown bulbs connect to a central bulb from which the plant emerges. Three branches end in a tapering line, the fourth in a squashed bulb.
The folio as a whole
The counter folio to You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. is f58r. You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. is the first full page of text after the herbology section, with the exception of the four people pointing on f57v, followed by another full page of text on f58v. (f65v is another plant image). So this sheet of parchment consists of two pages of text on the left and plant images on the right.
Remember that three whole folios have been lost between f58 and f65, as illustrated You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view..
(When reconstructing the layout of the book, we are going by the numbers inked on the right hand folios.)
Text
There are three vords on this page.
otaim dam alam
otaim dam alam
There has been no attempt to leave space on the page for block of text, which indicates to me that the scribe never intended having a large description. Why?
Q - Which was inked first, the plant or the text?
The three vords appear to have been almost an afterthought, and the last glyph runs into the leaf, despite there being plenty of room.
The first two vords are close together. The third has a double space, which is why it runs into the leaf.
Q - Why is this double space so important?
You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. is a rare word, it only appears twice (f65r and f111v). This may be a scribal issue, but the two don't seem that similar to me.
On the other hand, this may be my own wishful thinking - what do you think?
You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. appears all over the place, 98 matches.
You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. has eight matches.
So let's have some fun! Let us assume otaim is the name of the plant. We thus most likely have a subject - object - verb sentence going on (You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.), based purely on the frequency of occurrence of the vords. Something like plant_name used [for] nothing.
This makes a certainly amount of logical sense for an a priori constructed language, especially coming from a Latin speaker. It also explains away the double space in the sentence - the scribe paused to think before dashing off the final vord.
dam doesn't have to be just one vord - it is perfectly possible that this is an artificial construct. It could, for example, be a shorthand construct meaning something like, for example, the purposes of.
So let us assume otaim is the subject, the noun, the name of the plant. Let us further assume that this vord has been contracted in some way, by the use of scribal abbreviations. So:
Q - Can this word otaim be deciphered or expanded to link to any known or reasonable vernacular name for a plant similar to the one depicted?
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