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Which other manuscript contain the most Voynichese glyphs?
- Which other manuscript contain the most Voynichese glyphs?
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RE: Which other manuscript contain the most Voynichese glyphs?
-JKP- > 15-06-2018, 06:46 AM
Don, paleography is broad and deep. You can spend your life studying a 50-year time period in one region and not run out of things to discover, so the answer to your question is, sort of...
I am far more familiar with glyph styles from the late 14c and 15c than I am with earlier writing styles. I can read the earlier ones but I can't just glance at them and say, this is probably from [this area or this time period] which I can with some of the 15th-century manuscripts.
Also, scribes moved around. In fact, some were like doctors and teachers, traveling and offering their services was their lifestyle, so some of the regional differences had more to do with who went where than with where something was created. St. Gall, for example, was regularly staffed by monks from England (Bury St. Edmunds, for example). Students from Lombardy, Heidelberg, and Paris regularly traveled to Naples. Which means... it often takes years of dedicated detective work to unsnarl where something was created because they brought their scribal habits with them, but sometimes partially adapted to local scribal traditions.
I know enough to recognize certain patterns in early 15th-century manuscripts, but only from some areas. If you asked me to summarize patterns for the England, Bavaria, Veneto, or Provençe, I could probably give a reasonable answer. If you asked me the same question about western France, it would take a lot of study (maybe as much as a couple of years) before I could make any kind of reasonable answer. -
RE: Which other manuscript contain the most Voynichese glyphs?
DONJCH > 15-06-2018, 04:35 PM
JKP, I was going to suggest that you could do one of your amazing maps - plot the best gallows examples or nearest precursors across Europe and the Mediterranean - one day! -
RE: Which other manuscript contain the most Voynichese glyphs?
-JKP- > 15-06-2018, 08:27 PM
I'm actually working on some maps, but as interesting as they are, the gallows are probably not the best characters to use for paloegraphical comparisons, at least not at first. The more mundane "a" and "o", which were probably written the same way in VMS as they were in the scribes' local (or familiar) language, are more likely to yield clues to the writers' origins and daily habits.
Plus gallows characters take longer to study. I think there are more than four basic forms (plus benched forms). That doesn't automatically mean the variations differ in meaning (they might not, but it won't be clear without statistical studies).
It's not usually acknowledged in transcripts that there are many different forms of gallows, including one that is consistently written like EVA-k EXCEPT that the crossbar is on top (not slightly down the stem) and the loop slightly raised, and one that looks like EVA-k mirrored (the loop is on the left). It is also not usually acknowledged in transcripts that there are so many different forms of benched gallows: half gallows, cross-the ascender gallows, triple gallows, and extra-letter under the gallows bench that doesn't touch the bench.
I think I already posted a version of this chart on the forum and I haven't had time to add to it for a while, but here are some basic observations about VMS gallows when I investigated them to see if the forms could be organized into categories:
![[Image: GallowsChart0-91.png]](http://voynichportal.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/GallowsChart0-91.png)
Here are some important things to notice in this chart...
- If you look very closely at the variations, it suggests the possibility that P-shaped gallows may not have started out as P shapes. If you take EVA-k (which is a common scribal shape) and bench it, and shorten the leg on the right (row 8, col. 8), it's almost a benched P. The internal consistency of the gallows constructions suggests the possibility that the designer may have started with one or two more common shapes which, in turn, inspired the less common ones.
- It is particularly important to notice that P shapes have the little loop ON THE RIGHT. This detail is never discussed, but I think it's very important. No one writes P this way (I looked at hundreds of alphabets)—the little loop is almost always on the left—even medieval calligraphic pees rarely have a little loop on the right. But little loops on the right DO occur with significant frequency in scribal conventions where the loop is added as an abbreviation. This, along with other clues suggests, once again, that the gallows and benched gallows might not be glyph characters, they may be combinations of scribal shapes, and they may not be inspired by any particular alphabet outside of Latin, they may be a SYSTEM of glyph combinations, as was true of the entire scribal-abbreviation system—once you learn a few basics, you can combine them any way you like.
- It has been said that gallows characters are never adjacent in the VMS. This isn't true, plus I suspect some of the adjacent ones have been "hidden" in a sense, by combining them. Some of the fancy gallows appear to be embellished, but SOME of the combinations look like they have been stacked (see the last column in the chart). I think the one top right is a benched version of EVA-k followed by EVA-p. The one just below it, in row 2, looks like unbenched versions of EVA-k followed by EVA-p. But look at the next one, in the third row, the p-shape is above the k shape, not to the right of it, it is stacked differently, so perhaps in this instance, it represents Eva-p followed by EVA-k, instead of the other way around. Everything about the VMS glyph set is systematic. This too suggests that it's a set constructed by someone with an orderly mind. Considering how much of the VMS alphabet already is Latin characters and Latin scribal conventions, including positional similarity to Latin scribal conventions, the less common shapes may simply be constructed of more common ones combined to suit the designer's needs.
- If you look very closely at the variations, it suggests the possibility that P-shaped gallows may not have started out as P shapes. If you take EVA-k (which is a common scribal shape) and bench it, and shorten the leg on the right (row 8, col. 8), it's almost a benched P. The internal consistency of the gallows constructions suggests the possibility that the designer may have started with one or two more common shapes which, in turn, inspired the less common ones.
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RE: Which other manuscript contain the most Voynichese glyphs?
Emma May Smith > 15-06-2018, 09:25 PM
The chart is very thorough and informative. Thank you.
But some of these forms must have very low numbers, surely? I wonder if taking them as distinct 'categories' is the right way of dealing with them. It seems more likely that there are basic elements which can be combined in certain ways according to a ruleset. -
RE: Which other manuscript contain the most Voynichese glyphs?
