Jars

[Tisquesusa]

I have assumption, that bottom of jars resemble legs of "Russian samovar."  This method of warming waters is attributed to ancient Iran (or China - Hot pot). In figure the ancient “samovar”, made of clay over 2000 years,  that was found in Azerbaijan.

Exactly my thought. That's how I call them too.

The idea of telescopes and microscopes seems the product of "visual anachronism" (just invented the term, will explain):

The (in)famous case of the "helicopter" in the Egyptian hieroglyphs (Diane, you will know much more about that one than me) is similar in that aspect. I discussed that with a friend who is convinced it is a helicopter and jumps to conclusions about aliens, foreknowledge, etc.

My argument against his conclusion was that we only "call" that a helicopter, because we know how a helicopter looks like.

If someone from the 14th century would look at that same hieroglyph, he/she would never conclude that because there were no helicopters.

Same so for the "telescopes" and "microscopes". In general I think a poor interpretation, because of:
- indeed the feet/stands
- the drawings are always upright, not inclined like you'd expect from a telescope
- the "samovars" appear in the sections with plants, not with stars
- there are no close-ups/zooms of the plants drawn, which would be expected if they were (primitive) microscopes

Samovar/cooking tubes or pots seem to me the most logical interpretation, but then again logic is maybe not the best tool in getting to understand this mysterious MS...