The Modern Forgery Hypothesis

[JustAnotherTheory]

Several examples of "Octebre" exist, they are all modern. Here is an example from a 1898 French letter:

   

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Here's another one from 1810:

   

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There's even a Spanish example:

   

[eggyk]

Mr. Ova Yolk: I didn't want you to think I had walked away from this line of conversation. As I said it is not something I had paid a great deal of attention to, in the past. But you make good points, and I wanted to fill myself in on this whole "month names" story... what everyone else has said about it, what we know, what we don't, and how it affects my own ideas, any everyone's, for better or worse.

I mean it is definitely an issue... I haven't been ignoring because I thought it was an issue, but just because I had not explored it much.

So I have actually been spending a great deal of my spare time in working on this. I have discovered that the reality of the "octēbre" situation is fascinating in its own right. I'm not quite finished, but I'm getting there... I hope. But like many things like this, I've found that what people think they know about it is very different than the reality of it, when you begin to dig deeper and deeper.

In any case, for one thing, that Picard Astrolabe, which of course David King was writing about in 2001. You may know this, already, but I'm not sure... because there are many discussions on the Ninja's and elsewhere, and unless I am wrong... and someone here please correct me because I would like to see ANY examples of octēbre... but there seems to be NO examples of it other than in the Voynich, and engraved on the Picard Astrolabe. None.

What I discovered is that any examples of it are assumed... that is, the form "Octembre" is of course well known but not with the short hand bar for the "em" sound, written octēbre. Apparently, because the bar was not typeset, it was assumed that if you saw "Octembre", that it must have meant a transcriber for print... a typesetter... had seen a manuscript octēbre, and typeset it as "octember", knowing the conventions. But that, while we see many Octembres, I don't think there are actually any known written octēbre's. But I mean this: If I am wrong (I'm still climbing a steep learning curve on these month names), please forgive my ignorance, and point me to it.

It's no problem at all! If you haven't seen it already, the You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. contains almost all of the things that we/I have found about this. A ctrl+f on there will show any of the forms found so far. 

As for the zodiac signs, this has become a big project for me. The link in my signature is to a spreadsheet where 100s of zodiac signs from 100s of sources are displayed and rated to find the most similar to the VMS (printed works are included, mostly from the 16thC). The discussion thread for the spreadsheet is You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view., along with a new You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. thread and the existing You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. thread (whose spreadsheet I integrated and expanded upon). At this point, the vast majority of what has been mentioned before will have been added there. I also track the context in which they appear, attempt to link together related works/copies, as well as tracking other certain VMS-like imagery that occur within the source. It's why I know we haven't seen any lobsters connected like pisces 

octēbre with a macron has indeed been found a bunch of times. It is quite a lot rarer than octembre, which is quite common to find. I'm actually not sure i've come across any 15-16th century printed octembres either, for what it's worth. I haven't been tracking whether entries are printed or written, but I think all of the ones i've seen have been written. I would have to check. 

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(note that the last two are octēbres, but are found in a context where all of the month names appear to end in s for some reason)

[eggyk]

Several examples of "Octebre" exist, they are all modern. Here is an example from a 1898 French letter:



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Here's another one from 1810:



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There's even a Spanish example:

I'm sorry, but I have to push back on the first 2 examples here. An obscure spelling mistake halfway through a huge book should not count for these purposes imo. Firstly, because of the missing macron, and secondly because noone would ever find these without an OCR scan. This is how that octebre looks on those pages; the rest of the pages contain not a single other example (but do contain many octobres).

Context is important here. This is page 413 of 620, most of which are pages full of dates. 

   

[JustAnotherTheory]

Thank you for pointing out these examples. Turns out I was wrong, again. Shocker

[proto57]

Hi Eggo: There seems to have been some confusion on my part! And great work...

It's no problem at all! If you haven't seen it already, the You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. contains almost all of the things that we/I have found about this. A ctrl+f on there will show any of the forms found so far.

