Elephant in the Room Solution Considerations

[Jorge_Stolfi]

I am open to another way of reading the rings in the latter ... The position of each nymph (and their distances from one another) does not have any significance other than its place in the order of the counterclockwise counting, since these Zodiac charts only serve to magnify the 30 degrees in that Zodiac as part of a 360-degree annual chart.

Not sure what is your whole claim, but I agree too that the meaningful contents of  each VMS Zodiac diagram is only the ordered list of 30 (or 15) labels, each associated with one degree of the Ecliptic; and the approximate correspondence of the 30 (or 15) degree arc covered by each chart with a Western Zodiac sign and a Western calendar month (although the month may have been an addition by a later owner).  

It is possible that the meaningful contents includes also the number of rays of each star (visual magnitude?) an/or the position of the nymphs' arms (elevation above the ecliptic?), but my hunch is that they are random choices by the "Artist"/Scribe. 

In particular, I agree that the division of the two bands into sectors is not significant and was determined by the space taken by each nymph.  Except that the Artist was totally unable to plan the layout before he started drawing, so he often ran out of space and had to hack it.  Which is my explanation for the "overflow" nymphs above some diagrams, and for the missing nymph and central label of Pisces.

In this alternative order, first we begin counting at 9/10 o'clock on the outer ring moving counterclockwise, then we proceed to the same in the inner ring, and then (for those two Zodiac charts) proceed to counting the top four nymph figures, still counterclockwise.

Based on the evolution of the style and the cramping of some nymphs, I believe that the "Artist" drew the nymphs clockwise starting from around 12:00; and probably inner band first, then outer band, then "overflow".

But of course that need not be the order in which the labels were written, or were supposed to be read.  In my view the Artist himself had no idea of what those diagrams meant, other than they had to do with astrology.

It is possible that the Author provided only the list of 30 (or 15) labels, and the Artist then drew the diagrams and nymphs in the order above, then wrote the labels -- in the same order or in a different order, of his own choice or specified by the Author.

But the diagrams also include text rings.  I find it impossible that our sloppy Artist could lay down a given line of text in a ring without a huge gap or huge overlap.  So it seems more likely that the Author gave the Artist a sketch of each diagram with the text rings and labels already in the desired places, in a 5 + 10 or 10 + 20 arrangement. 

The text rings were obviously meant to be read clockwise.  The starting point seems to be around 10:30 rather than 09:00 or 12:00, but that is uncertain: the wider gaps we see in the rings may be where the Artist (who knew only the alphabet but could not read the language) started copying them, rather than where the reading was supposed to start.  And the "notched square" design in some of those gaps may be just an aesthetic hack that the Artist added to fill a gap that he himself created while copying each ring.

Since each label is written in the same clockwise direction as the text rings, it seems more likely that the order of the labels, as intended by the Author, was clockwise too.  But that inference is admittedly shaky.  I suppose that there are many examples of Western circular diagrams where each sector label is to be read in one direction, but the sectors are to be read in the opposite direction.

All the best, --stolfi