10-09-2016, 12:59 PM
Koen,
Yes, I've also found patterns like that in non-European sources.
Your details are very convincing too.
A while ago, when it was being argued that 'hatching' in the VMS was proof that the imagery was Renaissance, I illustrated the way that you find hatching like that at the base of folio 1v even in Egypt
Sorry this picture is blurred - that's how I received it:-
![[Image: pattern-hatching-book-of-the-fayyum-tiger.jpg]](https://voynichimagery.files.wordpress.com/2015/07/pattern-hatching-book-of-the-fayyum-tiger.jpg)
and full cross-hatching too.
![[Image: pattern-book-of-fayum-walters-art.jpg]](https://voynichimagery.files.wordpress.com/2015/07/pattern-book-of-fayum-walters-art.jpg)
In fact, the Egyptians were really into patterns and had a full repertoire. (see the pattern formed of a larger circle with a smaller one inside? You see that on one of the 'barrels'.
![[Image: baskets-from-fishes-roundel.jpg?w=341]](https://voynichimagery.files.wordpress.com/2012/12/baskets-from-fishes-roundel.jpg?w=341)
The interesting thing about Egyptian patterns is that we think they were not purely decorative: that each had a distinct significance, related among other things to colour and perhaps to a related mineral. Those correspondences are expressed in words in some of the Egyptian writings. The crocodile, for example, is described as green, or as of lapis lazuli and so on. The trouble is that the whole nature of how ancients described colour is still one being explored (and thus amiably debated between experts) so we can't be really sure if by 'lapis' was meant the same as we'd mean by blue, or by green, or even by black.
Not that we still think that people really saw colours differently but they mentally assigned them differently - probably more by density of tone than by hue... or at least that's one view for which there is reasonable evidence and balanced argument.
Cheers
Yes, I've also found patterns like that in non-European sources.
Your details are very convincing too.
A while ago, when it was being argued that 'hatching' in the VMS was proof that the imagery was Renaissance, I illustrated the way that you find hatching like that at the base of folio 1v even in Egypt
Sorry this picture is blurred - that's how I received it:-
and full cross-hatching too.
In fact, the Egyptians were really into patterns and had a full repertoire. (see the pattern formed of a larger circle with a smaller one inside? You see that on one of the 'barrels'.
The interesting thing about Egyptian patterns is that we think they were not purely decorative: that each had a distinct significance, related among other things to colour and perhaps to a related mineral. Those correspondences are expressed in words in some of the Egyptian writings. The crocodile, for example, is described as green, or as of lapis lazuli and so on. The trouble is that the whole nature of how ancients described colour is still one being explored (and thus amiably debated between experts) so we can't be really sure if by 'lapis' was meant the same as we'd mean by blue, or by green, or even by black.
Not that we still think that people really saw colours differently but they mentally assigned them differently - probably more by density of tone than by hue... or at least that's one view for which there is reasonable evidence and balanced argument.
Cheers