The Book Switch Theory

[proto57]

Seperately, if the signature is a fake signature, what is the motive for chemically treating it? The signature looks to have not been altered during the process, so if it was freely visible beforehand why go through the effort?

First of all, eggyk, I appreciate and respect your disagreement. It is good to hash these things out, IMO. We will just disagree on this, and anyone can read our various points on both possibilities, which is good.

As for a motive for first forging this signature... for this Book Switch Theory, or any other reason... and, after doing so, messing with it, I think anything anyone can do is speculate. And that speculation would be affected by the individual's other thoughts of the Voynich, and of Wilfrid, and motivations, and provenance, and so on... but to speculate anyway:

1) He felt it was too light, and others might not accept it as "Tepenecz" after putting it there. So, he tried to darken it with chemicals to bring it out more.

2) He didn't want it there, any longer, after placing it there for the purpose one provenance or theory, but found he could not erase it. So. he tried to obliterate it or cover it with chemicals, which failed. Then, being forced to live with it, he then would have to create a NEW provenance, which allowed for the "signature"- and so, created the Marci/Dee/Rudolf story line to replace an originally intended story line which also was enhanced by the name being there.

3) He wanted to emphasis his false narrative of seeing a name there, not being able to read it, and so needing to darken it. This one might also be to support the whole Carteggio-based provenance, as he, as I have, may have realized those writers SHOULD have seen and reported on the "signature", if he did. So perhaps he felt it was too dark to excuse that, and I agree, seeing the pre-treatment version it is one of the first and most important points about it. So, that would not do... if he never publicly shared the pre-treatment images, or ceased to, and blotted chemicals all over them, claiming, as he did, he was trying to "bring out" the mysterious lettering he claimed was there... it might, just might, cause people to excuse the Carteggio descriptions from mentioning it.

I suppose that are all my speculative answers to your question. But of course I don't know...

Rich