First of all, that is magnificent work, on yours and everyone's part! Granted I've only been on the case for a week or so, but still I failed at finding ONE "octēbre", and here you have quite a few. And the organized layout of the spreadsheet is excellent. All this must have taken a huge amount of work! Kudos. And is it OK if I link it to You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.? The list of the links is general, and even, mostly either non-committal or outright pro-1420 genuine.

That being said, I was very confused! You were asking me if I could find any examples of octēbre, and octembre and so I misunderstood and thought you could not find them. I went back to look, to see how I got it so wrong. I just looked, and now think I know the reason for the confusion. You wrote,

"As for octembre/octebre, if you have the time I would appreciate the links to those. I don't know exactly how you search, but all I get on google books are history publications containing written correspondence or direct quotes from the 12th-15th centuries, and not the usage of octembre in works of the 18-19th century itself", and, "But more importantly, the VMS uses octēbre with a macron, indicating a deliberate and attested shortening of 'octembre'. The only instance of octēbre with a macron that shows up in results is a 2001 david king book about astrolabes... in the context of the of the picardy dialect of french from medieval times."

So I mistakenly thought you could not find ANY WRITTEN octēbre's. And here is the reason for the disconnect: I learned that when a typesetter came across the manuscript version, octēbre, they did not have, nor have the means to add "on the fly", the character "ē". Nor did they have the means, or for whatever technical reason didn't, add the macron above the "e".

But the key point is, they understood what it was... that it was meant as the phonetic sound "em". And THIS is why it does not appear in print, AS "octēbre". Instead, they reverted it to the pronunciation meant by the manuscript author, and typeset it as "octembre".

I had actually surmised wrong, although I knew the above was the practice of typesetters: Since I didn't know of the finds off all the manuscript octēbre's, I had surmised that perhaps these typesetters were assuming octēbre, and so, writing octembre. But now I see that it is actually all very pat: Octēbre was used in many cases, and the typesetters were converting them to Octembre, and you were asking me if I knew of the form Octēbre in print, and it does not exist in print.

All that being said... and since this was part of the premise of your request... we can both see that the Theorem has been fulfilled in a more direct way than the technical minimum of some small and unfounded possibility he saw that astrolabe, because all these examples of octēbre in manuscript form fulfill one of the requirements, that the source, if not in print, be in a place he is known to, or could reasonably assumed to have possibly visited. Several of your links do show this.

Now the July is still up in the air. And as I've related, I think that the very indistinct and vague form would make it so difficult to pin down what spelling was actually meant by it... so I would reserve judgment on what that spelling was. I have to say that I do intend to pore over your spreadsheet, and look at all examples carefully, and perhaps I could form an opinion on this... not really so far though, not that it matters to anyone else!

As for the zodiac signs, this has become a big project for me. The link in my signature is to a spreadsheet where 100s of zodiac signs from 100s of sources are displayed and rated to find the most similar to the VMS (printed works are included, mostly from the 16thC). The discussion thread for the spreadsheet is You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view., along with a new You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. thread and the existing You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. thread (whose spreadsheet I integrated and expanded upon). At this point, the vast majority of what has been mentioned before will have been added there. I also track the context in which they appear, attempt to link together related works/copies, as well as tracking other certain VMS-like imagery that occur within the source. It's why I know we haven't seen any lobsters connected like pisces 

"Wow" again. Excellent work. Can I also place this link on my blog? No problem if not of course.

octēbre with a macron has indeed been found a bunch of times. It is quite a lot rarer than octembre, which is quite common to find. I'm actually not sure i've come across any 15-16th century printed octembres either, for what it's worth. I haven't been tracking whether entries are printed or written, but I think all of the ones i've seen have been written. I would have to check. 

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Yes and, as I answered above, the reason we find many printed "octembre's", and as octēbre it is only written, seems to be because the typesetter understood the meaning of the macron on "e" as "em", and set it as "em". Well of course in "modern times", with the technological advancements in typesetting and various other printing methods, printed works ceased to have a problem with representing the original manuscript octēbre in print. Like us!

Great discussion, great work, and once again, I learned far more than I was able to offer.... thanks.

