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+--- Thread: Plants and labels in pharma section (/thread-196.html)
RE: Plants and labels in pharma section - MarcoP - 08-02-2016
Here is a page I posted on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. a few years ago.
It's from You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view., a XIII Century divination book. The names of the spices are transcribed You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view..
These jars, and those from the Sloane manuscript linked by Rene, are similar to the simpler containers in the Voynich manuscript. But the more complex jars, with three or more feet supporting a combination of cylinders of different width and height, are very puzzling and interesting.
RE: Plants and labels in pharma section - Oocephalus - 08-02-2016
Diane: I didn't doubt that duplicated plant images exist. I was just looking for examples to see if the labels are found again in the text on the herbal page. I'm probably not the first to do this, but I haven't seen it published by anyone else, so I tried anyway.
I do think the section is pharmaceutical in a wide sense. As the section shows roots and leaves as well as containers these might go into, what else could it be? As for whether it's "Latin European", that's another question. The shape of the glyphs at least shows such influences, but as for the underlying language, or the culture the author(s) came from, I don't know.
Wladimir: What I mean is that, if the labels are instructions such as "use the juice from the root of this plant" one would expect the same label to occur for several plants. We might still see some unique ones, but probably not as there actually are in the pharma section. This is just my impression, though.
RE: Plants and labels in pharma section - ReneZ - 09-02-2016
The term 'pharmaceutical' for these three bifolios was popularised by D'Imperio in her 'Elegant Enigma'. I have not seen it much in contexts outside the Voynich MS. Herbalists would rather speak of 'simples' and 'composites'. The former are drugs or treatments related to a single herb, and most of the famous illustrated herbal MSs are concerned with these. The Voynich MS herbal pages appear to be of the same nature.
The 'pharmaceutical' section then appears to describe 'composites'.
Whether it really does, we'll know if the text can one day be understood.
I for one am not yet ready to discard the option that the book is just meant to 'look like' a scientific work.
The containers shown in this section may well be imaginary ones that never really saw the light of day (even if the book and its text are real).
The more simple ones could be made of wood. Similar wooden containers from the 15th C still survive (more or less...)
RE: Plants and labels in pharma section - -JKP- - 09-02-2016
In my list of blog categories, I call it "the Kitchen Section" not because I necessarily think it's a kitchen section (culinary herbs) but because I like to remind myself to stay open-minded about interpreting it because my leaning is toward thinking of it as a "Pharma" section.
RE: Plants and labels in pharma section - Wladimir D - 09-02-2016
Please note that none of the individual tag of the "stars" and the tags this section does not contain the words with the prefix "4o". In my interpretation, "4o" ("4" - a symbol of the absence "o" - water) - the absence of water. That is dried (dehydrated). The container holds the liquid fraction?!
RE: Plants and labels in pharma section - ReneZ - 10-02-2016
Someone suggested to collect the examples of (potential) repetitions of herb drawings between the two areas. I have some 20 examples, of varying certainty, and would be happy to share them, but the discussion will require some straightforward way of identifying them.
Theodore Petersen numbered them in his hand transcription, but only very few people will have a copy of this.
In the herbal section I have counted 134 herbs (counting the 5 cases where one page has two herbs for two each).
In the pharma section there appear to be 241 herb 'fragments' by Th.Petersen's count, though nsr. 39 and 228 are missing.
Some more numbers:
- They are subdivided over 3 bifolia in two quires, all of them foldouts.
- There are 57 rows of 'fragments', with numbers varying from 1 to 9 fragments per row.
- There are 45 'containers'.
RE: Plants and labels in pharma section - -JKP- - 10-02-2016
(10-02-2016, 09:03 AM)ReneZ Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Someone suggested to collect the examples of (potential) repetitions of herb drawings between the two areas. I have some 20 examples, of varying certainty, and would be happy to share them, but the discussion will require some straightforward way of identifying them.
Just for my own use, I've been doing it this way...
Folio number-Row-Column
For example, counting from left to right and top to bottom, Plant fXr-3-5 would be the 3rd row, 5th plant on Folio X.
Some of the plants are very large, occupying several rows, but I usually count those as belong to the row that includes the "label". Some don't have labels, but they are more-or-less in rows.
I don't know if something like that would suffice for communication between researchers, but it's worked as a personal system.
RE: Plants and labels in pharma section - ReneZ - 10-02-2016
The correspondence between this system and the numbers is shown in these pages (which are otherwise highly incomplete):
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In case of doubt, a Voyager link would help, though some of the images there are affected by curls (more so than the newer Beinecke scans).
As a start, even some of the herbs in the herbal area appear similar, though are clearly not copies of each other. I have this short list (all tentative):
f3v and f90r1
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. (really doubtful)
f17v and You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
f39r and f95r2
f40v (left and right)
f87r and You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. (left)
RE: Plants and labels in pharma section - Oocephalus - 10-02-2016
JKP:
Yes, I think such a system would work. Any ambiguities that would arise will probably quickly resolved.
René:
Thanks for this! Interesting that the similarities you listed are alway between plants where the text is in the same Currier dialect. And I somehow missed that on your site Petersen's observations on similarities to the herbal pages are listed, I'm going to look at them now.
RE: Plants and labels in pharma section - ReneZ - 10-02-2016
I seem to remember that the ones Th.Petersen indicated were not all the most obvious ones.
When I started making my own list I found it very hard to browse the two sets of images side by side - there are just so many, and memory is occasionally deceiving me.
Up to this day I am convinced that I have seen the item on f100v, row 2, nr.1, i.e. this one:
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in some herbal MS, but I have not been able to find it back.