02-01-2025, 12:06 AM
Looking at other manuscripts recently makes me aware again how poor and unprofessional looking the illustrations in the Voynich manuscript are. It seems to me, for example, that the Zodiac illustrations were copied without much care or attention. In fact I would say that all the Voynich illustrations were done without much care by an amateur.
So, the idea that the illustrations were made to impress other people seems doubtful. Rather it seems to fit with the idea that the manuscript was kept private and secret than to be made public. The Voynich has the feel of a scrappy scientific/medical notebook. I suspect that the manuscript was intended to be functional and practical as opposed to beautiful, so the illustrations were as good as they needed to be for practical usefulness rather than visual appeal.
I must admit that the scrappy appearance of the manuscript bothers me a little. It makes me worry about the seriousness of the author(s) in making it. On the one hand the hours of work put into making it shows they took it seriously. On the other hand I worry about whether they put as much effort into the text as they put into the illustrations. Maybe the text is as poorly executed as the illustrations. The possibility that I have discussed before that a lot of the text may just be filler with only a small proportion meaningful occurs to me again. It makes me wonder if we have all been treating the manuscript with more seriousness than it deserves.
So, the idea that the illustrations were made to impress other people seems doubtful. Rather it seems to fit with the idea that the manuscript was kept private and secret than to be made public. The Voynich has the feel of a scrappy scientific/medical notebook. I suspect that the manuscript was intended to be functional and practical as opposed to beautiful, so the illustrations were as good as they needed to be for practical usefulness rather than visual appeal.
I must admit that the scrappy appearance of the manuscript bothers me a little. It makes me worry about the seriousness of the author(s) in making it. On the one hand the hours of work put into making it shows they took it seriously. On the other hand I worry about whether they put as much effort into the text as they put into the illustrations. Maybe the text is as poorly executed as the illustrations. The possibility that I have discussed before that a lot of the text may just be filler with only a small proportion meaningful occurs to me again. It makes me wonder if we have all been treating the manuscript with more seriousness than it deserves.