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Plants and labels in pharma section - Oocephalus - 07-02-2016
In the "A and B plants" thread, René mentioned that some plants depicted the herbal section appear to be duplicated in the pharma section. I think someone mentioned some really convincing examples of this in the comments at Stephen Bax's blog a few months ago, but I can't find it. Does someone have a list of such occurrences? I think that, if the label of the plant in the pharma section occurs also on the relevant herbal page, this would be a strong argument for the text being meaningful, especially if the word is rare. Has anyone found such cases?
I've looked at some very rare plant labels (6 or less occurrences in the whole MS) on the pharma pages on voynichese.com to see whether they occur on herbal pages with similar plants. The only such case I found is the word "opchor" (6 occurrences total), which occurs as a label on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. (first row, third from the left) and also in the text on f13r. However the similarity between the plants is rather vague, and the word also appears on two other herbal pages with very different plants. Somewhat more convincingly, the word "otory" (4 occurrences total) occurs on f102v2 (first row, second from the right)* as a label for an oddly-shaped leaf and on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. (second row, first from the left) as a label for a plant with similar but somewhat thinner leaves. It may also be interesting that the word "okeoly" (6 occurrences total) occurs as a label on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. (second row, sixth from the left) as well as in the text immediately above the label.
I think that, although the presence of such cases is an argument for the text being meaningful, their absence would not necessarily refute this. It may be possible to encipher the same plaintext word in different ways, or the language could be highly inflected. For example, in a Latin herbal, the picture of a plant would probably be labeled in the nominative singular (e.g. "convolvulus"), but in the main text the word might occur only in other forms such as "convolvulum" or "convolvuli", which a simple approach like the one I tried would not find.
* I'm using the foliation from voynichese.com here, which seems to be the same as on jasondavies.com. Not sure if this is correct in this case.
RE: Plants and labels in pharma section - -JKP- - 07-02-2016
It's my belief that a number of the plants (at least a few) are duplicated in the pharma section and that the ones in the pharma section may be simplified versions of the big plant to fit the space.
I mentioned this in one of my blogs, but the example in the blog isn't the most convincing one, I used it because it was relevant to the T & T article:
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There are some pharma plants that resemble the big plants more closely.
I think the plant pictures are meaningful. I think the nymph pictures are meaningful also. There are biological processes symbolically represented in several of them.
But we have to ask whether the labels and the main text were added by the same person who drew the pictures. It's the simplest explanation and since the drawings are often symbolic, it's not a stretch to believe they could be accompanied by encrypted text.
But...
I'm quite sure the VMS is an unfinished document. There are many signs that this was probably the case.
The missing "labels" on some of the pharma pages appears to strengthen this possibility. So... if the VMS is unfinished, was it interrupted after the drawings were done and someone else added the text, possibly for an entirely different purpose? I've seen unfinished herbals with no text at all (and some with no drawings even though there was space for drawings). If you consider the prevalence of war and diseases (including plague) that could quickly and unexpectedly take or disrupt life in the middle ages, it's not surprising that this happens.
I would guess that the first two things that 90% of people try to do when they first encounter the VMS is to:
1. Try to solve it with a simple substitution code.
2. Try to puzzle out the labels that are next to recognizable pictures, most likely looking for nouns
In other words, these two approaches have probably been tried tens of thousands of times by historic persons and amateur Internet cryptographers.
And no one has succeeded even though the VMS is packed full of "labels" in different contexts (plants, pharma, astrology/astronomy, balneological, etc). That tells me they might not be labels in the traditional sense or that they are encoded in a unique way—perhaps in a way that requires a second document as a lookup tool.
I don't know if you've ever looked at medieval documents describing Tirolean Tironian notes. I don't mean the ones that show a chart of a couple of hundred characters, I mean the manuscript that is hundreds of pages long with thousands and thousands of symbols to represent each word or long syllable.
It's an unwieldy system, bordering on the ridiculous. Given how uneven most people's handwriting tends to be, and the slight differences between symbols, I can't imagine anyone being able to read anything that's encoded this way, including the person who wrote the document using this method. You can go from the symbol to the cipher document, but there's no efficient way to refer a shape back to its original meaning and the system is far too verbose to actually learn by heart.
