How Many Scribes?

[Torsten]

Thank you for taking the time to review my work so carefully, Torsten. In my plenary lecture at the upcoming conference, I will introduce the methodological underpinnings of Latin Paleography and explain precisely how I have applied those principles to the script and scribes of the Voynich Manuscript. I hope you will attend.

Thank you for your response. 

Paleography for a known writing system like latin can normally assume that each scribe has some experience in writing and had already developed his own style. However in the case of the VMS this assumption is not granted. The VMS is the only example of its kind, therefore one possibility is that the writing system was designed to write only the manuscript we know. In this case the scribe did start with little experience and was becoming more fluent over time. 

We know that the Currier A part was written before Currier B and we if we look at the manuscript it becomes obvious that Herbal in Currier A is written more "legible" than Herbal in Currier B. You even describe the writing in Currier A "as broadly spaced and seems to have been written more slowly and carefully" (see You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.). This would fit with the hypothesis that the scribe wrote Currier B more fluently since he had more experience in writing Voynichese. However, what we didn't know is if the writing style in Currier A is changing over time or not? This is the question I'm interested in.