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| Text to image relation in Quire 13 |
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Posted by: bi3mw - 20-04-2022, 04:12 PM - Forum: Imagery
- Replies (14)
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In reference to another thread, I have a simple as well as basic question: Do the illustrations in Quire 13 partly have a direct relation to the adjacent text paragraph or do they describe an independent content in the sequence which is only indirectly related to the text as a whole ?
As an example I would cite You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. . The illustrations follow each other closely. One gets the impression that a direct relation to the text paragraph to the right should be established. Otherwise there would be no reason for such "compression". Obviously everything had to fit on one page. On You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. it looks similar.
On You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. , the illustration in the header clearly encloses vertically the entire text paragraph ( especially on the left side ). The two illustrations following on the left also each "mark" a new paragraph of text. This division also makes me suspect that text and illustrations are directly related. It does not seem very likely that they would have to be considered independently of each other.
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| Combination of pch glyphs |
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Posted by: Ruby Novacna - 17-04-2022, 04:52 PM - Forum: Analysis of the text
- Replies (22)
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I still persist in seeking a solution by simple substitution. I know that the majority of Voynich followers do not share this kind of idea. However I would like to present some words beginning with pch which I read as ph or f.
1. pchdaiin (3) - fthaiin - φθαιην –of φθανω– come or do first
2. pchdair (4) – fthair – φθειρ – vermin
3. pchdeedy (1) - fthu89 - φθιτος, verb. adj. of φθιω –destroyed, dead
4. pchdy (11) - fth9 - φθῃ = εφθη –of φθανω – come or do first
5. pcheam (1) - phiar… - φιαρος - shining
6. pcholkchdy (1) - phanei89– Φανητος, gen. of Φανης
7. pcholkeedy (1) - phanu89 – Φανητος, gen. of Φανης
8. pcholky (2) - phan9 - Φανης
I do not know if such a proposal was made before me.
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| Ruby's Greek Thread |
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Posted by: Ruby Novacna - 12-04-2022, 01:41 PM - Forum: Theories & Solutions
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Four years ago I proposed to read the last two words of line 38 of page 75v dedy.kedy followed by qo!qokeey of line 39 as two words: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.* - of the Titanide of Dodona**.
However, as the years go by, I have not found much more information about the Dodonian oracle and the relationship of our manuscript to it.
Do you have any thoughts on this?
* From this reading I have retained that the letter 8 transcribes Greek tau, as well as delta in word endings, 4o transcribes delta at the beginning of words and e transcribes iota.
**I had proposed Τιτηνιδος Δωδωναῖος and today I realise that I did not pay attention to the gender of two words and that it would be better to say Τιτηνιδος Δωδώνης
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| Vords are too short. |
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Posted by: R. Sale - 07-04-2022, 08:45 PM - Forum: Analysis of the text
- Replies (26)
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In the discussion of potential translations, perhaps it should be said once again, that proof of a proper interpretation of the VMs text cannot be demonstrated by words alone. Certainly, vords are important, but vords are too short. A vord by itself does not demonstrate that the text makes sense - in whatever way sense can be made in some relevant interpretation.
Any random page of VMs text would do. But why not tune in to what the VMs has left to offer. There are certain markers in the circular texts. A particular pair of heraldic indicators are attached to marker on White Aries.
Finding a viable interpretation of VMs text is going to take the conversion of a given VMs text segment into a coherent statement of some sort. And better than a random text selection, there might be something present in the illustrations as an indicator. One that is paired. One that is both disguised and verified. One with enough historical significance to represent the start of an ecclesiastical tradition. Just a lil' ol' thing like that.
Heraldry helps to interpret the VMs illustrations. And those images reveal what the VMs artist knew. And there is another level of revelation when the techniques of VMs artistic presentation are investigated and the multiple examples of ambiguity and obfuscation are recognized.
The story of the VMs, though still not that well understood, ties in somehow with the era of the Golden Fleece and rise of the Colettine Poor Clares, which are tied together in the C-14 dates and the era of Philip the Good, Dike of Burgundy. The VMs illustrations tell a story that is complex, detailed and fairly coherent. Vords do very little in making sense of the text, they are too short.
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| f67-v1. Cosmos: God, Trinity, aether |
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Posted by: Juan_Sali - 04-04-2022, 03:10 PM - Forum: Astrology & Astronomy
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In my opinion f67-v1 represents the Cosmos.
On the outer circle: God and the Trinity (Father, Son and Holy Spirit).
Inside the circle the heaven/sky and the Earth. In the center the Aether (Quintaessence).