Rich

[RadioFM]

I keep coming back to this thread just to enjoy reading Mr. Ovoplasma's aliases

[proto57]

I keep coming back to this thread just to enjoy reading Mr. Ovoplasma's aliases

They are meant entirely lovingly, no yoke (but I'm not sure if the Eggster is a Mr. or not, not that it matters. Do we?)

Proto

[eggyk]

All that being said... and since this was part of the premise of your request... we can both see that the Theorem has been fulfilled in a more direct way than the technical minimum of some small and unfounded possibility he saw that astrolabe, because all these examples of octēbre in manuscript form fulfill one of the requirements, that the source, if not in print, be in a place he is known to, or could reasonably assumed to have possibly visited. Several of your links do show this.

I admit that is is possible, albeit quite unlikely, that voynich saw the form Octēbre -either on an astrolabe or in a french book of hours- or alternatively that he came across the form octembre in one of these historical books, and then chose to shorten it the same way septēbre, nouēbre and decēbre often got used.

Now the July is still up in the air. And as I've related, I think that the very indistinct and vague form would make it so difficult to pin down what spelling was actually meant by it... so I would reserve judgment on what that spelling was. I have to say that I do intend to pore over your spreadsheet, and look at all examples carefully, and perhaps I could form an opinion on this... not really so far though, not that it matters to anyone else!

Fair enough, but I would say that everyone would agree that the word has 'oll' in the middle of it. Such a spelling -no matter what comes before or after- is unattested afaik. Previously unattested forms do trickle in as we do this work sometimes. For example, we have a lone 'jugnius' for june instead of julius in one of the latin entries. 

Or similarly, we have You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. (wonderful) unique zodiacs that I only found a couple of days ago:

           

I doubt we'll see these designs in another manuscript, nor I assume in later printed works. It's a good reminder that some things were genuinely unique back then. If the VMS had copied the above designs, but the above manuscript was lost to a fire, we would be saying such designs are completely unattested. That is the nature of medieval works. Hell, it feels like every time I open a german manuscript I find a new, ridiculous unique spelling of something or other. 

Can I also place this link on my blog? No problem if not of course.

You are welcome to add the zodiac spreadsheet onto the blog, but as it is connected to my personal google account I would prefer the form to be a link to the Voynich Ninja You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. (which contains the spreadsheet link), so nefarious actors (or AI scrubbers) can't freely access/provide the share-link without registering.   Sorry for being awkward! 

The month name spreadsheet is owned by Koen, so you would require his permission.

I keep coming back to this thread just to enjoy reading Mr. Ovoplasma's aliases

They are meant entirely lovingly, no yoke (but I'm not sure if the Eggster is a Mr. or not, not that it matters. Do we?)

Hahaha

[Bluetoes101]

Hi Rich, 

Hope all is well. 

I disagree wholeheartedly, first of all, that it "is a very good fake 15th century manuscript". We are told this, today, but in the first place, before the C14, most experts didn't think this at all. The only way to think it came from the 15th century is to ignore, or reject on various unscientific grounds, the tremendous amount of evidence that has steered many very qualified people to opinions in the 16th and 17th century, mostly. The only thing actually pointing to 15th century at all is the age of the calfskin, which does not date a manuscript.

What happened was... I was there and watched it unfold... what happened was that once that C14 dating hit the table, a huge effort was made to filter out all the evidence and opinion which pointed in a million other directions.

No, whatever it actually is, it is a really bad example of a 15th century work. It looks little like one (along with a little like a few other things), and really if you look critically at even the supporters of that age it is very apologetic just how many anachronisms and anomalies it has. I think it is an awful forgery, crude and actually a bit cartoonish and silly, like a really bad parody of "What an old herbal should look like". IMHO.

