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Scribes and elaborate gallows - Printable Version

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Scribes and elaborate gallows - Koen G - 19-02-2026

I've been wondering for a while whether there is any connection between LFD's scribes and the use of ornate & special gallows. I just spent some time skimming each page of the manuscript, paying special attention to top lines. This is far from exhaustive, but should be sufficient to start a discussion.

Some preliminary notes:
  • I did not pay too much attention to circular diagrams and left Scribe 4 out of the equation. The ornate gallow is more of a thing for paragraphs. There are some clear exception in f57v, with some very loopy gallows. This is the only diagram not done by scribe 4. It is also part of weird Quire 8, and hence cursed.
  • Long-P stretching over various glyphs is omnipresent and cannot be used as a discriminating factor. 
  • Some areas of the MS are more prone to get fancy gallows than others. (Relative scarcity in some pharma and Q20 pages). This may be due to layout, text type or scribal preference.

Observations

   
  • Scribe 1 masters the "bridging gallow", connecting one word with another. I found only one modest instance by scribe 2 (f80r), though there may be more that I overlooked.
  • Moving one tier down, we also notice that Scribe 1 likes to add extra loops. This is rare in other scribes. However, notice the top red arrow. Scribe 1 and scribe 3 have the exact same shape here. This cannot be a coincidence.
  • One tier down again from the red arrow, scribe 2 comes in with the "twist" (f76v mark), moving the top of the gallows to the right of the legs. Scribe 1 also has twists, but Scribe 2 has his own recognizable varieties.
  • One tier down again (f22r, You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. mark), I noted that all scribes have a few lanky, awkwardly looped gallows.
  • At the bottom, there are some uniquely embellished ones. Scribe 1 mikes dots. Scribe 2 has the "ribbon" and groups of 3 lines.
  • The second red arrow shows another instance where scribe 3 does exactly the same thing as Scribe 1: scallops on top of the long horizontal, dots beneath. (These are only a few folios removed in the current binding! 102r-105r)

Conclusions

Abnormal/ornamental gallow usage has constants throughout the manuscript (long P, taller gallows on top lines), but some scribes leave their own marks. Scribe 1 likes the most variation, with bridging gallows and extra loops. Scribe 2 thinks about going there sometimes, but us much more careful and restrained. Despite having produced a lot of text, scribe 3 does not use many ornamental gallows. When he does, he acts very much like Scribe 1. 

Finally, there is also this page, but I'm not even sure which scribe this is supposed to be. The Rosettes foldout is one of those where several scribes were active. I see TWO instances of rare gallows on this one odd page: a modest bridge, and a Scribe 1-style extra loop.

   

RE: Scribes and elaborate gallows - R. Sale - 19-02-2026

Is Scribe 4 excluded entirely? Do examples of those 'top-line shenanigans' occur in any of the circular text segments? I don't think they do.

RE: Scribes and elaborate gallows - LisaFaginDavis - 20-02-2026

I have quite a lot of notes about this question. All of the scribes use these (what seem to be) ligatures, in similar ways, although as Koen notes, Scribe 1 has a largest variety. 

Although we won't really know until/unless we can read the text, I did note in my Voynich Conference lecture my thoughts about these ligatures, that they may perhaps be parsed by considering the number of loops and the number of legs. See p. 9, section 5.2 here:

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Here's an excerpt:

   

I never really followed up on this idea, in part because it is completely speculative...

RE: Scribes and elaborate gallows - Skoove - 20-02-2026

The special ligature gallow on f8v, I think, is actually very telling. The scribe's desire to use benched gallows to make a stylised ligature might have let slip the underlying meaning of benched gallows. Which is, a benched gallow is equivalent to a gallow + bench (in that order). We expect a paragraph/page should start with a gallow, yet we see instead, this page starting with 'cth'. The only way therefore to render this as a paragraph initial gallow is for 'cth' to be equivalent to 'tch'. 

I know others have speculated that a benched gallow is a gallow + bench based on the frequency of gallow + ch compared to ch + gallow, but this might be a different line of evidence that draws the same conclusion. 

   

RE: Scribes and elaborate gallows - Koen G - 20-02-2026

Lisa: I think there's more to it than scribe 1 showing more variety. When Scribe 3 does eventually use a couple of special gallows, these are near-copies of something Scribe 1 did before. This would imply that Scribe 3 was looking at Scribe 1's work while working on those pages; You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. emulates the gallow on 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. emulates You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. . (Potentially relevant detail: the f95 bifolio is one of the instances where B-language plant folios have red color available. So we have red popping up in B at the same time S3 copies S1's gallows).

And then there's something going on with the Rosettes page (both sides apparently) where Scribe 2 (?) suddenly uses two modest special gallows on f86v6: a little bridge and one with an extra loop. You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. And on the Rosettes itself, apparently scribe 4 (?) also drops a special gallow. Though in your 2020 paper, you write that you are not certain about scribe 4 here.

I would be cautious with reading the extra loops as meaningful. It is evident that the gallows allowed for some fancy and embellishment. (Which does not take away the fact that bridge gallows are difficult to parse).

RE: Scribes and elaborate gallows - Rafal - 20-02-2026

I believe these "ligatures" don't carry any meaning, they are just supposed to look fancy.

Have a look at a document in Latin written in similar style:
   

RE: Scribes and elaborate gallows - Koen G - 20-02-2026

That is a good parallel, and opens up questions about what gallow glyphs are to begin with. If two bench glyphs can each grow an ascender and connect horizontally, then what are these ascenders and what is the bench glyph?

What they are is a separate question though, which could have its own thread. I wanted to focus here on the differences between scribes/sections.

RE: Scribes and elaborate gallows - Jorge_Stolfi - 20-02-2026

(20-02-2026, 01:44 PM)Rafal Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I believe these "ligatures" don't carry any meaning, they are just supposed to look fancy.  Have a look at a document in Latin written in similar style:

Note that the fancy ascenders in that image are not consistent: sometimes different letters have the same ascender, sometimes the same letter gets different fancy ascenders.  And there are several instances of "bridging ascenders", even jumping over 2-3 normal letters.  

That example should make one wonder whether there is any point in computing and interpreting statistics of puffs...

All the best, --stolfi

RE: Scribes and elaborate gallows - Dana Scott - 20-02-2026

(20-02-2026, 01:44 PM)Rafal Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I believe these "ligatures" don't carry any meaning, they are just supposed to look fancy.

Have a look at a document in Latin written in similar style:

Hello Rafal,

Do you have a source reference for the "Latin" gallows?   Thanks.

Regards,
Dana Scott

RE: Scribes and elaborate gallows - Rafal - 20-02-2026

Hello Dana,

Here is Wikipedia article:
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And here is the document itself:
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