Rosettes and Revelations Pt.1: The Holy City - Koen Gheuens and Cary Rapaport

[Mark Knowles]

Where does it say that every detail has to be relevant?

I think every detail has a reason behind it. There was a reason why the author chose to illustrate that detail. They made a conscious decision to illustrate this or that thing in each instance where a detail is large enough not to be an inadvertent mark or smudge.

When you ask if every detail has to be relevant? I think this is a interesting question regarding the mindset of the author. If there are a significant number of irrelevant details it might imply that the author had somewhat scattered thinking where they drew many images for no reason. I tend to doubt the author as someone prone to random doodling, although perhaps we do see evidence of doodling on the very last page f116v.

I am inclined to the view that the author(s) was an intelligent and thoughtful and purposeful person as opposed to a maniac making random drawings. Now, this is a psychological assumption about the author. I think the evidence of the Voynich manuscript as a work in itself supports that assumption.

I think we should look for the relevance in every detail and work on the basis that there is some basis to them. Although, I would agree that there must certainly be some artistic motivation. Though the Voynich is not a work of beauty given it has been called an "ugly duckling", fairly I think, so I don't think artistic consideration figure so high in the authors' motivation. The Voynich to me looks like a scrapy pseudo-scientific notebook not an artistic production, so I think the relevance of the content figures quite importantly. I do except that drawings such as those of the nymphs and people served some kind of artistic purpose.

Clearly, some details are much more important than others which is often reflected in their size. So some details may be necessary details whilst others might be nice additions.