The Father is represented by a P: Pater.
The Son is represented by a cross.
The Holy Spirit is usually represented by a dove. In the case of the VM it uses a 7 (seven).
It is a reference to the You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.: wisdom, understanding, counsel, fortitude, knowledge, piety, and awe of the Lord. The seven gifts are found in the Book of Isaiah 11:1-2.
A sample of the Seven gifts as 7 doves:
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The Son comes to Earth while the Father and the Holy Spirit are related to heaven/sky, represented by the Sun.
God is represented as a T-O map in the bottom left. Inside it there is a U (unus), three different persons sharing one essence. Each of its parts as an element of the Trinity. Which part/color correspods to each element of the Trinity? This question is opened.
Tabla XIb del You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view., You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. (1135-1202).
The green for Father, Blue for Son and Red for Holy Spirit
The Shield of Trinity, a way to explain some aspects of the trinity.
Left, Scutum Fidei (Shield of Trinity) Manuscrito Cotton Faustina,3 ca. 1210
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The central detail shows a circle. Inside it the drawing suggests circular movement and the aether flows in the four directions.
Aether, also known as the fifth element or quintessence, is the material that fills the region of the universe beyond the terrestrial sphere.
Aether naturally moved in circles, and had no contrary, or unnatural, motion. Aristotle also noted that celestial spheres made of aether held the stars and planets. The idea of aethereal spheres moving with natural circular motion led to Aristotle's explanation of the observed orbits of stars and planets in perfectly circular motion.
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In medieval western Europe there was a discussion to explain the motions of the celestial spheres: Were they moved by angels or another intelligence? Was God who impressed them a circular impetus? ...
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| The Issues with Nick Pelling's proposed DNA Gathering Analysis |
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Posted by: MichelleL11 - 02-04-2022, 11:02 PM - Forum: Physical material
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First, I want to say I completely support the utility of understanding the alpha state of the VM to whatever extent is possible. The obvious shuffling of the folio and quire order is a detriment to getting reliable results for many kinds of analysis that bridges these lengths, especially analysis of the text, and increased certainty of any kind would be useful.
You state that you have gotten some pushback on the suggested DNA gathering analysis. As much as I support biocodicology experiments to be done on the VM, it should be emphasized that the answers you are asking from the technology have not been successfully achieved to date.
These are the issues that remain. Note I am assuming that based on the ZooMS data gotten in 2014, all the folios are bovine parchment -- but given the small sample size, I admit this could be an incorrect assumption.
1. Keep in mind you are asking for individual differentiation of a large number of animal sources of the parchment from each other. There is a high likelihood these animals will be highly related to each other because of geographic constraints of animal husbandry and, secondarily, trade of the time. This greatly complicates the analysis. It is quite different to distinguish protein samples of different species from each other than DNA samples of different, highly related individuals from each other.
This requires either single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) or short tandem repeat (STR) analysis to get to the individual level. An analysis of this issue with modern herds estimates that it take at least 99 mapped SNPs that are different between individuals for a successful differentiation (see, Fernandez et al. You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view..) This requires a decent amount of intact DNA to do successfully. Obviously not an issue when you get your DNA through blood draws, but it is an issue when you are dealing with extracted DNA that is over 600 years old.
Campana et al. attempted STR analysis unsuccessfully You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. -- granted this was 12 years ago, using standard DNA sequencing rather than next gen, but there hasn't been anyone that has tried it since. Their results indicated that none of the parchment sources were related to each other.
2. The eraser crumb sampling technique has proven decent for protein collection, but much less successful for DNA collection. The one publication that I am aware of that did both (and I have tried to find all related publications in my review) was Teasdale et al. You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.. Although sufficient protein was obtained from all the bifolios that were attempted (65 samples) to identify species, only eight bifolios were attempted for DNA analysis ("large volume of eraser waste" was required) and only three of these eight had sufficient DNA integrity to do any kind of SNP analysis (e.g. about 4.6%). They saw "a trend" toward SNPs seen in modern North Europe breeds. There was no attempt to assign individual identity to these three samples. In fact, they saw a greater than expected differentiation between the samples, which they attributed to "the limited SNP recovery in these samples." This is precisely what would be expected with the VM samples, too.
Note that the most recent and most extensive project (Ruffini-Ronzani et al., You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.) didn't even attempt DNA analysis but just stuck with ZooMS. Note the new software that has been developed is only for protein, and not DNA analysis. The full data set was recently published and it appears that nothing along a DNA analysis was even tried. This could well be related to the much greater difficulty of getting sufficient intact DNA from this sampling approach.
