08-01-2025, 04:55 AM
I have posted an opinion about this in my thread called Fakery. Here, I will summarize. The botanicals are either totally imaginary, or interpreted from a description. Whoever described them to the scribe, could market the same information to others elsewhere for profit. Hence the scribe's obfuscation by encryption makes little practical sense.
Too, there were multiple instances of these unidentifiable botanicals. Since they do not actually exist, the artist could sketch them before writing about them. For ordinary people, the magic memory number is 7 plus or minus 2. This implies either the scribe wrote details in his native tongue so,as not to confuse his plants, or there was no description at all. If the former, the scribe could construct an alphabet, a grammar and a cypher taking as long as desired, limited only by actually forgetting to write that which was learned in talk. For me, that suggests a hastily constructed cypher based on imaginary invented commentary. What would it be about? Health, fertility, pleasure, certainly. That has aways been marketable.
What makes economic sense is writing and selling a hastily constructed manuscript of whimsy, nonsensical pictures and writing designed to intrigue, challenge, relieve boredom and sell for a quick profit. Look who has owned it!
Too, there were multiple instances of these unidentifiable botanicals. Since they do not actually exist, the artist could sketch them before writing about them. For ordinary people, the magic memory number is 7 plus or minus 2. This implies either the scribe wrote details in his native tongue so,as not to confuse his plants, or there was no description at all. If the former, the scribe could construct an alphabet, a grammar and a cypher taking as long as desired, limited only by actually forgetting to write that which was learned in talk. For me, that suggests a hastily constructed cypher based on imaginary invented commentary. What would it be about? Health, fertility, pleasure, certainly. That has aways been marketable.
What makes economic sense is writing and selling a hastily constructed manuscript of whimsy, nonsensical pictures and writing designed to intrigue, challenge, relieve boredom and sell for a quick profit. Look who has owned it!