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+--- Thread: Greek Influences in the VMS glyphs? (/thread-3143.html)
RE: Greek Influences in the VMS glyphs? - -JKP- - 05-04-2020
I often think of Llullian diagrams when I look at the VMS.
Secrecy was not the purpose of the diagrams (although I could see gnostic societies jumping on the idea and using it for secrecy since they do lend themselves to this also), but they do seem baffling to anyone who doesn't know how they are intended to be used.
Many of them were not so much to teach as to remind. Which means that you were supposed to know what you were looking at before you tried to figure them out OR to have someone pointing at it and explaining it as you were learning.
It was a fairly original way of diagramming information at the time and sparked a certain change in the way people thought about diagrams. Llull's charts were not entirely a new idea, Jessie trees and other story-telling aspects of medieval iconography have some of these characteristics, but Llull put a stronger emphasis on the mnemonic aspects of the way the information was incorporated and used a lot of seemingly cryptic text.
So what you get is a diagram that means nothing to most people (most people couldn't read), with inscrutable abbreviations, sometimes a lot of repetition.... but... if you know that is it a mnemonic for a specific Bible passage, for example, and you know the passage (or mostly know it), you can follow the information up the tree, or around the circle, or along a vertex, and work out what it represents. Some of them are difficult to work out even if you do know what they represent. This would move at least some of them into the category of an intellectual exercise.
RE: Greek Influences in the VMS glyphs? - R. Sale - 05-04-2020
In response to the question by DONJCH:
"So you are saying that the VM could be a jest, a stunt, a piece of medieval performance art?"
I agree with what Koen and JKP have posted. In my opinion, I'm not saying that I believe the whole VMs is a stunt, etc., but there is some chance that it could be a possibility, just as other potential scenarios might have served as motivation. Currently, IMO, we don't have enough information to know the reasons for VMs creation. We need to have some idea of the thinking behind VMs creation, before we can attempt to assign motivation.
The papelonny pun is an example of something similar to heraldic canting or interpreting a rebus. Functionally the method of interpretation starts with an image (the picture of an eye), the image must be correctly named in the relevant language (eye), and the sound of the word is then punned to an alternate interpretation (I). So the picture sequence: eye + heart + fish (a pike) could be read as "I love Lucy". Which only works when the relevant medieval terminology for the fish is known.
And the actual 'humor', such as it is, is more witty, rather than something evoking laughter. It is like a joke, however, in that you either 'get it', or you don't get it. And for VMs investigation there has been a lot of the latter.
So, the first part of understanding the papelonny pun, is knowing, recognizing and naming the papelonny pattern. Otherwise the whole thing is dead in the water from the start. In heraldry a papelonny pattern is one of the heraldic furs. It is a scale-like pattern as seen on fish, but the term is derived from the scales on the wing of a butterfly, from the French word for 'butterfly', which is 'papillon'. If heraldry is an overlooked field of investigation, then the papelonny pattern is an obscure bit of information in an overlooked field. Many references for heraldic furs show the variations of ermine and vair, but omit papelonny and plumetty (a feather pattern).
So a person investigating the VMs, doesn't know this obscure bit of information, can't name it, doesn't recognize it, even if looking right at it. How is that going to work? I know how it works. I did it for several years. It's called 'being oblivious.' It's something sitting in plain sight, and yet it is meaningless.
So where are the papelonny patterns? There are scale-like patterns on a tub in the outer circle of VMs Pisces and on another in the inner circle of Dark Aries, both in the approximate 10 to 11 o'clock position. And there you have it. Pretty punny, huh? <Well , of course, not!> And that is because you've only found the patterns, but don't understand what they are doing. That understanding depends on the investigation and interpretation of White Aries.
If the blue-striped patterns of White Aries, disguised in a radial format, are intended to be suggestive of the Fieschi armorial insignia (bendy, argent et azur), and two individuals from this family were 13th century popes, (Innocent IV and Adrian V), then it might also be noted that a certain positional arrangement exists between the blue-striped patterns and the two papellonny patterns from the preceding pages. They correspond in placement in both sphere and quadrant. And (the finishing touch) the French word for 'pope' is 'pape' - - 'Pape' and 'Papelonny' corresponding in an intentional construction. Hidden in plain sight. All it takes is the recovery of traditional terminology, to name what can be seen, but it's harder than XXXX to find an unfamiliar tradition in a hidden and/or disguised representation.
An alternative approach to White Aries is to look at the hats. What is known about medieval hats? What is known about the heraldic interpretations and the historical traditions of ecclesiastical hats?
