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| Experiments with mapping |
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Posted by: dfs346 - 07-12-2023, 08:54 PM - Forum: Analysis of the text
- Replies (1)
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When I first started juxtaposing the frequency table of Voynich glyphs with the frequency tables of selected medieval European languages, an experiment naturally suggested itself. This was to take a random page from the Voynich manuscript and map glyphs to letters, one by one from the top of the frequency table to the bottom. This might produce a few recognisable words; or it might not.
I did indeed try a few experiments of this nature, starting with the v101 transliteration as the source document and with medieval Italian (as per the OVI corpus) as the destination language. I did the mapping in Microsoft Excel, which has a convenient “find-and-replace” function. Since Excel tends to treat upper and lower case as the same, I first replaced all upper-case keyboard assignments in v101 with similar lower-case Unicode characters: for example, v101-K became ǩ and v101-W became ŵ.
I also made the decision to replace all occurrences of v101-4o (which I believe is a single glyph) with the Unicode character ④.
Not unexpectedly, these experiments did not yield recognisable words. For example, having randomly selected page f090r1, the first two lines: - goeccoe ④hcoe ④ŵ1o8 1oe9 ǩop / 92oe koy 2coy ④k1oy ④h9 8ayaea
mapped to:- BEROOER CTOER CŵNEL NERA QUEF / APER DES POES CDNES CTA LISIRI.
(In this instance, the v101 glyph ŵ could not be mapped at all, since this glyph is relatively rare, and the medieval Italian alphabet had only 33 letters including accented vowels. So I ran out of Italian letters before I ran out of Voynich glyphs.)
However, later on when I became aware of the Sukhotin algorithm, it made sense to try a variant of this approach, with vowels distinguished from consonants. With the v101 transliteration, the Sukhotin algorithm (as implemented by Dr Mans Hulden’s Python code) identifies the following v101 glyphs as the most probable vowels (in descending order of probability):
(There are six vowels here, but we might need to conjecture that C could be a double c.)
That enabled me to construct another juxtaposition of frequency tables, as follows:
This in turn permitted another series of experiments with mappings, on which I will report in another post.
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| Journals for Voynich Manuscript Decipherment |
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Posted by: Pardis Motiee - 07-12-2023, 06:02 PM - Forum: Voynich Talk
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When I tried before, about three journals said that it is not in their scope because the method is new. Even now, when I am trying to submit, due to the large number of pages (109 pages in total = 8 pages article + 99 pages for supplementary materials), the editor said that they will not accept any article for review with this number of pages. What journals do you recommend?
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| Strange Horticulture |
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Posted by: Pepper - 01-12-2023, 10:04 AM - Forum: Fiction, Comics, Films & Videos, Games & other Media
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Anybody who likes puzzle games might enjoy this - it includes several nods to the Voynich: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
You play a medieval herbalist who must find and identify plants with the aid of Voynich-esque manuscript. Your MS is written in English but the images are often not literal, and the text is sometimes vague. You have to use your plant IDs to mix potions, help customers, and solve a mystery.
I really like these kind of games and found it had a good level of challenge, nice music, and of course the Voynich references made me smile.
For the avoidance of doubt I'm not involved in the game's production in any way, just bought it on Steam and thought other forumites might like it.
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| A Voynich Talk |
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Posted by: Mark Knowles - 30-11-2023, 06:05 PM - Forum: Voynich Talk
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I have been doing a series of presentations on the history of 14th of 15th Century Cryptography in conjunction with the University of Wuppertal and it seems in this context it would not be a bad idea to do one on the Voynich manuscript.
I could do a presentation on my own theory, however I would prefer to do a presentation that is more general and less specific.
Having watched a few general presentations online I have decided what I don't want in my presentation:
1) Much discussion of late history of Voynich manuscript. Whether Anne Nil, Athanasius Kircher, Hans Krauss etc.
2) Lots of Talk about folios and bifolios and quires.