3. In my opinion, this pinpoints the most significant issue with the proposed analysis -- the likelihood of getting useful data is relatively low.
If you get only a small amount of DNA results, there will be an inability to associate any individual result with any other individual result (you need a minimum of 99 mismatches to know you are looking at a different individual). In Teasdale, they were comparing the limited samples to a modern cow SNP collection (they were looking for geographic placement through SNP matches). With the proposed study, the comparisons will be looking for lack of matches between the samples. Given the numbers of Teasdale, only a fraction of the samples will have enough DNA to analyze at all, and then, you have to get lucky enough for those samples to have enough overlap to find 99 mismatches in order to distinguish.
4. Given this scenario, of a low number of samples with enough DNA, and scattered location of what intact DNA that has been sequenced (which will be unique for each sample), and the likely relationship of the cows to each other, the greatest likelihood of a result is that all the samples will appear related to each other (if you get decent overlap between the samples) OR alternatively, the amount of coverage will be so sparse, none of the samples will be related to each other, like what Campana et al. found. Both of these results are equally not useful.
Asking this kind of question really emphasizes the issues with (1) being hampered by having to use non-destructive collection; (2) how the data from DNA available degrades with time; and (3) the lack of comparative data for medieval era cow genomes.
So, I hate to be negative -- but I tend to agree that progress in DNA extraction from eraser crumbs, progress in analysis of highly fragmented DNA results (e.g. software development for the DNA part -- maybe needing artificial intelligence to bridge gaps), and further information about medieval cow genomes in general (e.g. more DNA samples from medieval parchment -- maybe using destructive sampling if there is "waste" parchment?) to build a decent SNP library is needed before the likelihood of getting useful data seems high enough to me to attempt the study.
Happy to answer questions about these thoughts.
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| Breaking Apr 1st news! MS 408 proves Blackadder actually existed! |
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Posted by: kckluge - 01-04-2022, 07:43 PM - Forum: News
- Replies (11)
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After a pleasant dinner earlier this week that including stimulating conversation with another long-time member of the Voynich manuscript research community I drifted off to sleep with thoughts of that vexing sphinx filling my head. I dreamt that I was looking at John Dee's scrying equipment in the British Museum. Gazing into his crystal orb I found myself standing in a mist-filled void containing a lectern with MS 408 on it. The book flipped open to You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. [1], and as I examined the page the snake in the root of the left plant turned to fix me with its steely gaze, speaking as follows:
Though at first glance I seem mild snake,
T'would be a foolish error to make!
No garter snake, I! Don't void your bladder --
I am, in fact, the loathsome Adder!
While I seem brown, I fade, alack!
So know, in truth, my hue is BLACK!
Heed me well, though 'tis hard to imagine it,
For I am the glorious serpent Plantagenet!
The snake loomed larger, its jaws gaping, and I found myself falling into its ravenous maw. Waking bathed in sweat, I somehow knew I had been given the key to the Voynich manuscript.
Puzzled, I did a Google search for some sort of "black adder" or "blackadder". Buried among results for William Blackadder (executed for his role in the murder of Lord Darnley), St. Andrew Blackadder Parish Church, and every Thursday being Curry Night at The Blackadder Hotel Bar & Restaurant [1], I found references to a BBC historical drama involving a fringe theory regarding the final years of the Plantagenet dynasty [2]. A thrilling dramatization that features all the historical accuracy that viewers of _I, Claudius_ had come to expect [3] from the Beeb, it follows the adventures of the Black Adder (Prince Edmumd, younger son of Richard IV (sic!)), and his associates Baldrick and Lord Percy Percy.
I pondered on how to use this information to solve the mystery of the text, when it hit me – I could use names as cribs! Let Feely search in vain for his "ovaries"; let Brumbaugh spice his theory with "pepper" and "paprika"; with the aid of "Black Adder" and "Baldrick", I had a cunning plan. I would use the pattern of common letters in the two names to find them in the cipher text in much the same way that Champollion used the shared letters in “Ptolemy” and “Cleopatra” to make an initial break into reading Egyptian hieroglyphs [5].
