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The Voynich Manuscript is a cipher because...? - Printable Version

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RE: The Voynich Manuscript is a cipher because...? - Anton - 24-03-2016

(24-03-2016, 10:36 PM)ReneZ Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
(24-03-2016, 09:54 PM)Anton Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.What is not normal is that this supposed number is represented by a symbol which is extremely rare in the corpus.

I am not so sure that it isn't simply an Eva-s, which occurs stand-alone elsewhere in the MS.
The bottom part of the s is barely visible but it seems to be there...

That would make the case different, of course. This is one of those cases when I wish I saw it in the natural light through the magnifying glass. :-)

However, if s is a number indeed, then we return to You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. where s and &163; are both there in the "index" column - so either they both are numbers there (in f49v), or they are both letters there. In the former case we are faced again with the number represented by a very rare symbol, in the latter case we have a column containing a very rare letter among very common letters, so the question arises: what's going on here? Apparently this is not an index in that case, so what's it otherwise?

RE: The Voynich Manuscript is a cipher because...? - -JKP- - 24-03-2016

The page with the index column on the left might be in random order.

Often index columns were there only for a visual reference to find a particular line and could be almost anything. In other words, they were like capitula, not meaningful in themselves, but using different shapes was like using different colors for capitula (with a wider palette), it let you scan down faster to the one you wanted.

In many of the calendars and astronomical tables of moons, they would simply use a b c d e f g a b c d e f g a b c d e f g to express the days of the week and as you can see, it's just a sequence, it doesn't correspond to the first letters of the day of the week (e.g., M T W TH F Sa S) or anything meaningful related to the content other than the fact that it repeats every seven lines.


I've been assuming the most likely explanations for the index column are that they are
  • the first letter of each "paragraph" or
  • a sequence to help the eye find a particular spot which may bear a relation to the text on the right or
  • that the characters relate the information on the "index" page to something else in the manuscript (which may or may not have been bound in with the other pages) or
  • a random column to help the eye find a particular spot with the characters bearing no relation to the following text or
  • it's a ruse to make it look like a sequence (I don't think this is the most likely explanation).
There are certain quirks in the manuscript that seem unlikely to exist if this were a fraud document (unless it's a very OLD fraud document). Since frauds are designed to make money, certain corners are usually cut and certain ideas are unlikely to come into the forger's head. I doubt that a 19th or even a 17th century forger would include things like a complicated labor-intensive rosette map in a style that's not typically western European, or plant drawings in a style that is not characteristic of the time (as with the segment of plant drawings that appear to have been drawn from life or from specimens), or an index page in the middle of the book.

RE: The Voynich Manuscript is a cipher because...? - ThomasCoon - 13-10-2016

I'd like to revive this thread because I haven't responded yet Big Grin 

1) I don't think the fact that the VMS has remain unsolved for 600 years is problematic, and the author would not need a highly advanced cipher to accomplish this. If he used a combination of basic cipher techniques, he could also create a code that is practically impossible to solve. For example, let's say that this is the key to the VMS:
  • The text operates on monograms and bigram units (ol, ar, od, ok, etc.), but also:
  • <yk> = <ok>, but otherwise <y> is completely meaningless
  • <e> and <i> can be written 1, 2 or 3 times with no change in meaning
  • <Sh> = <ch> = <ee>
  • Any word beginning <q> is meaningless
  • Etc.
These mechanisms are not too advanced for the 1400s, but still incredibly difficult to figure out if you don't already know them.

2) There seem to be several obstacles to a pure linguistic solution. For me, the biggest is strings of several almost-identical vords in a row: ex. okeey.qokeedy.olkeedy or sheod.sheodaiin.shodaiin. This happens occasionally in a natural language, but never to the extent that it happens in the VMS (very frequently). Languages tend to work in the exact opposite way - words move away from each other to fill the phonetic space. But several ciphers can explain these strings.