-JKP- > 15-06-2018, 10:10 PM
Some are infrequent, some are very frequent. It's quite common in the VMS to find half-benches, for example, and there are more stacked gallows than I included in the chart (the chart was mainly to try to identify the basic forms, if possible). There are also quite a few benched gallows with a straight-bench rather than one that is curved and even an instance where it looks like the straightness of the leg was emphasized.
Unfortunately, when people rely on transcripts, they are accepting the glyph-interpretation of whoever created the transcript and if these variations are not acknowledged, they are in a sense invisible to the person using the transcript. -
RE: Which other manuscript contain the most Voynichese glyphs?
DONJCH > 16-06-2018, 02:01 PM
JKP, If we stipulate that Eva-k could have been formed from I + tis = Item, do you have any clues as to how the basic one legged gallows could have been formed?
FWIW while looking at the Visigothic manuscripts I came to similar conclusions i.e
1 p never loops that way (on the right) no matter what abbreviation is added
2 VMS p does not even look like a p
3 In any case p was on a descender
4 The nearest feature of interest was that capital T loops to the left with a spur on the right.
5 The characters with tall ascenders such as b,d, l etc all had spurs on the top, not loops.
I was thinking maybe with a cursive script we could get some loops but never on the right of the p. OTOH there were lots of the long macrons.
This was all irrelevant to the immediate task of finding a 100% accurate wild copy of the 4 basic VMS gallows.
TLDR I agree that the gallows look constructed. Maybe I should look again with that in mind.
Visigothic docs examined were from 600 - 1300AD with most round 850 - 1050AD. It was spine tingling to examine stuff that was old at the time of the Norman Conquest! -
RE: Which other manuscript contain the most Voynichese glyphs?
-JKP- > 16-06-2018, 05:08 PM
(16-06-2018, 02:01 PM)DONJCH Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.JKP, If we stipulate that Eva-k could have been formed from I + tis = Item, do you have any clues as to how the basic one legged gallows could have been formed?
FWIW while looking at the Visigothic manuscripts I came to similar conclusions i.e
1 p never loops that way (on the right) no matter what abbreviation is added
2 VMS p does not even look like a p
3 In any case p was on a descender
4 The nearest feature of interest was that capital T loops to the left with a spur on the right.
5 The characters with tall ascenders such as b,d, l etc all had spurs on the top, not loops.
I was thinking maybe with a cursive script we could get some loops but never on the right of the p. OTOH there were lots of the long macrons.
This was all irrelevant to the immediate task of finding a 100% accurate wild copy of the 4 basic VMS gallows.
TLDR I agree that the gallows look constructed. Maybe I should look again with that in mind.
Visigothic docs examined were from 600 - 1300AD with most round 850 - 1050AD. It was spine tingling to examine stuff that was old at the time of the Norman Conquest!
Both the one-legged gallows and the small loops on the right are found in Greek manuscripts. But it's not usually a P-shape that has the loop on the right, it's Pi, and adding the loop is the same as adding "o" or "e" or (if it's a lazy scribe) "eri" to make "Peri" (which is somewhat analogous to the way "Item" is used in Latin).
In Greek, a one-legged P-shape benched represents rho and pi. So, in Latin, something that looks like a bench is usually a long macron, in Greek, it is usually a stretched lowercase pi. Since Latin didn't retain the shape of pi (a P was used), they dropped the habit of stretching it over ascenders (although they still sometimes did use a Greek-style bench with numbers).
If I were to try to assess the origins of the glyphs in terms of numbers, my subjective impression is that the glyphs are about 80% Latin alphabet/Latin scribal conventions, about 10-15% Greek scribal conventions (some of which overlap with Latin conventions), and perhaps 5%-10% invention... but not random invention or invention based on different sources, invention based on scribal concepts. -
RE: Which other manuscript contain the most Voynichese glyphs?
-JKP- > 16-06-2018, 05:28 PM
This mid-15th-century German manuscript uses essentially the same conventions as the VMS:
You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
On this page you will see ris, tis, the arc-shaped apostrophe, r with a tail, c/e with a tail, EVA-y (especially at the ends of words) and backswinging tails on other letters, as well.
Also per and pro (p with a line through it or a curve through it) which, if you shifted them up so they were uppercase letters would be somewhat reminiscent of gallows P-glyphs (not exactly, but along the same lines). There is also a long macron through the b and l in "horribil[is]" (near the bottom-right) similar to a bench.
Notice also that a number of the letters lean backwards (r, i, m, t). Not quite as much lean as the VMS, but they lean back more than forward.
There really is nothing unusual about the VMS glyph shapes except for the composition of some of the gallows and even those might turn out to be re-combinations of the other scribal components already in use in the VMS. The main difference is the paucity of non-scribal shapes and the positional rigidity of those that look like letters of the alphabet, but don't behave as one might expect from natural language. -
RE: Which other manuscript contain the most Voynichese glyphs?
-JKP- > 18-06-2018, 02:10 AM
Here is an example of litterae elongatae used mostly for embellishment.
You'll notice that when a horizontal line connects two letters with a gap in between, it does not represent missing letters as would be true if these were long macrons:
![[Image: K.._MOM-Bilddateien._~Reichersbergjpgweb...32_r01.jpg]](http://images.monasterium.net/pics/76/K.._MOM-Bilddateien._~Reichersbergjpgweb._~StAR_12190318_32_r01.jpg)
Image credit: monasterium.net Urkunden (1137-1857) 1219 III 18 Legal Charter, 1219, housed in the Stiftsarchiv Reichersberg (Austria)