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+--- Thread: Which other manuscript contain the most Voynichese glyphs? (/thread-2394.html)
RE: Which other manuscript contain the most Voynichese glyphs? - DONJCH - 08-06-2018
I'm sure you all have seen it but this was the benchmark comparison 20 years ago:
![[Image: ilar14.gif]](http://ixoloxi.com/voynich/image/ilar14.gif)
VIENNA, NATIONALBIBLIOTHEK, Cod. Vindob. 2398.
Franciscus Tranchedinus,
Furtivae litterarum notae .
This codex contains some two hundred ciphers
used by the Milanese Chancery
between 1450 and 1496. Ciphers shown date
from ca.1450. Original .
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From thread on this forum:
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Marco, Plants of the Alchemists thread
But to quote Rene:
"Even down to such special things as Currier 'S', the i-shaped variant of Currier-S, 'SO' ligatures, picnic tables, and things like the 'chinese hat in corner', looking more like the mirror image of Arabic 'k'."
Have we progressed much in the last 20 years?
Also this:
![[Image: tavolaiv-top.jpg]](http://ixoloxi.com/voynich/image/tavolaiv-top.jpg)
from the same thread.
I thought this all may be interesting and somewhat relevant but please delete if not.
RE: Which other manuscript contain the most Voynichese glyphs? - -JKP- - 08-06-2018
I have a copy of the diplomatic ciphers collected by Tranchedino (the print edition) and they used every conceivable symbol from Latin, from alchemy, from numbers, from astronomy, from kabbalah, etc., plus some invented signs. Many of the ciphers used a couple of hundred glyphs.
The reason there are so many different glyphs in these ciphers is because they used one-to-many substitutions, numerous nulls, and additional glyphs for important names of people and towns.
Most of the ones that are similar to the VMS are taken from Latin, which means the VMS isn't necessarily related to the Tranchedino ciphers in any way—they might BOTH have derived their ideas from Latin alphabets and scribal conventions, and when you consider that the structure of the VMS in no way resembles the structure of the Tranchedino ciphers (which were substitution codes with extreme variation in glyph shapes and positions), then the resemblance is even less.
RE: Which other manuscript contain the most Voynichese glyphs? - MarcoP - 08-06-2018
(08-06-2018, 03:12 AM)DONJCH Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.VIENNA, NATIONALBIBLIOTHEK, Cod. Vindob. 2398.
Franciscus Tranchedinus,
Furtivae litterarum notae .
This codex contains some two hundred ciphers
used by the Milanese Chancery
between 1450 and 1496. Ciphers shown date
from ca.1450. Original .
You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
...
But to quote Rene:
"Even down to such special things as Currier 'S', the i-shaped variant of Currier-S, 'SO' ligatures, picnic tables, and things like the 'chinese hat in corner', looking more like the mirror image of Arabic 'k'."
Have we progressed much in the last 20 years?
Thank you, DONJCH! Tranchedinus is obviously interesting. If I am not mistaken, Tranchedinus' manuscript is not digitally available yet, so we cannot check how many Voynichese characters appear in it (a job that would take several hours, I guess). Yet, we can rely on what Jim Reeds and Rene Zandbergen said in the ixoloxi page you linked: among the hundreds of ciphers presented by Tranchedinus, there are no "gallows" characters.
Also, some of the progress made in the last 20 years is the carbon dating of the VMS: now we know that Tranchedinus is a few decades later than the VMS. It can still be a useful and informative parallel (like those I discussed above) but inspiration must have come from earlier manuscripts.
(08-06-2018, 03:12 AM)DONJCH Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Also this:
from the same thread.
This is an amazing illustration! It was You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view..
Finding good matches for the gallows ( t p f in particular, k is relatively frequent as -tis) is not easy. Parallels for benched gallows are even harder: I believe these are the best I have seen. Again, it is a pity that only a small detail of the document is available.