Initially I lined the names up as follows, with each unique letter assigned a number:
B L A C K A D D E R
1 2 3 4 5 3 6 6 7 8
B A L D R I C K
1 3 2 6 8 9 4 5
After failing to find appropriate matches to those patterns of letters, I reconsidered my approach. S. Reddy & K. Knight say, "The similarity with devoweled scripts, especially Arabic, reinforces the hypothesis that the VMS script may be an abjad." [6]. R. Zandbergen says, "Other typical features of the ciphers in Tranchedino are...that double characters are usually represented by a single code character." [7] Since there is some debate over whether spaces in the text are word separators, I decided to remove them as well. Then I tried the following modified cribs:
B L C K D R
1 2 3 4 5 6
B L D R C K
1 2 5 6 3 4
I used the D’Imperio transcription [8] for two main reasons: 1) this is an April Fool’s joke, so why not?, and 2) if you can’t trust the NSA, who can you trust? Modifying an existing Awk [9] program I use to look at k-gram statistics, I was soon pumping out possible matches to my cribs:
BLCKDR Count BLDRCK Count
[...]
ZC94OF 53 ZCOF94 2
SC94OF 55 SCOF94 2
OEZC89 67 OE89ZC 3
OESC89 108 OE89SC 3
4OFC89 201 4O89FC 2
Faced with multiple possible matches, I looked for the most common match for BLCKDR that occurred on f43v, and lo and behold, there was SC94OF! Looking at that line in the raw transcription file:
08404B 8ZC9/9FCC89/SCC2/AN/Z9/4OQC89/SC9/4OFAR/SCX9/OFAJ-
the match for BLCKDR starts after a space, but (1) has a space in the middle between ‘9’ and ‘4’, and (2) does not have a space at the end of the word. Point (1) is worth examining as it illuminates the sort of issues that lead some to question whether spaces in the manuscript are word separators. Looking at the Herbal A “language” pages in the D’Imperio transcription, 67% of the time a ‘9’ is followed by a space (1097 occurrences); 11% of the time it is followed by the end of a line (203 occurrences). It is *never* directly followed by ‘4’ without an intervening space -- the only glyphs that follow it within a "word" more than a single-digit number of times are ‘F’ (103), ‘P’ (92), ‘8’ (52), ‘S’ (51), and ‘B’ (16) (‘Z’ just misses the cutoff at 8 occurrences).
Having successfully identified two plaintext words and determined the consonantal values of six Currier glyphs, it is now necessary to explain why further application of this key produces gibberish. This is a reef multiple previous proposed decipherments using cribs have run aground on, so I see no reason not to follow their example and double down, insisting on the patently obvious correctness of the deciphered cribs and maintaining that further study will no doubt solve the problem. Beyond the far less standardized spelling common in the late 15th century, part of the incomprehensibility may be a result of Baldrick having written portions of the manuscript. While no texts written by him survive, it is known that a Victorian-era descendant of his had such appalling spelling that he gave Mr. Ebenezer Blackadder a holiday card which managed to misspell "Christmas" so badly that it didn't include any of the actual letters in the word [10].
It might also be objected that the reign of Prince Edmund’s father, King Richard IV, (1485 to 1498) falls outside the 95% probability interval of 1404 and 1435 generated by C-14 dating of vellum samples from the manuscript [11]. As it has been scientifically established that there were heaps of unused vellum just lying around waiting for later use, I don’t see that this objection has any force.
Speculating further on the yet-undeciphered content of the manuscript, I would suggest that the so-called “Zodiac” folios are, in fact, Prince Edmund’s list of conquests – similar to that of the legendary Don Juan [12] but arranged by the zodiac sign of the lady in question rather than country of residence, with Baldrick as the Prince's Leporello. Such a large set of paramours would make him a worthy great-great-great-great-grandson of Edward III, who sired so many children that one estimate has it that the probability that a Briton born in the 1970s isn't related to Edward III is as small as 0.0000000000000000000000000001 [13]. If my hypothesis is correct, then it is as least as likely that almost all current Britons have a little bit of Prince Edmund’s DNA in them as well. (Ironically, the large number of Britons with a little bit of his DNA in them was one of the reasons cited by two of the three popes at the time in their Bulls excommunicating Prince Edmund after an unfortunate incident in a nunnery in November of 1487 [14].)
