03-09-2016, 10:56 AM
Koen,
I realise that people like Searcher don't quite know which parts of an image are significant for comparing imagery, and that others are so used to creating comparisons at a fairly low level of sophistication, but even so it shouldn't be that difficult to realise that this feline in the VMS isn't a lion, and isn't a medieval heraldic figure.
If Sam G. ever comes back to this thread - all the images in the Calendar section have counterparts in imagery for coins from the Hellenistic to the early Roman period. I wrote about this some years ago when first emphasizing that the images in the centres of these roundels do not constitute the series of Roman zodiac figures - not even those for the months inscribed. That's when I also found the closest matches for the form of the Voynich leo, and the otherwise unheard-of form for the Archer in mosaic from Syria, dated to the period of Byzantine rule, but of northern Syrian style.
It is interesting that the Getty museum curator, unprompted, pointed to just the same centuries and region - and turned up an excellent comparison. I very much doubt that s/he meant Koen to suppose that she thought the feline a griffin: what she was pointing out was the style of image - time and place of enunciation.
I realise that people like Searcher don't quite know which parts of an image are significant for comparing imagery, and that others are so used to creating comparisons at a fairly low level of sophistication, but even so it shouldn't be that difficult to realise that this feline in the VMS isn't a lion, and isn't a medieval heraldic figure.
If Sam G. ever comes back to this thread - all the images in the Calendar section have counterparts in imagery for coins from the Hellenistic to the early Roman period. I wrote about this some years ago when first emphasizing that the images in the centres of these roundels do not constitute the series of Roman zodiac figures - not even those for the months inscribed. That's when I also found the closest matches for the form of the Voynich leo, and the otherwise unheard-of form for the Archer in mosaic from Syria, dated to the period of Byzantine rule, but of northern Syrian style.
It is interesting that the Getty museum curator, unprompted, pointed to just the same centuries and region - and turned up an excellent comparison. I very much doubt that s/he meant Koen to suppose that she thought the feline a griffin: what she was pointing out was the style of image - time and place of enunciation.