But... going on that concept, you need both manuscripts to decode something written this way. Maybe there was another document with long lists of glyph combinations as a reference manual for the VMS.
There is some reason inherent in the way the VMS is constructed that has prevented very smart cryptographers from deciphering it, given that there are so many labels that could normally be used as clues. Which says to me, those might not be labels in the traditional sense OR there may be additional material needed to 'read' them (e.g., they belong with other text on the page or on another page or in another document).
RE: Plants and labels in pharma section - Wladimir D - 07-02-2016
In my view, the labels near the simplified drawings of plants means ingredients that are taken from this particular plant. This is a very agrees well with the method of my translation.
2. o2оя - juice of the top of the root and juice of the upper leaves.
3. oяпio& - juice of the leaves sprout.
4. оН*ояS - plenty of fresh juice raised up leaves.
Other examples of transfer labels have on my page.://vk.com/id304788998
Collage of simplified drawings, which I published in Bax
RE: Plants and labels in pharma section - -JKP- - 07-02-2016
(07-02-2016, 06:39 PM)Wladimir D Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.In my view, the labels near the simplified drawings of plants means ingredients that are taken from this particular plant. This is a very agrees well with the method of my translation.
2. o2оя - juice of the top of the root and juice of the upper leaves.
3. oяпio& - juice of the leaves sprout.
4. оН*ояS - plenty of fresh juice raised up leaves.
Other examples of transfer labels have on my page.://vk.com/id304788998
Collage of simplified drawings, which I published in Bax
Given the amount of repetition in the labels, I think it's entirely possible they could refer to something other than the name of the plant, like which part is used or what it is used for.
One of the problems with determining the exact meaning is that many of the pharma labels are constructed of the same tokens or "syllables" as other sections, like the zodiac and star sequences, which contain no juice or roots or leaves.
If individual "syllables" refer to concepts, then that could possibly be generalized to the section in which the label stands while still using the same shapes.
RE: Plants and labels in pharma section - Wladimir D - 07-02-2016
I have already expressed my opinion.
In my opinion, what is called the stars, the stars are not. It is looks like a child's drawing of a flower with petals. For many do not like it.
RE: Plants and labels in pharma section - Oocephalus - 08-02-2016
JKP:
Quote:In other words, these two approaches have probably been tried tens of thousands of times by historic persons and amateur Internet cryptographers.
I agree. If it were that easy, and written in a well-known language, it would have been solved long ago. I wasn't actually saying the VMS is in Latin, just using it as an example of a highly inflected language.
Quote:And no one has succeeded even though the VMS is packed full of "labels" in different contexts (plants, pharma, astrology/astronomy, balneological, etc). That tells me they might not be labels in the traditional sense or that they are encoded in a unique way—perhaps in a way that requires a second document as a lookup tool.
So you mean a codebook? That wold also be possible, and essentially the same as an artificial language. Which would of course make it essentially impossible to decipher without the codebook.
Quote:I don't know if you've ever looked at medieval documents describing Tyrolean notes. I don't mean the ones that show a chart of a couple of hundred characters, I mean the manuscript that is hundreds of pages long with thousands and thousands of symbols to represent each word or long syllable.
I didn't know there were that many Tironian notes. However, the VMS appears to have a much smaller number of distinct glyphs. As you wrote on your blog, several of them look like common medieval abbreviations. Others look like ordinary Latin letters or Arabic numerals. Could it be that the VMS was written by a person who could not read Latin, but got their hands on some Latin MS and created their own alphabet based on the symbols they found there without understanding their original meaning? Either to create a meaningless imitation of text or for recording their own language (or an invented one), similar to how Sequoyah created the Cherokee script based on English letters whose meaning he did not know.
Wladimir:
Quote:In my view, the labels near the simplified drawings of plants means ingredients that are taken from this particular plant. This is a very agrees well with the method of my translation.