3) Lists of possible theories already discredited by carbon dating. E.g. Roger Bacon, Wilfred Voynich, Edward Kelley, DA Vinci etc.
4) Voynich is pop-culture
OK. So what does that leave us with, if anything?
1)Comparison with other historical herbal manuscripts of the time
2)Comparision with other astrological documents of that time eg. Diebold Lauber
3) Relevant Statistical work
4) Contemporary figures Giovanni Fontana, Ramon Llull
A hard question is how much time to devote to a known/unknown language theory and how to a cipher theory. Given my strong objection to the idea that the Voynich is written in a unknown language or known language in an unknown script maybe I should present that in the talk even if it might seem to show some kind of bias and I can then still leave the door open to that possibility.
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| Why does a gallows character start almost every page? |
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Posted by: Amarfa - 21-11-2023, 11:25 PM - Forum: Analysis of the text
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Ok, so I'm just going to post a few things here to see if the pattern I'm seeing is really there or not. It looks to me as though a gallows character starts almost every page of the Voynich manuscript, and I'm going to cut and paste it along with its accompanying word, if any, to identify similarities and differences. I might not be able to finish the chart in one sitting, but if I put it up here, maybe somebody or some other folks can pick up where I leave off?
f1r: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
f1v: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
f2r: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
f2v: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
f3r: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
f3v: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
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| Ethel Lililan Voynich' complete notebooks |
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Posted by: Koen G - 15-11-2023, 11:29 AM - Forum: News
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As you may remember, last year Marco Ponzi and I transcribed the first one and a half notebooks of Ethel Voynich (ELV) based on photos made by Lisa Fagin Davis. I recently had the opportunity to photograph the remaining notebooks, which Marco and I now also transcribed.
The contents of the notebooks are mostly entries about each large plant drawing (Herbal section), trying to identify it with regards to botanical properties and herbal traditions. She also discusses selected small-plant drawings, and points out links between both sections.
Here is the link to the complete transcription (pdf): You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
Here is a spreadsheet where I gathered Ethel's final guess for each plant, as well as how certain she appeared to be: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
(If you are interested in a certain folio, however, I strongly recommend looking at the full entry, since quite often her discussion is much more nuanced than what can be captured in a spreadsheet.)
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Botanical bestiary |
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Posted by: R. Sale - 13-11-2023, 10:13 PM - Forum: Imagery
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Is the VMs large plant section a botanical bestiary?
Here is the story of the pelican from the first listing that popped up.
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From the medieval perspective, if you're buying that one, then the VMs example is no problem.
The VMs example is f46v. Identified from sources as costmary, Tanacetum balsamita. The plant has also been called the 'herb of the virgin' - with reference to the Virgin Mary.
The roots were a bit more of a problem. They look like wings. Interpretations tried to turn them into the double-headed eagle of the Holy Roman Empire, but the headless VMs illustration doesn't have one head, let alone two. It also doesn't have an eagle's legs, claws or tail. A better interpretation was recently proposed. The roots were the wings of Saint Michael. Though you can find an illustration of Saint Michael in almost any color, the red shoulders are a positive indicator. The structure of the "wings" with their tips upward is very hard to find in medieval illustrations of Saint Michael and has much more in common with wings as represented in medieval heraldry.
The association of Saint Michael and the Virgin Mary relates to his role as psychopomp, or the guide of souls and the combination is a subtle, yet clear reference to the Assumption in an era when Mariology was growing in significance.
I make no claim to the investigations that identified either part of this beastly combination. I do think that when things fit together, from a medieval perspective, that it should be acknowledged and not 'swept under the rug' as it seems. So here it is.
The VMs is a botanical bestiary - based on the one example. It is the one example where we can interpret the use of a biblical backstory for the illustration, very similar to the use of the example of the pelican. It is one example where there were 'zero' examples before with nothing beyond proposed botanical identifications. Even if this is the only example, it shows some of what the VMs artist can do and why VMs interpretation has been so problematic.
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