You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.There still is much content that points to the 17th century, and until the release of the C14 results many agreed. Think of it: That date alone changed everyone's mind, like the smell of a bakery will wreck one's diet... and it did this on a mostly provably incorrect assumption: That "nobody would use" old parchment! That's it. The pictures in the Voynich didn't change, the construction didn't change, the styles didn't change... so why did the history of herbals and art history magically change to fit the 15th century? It didn't, IMO. It is still what it always was: A work filled with content from several centuries, including the 15th, but also from up to the 18th.

Here is an interesting, imaginative scenario, one which... from my experience... I am sure would happen: Say Greg dropped a bombshell, and said to everyone, "Sorry guys, there was a mistake in the interpretation of the data. The calfskin is actually from about 1604-1638, with a 95% accuracy". In about two weeks, all the opinions would re-align with this new dating. But Rich, HOW can you SAY that??? I can, because I watched it happen once already, in real time. In fact, I was not alone... I point it out all the time, but when the C14 first came out, the new wasn't, as it is claimed today, that "That the experts got it right!"... it was the opposite, that "The experts got it wrong!". It took about two to three weeks to re-write the history of the Voynich for it to match the C14.

So I see no reason why it wouldn't happen again. At least it would resurrect the reputation of the great Charles Singer, and some of his other illustrious scholars. So again, "no"... this did not look like a 15th century work to most experts, until they passed out the C14 colored sunglasses.

I actually fully agree that a lot of opinions on the date of the manuscript would move to whatever date, in the hypothetical scenario of a new dating of the materials. This is because many of the dates come from ways of dating a work that would not pass any sort of actual scientific rigor. If we can have "vibes coding" in the dictionary now, I'm going to coin "vibes dating", much of what was done was "vibes dating". 

The dating of a work like the VMS should be based on handwriting style and artistic techniques (obviously excluding examining physical materials/properties and such) - however given the quality of the "art" I'd say that would not be as reliable as the writing. If any of the dates provided by experts was based on this criteria and they arrived at a date much different than "15th century - or near" then I'd like to see them.  

Just as a very easy example, if you (or others reading) scroll around on here, pick out the era which best matches the writing in the VMS 
You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.. This is why my opinion would not change other than thinking it must be a copy of a 15th century work made by someone who has practised the style to imitate it well.

This actually leads on quite well to my troubles with the nature of our hoaxer, as by hypothetically imagining the material to be 17th century its not too far of a leap to imagine the aim of creating a 17th century work and ending up with the VMS, and it quite well displays why I can't get my head around the nature of our hoaxer, and also why I call him the "genius idiot". 

The writing, I hope we can agree, does not belong to the 17th century. To achieve the style shown in the VMS someone would have to be practised in the style to imitate it. Does a rare book dealer who practised a style to imitate 17th century writing accidently learn 15th century, then selected 15th century velum to write on, make sense?     

I do not doubt the possibility of a modern hoax, forgery or fake. But to my eyes they aimed to make a 15th century work, both with the writing style and materials used. This then makes it problematic for the goal to have been either a Jacobus de Tepenec, or Roger Bacon, which would in turn make Wilfrid Voynich a troublesome candidate. In order for him to be considered he would have to be my "genius idiot", he painstakingly created a very convincing fake, of completely the wrong thing. 


I chopped off a lot of quotes just so this didn't become too lengthy - Don't want it to come across that I dismissed anything you said.

[proto57]

Hi Rich, 

Hope all is well.

Yes, thank you... and you, too, I (also) hope.

Just as a very easy example, if you (or others reading) scroll around on here, pick out the era which best matches the writing in the VMS 
You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.. This is why my opinion would not change other than thinking it must be a copy of a 15th century work made by someone who has practised the style to imitate it well.

This actually leads on quite well to my troubles with the nature of our hoaxer, as by hypothetically imagining the material to be 17th century its not too far of a leap to imagine the aim of creating a 17th century work and ending up with the VMS, and it quite well displays why I can't get my head around the nature of our hoaxer, and also why I call him the "genius idiot". 

The writing, I hope we can agree, does not belong to the 17th century. To achieve the style shown in the VMS someone would have to be practised in the style to imitate it. Does a rare book dealer who practised a style to imitate 17th century writing accidently learn 15th century, then selected 15th century velum to write on, make sense?

