01-06-2018, 07:38 PM
You touch upon an important subject, Anton. I've had a discussion with Sam about this recently, and to some extent I agree with you. That is, if the development of Voynichese script had been prompted by the same circumstances as those of Cyrillic, we would have had a different range of documents left. If it was really a script backed by some culture, there should have been more traces left of its cultural traction.
However, I also have some remarks:
1) Most importantly, it has been suggested (Bax, Emma?) that Voynichese script was a project that didn't really take off well. It seems very possible to me that they first tried to get a feel for the script on a scientific text they had handy, rather than go for a bible right away. In this sense, the VM script would be the preparation for a language's own script, rather than a fully blossoming one.
2) As Sam brought up in our discussion, certain areas throughout history have seen all books destroyed during tumultuous times. Books from entire villages have been burned by the thousands. Obviously, specific demographic groups (like Jews) have been the target of this practice more consistently than others. This means that it's not unlikely that all manuscripts of a certain type have been destroyed, especially if they were still concentrated in a certain area (or even library!) around the time the book burning happened to hit them. Foreign invasions may have had a similar impact.
Now personally I think it's more likely that Voynichese was designed to suit certain very specific needs. Since the script is fairly easy to read, it may have been created for people from various linguistic backgrounds to be able to read. Or for example a foreign script rewritten to make it easier to read for Latins, or the other way around. I can't substantiate that hypothesis, but it's the type of solution I'd prefer over Voynichese script having been invented for the same purpose as Cyrillic.
However, I also have some remarks:
1) Most importantly, it has been suggested (Bax, Emma?) that Voynichese script was a project that didn't really take off well. It seems very possible to me that they first tried to get a feel for the script on a scientific text they had handy, rather than go for a bible right away. In this sense, the VM script would be the preparation for a language's own script, rather than a fully blossoming one.
2) As Sam brought up in our discussion, certain areas throughout history have seen all books destroyed during tumultuous times. Books from entire villages have been burned by the thousands. Obviously, specific demographic groups (like Jews) have been the target of this practice more consistently than others. This means that it's not unlikely that all manuscripts of a certain type have been destroyed, especially if they were still concentrated in a certain area (or even library!) around the time the book burning happened to hit them. Foreign invasions may have had a similar impact.
Now personally I think it's more likely that Voynichese was designed to suit certain very specific needs. Since the script is fairly easy to read, it may have been created for people from various linguistic backgrounds to be able to read. Or for example a foreign script rewritten to make it easier to read for Latins, or the other way around. I can't substantiate that hypothesis, but it's the type of solution I'd prefer over Voynichese script having been invented for the same purpose as Cyrillic.