Thanks for the compilation. Most of these are indeed very similar to the herbal pages. For those that have labels, I haven't found those words again on the respective herbal pages. Your idea that the labels represent instructions on what part of the plant to use is also possible, but many label words are unique within the MS and I don't think this would be expected under that theory.
RE: Plants and labels in pharma section - -JKP- - 08-02-2016
(08-02-2016, 12:52 AM)Oocephalus Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view....
Could it be that the VMS was written by a person who could not read Latin, but got their hands on some Latin MS and created their own alphabet based on the symbols they found there without understanding their original meaning? Either to create a meaningless imitation of text or for recording their own language (or an invented one), similar to how Sequoyah created the Cherokee script based on English letters whose meaning he did not know....
It has crossed my mind a few times that someone might see an alphabet they didn't know (perhaps in an herbal), one for which they didn't fully understand the letter construction (for example, a European trying to transcribe unfamiliar letters from Ethiopian, Syrian, Arabic, Sanskrit, or Malaysian), assigned characters to what they perceived as individual shapes, and "copied" the text without interpreting the characters correctly.
It's not the most likely scenario, but I think the possibility has to be considered.
RE: Plants and labels in pharma section - Diane - 08-02-2016
Oocephalus,
I think Rene was summarising a well-established view shared by people who have investigated the botanical and so-called 'pharma' section in detail.
I recognised the common elements in the two sections when analysing some of the botanical images, and that was in 2010. At the time I was told it was already well-accepted that the two were connected, so I guess the original recogition, and various particular plant folios/'leaves and roots' details had been noticed well before then. It has become one of the things everyone accepts now and while more detail is always good, the idea hardly needs to be argued.
What is more dubious is the notion that the 'roots and leaves' section relates to practice in Latin European pharmacy.
There's no pharmaceutical text I know of which uses a page layout like the 'roots and leaves' section, and hunt as I might (and did) the historical and archaeological evidence absolutely refutes the idea that Latin pharmacies to 1438 regularly used containers anything like what we see in that section.
So a balanced assessment must come down to the view that (a) its not about European pharmacy and/or (b) its not about pharmacy.
I'm not saying so just to be difficult. Like everyone else, I began by expecting that a manuscript which turned up in Europe, and was evaluated by highly competent persons as a product of England or of Spain would be all about European plants and things.
But the weight of evidence is heavily against it.
Much of what is taken as the basis for a newcomer's research is, when investigated, found to be no more than someone's early exercise of imagination, solidified by unthniking repetition for as much as a century.
I think it's a great pity: it leads to so much tail-chasing, and re-discovery of well-known facts, when the talented researcher might be better employed, and we'd be all the better for it.
RE: Plants and labels in pharma section - Wladimir D - 08-02-2016
Oocephalus. I see no contradiction. Not necessarily in the herb section should be the ingredients. There must be a description of the plant, and for what purposes it is used. For ingredients have the section of recipe and section "Leaves and roots." Therefore here there are unique words.
Many researchers suggest that the the first word in the pages of this herbal section is the name of plants. This is not true. See You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. and f55r. The first two words - also not true - You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. and f53v.
I believe that the plants do not have names in the text. To identify the particular plant the simplified pattern. For this intended section "Leaves and roots" (not a classic, according to Diane).
You may ask, from whence then is taken fanciful leaves and roots, which are not in herbal section?
According to my concept of building a manuscript in the herb section are missing about 61 plants. According to the classical scheme of construction of medical manuscripts, section of recipes must be linked to grass. Anton calculations brought "groups" in the last section. Depending on the averaging method and taking into account the four missing pages, I got 190 "groups". That is, each plant to describe corresponds to one group. 190 - 129 (available). 61 = no plant.
RE: Plants and labels in pharma section - ReneZ - 08-02-2016
As a matter of pure coincidence, I found a nice image of an apothecary shop in a French MS now in the British Library.
The MS is Sloane 1977 and it's on f49v. This is from the 1st quarter of the 14th Century, so quite a bit older than the Voynich MS.
On the shelf are both simpler cylindric containers (as in Quire 19) and some more elaborate ones (as in Quire 15).
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