Rosette volcano as Vesuvius

[Linda]

[quote="Linda" pid='24987' dateline='1551476749']
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Perhaps the text encodes coordinates and the rosettes are where the windroses go, with hints as to what gets drawn from there. So...

YES YES YES YES YES YES YES!!!!!!!!!!!

I cannot say YES loud enough.

I think this possibility HAS to be considered, based on the peculiar structure of the VMS text.

Cool! It would be so freaky if there is a portolan map encoded in the manuscript. It would definitely pull some things together.

To backtrack a little...

I once commented on Nick's blog that maybe the text is a symbolic representation of Gutenberg's trade secrets (his typefaces and printing press design). It was more of an example than a hypothesis, because the point was that the general idea (of encoding physical structures), can be applied to many things, including map coordinates...

Imagine Gutenberg toiling away in secret, designing his printing press and his typefaces. He actually did this. He was a smart man and KNEW as soon as he launched his press that competitors would be trying to steal the ideas (which is exactly what happened). So he practically disappeared for a few years and worked in secret while he was inventing the technology for the press and designing individual type molds.

Now... if you wanted to HIDE this kind of information (e.g., coordinates that define the parts) but make it "visible" to a technician who had to craft the molds, you would end up with something that was very orderly, structured, and repetitious... like Voynichese. It would probably also have positional characteristics (e.g., many coordinate systems start at the top left, work across and down, for example, for each piece of type or each component of the press).

Imagine someone like Gutenberg using a manuscript full of naked nymphs to hide valuable trade secrets or diplomatic information.

Yes, i can envision that. The hiding in plain sight idea is clearly there. I guess the trick is to figure out the structure required to encode such information, then look for this structure in the text?

Actually, Antonio's idea of Voynichese being astronomical symbols, maybe volvelle symbols, is not a bad idea (it shows better understanding of the structure of the text than the majority of substitution cipher "solutions"). VMS MIGHT be a symbolic language, it's only his interpretation of it that is still under-explained.

Yes i was thinking the same, his last posting has been sitting on my mind but i don't know how to coordinate the info (pun not intended).

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Okay, so the Gutenberg typeface example was mainly intended to show that certain kinds of information, that contain a lot of positional data, are usually written as coordinates or patterns (I once linked to some crochet patterns to illustrate this), even knitting and cross-stitch patterns have this basic structure, but I was mainly thinking maps because France and Germany (and other countries) were regularly sending spies to Constantinople in the late Middle Ages, just as Italy sent Albert Cantino to Spain in the early 16th century to copy or steal maps.

Coded coordinates (regardless of what they encode... astronomical info, textile patterns, typefaces, maps) would be rigid, probably positional, repetitious—very similar to Voynichese.

Yes. Many of them become encoded into machinery to create things or calculate things, mechanical knitting machines, automata (some have been created to draw and write), astrolabes. 

Also consider that several of the Voynichese glyphs are the same as early 15th-century numbers (I've blogged about this). This glyph l was how they wrote 4, this v is how they wrote 7, this d resembles 8, o resembles zero, this y resembles 9 (I'm a bit hesitant to include 9 since it also was used as an abbreviation symbol).


So maybe there are numbers in there (hard to tell, since alphabetic characters could also be used to record numbers, just as the minims i ii iii iii might represent numbers).

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I don't want to go on for too long, but did want to completely agree with you that the text might include encoded coordinates in some way.

Thanks for the support. Still a long way to go, though, it is hard to say how it would all work, but the possibilities are exciting.