05-12-2025, 08:51 PM
(04-12-2025, 09:08 PM)anejati wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.In You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. the characters in the middle ring repeat in a 4x17 pattern, and there are also 4 figures inside the circle. Going around the circle, the faces alternate towards and away from the viewer (towards-away-towards-away). The faces looking away have two outstretched hands and the faces looking towards have one raised hand which appears to be pointing at something.
It seems like an obvious pattern but I haven't seen any discussion on this. Is there any idea on the alternating towards-away faces? Do we know what this is supposed to symbolize? Are there parallels in other medieval scripts?
One interpretation is that the figures are supposed to represent four people in a circle in 3d (imagine children playing a game), but then it should have been towards-towards-away-away, not towards-away-towards-away.
For a long time, I’ve had the feeling that You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. might hold the key to decoding the VM. Here’s a rather wild idea I once had about the four figures: what if they represent the four pages of each bifolio; front and back, left-hand and right-hand? I’d forgotten about this theory for a while, but it came back to me after seeing LFD’s theory that the VM was originally a set of individual bifolia.
In that case, each page of every bifolio might have its own coding scheme, with clues hidden somewhere in f57v. It should be testable; I just never got around to trying it.