Astro/Zodiac symmetry on recto/verso

[Jorge_Stolfi]

[the right half of one side of the bifolio, flip over, left half then right half, flip over, then left half of the first side.

 

I agree I think this is also how it was written. What about the more complex fold outs though.... Do you think the odd foldout pages were always intended to be folded in the current manner or that was just done to get it to fit into the book?

Even while the book was kept as a stack of bifolios, the wider bifolios would have to be folded multiple times until they had the same shape as the rest.

These are the fold-out bifolios besides the Rosettes map. The numbers in parenthesis are the widths of each folio, as multiples of a normal page width:

Cosmo+Zodiac:
  f67(2)+f68(2.4) [E1]
  f71(1)+f72(3.3) [E2]
  f69(1)+f70(2.0) [C1]
  f73(1)+f74(1?) (right half lost)
  
Pharma: (3 bifolios)
  f100(1)+f101(1.9) [C2]
  f88(1)+f89(2.5), [D1]
  f99(1)+f102(2.2)  [D2] (bad bottom)

Herbal: (2 bifolios)

  f87(1)+f90(1.9) [B1]
  f94(1)+f95(1.9) [B2]


Lost: (2 bifolios)
  f91(1?)
  f92(?)
  f97(1?)
  f98(?)

Not fold-out: (1 bifolio)
  f93(1)+f96(1)

Others may have done more accurate measurements, but those should be accurate enough for this discussion.  I interpret those numbers as follows: 

The Author obtained at least five pieces of vellum [A]-[E] that were twice as tall as a normal page, and approximately 2.8, 2.9, 3.0, 3.3, and 4.3  times as wide.

He used the 2.8 wide piece [A] for the Rosettes map.

He cut the other four sheets horizontally to make eight bifolios. Two each with approximately 2.9, 3.0, 3.3, and 4.3 times the page width. 

Normally he would cut any bifolio that was at least 4.0 pages wide to make two normal bifolios.  But he kept the bigger ones [E1,E2], with ~4.3 page widths, for the Cosmo and Zodiac sections.  There are bazillions of possible explanations, but perhaps he thought it would be cool to have those diagrams, specifically, as fold-outs.

The other six wide bifolios were not wide enough to be split into two normal bifolios.  He apparently was not happy with discarding any piece of vellum and so he decided to keep them as fold-outs.

[5-10 bifolios per day] seems quite fast, especially if they did the illustrations in the same time. You think the entire manuscript was written in about 5-10 days? Or do you think that is just to convert it from a draft into the MS?

I am quite sure that Scribe could not understand Voynichese and was just transcribing the text from a draft (with lots of errors). 

Sorry, when I wrote 5-10 I was thinking pages. Maybe it is more like 2-3 bifolios per day. I think this is quite possible.

Someone should bite the star bullet and actually simulate the process, by timing how long it would take for him to copy a typical Herbal page.  The drawing does not have to be an accurate or artistic copy (like those that others have posted); it has only to have very roughly about the same number of leaves, flowers, petals, with similar level of detail (ruffled leaf edges , branched root, etc.) The text need only have the same tokens and glyphs, not exactly the same shapes or spacing.  The original line breaks should be ignored and lines should be broken according to space available in the copy.

I bet copying a typical parag will take less than 10 minutes, and a typical plant drawing would take maybe another 20 minutes.  That would be less than 40 minutes per page, or ~2.5 hours per bifolio. 

All the best, --stolfi