Is the VM an autograph or copy?

[Stephen Carlson]

I can't seem to find a thread devoted to this topic, though it has been briefly broached recently, but here it is: Is the VM an autograph or a copy?

By "autograph" I mean that the VM embodied the first, finished instantiation of a literary work (or whatever it is). (It is of course possible that it was composed on some scratch medium and transferred to the codex.) By "copy" I mean that some earlier MS instantiates the work and what we have is a scribal copy of it.

I'm curious what evidence exists for determining whether it's an autograph or a copy?

Brainstorming, I would suggest that possible evidence for it being a autograph / against it being a copy are:

• No known exemplar of the work
  
• No known exemplar(s) of the drawings
  
• No known exemplar of the text
  
• No known exemplar of the script
  
• Various page-layout (formatting) effects at end of lines, at beginning of lines, at first lines of "paragraphs," similar "words" in the vertical direction, more? (These suggest that the text was made to fit the medium.)
  

Possible evidence against autograph / for copy:

• Scribal corrections 
  
• Script / vord-structure seems well planned and sophisticated
  

Am I missing anything, beside an ability to play devil's advocate?