RE: Greek Influences in the VMS glyphs? - Stephen Carlson - 06-04-2020
(04-04-2020, 06:54 AM)-JKP- Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.2. Greek Abbreviation Symbol. The staircase symbol with a dot is a rare character in the VMS. It is a shape-mate for the Greek abbreviation for "atto". I've never seen this shape in a Latin-character manuscript and Latin abbreviations don't usually have this shape. I've only seen it in charts of Greek abbreviations, but there are a few abbreviations in Greek that are based on this general idea of a staircase+dot, so it might be a specific class of abbreviation.What is "atto" (it's not a Greek word I'm familiar with or can find in a lexicon) and what's your source for this?
RE: Greek Influences in the VMS glyphs? - -JKP- - 06-04-2020
It may be part of a word, Stephen, and thank you for responding on the thread, as I know you have knowledge in this area.
I am not as familiar with Greek abbreviations as I am with Latin. I only know some of the most common ones (mostly the ones that carried over into Latin).
In Latin, an abbreviation doesn't always mean a word. For example, the m abbreviation in languages that use the Latin alphabet represents the common abbreviation "-ris" (and its homonyms), which is not a word, but a syllable. It is comprised of the letters "r" and the loop+descender that usually represents "is".
So maybe "atto" is a syllable rather than a word? The ligature for gamma-gamma (the square form, not the cursive form) is also one of the staircasy ones and somewhat resembles the way some of the VMS gallows chars are sometimes combined in the main text, by placing the second one slightly higher and to the right of the first.
As mentioned, the abbreviations that look like staircases I have seen mostly in Greek palaeography charts. They stood out to me because most Latin and Greek abbreviations are rounded in the cursive style and these were different. I've never seen them in a Latin manuscript and I haven't gone through enough Greek manuscripts yet to have seen all the abbreviations (mostly I've been looking at Greek mss. about plants and medicine).
I'll try to find the examples I saw. It was a few years ago so I have to hunt them up again.
Other Possible Shapemates
The only other place I've seen these staircased shapes (some portions are rectangular, some like triangles), is in Mandaic alphabets, where some letters are comprised of angles and partial rectangles, somewhat similar to the shape in the VMS. Mandaic evolved from Armenian or Parthian.
For example, in Mandaic, which has a syllabic alphabet, you start with a simple staircased shape and then you can add a 1) triangle or 2) short stem to the left side to represent the vowels "a" or "i". With consonant and vowel combined, it looks somewhat like the VMS rare shape. The letter + vowel that is most similar to the VMS glyph represents "t" or theta in the Mandaic alphabet, "m" is also similar, but it depends on the scribe. Some of the other letters follow the same concept but are not as similar.
But... the Mandaic syllables only look similar in their square form. The cursive form is less like the VMS. It has rounded connectors, which makes the triangles and rectangles look softer and more like western letters. So... it's not a super-strong resemblance except in certain instances, but I mention it for the record.
Even though the resemblance to Mandaic is not super-strong, I looked into it because the script was traditionally added to talismanic objects (like demon bowls and healing bowls). If the VMS has any connection at all to kabbalah or other Semitic magical scripts, then these talismanic objects may be of interest.
RE: Greek Influences in the VMS glyphs? - -JKP- - 06-04-2020
I've blogged about "monogram" style Greek letter and number combinations, mostly common ones like pi-rho, tau-rho, mu-rho, and chi-rho and stacked words like Prodromos. Some are stacked (one above the other), some are benched (like pi crossing the ascender of rho).
There are a number of ways of superposing them, but the important thing is that it is common in Greek scripts and less so in Latin scripts, except in Latin legal seals where it is fairly common.
These examples are not as good as the examples I posted on my blog from actual manuscripts, but they get across the idea of commonly benched (superposed) abbreviations:
Here is an example of a character in the VMS that resembles a double-gallows (perhaps two EVA-k in a row) that have been stacked in the same way as gamma-gamma is sometimes written as a ligature in Greek, with the letters joined and the right one raised like a staircase (this can be done with any combination of letters that are somewhat squarish and lend themselves to ligatures):
When I was creating transcripts, I noticed in a number of places that the ascenders of VMS benched-gallows characters do not always reach the baseline. This made me suspicious that benched-gallows chars might be ligatures. Here is an example of stacked rho-pi in a Greek manuscript where the stem does not go down through the pi character. It is stacked rather than superposed. Maybe this is why some of the VMS chars behave similarly:
And here are some examples of the common theta-rho ligature that somewhat resembles EVA-t. Whether it swoops up and attaches to the next letter (in this case, alpha, omicron, and omega) depends on whether it is in the middle of the word or at the end of the word:
It's important to read for context when interpreting theta-rho because some scribes added loops to pi ligatures, as well. In this example, it's theta-rho.
I don't think the extra lines and loops on the fancy gallows chars are always embellishments, I think some of them may be ligatures. If they are, they have been done in the Greek style, not the Latin style.
