13-01-2026, 08:48 PM
(This post was last modified: 13-01-2026, 08:56 PM by Mark Knowles.)
Hi Stolfi
Just following up your points.
You say "On page 021 (f10r), the word must have been ro.tCho.Shor or ro.tChy.Shor. All three words occur at least a few times. The first strange glyphs was originally a normal r (you can see bits of the faint original ink) but was mangled into that weirdo by a Retracer."
I don’t think your conclusion that the words should be split the way that you say necessarily follows. It is possible that that is the case, but not certain. The weirdo that you refer to appears as the first glyph of the word directly below it. It is possible that it is a mangling of another symbol, but it is also seems possible to me that it is another rare symbol. Do you have any evidence that it was mangled by a retracer?
You say: "Encrypted documents were usually written with great care, because even trivial errors, like replacing one glyph by a similar one, or skipping a glyph, would normally cause a non-trivial change in the decoded text. Thus when one assumes that the VMS is encrypted one will necessarily assume that there are practically no errors."
Since I first started studying the Voynich It has been widely stated that it contained few or zero errors. I have long tended to doubt that there are no errors in the manuscript, but certainly few errors may be consistent with it being in cipher. However, it is the case that errors were sometimes made in enciphered documents.
I would welcome more comments on or criticism of the inclusion of certain words on my list.
Many Thanks,
Mark
Just following up your points.
You say "On page 021 (f10r), the word must have been ro.tCho.Shor or ro.tChy.Shor. All three words occur at least a few times. The first strange glyphs was originally a normal r (you can see bits of the faint original ink) but was mangled into that weirdo by a Retracer."
I don’t think your conclusion that the words should be split the way that you say necessarily follows. It is possible that that is the case, but not certain. The weirdo that you refer to appears as the first glyph of the word directly below it. It is possible that it is a mangling of another symbol, but it is also seems possible to me that it is another rare symbol. Do you have any evidence that it was mangled by a retracer?
You say: "Encrypted documents were usually written with great care, because even trivial errors, like replacing one glyph by a similar one, or skipping a glyph, would normally cause a non-trivial change in the decoded text. Thus when one assumes that the VMS is encrypted one will necessarily assume that there are practically no errors."
Since I first started studying the Voynich It has been widely stated that it contained few or zero errors. I have long tended to doubt that there are no errors in the manuscript, but certainly few errors may be consistent with it being in cipher. However, it is the case that errors were sometimes made in enciphered documents.
I would welcome more comments on or criticism of the inclusion of certain words on my list.
Many Thanks,
Mark