Anton,
Your counterarguments are based on the assumption that the VM plant sections are, and behave, like "plant books" we know. My view, largely agreeing with Diane's, is that both sections were originally compiled for someone (a trader, an Alexandrian official...) willing to learn about the trade routes. In Greco-Roman Alexandria, all "books of the ships" were copied, giving its library a vast amount of documents to use as sources. I think a scholar was hired to structure information from such sources into a way that would make them relatively easy to digest for the intended reader(s). Hence the large amount of mnemonics.
This resulted in an overview of useful plants from various areas around the trade routes. These documents were then copied a number of times more for preservation, and somewhere along the line, other sections got added to them, and they were likely taken East. Eventually they found their way back to the Mediterranean, in the north this time, where they were copied one last time, a thin layer of medieval European veneer was added, the script was altered for reasons unknown, and the final result is known as MS Beinecke 408.
I think the script is a late addition, because I agree with others that it looks rather Latin, and indeed I often read the glyphs as if they were their closest Latin counterparts.
The descriptive section probably talks about the plants in the reader's own language, or one of the languages familiar to him (educated people mastered a number of languages in those days). It may or may not mention names in other languages. The mnemonics in this section, as Diane analyses them, are practical: they focus on what the plant can be used for as ship's supplies, for ship repair, or its commercial value.
The "pharma section", which I consider my own "area of expertise", is not a pharma section at all. It has been constructed to teach the local names for these plants to a person professionally interested in learning them. Its main purpose is linguistic. That is why the mnemonics are based on Greco-Roman myth: these stories and images were familiar to the intended audience, which would allow them to learn the names of the foreign plants easier: "Right, this plant was drawn to resemble Heracles, so its name sounds a bit like Heracles". I didn't invent this system - it was known already in antiquity, and modern memory experts recommend something similar. Similar systems are exploited in the modern "memory palace", which seeks to activate the visual part of the brain to remember information (hence the name of my blog, the Voynich memory temple
It doesn't render anything useless, in my opinion. There is a double "cipher", if you want to call it like that, but only if you would call "THIS" and "this" two sets of ciphers. Also, for example, the common Dutch diphthong "ij" is, in informal contexts, also written as "y", which would result in different readings if you don't know the language. In summary, I think a number of sounds can be written in two different ways, but that is not much different from things we still do today, and is perfectly readable for those accustomed to it.
True. In many cases, it's the product gained from the plant, given the purchase-oriented focus of the section (as I see it). Of course, in many other cases, the name for the plant/product/fruit will be the same either way.
Here I must disagree. Plants in their local language aren't named after Greek gods. The mnemonics works as a memory booster, something you know that you can tie the name to, but you still need a label to tell you what that name is. For example, the local, Indic name for sugar was something like sharkara. It may be impossible to come up with a mnemonic that sounds just like that - likely, there is no word in your language that comes close to /sharkara/. So what they did is try to match part of the word with the mnemonic, or only the consonants, for example. This is usually enough to kickstart your memory into remembering the foreign word.
In the case of sugar, the mnemonic was "Khara", Grace - the plant was drawn as the three Graces, popular figures in classical mythology and in later eras as well. The person will still need the word "sharkara" written for him, but the mnemonic is there to help him remember it.
Your counterarguments are based on the assumption that the VM plant sections are, and behave, like "plant books" we know. My view, largely agreeing with Diane's, is that both sections were originally compiled for someone (a trader, an Alexandrian official...) willing to learn about the trade routes. In Greco-Roman Alexandria, all "books of the ships" were copied, giving its library a vast amount of documents to use as sources. I think a scholar was hired to structure information from such sources into a way that would make them relatively easy to digest for the intended reader(s). Hence the large amount of mnemonics.
This resulted in an overview of useful plants from various areas around the trade routes. These documents were then copied a number of times more for preservation, and somewhere along the line, other sections got added to them, and they were likely taken East. Eventually they found their way back to the Mediterranean, in the north this time, where they were copied one last time, a thin layer of medieval European veneer was added, the script was altered for reasons unknown, and the final result is known as MS Beinecke 408.
I think the script is a late addition, because I agree with others that it looks rather Latin, and indeed I often read the glyphs as if they were their closest Latin counterparts.
Quote:It is not clear why would the descriptive part (the botanical section) use one language, and the pharma section would use another.
The descriptive section probably talks about the plants in the reader's own language, or one of the languages familiar to him (educated people mastered a number of languages in those days). It may or may not mention names in other languages. The mnemonics in this section, as Diane analyses them, are practical: they focus on what the plant can be used for as ship's supplies, for ship repair, or its commercial value.
The "pharma section", which I consider my own "area of expertise", is not a pharma section at all. It has been constructed to teach the local names for these plants to a person professionally interested in learning them. Its main purpose is linguistic. That is why the mnemonics are based on Greco-Roman myth: these stories and images were familiar to the intended audience, which would allow them to learn the names of the foreign plants easier: "Right, this plant was drawn to resemble Heracles, so its name sounds a bit like Heracles". I didn't invent this system - it was known already in antiquity, and modern memory experts recommend something similar. Similar systems are exploited in the modern "memory palace", which seeks to activate the visual part of the brain to remember information (hence the name of my blog, the Voynich memory temple
Quote:This could be also in the case when one plain text word could be enciphered in a number of ways, yielding different ciphertexts. Unfortunately, this would render useless making any assumptions based on the labels consistency throughout the MS (which course I took).
It doesn't render anything useless, in my opinion. There is a double "cipher", if you want to call it like that, but only if you would call "THIS" and "this" two sets of ciphers. Also, for example, the common Dutch diphthong "ij" is, in informal contexts, also written as "y", which would result in different readings if you don't know the language. In summary, I think a number of sounds can be written in two different ways, but that is not much different from things we still do today, and is perfectly readable for those accustomed to it.
Quote:Actually this negates the proposal that the pharma labels stand for the plant names, because the name is "teak", not "teakwood".
True. In many cases, it's the product gained from the plant, given the purchase-oriented focus of the section (as I see it). Of course, in many other cases, the name for the plant/product/fruit will be the same either way.
Quote:if the roots are "especially mnemonic", then developing this consideration we come to the conclusion that they don't need names to be put near them
Here I must disagree. Plants in their local language aren't named after Greek gods. The mnemonics works as a memory booster, something you know that you can tie the name to, but you still need a label to tell you what that name is. For example, the local, Indic name for sugar was something like sharkara. It may be impossible to come up with a mnemonic that sounds just like that - likely, there is no word in your language that comes close to /sharkara/. So what they did is try to match part of the word with the mnemonic, or only the consonants, for example. This is usually enough to kickstart your memory into remembering the foreign word.
In the case of sugar, the mnemonic was "Khara", Grace - the plant was drawn as the three Graces, popular figures in classical mythology and in later eras as well. The person will still need the word "sharkara" written for him, but the mnemonic is there to help him remember it.