---------
The majority of the VMS shapes have analogues in Latin. The glyph-shapes a i o y g ' [font=Eva]m e c r s u b q l d eh k[/font] are all common except for the way the i leans back, but the gallows chars, as a group, seem to me to be more similar to Greek in the way they are shaped, and especially in the way they are combined.
RE: Greek Influences in the VMS glyphs? - bi3mw - 06-04-2020
(05-04-2020, 04:53 PM)-JKP- Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I often think of Llullian diagrams when I look at the VMS.I am glad to hear that I am not the only one who feels this way. I would even say that the method of "proof of God" (Ars Brevis / Ars Magna) might have been applied in a similar way as later in the VMS. This would mean, of course, that without an "instruction book" one would not get anywhere.
RE: Greek Influences in the VMS glyphs? - Stephen Carlson - 06-04-2020
Thanks for your comment. I've never seen anything like this "atto" thing and I was curious about the source. It could be a combination of different elements that happen to be juxtaposed or something in a source you've looked at?
Yes, Greek abbreviations do tend to stack more than Latin ones, but the preference is for ligatures and special macron-like elements, especially for common word endings. Some of the forms you cite are less common and tend to be used more in paratext settings, like titles, subscriptions, and marginal notes. Also, a lot of the stacked abbreviations in minuscule manuscripts use an older form of the script called majuscule or uncial, which gives a feel very different from the VM. A good list of what you'll commonly see in Greek MSS is found in this chart:
![[Image: Liga1.JPG]](http://www.biblical-data.org/Liga1.JPG)
I realize it is a subjective feeling, but nothing in the VM script has really jumped out to me as Greek, not even the gallows. On the other hand, a lot of the VM looks conformably at home with Latin (even humanist) hands to my eye.
RE: Greek Influences in the VMS glyphs? - -JKP- - 06-04-2020
Stephen Carlson Wrote:Some of the forms you cite are less common and tend to be used more in paratext settings, like titles, subscriptions, and marginal notes.
The stacked gallows in the VMS (the ones that I think are combination gallows, combined in the Greek style) also tend to be used in places where we might expect titles, or paragraph openings, like the beginnings of lines.
As I mentioned, to my eye, most of the VMS glyphs are Latin shapes, common ones. These VMS shapes are all common in Latin script: a i o y g ' m e c r s u b q l d eh k except that "i" doesn't usually lean (I have a large set of examples sampled from actual manuscripts)... but the concept of benching and stacking is more Greek than Latin and even some of the specific ways in which the double gallows chars are combined are exactly as they do it in Greek.
RE: Greek Influences in the VMS glyphs? - Mark Knowles - 07-04-2020
(05-04-2020, 10:05 AM)Koen G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.(05-04-2020, 08:28 AM)DONJCH Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.So you are saying that the VM could be a jest, a stunt, a piece of medieval performance art?
This is actually a possibility I often consider, though I prefer "intellectual exercise". Both in the script and the images, we see touching points with the dominant culture of the time, but they have been employed in a disorienting way. This is done very consistently over many pages.
We know that at least five people worked on this thing, so there was also some group component involved, whatever the relationship between these people was. Assuming none of the scribes died, there was an audience of at least four.
I don't know if this is the case, but it's one of the things I keep in mind. The driving force may have been the concept itself rather than secrecy.
Koen, this hypothesis that you present is one that I like and similar to what I have suggested some time ago.
It is often discussed what the purpose of the Voynich was: to keep important secrets hidden or as a hoax to be sold for a lot of money or... Why was it necessary to encipher that book when almost all contemporary manuscripts are not enciphered?
My answered has been primarily, because the author(s) could. Because the author(s) had a fondness for ciphers. He/she/they wrote the manuscript out of personal interest to entertain themselves. It could have been an intellectual exercise. I am not saying that the contents are not meaningful, important and interesting, but that people don't necessarily always do things for clear functional reasons.
Why are many people researching the Voynich? Entertainment and personal interest are big reasons. So why would people of that period be so different?
Think of the Codex Seraphinianus. Why was that written?
RE: Greek Influences in the VMS glyphs? - -JKP- - 07-04-2020
In the first post in this thread, readers may have noticed that I rotated the EVA-l character to make "a". Just in case it doesn't look like "a" to everybody (I don't know how many are familiar with this form of "a"), I thought I would post an example from a 15th century manuscript. This is the word "Amen":
Now... we don't know if the VMS is a cipher alphabet, but one of things I have noticed fairly frequently in medieval substitution ciphers (and also modern ciphers), is that there are often a few glyphs that are rotated versions of recognizable characters, changed only moderately to create a new shape that looks different enough but is not super-hard to remember. Even Hildegard von Bingen's cipher had a few rotated and mirrored glyphs.