Number of syllables distribution

[-JKP-]

In that line, EVA-l and EVA-s are self-standing. The rest are as they appear.

I'm reasonably confident about that.


I completely agree that some spaces are difficult to judge, but this line doesn't seem as difficult as some.

I didn't look very hard. The Eva-l for certain, the Eva-s: very likely.

However, how about the otaiin following that?

Ah, are you referring to the gap between the "o" and EVA-t? Yes, this happens quite frequently, where there appears to be a half-space. I gave up trying to figure out whether instances like this are one unit or two and created a version of the transcript that records half-spaces.

And more interestingly, what about the second 'word'?

The characters of olcheeo are not at the same height, in particular the first two. This would not be expected to happen if this were one word. But we are necessarily guessing.

I agree that there's something different about this one. I looked at it numerous times.

But, there might be a couple of explanations for it. The vellum is unlined and unpricked, so if the scribe were copying from something and had to look away frequently, this might account for the inconsistency of the baseline.

Another possible explanation, one that I've frequently wondered about, is whether it's one of those instances where the text might have been laid down in more than one pass.

As a general 'problem', all of the last 10 lines show vertical shifts all over the place. It is as if these lines were not written line by line, but in blocks. This happens in many places, especially in quire 20.

Another interesting example is line 18 from the bottom. The one that has aror Sheey .
Towards the end, one has to really guess where are the 'word' boundaries.

I'll agree that one is tough. I don't like to assume that every glyph-sequence is predictable, but here I am inclined to interpret it based on patterns that are extremely prevalent throughout the manuscript (in other words, I'm reluctant to believe that the gap between o and l in cheeol is a full space, but will always keep in the back of my mind that it might be...), so...

to me it looks like .... olcheear chedar or aror sheey olkeechy or char cheeol s or or aiin otam (with slight uncertainty about the "o" in otam, since it is "a"-like).