Given the confirmation this provides for the reality of the reign of Richard IV (written out of the history books for centuries by people like Alison Weir [15]), an additional avenue of research this decipherment opens up is the extent to which Henry VII was responsible for the broader fabrication of British history uncovered by A. T. Fomenko and G.V.Nosovskij. They claim "...ancient and medieval English events are to be transferred to the epoch which begins from 9-10th cc....many of these events prove to be the reflections of certain events from real Byzantine-Roman history of 9-15th cc." [16]. Thus, for instance, they claim that the English King William I (conventionally 1066-1087 C.E.) and the Byzantine Emperor Theodore I Lascaris (conventionally 1204-1222 C.E.) were, in fact, the same person. While they blame Scaliger and Petavius for this confusion, the distortions of English history pointed out by the narrator in [17] suggest Henry VII as an equally likely contributor/culprit:
”History has known many great liars: Copernicus, Goebbels, St Ralph the Liar -- but there have been none quite so vile as the Tudor king Henry VII. It was he who rewrote history to portray his predecessor Richard III as a deformed maniac who killed his nephews in the Tower. But the real truth is that Richard was a kind and thoughtful man who cherished his young wards. In particular: Richard, Duke of York, who grew into a big, strong boy. Henry also claimed he won the Battle of Bosworth Field and killed Richard III. Again, the truth is very different; for it was Richard, Duke of York, who became king after Bosworth Field, and reigned for thirteen glorious years.”
No doubt additional light will be shed on those glorious years as further progress is made deciphering the manuscript following the initial chink I have opened in its armor. If so, no doubt there will be books written about me, and songs sung about me, and the History Channel will show episodes from my life weekly at half past nine starring some great heroic actor of our age in the lead role.
Assuming, of course, that Alison Weir doesn't put out a hit on me....
References:
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[2] You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view., You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view., and You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. respectively
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[9] You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
[10] You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. (“However, be that as it may...’A Merry Messy Christmas.’ ‘Christmas’ has an H in it, Mr. Baldrick....and an R. Also an I, and an S. Also T and M and A....and another S. Oh, and you’ve missed out the C at the beginning. Congratulations, Mr. Baldrick! Something of a triumph, I think — you must be the first person ever to spell `Christmas’ without getting any of the letters right at all.” The title card at the end reveals that Baldrick had spelled it "Kweznuz" after initially trying and crossing out "Kwelfnuve.”)
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[12] You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
[13] You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
[14] You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. (quoting the Mother Superior of the nunnery: “And finally, you got two knights drunk and invited them to come and wrestle with you inside the nunnery in an orgy of heathen perversity?...it has the unmistakable ring of truth to it, and I must therefore tell you that this morning I have written urgently to all three popes recommending your immediate excommunication. Nevermore may you be Archbishop of Canterbury!”)
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| Voynich text as Base20 |
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Posted by: RobGea - 30-03-2022, 11:10 PM - Forum: Analysis of the text
- Replies (6)
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Voynich text as Base20
EMS suggested to report failed experiments.
After 5 days of work, this fell on its face, so here it is.
Decoding vms text as Base20 ran into a leading zeroes problem.
Idea as follows:
:: Decode text as Base20
-eva has 26 chars (TT only uses 22-Fail 1)
-assume 6 lowest frequency eva chars represent something else, like planets, constellations, stars, whatever
-leaves 20 letters, map those letters onto the 'symbols' for a Base20 number system (vigesimal)
-convert newly created Base20 num into a decimal number
Now you have a nice set of decimal numbers that you can do what you want with ( indices in a look-up table == unnecessary-Fail 2).
Code: Vord Base20 Decimal
dain 647d 49753
qokeedy e081163 897288523
okey 0813 3223
:: Encode text as Base20
-take some normal text, strip puntuation etc
-allocate each unique word a random number in decimal ( this step is for easy computation (and i had an indexing idea but...)
-convert that number to base20
-convert the base20 number into eva
ie map Base20 symbols onto the commonest 20 eva symbols
:: Result
Courtesy of project gutenberg : A Scandal in Bohemia by A.conan-doyle
plaintext:
to sherlock holmes she is always the woman i have
seldom heard him mention her under any other name in
his eyes she eclipses and predominates the whole of her
sex it was not that he felt any emotion akin
to love for irene adler all emotions and that one
particularly were abhorrent to his cold precise but admirably balanced
mind he was i take it the most perfect reasoning
and observing machine that the world has seen but as
encoded:
ap oqsgcki oinflyx oie ook frn aled aktkcr esk hhy
adq as rypp tdkg triqya oe hod i omm hy
ha iednsk oie yc olxc odt aled dshg oq triqya
e yets yoci ar ce fm qm hod ydglhy parfgm
ap dhtn ony aye ocr ykl ond olxc ce nkaspk
oysf osc tok ap ha hfcn ya oqc hr gnl
hm fm yoci esk yf yets aled hr eoyh n
olxc rmi hkii ce aled he ohtpxhe hg oqc ae
Conclusion::
idk. 
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