Hey, Koen, our postings got crossed. Maybe I said something useful above. However, you're off on the wrong foot here. This section (VMs Zodiac) was *not* built around heraldry. Heraldic patterns, select little bits and pieces were hidden in the VMs Zodiac. They are easy to find, if you look at the "challenge" I posted above. They are hardly obscured, other than being small and tucked away and mixed with other patterns that may or may not belong in the heraldic set. Heraldry may indeed seem thin, until you feel it is validated. It may seem like a thin string until it becomes too long to be the result of random chance, then it is more like a wire.
Heraldry is limited, but not inaccurate. It is clearly connected to one of Stolfi's patterned markers in the VMs illustration (f71r). Is this another meaningless coincidence or an intentional placement? Doesn't that decision depend on discovering what the reason is? Isn't that reason provided by seeing what the patterned markers and blue-striped insignia were intended to represent?
All cultures use patterns, some patterns derive from prior cultures, I have no problems there. Some of your investigations have been very interesting, the stepped crown, recently. In other areas, I have several difficulties.
In general, for the VMs, there is a certain chronology. Not before the parchment manufacture. That places creation of the VMs under certain chronological restrictions. I feel it is only logical to focus any investigation in areas, cultures and disciplines that ostensibly share those same chronological criteria, as much as possible, at least for starters, with the caveat that nearly everything is influenced by something that has gone before.
Specifically, I have a problem with the proposed Egyptian serpent to nebuly line connection. Firstly, this is a natural reality for snakes. Anyone *could* derive the shape directly from the snake. There is no need for Egyptian representations as intermediaries. And secondly, the ideas behind the two representations are completely different. If the idea is different, the meaning is different, the interpretation is different, then this is not the same thing. The snake is not a cloud and the cloud is not a snake. This would seem to be a factor indicative of alternative ideological origins.
PS: In the examples above, you have lost the distinction between nebuly and wavy. Nebuly is defined as being bulbous. Wavy is just the regular sine wave, like your two examples.
Heraldry is limited, but not inaccurate. It is clearly connected to one of Stolfi's patterned markers in the VMs illustration (f71r). Is this another meaningless coincidence or an intentional placement? Doesn't that decision depend on discovering what the reason is? Isn't that reason provided by seeing what the patterned markers and blue-striped insignia were intended to represent?
All cultures use patterns, some patterns derive from prior cultures, I have no problems there. Some of your investigations have been very interesting, the stepped crown, recently. In other areas, I have several difficulties.
In general, for the VMs, there is a certain chronology. Not before the parchment manufacture. That places creation of the VMs under certain chronological restrictions. I feel it is only logical to focus any investigation in areas, cultures and disciplines that ostensibly share those same chronological criteria, as much as possible, at least for starters, with the caveat that nearly everything is influenced by something that has gone before.
Specifically, I have a problem with the proposed Egyptian serpent to nebuly line connection. Firstly, this is a natural reality for snakes. Anyone *could* derive the shape directly from the snake. There is no need for Egyptian representations as intermediaries. And secondly, the ideas behind the two representations are completely different. If the idea is different, the meaning is different, the interpretation is different, then this is not the same thing. The snake is not a cloud and the cloud is not a snake. This would seem to be a factor indicative of alternative ideological origins.
PS: In the examples above, you have lost the distinction between nebuly and wavy. Nebuly is defined as being bulbous. Wavy is just the regular sine wave, like your two examples.