04-10-2017, 10:36 AM
Well, being able to read a bit of Pahlawi as written in the seventh and eighth centuries has been part of my day job for the past fifteen years. I can agree wholeheartedly with the opinion expressed in this article that Pahlawi is often ambiguous and a misery to read, but I'm afraid I struggle to find much else here which I can go along with.
As I understand it, the slightly modified version of the Arabic alphabet which is still used today had replaced Pahlawi during the ninth century for all purposes except pre-Islamic religious texts (which of course will have been familiar anyway) and perhaps other ceremonial formulae. There are a couple of extremely rare coins issued by the Buwayhids in the tenth/early eleventh centuries which have a word or two in Pahlawi alongside the otherwise Arabic legends, and I think I'm right in saying that these deliberately copied Sasanian royal protocols from centuries earlier. But otherwise, as far as I know, Pahlawi was confined to well-known, pre-Islamic religious literature some five centuries before the Voynich Manuscript was created. The idea that an upside-down version of Pahlawi, written from left-to-right instead of right-to-left, would have been used in the fifteenth century AD to write a scientific/medical text seems, in my view, to stretch credibility.
As for the supposed similarities between Voynich characters and Pahlawi...well, you tell me.
As I understand it, the slightly modified version of the Arabic alphabet which is still used today had replaced Pahlawi during the ninth century for all purposes except pre-Islamic religious texts (which of course will have been familiar anyway) and perhaps other ceremonial formulae. There are a couple of extremely rare coins issued by the Buwayhids in the tenth/early eleventh centuries which have a word or two in Pahlawi alongside the otherwise Arabic legends, and I think I'm right in saying that these deliberately copied Sasanian royal protocols from centuries earlier. But otherwise, as far as I know, Pahlawi was confined to well-known, pre-Islamic religious literature some five centuries before the Voynich Manuscript was created. The idea that an upside-down version of Pahlawi, written from left-to-right instead of right-to-left, would have been used in the fifteenth century AD to write a scientific/medical text seems, in my view, to stretch credibility.
As for the supposed similarities between Voynich characters and Pahlawi...well, you tell me.
![[+]](https://www.voynich.ninja/images/collapse_collapsed.png)