RE: Judaeo-Greek reading of first three lines of f67r 1
geoffreycaveney > 21-03-2019, 02:48 PM
For completeness' sake, this is my interpretation of the 4th line and thus the whole "poem" at the top of Voynich ms folio page f67r1:
ειπαν τις ηπειρους οταν || σκιαις τις, ειπαν ουν
παρ' αυτους κ' αυτες τωρα οικους || ουκ εισ' τες, τις τ'-ειπες
σου τες ηταν αυττοι αυλες, || δειτε [τη] βασειν, φης
ειπαν αυτες τωρα αυλη || δολιας βουλη γης
In this version I have inserted the caesura marks to make the poetic meter easier to "hear". Again it is of course Byzantine stress-based poetry, not classical meter. I have also marked the elision of several final vowels in the 2nd line, which is in fact in keeping with the ms text which also omits these vowels, and which are necessary to make the meter of this line correct (with the vowels the 2nd line would have far too many syllables).
The meter is disyllabic heptameter, which is very close to Byzantine norms, although the Byzantines typically added a final unstressed syllable at the end of each line, which this poem lacks.
Basically, the lines are trochaic before the caesura, and iambic after the caesura. However, the 2nd line begins with an additional unstressed syllable, the preposition παρ', and the second half of the 3rd line omits the unstressed syllable of its first foot.
Here is my translation of the whole verse:
"They said when the continents are in the shadows, then they said
Now there are not (astrol.) houses by them, you said to them
These houses/courts belonged to you; you see the foundation, you claim
They said now a house/court is a will/determination/Senate of a deceitful/treacherous land"
I admit the last line has an oracular, obscure quality to its interpretation. I could read it in a modern (medieval) political way, as in "the court is a Senate of a deceitful/treacherous land", or in an astrological way, as in "an astrological house is a determination of a false location".
I note that the last line lacks any definite articles, which is why my interpretation uses indefinite articles. In the final phrase, the word βουλη is placed in between the words of the genitive phrase δολιας γης. I am not sure about the quality of the Greek syntactic style here, but I do note that this word order is necessary to make the poetic meter of the line work.
Geoffrey