No, I don't agree that the writing... in part.. "does not belong to the 17th century". And while the author would have to be somewhat practiced, true, I think they were familiar with the (actually) very wide range of styles, from different sources and ages, that we (actually) see in the Voynich.

As to selecting 15th century parchment, I due not believe they did specifically opt for that age, nor could they, really, as there was no C14 testing. I mean, if blank they could not know the age of it... it was just, as I've opined, "Just some old vellum laying around". If they knew the age of the vellum, or worried it could be dated in their (or Ethel's) lifetime, I think they would have chosen materials from the early 16th century, to better match the content they smeared on it.

Just look at some script-based opinions, from D'Imperio alone:

p.08- "I should go no lower than ca. 1510-1520 because no influence of the Italian Renaissance style is evident. The above date is based on the character of the script, the style of drawing and on such costumes as are evidence on certain pages..."- Panofsky

p.08- "Paleographic experts agree that the nature of the drawings, the writing, the ink and the vellum, etc.... ...Some experts suggest that the probably period in which it was written was 1500, plus or minus twenty years"- Elizebeth Friedman.

"The format and use of certain peculiar symbols (mirror images of the Italian d or di and el, respectively) are evidences that the author was probably familiar with the manuscript of Leonardo da Vinci's 'Anatomy' (written about 1510)"- Leonell Strong.

p.09- "Professor Giles Constable (professor of medieval history, Harvard University)... ...dated the manuscript as sixteenth century and suggested that the script might be a form of private language motivated by the desire to keep such a powerful document from the general public... ... the date of the manuscript was again placed in the sixteenth century by Mr. Rodney Dennis (curator of manuscripts in Houghton Library of the harvard College Library). Mr. Dennis identified the script to be in the style of the sixteenth century humanist script".

p.23, "Some source mention, in passing, the possible derivation of the Voynich symbols from "Roman minuscule characters.". McKaig (n.d.) states that "the text is writing in a beautiful script that slightly resembles writing used in Italy in the 1500's" (p. 481).

p.23, "... and the decorative extensions of letter with tall stems [gallows] int he top line of a manuscript illustrated in Cappelli (Table IV).

(This famous Cappelli gallows-like script is from an obscure 12th century letter, first published in the early 20th century)

Mary D'Imperio made another prescient point, I think, with:

p.24- "Unfortunately for the student, the designer has exhibited a truly remarkable ingenuity in blending and distorting these elements so as to make of them an entirely new writing system, fundamentally independent of and distinct from any of its sources, so that our recognition of similarities to known symbols has not helped us to unlock the secret of the script".

This statement by Mary D'Imperio is emblematic of the very problem I had first noted a decade or so ago, that the Voynich seems to both borrow from many sources, then blur the combination... and she seems to have agreed with me and others in that it was "made" so. But note her phrase, "entirely new writing system"... not identifiable to 13th, not 15th, not 16th, not any era, but "entirely new".

But also, I would again ask, "How exactly did the C14 pare down all of these perceived date ranges into simply 'early 15th century'". Simply explained, I think, by the same exact "C14 Filter Effect" once again: The reality of the history of all paleography has not changed, but it could not be applied to the C14 era, so instead it was simply dropped. It is still there, it just needed to be ignored, and still is ignored. So when someone, today, "sees" only 15c., I mean, they are needing to NOT see all the other, later and some earlier, comparisons. They are still there, they have not changed, the cannot change. And likewise, the value of the pre-C14 opinions should not be simply edited out of the story. But... it is. I think this is science done backwards.

The whole projected vision of the Voynich today has adjusted itself, morphed, to skew these results, and ignore previously valued opinions, edit firm histories, all to align with this "C14-Centric" demand. Then this C14-Centric narrative is fiercely defended by argument by authority, filtered peer review for access to visibility in lectures and forums, formal institutional access and their "official" positions, and so on. And the filter is simple: If the proposed idea accepts early 15th century and genuine (I call it the "1420 Genuine European Cipher Paradigm"), it is allowed; if it is anywhere outside of this paradigm, is it censured through "peer" rejection. That's it.

