Suggestions for decomposition of the Voynichese characters

[-JKP-]

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That it is the first folio in the binding does not mean that it was written in the first place. A blank page might have been left for to be filled in later (like, to provide abstracts of chapters yet to be written).

I completely agree that this is possible, that it could have been written later or perhaps was meant to be bound in some other sequence and was never intended as the first page (or that the leaves for the first pages are lost), but... out of all the folios in the manuscript, it is the one folio that has the look of an introductory page (with "red weirdos" to fancy it up) and it's the only folio that doesn't have the same familiarity and fluency in writing as the others.

It's the same hand that wrote the next couple of dozen pages and the script is tidier on the subsequent pages. Even the inventors of new languages or alphabets have to get used to writing them. I spoke pig-Latin and wrote code letters to friends when I was a kid and it took me a while to get good at it.


Here are some possibilities (assuming the first page really is the first page):

• The manuscript is a group project (at least two scribes) and the person who invented it is Hand 2 and Hand 1 was a major contributor (perhaps a direct relative) but not yet fluent in writing Voynichese.
  
• The first page was written first, was not quite as good as desired, a wax tablet was enlisted to write out the words first and then copied, thus leading to more fluent pages after the first page.
  
• The first page was written first, was not quite as desired, the scribe practiced a bit more, then continued on.
  
• The first page was not quite as good as desired, the two scribes had a conference and scribe one tried harder on the following pages.
  

Those are just some quick ideas. I'm sure there are many more possibilities.