[split] Big f116v spillover thread.

[Jorge_Stolfi]

... Those few "words" that could be "Germanish" or Latin words do not make sense together.

So why does the last line almost seem to refer back to the first? "poxleber" (buck's liver), "gaſmich" (goat's milk), suggesting to the reader so first take the liver of a goat, then the milk of a goat? The last three words are especially clear as "ſo nim gaſmich.", translating to "then take goat's milk.", along with all the other elements of a medieval charm that suggest it is in fact, a medieval charm?

The last two words are not "goat's milk".  Objectively, the first one could be read as "gas" or "gaf", but neither is a reasonable misspelling of a Germanish word for "goat's".  As Koen himself observed in the video, to be a Germanish word for "milk", the second word should have an "l", and there seems to be no sensible explanation for its absence. 

Objectively , that second word is "mich".  Which is good German for "me" -- but then the two words don't seem to make sense.  

And likewise it took some strain to interpret the first word at the top as "buck's liver".  That reading was chosen because it was assumed that it had to be a meaningful Germanish word.

And, anyway, in what sense does "goat's milk" refer back to "buck's liver"?

To read the last two words as "goat's milk", and see them as referring to "poxleber", one must assume that they were supposed to make sense, but both were grossly misspelled; and in fact one must assume that the four lines are a recipe (that includes a charm).  Except that the recipe seems to end mid-sentence...

Again, the Restorer who tried to recover the lost (Voynichese) text apparently thought that the parag was a charm, and tried to "restore" the smudges accordingly.  

So why wouldn't the restorer have seen the two Voynichese words that just so happen to be perfectly untouched, along with the rest of the manuscript being in Voynichese, and figure out that the text was in fact, not in Latin or German, but in this mysterious language no one could read?

Not "just so happen"; they obviously were unaffected by the spill.  Unfortunately the edge (A) of the spill cannot be seen above the (B) line in You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view..  

Moreover, wetting alone should have softened the ink, but would not erase it completely. What erased the original text must have been the careless wiping of the spilled water.  Even if the aror sheey got wet, it could have escaped the wiping.

The Restorer apparently had not spent any time examining the manuscript, and so did not realize that the text had to be in the Voynichese script, not Latin script.  He may have been a Jesuit librarian scrambling to rescue a couple dozen books affected by a roof leak.  The Restorer could have been the Spiller himself; who could have been anyone in the owner's household, or a friend who borrowed the book to peruse it over lunch.  In this case, he probably knew that his reconstruction would be totally wrong, but hoped that it would keep the owner (who surely could not read Voynichese either) from noticing his big oopsie.

By the way, two of the crosses (after "multod" and after "cere") are closed at the northwest quadrant by a diagonal line, so that they look more like a "4".  But crosses are normally drawn with a vertical down stroke and a left to right horizontal stroke.  If the quill is not completely lifted off the vellum between the two traces, the result would be a diagonal line closing off the southwest or northeast quadrant, depending on which stroke is drawn first.  The diagonal line at the northwest suggests that what the Restorer saw there was a "4", not just a cross.  Like a partially erased q...

You do know that when writing '+' shapes fast, diagonal connecting lines can happen when writing normally, right?
I can say this because whenever I have to write a '+' as part of a math equation, or something similar, typically I write it fast, and in one stroke without lifting my pen off the paper, which usually results in a diagonal lines in either the northwest, or northeast quadrants, depending on the direction I wrote the symbol in. A shape just just like a 4, or indeed, q is just a consequence of writing a '+' symbol in one stroke.

Please read again what I wrote.  That "lazy pen" explanation could apply to a diagonal in the NW quadrant only if the vertical stroke was traced first upwards, or if the horizontal stroke was traced first right to left. Both are "forbidden" directions for a right-handed person writing with a quill.  (And we know that he was right-handed from the way the bold pen strokes end.)

Those diagonal strokes were deliberate, and in fact they are probably remains of the original writing. Whoever wrote them traced the vertical stroke first, lifted the pen, then drew the diagonal and horizontal strokes in one motion.  As if writing a "4".  Or a q...

All the best, --stolfi