Cannons versus Pipes

[RenegadeHealer]

it is a shame no one understands a lost language like Aramaic.

Aramaic is a living language. The interest of Aramaic to most people who deal with it is largely historical, rather than for day to day use, and its heyday as a medium of communication is long gone. But there are still a handful of villages in Syria and Iraq where people speak Aramaic at home, and consider it their native language.

I imagine that being a native Aramaic speaker nowadays must be a fairly marketable skill in and of itself. I know that the making of the movie The Passion of the Christ using native Aramaic-speaking actors, brought a wave of much needed money and international attention to this threatened ethnoreligious community.

Edit: As for the OP, I'm having trouble seeing the practicality of a tight group of pre-modern cannon all touching each other, unless they were packed on a ship for transport. Loading and firing them in a group like the VMS purportedly shows seems impractical and dangerous to me, from what little I know about heavy artillery.

[Monica Yokubinas]

Aramaic is a living language. 

Yes, there are small groups who still speak it in Syria, Iran, and some parts of Africa

[bi3mw]

What speaks against cannons is that there is nothing illustrated in their periphery that would refer to this subject. So there is no recognizable context to the rest of the illustration, not even speculative. What would these cannons be aimed at ? Why are these cannons in the upper, left illustration much longer than in the middle illustration ?

Also, the obvious bundling of the "cannons" and their different lengths side by side (middle illustation) suggest that it is something else.

[-JKP-]

Maybe they are horns. Trumpets were used as symbols for celestial messages in numerous medieval manuscripts. I know they are not shaped as horns, but nothing in the VMS is particularly conventional.

[bi3mw]

@JKP: Yes, that is much more conclusive than cannons.

[Aga Tentakulus]

The way it's drawn, it can't be a cannon.
How should you ignite the middle tube, but more importantly, where is it fastened so it doesn't fly out the back?
I also think of trumpets or organ pipes. Such a 5 pipe register comes there about.

[-JKP-]

They already had pretty sophisticated organs by the 15th century.

[Koen G]

I agree, some kind of "sound pipes" or wind pipes seems more likely than cannons and similar suggestions.

I just noticed that the five openings are arranged in a familiar pattern..

[Wladimir D]

For me, this scheme is most similar to the accelerating blocks of a space rocket.

[bi3mw]

Jüergen Wastl and Danielle Feger have something else to offer instead of cannons: The Nile Delta with its five branches. That seems to me possible too.


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