HOW VOYNICH WAS WRITTEN

[-JKP-]

Can you give a reference, URL or shelf mark?

Yes, it's SAN-Hss Ms. lat. 85 on the MDZ viewer. A manuscript from Ansbach.

The hand is variable, but if you leaf through it, you'll see many examples where the g has the bottom tail and beginning loop slightly disconnected from the top stroke because of the way he writes the bottom part first and then the stroke on the top. Sometimes he connects it, sometimes he doesn't.

There are also many examples of the Latin go (degree) abbreviation since the manuscript is medicine-related and they classified many things (heat, cold, plants, etc.) according to 1st degree, 2nd degree, etc.


I'm not claiming this is the best example, it's just one of many that I've come across and happened to have in my database in which the bottom of the g is written first, like a "y", with a stroke then added on top.

Here's another example by the same scribe (the one on the right) of the abbreviation commonly used for first degree/first grade:

   


And... I'm not 100% certain the VMS glyph is a g because scribes who wrote a g this way often also wrote the y this way and often there would be an abbreviation symbol above it. In fact, in the Ansbach manuscript, I came across a y like this with a line over it that looks very similar to the g, but unfortunately neglected to screensnap it. The VMS doesn't give enough context for knowing if it's g or y (or something else).