Well that was not just a rant, but the point is, most of what people accept, now, as factually correct and therefore inarguable, has already been pre-filtered through this process. The general acceptance of the results of this process is, of course, normal, as people tend to trust authority (I don't), and people just cannot apply the time and effort necessary to seek the "truth of the matter". Well most of us all must do this... for any problem or question in life you have layers: The topmost is the generally accepted set of "facts". Dig a few hours or days, and that changes again, and the truth turns out to be something else. But dig for months or years, look back to the whole history of a problem, and look at all source materials, critically, really skeptically and critically, and the reality again is realized to be something entirely different than you have been taught. I mean I have to trust many things in life, and so I am also a frequent victim of filtered and biased results... but in a handful of areas, among them the history of early submersibles and the Voynich manuscript, I have spent years diving for the truth of the matter... in looking at source materials, the practice of the era involved, and questioning everything. And also, as decades go by (!!!) I have noted how the story changes, and change by who, and from that another picture entirely is formed... I mean, the history of research in any field tells us as much or more than the static cross-section of any moment in the process, because it introduces motivation, sources of bias, of various personal agendas... the human side, so to speak. And I have referred to this process, in this case, as I've watched those new to the VMs history come in these different "strata of understanding", having excepting whatever came before as the gospel.

Hey I did, too! I look back and almost can't believe what I accepted as gospel, myself, before doing some of my own research, my own thinking. And despite what is charged against me, often, and heatedly, I do listen to those who criticize my ideas, and have even changed my mind on a great many aspects of this story. When I felt it made sense, that is... where I am now, I have been somewhat, not entirely, unmoved by the arguments offered the past few years. Introspection is the most important tool, I guess I'm saying... or we will all be suffering from Dunning-Krueger, making up our own World, and none of us wants to do or be that.

Anyway, back to the script. Yes, almost everyone believes the processed "truth" that the script is absolutely early 15th century and nothing else. But it is only early 15th century if you ignore everything else. I guess that is the TLDR.

Interesting aside, which throws kudos on the diligent and observant Ms. Nill: D'Imperio wrote (p.26), "Miss Nill declares the last page [marginalia, of course] is written in the same ink as the bulk of the manuscript". Wow, I had missed or forgotten that tidbit. Of course Anne could not have known how correct this turned out to be, for when McCrone tested the inks in 2009, they discovered exactly that. And of course it is important, as illustrated by the fact that the time between Nill and McCrone, it was firmly and repeatedly stated (as evidence the work was genuine, mostly) that the last page marginalia was in a different hand, by a different scribe, and applied much later than the creation of the bulk of the text. When it was revealed to be of the same ink, the official sources quickly corrected themselves, apologized for the very misleading, incorrect information that had led so many astray... oops, just kidding! No, the references to "different scribe, later hand" were very quietly removed. In fact, I was baffled... thinking, "Where did THAT go, now?", which caused me to re-examine the McCrone report, discover the ink being the same, and then I knew why the previous claims vanished.

And this is yet another illustration of just what we are up against, if one wants to determine the Truth of the Voynich: The story of the history of it, the nature of it, and everything that goes into creating the current pretty picture that everyone believes, is actually a very careful and strongly defended construct, which bears little resemblance to what is actually known about it, and what the bulk of the many expert opinions about it actually do say. Those have been selectively stripped away with the "C14 Filter", until all that is left is the appearance, not a reality, of everything being early 15th century and genuine.

In the case of the script, too... no, it is demonstrably not. It is a hodge-podge of scripts and styles from a very wide range of ages and sources, but edited and whittled down to the very narrow and desired era, all because, and based on, the calves dying in the early 15th century.

Anyway, all for the moment. I do appreciate your open mind(s) and value the input and discussion, and especially the very valuable disagreement. I actually often find myself hoping I don't change some people's minds, because then my own path stagnates somewhat. I am inspired by the challenges, that is.

Rich