In my opinion, Koen's idea of finding the best single source for Voynichese glyphs is potentially useful, if difficult and time consuming to pursue. Of course, it could be that the VMS was inspired by several different manuscripts, but finding the closest scripts could still tell us something about the authorship of the VMS.
RE: Which other manuscript contain the most Voynichese glyphs? - -JKP- - 08-06-2018
Just for the record, even though I'm supportive of this thread and believe it will provide interesting information and food for thought (it's a fun idea, actually), I don't think the VMS designer got the shapes from any particular source.
Latin scribal conventions are building blocks. You put them together however you want. As long as you have the basic "tools" (know the basic shapes), it doesn't matter how you combine them. Latin scribal conventions were flexible and scribes knew by context how to interpret them.
Obviously, in the VMS, the pieces were put together in a selective and rather regimented way for whatever purpose the designer wanted them to serve and the underlying information isn't necessarily narrative text and might not even be natural language (which might be why the text as a whole looks strange to people), but the building blocks themselves are not unusual—tails, loops, caps, macrons, and benched characters were all standard ways of abbreviating text and they used pretty much the same conventions in Naples as they did in England.
RE: Which other manuscript contain the most Voynichese glyphs? - Hubert Dale - 08-06-2018
Just a thought.
The Voynich Manuscript seems to be almost completely unlike a piece of fifteenth century diplomatic correspondence. Why would anyone expect an encryption system devised for the latter to be used for the former?
RE: Which other manuscript contain the most Voynichese glyphs? - bi3mw - 08-06-2018
@Hubert Dale: A good argument. On the one hand, the content should be explosive and on the other hand, time must have been insignificant in this case. This is an old problem. The content of the VMS as a composite manuscript (?) seems unspectacular. The presumed production time excludes any timely information. The only possibillity that comes to my mind is a guide to coin counterfeiting. That seems unlikely here.
RE: Which other manuscript contain the most Voynichese glyphs? - davidjackson - 08-06-2018
Well, let us not get off topic. In this thread we are discussing how, not why.
RE: Which other manuscript contain the most Voynichese glyphs? - DONJCH - 09-06-2018
Just to be clear, Rene himself said in that quoted thread:
"And in fact it seems unlikely any professional cryptographer would have written the VMs"
RE: Which other manuscript contain the most Voynichese glyphs? - MarcoP - 09-06-2018
(09-06-2018, 05:16 AM)DONJCH Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Just to be clear, Rene himself said in that quoted thread:
"And in fact it seems unlikely any professional cryptographer would have written the VMs"
My opinion is that it is not a cipher (either professional or amateurish) but a phonetic script: this really makes no difference for the current topic. Evidence suggests that the Voynichese alphabet is an early XV Century creation and ciphers provide a number of examples of invented late-medieval alphabets. I believe the comparison with cipher alphabets is relevant to Koen's question, together with the comparison with plain or abbreviated scripts. The closest script can be hiding in several different places...
RE: Which other manuscript contain the most Voynichese glyphs? - DONJCH - 09-06-2018
If cypher characters are of interest, as Tranchedino is not online, and the copy I posted above is only one of many cipher alphabets, here is a more accessible source mentioned on Nick's site:
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Aloysius Meister’s “Die Anfaege Der Modernen Diplomatischen Geheimschrift” (1902)
In German but tables and dates easy to read - many from EARLY 15thC. I'm sure many of you know it.
Anyway, Marco seems the clear winner to date and all the non-gallows are covered.
We need a separate category for gallows I think!
Dum de dum...Visigothic...here we go! British Museum "Additional 30850", dated from 4th quarter 11thC to 1st quarter 12thC, in Visigothic Miniscule.
A manuscript of great beauty in my eyes!
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(Go to "View detailed record" and check out the other pages too!)
![[Image: C13547-71.jpg]](http://www.bl.uk/IllImages/BLCD/big/C135/C13547-71.jpg)