Speculative fraud hypothesis

[Jorge_Stolfi]

I recently decided to check a feeling I have long had, about the frequency distribution of the labels, in particular the zodiac labels. I have You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view..

Thanks Rene for that long overdue analysis of the labels!

The uniqueness of most labels was expected; it is the repetition (even with freq only 2) that needs explaining. 

Some of them may be spelling errors by the Author, "quillos" (like typos, but with a quill) by the Scribe, or or transcription errors (swapping o and a, r and s, Ch and ee, y that lost its tail with o, etc.)  But they seem to be too many for that to be the only explanation.

Here all the occurrences of the first word in your list, otaly (otaly), as a label or part thereof in my version of the transcription (that differs from yours, I don't know how much now):

Page      Sec Word(s)          Obs
--------- --- ---------------- ----------------------
f68v1.t   cos otol.Ches.otaly  ---
f88r.6    pha otaly            ---
f99v.6    pha otaly            ---
f70v2.15  zod otaly            Pisces
f70v1.6   zod otaly            AriesDark
f72v3.10  zod otaly            Leo
f72v3.31  zod otaly            Leo
f72v3.32  zod otaly.yty        Leo
f73r.1    zod otaly            Scorpio
f73r.6    zod otaly            Scorpio

Here are all its occurrences of otaly in running text:

Page      Sec Word(s)          Obs
--------- --- ---------------- ----------------------
f58r.1    str otaly            ---
f71v.12   zod otaly            TaurusLight,Circular
f72r2.22  zod otaly            Gemini,Circular
f82v.31   bio otaly            ---
f84r.47   bio otaly            ---
f103v.35  str otaly            ---
f103v.5   str otaly            ---
f105r.36  str otaly            ---

Seems that the occurrences of otaly are all but random.  What else can we say about them?

More surprising, here are all occurrences of words that contain otaly as a proper substring:

Page      Sec Word(s)          Obs
--------- --- ---------------- ----------------------
f43r.4    heb qotaly           ---
f78r.42   bio kotaly           ---
f104r.36  str qotaly           ---
f106v.18  str qotaly           ---
f113r.4   str qotaly           ---

Just for reference, the similar word otoly (otoly) occurs only 8 times, including once as a sub-word of Shotoly, and 3 times as label:

Page      Sec Word(s)          Obs
--------- --- ---------------- ----------------------
f75v.37   bio otoly            ---
f84r.11   bio otoly            ---
f101v2.8  pha otoly            ---

The similar word okaly (okaly) occurs 8 times as a label and 19 times in running text.

The similar word okoly (okoly) occurs only twice, once as a label (on f70v1, AriesDark)
and once in running text (f22r.1, Herbal A).
All the best, --jorge