Rosettes as a ... magic altar

[Jorge_Stolfi]

As you may know from my previous posts I like the idea that Voynich Manuscript was once a bunch of loose pages

I imagine that books were usually copied onto loose bifolios, which were folded, nested, and bound  only after all the text and art was done.   Except for diaries, logs, and other register-type books,of course.  

Writing and drawing onto a bound blank book would be awkward, and fixing some serious mistakes -- like skipping a paragraph while copying -- might have required undoing and re-doing the binding.

If that is the case, then the question is not whether the VMS was once a bunch of loose bifolios, but for how long it was kept in that state before being bound.  

In an "industrial" scriptorium the whole process would probably go from blank sheets to bound book in a few months; but I suspect that for the "home-made" VMS it stretched over several years, in fits and starts.  

I even think that the Author died before the intended book was finished, and the bifolios were bound by his heir.  Which would make the incorrect nesting of Bio more understandable.

Writing a book on loose bifolios of course requires writing their their pages in a non-trivial order.  I wonder whether the VMS Scribe was smart enough to figure that out.  It would not make much difference for the Herbal and Pharma sections, but that may be why the Astro/Zodiac quires are single un-nested bifolios, and why the Bio section has those known nesting errors.

All the best, --stolfi