Alphabet on Page 1?

[nihon.no.yume]

Hey there,

I'm new to the site, I just recently watched a docu about the Voynich and have been a bit obsessed with it ever since lol. I tried searching for this within the site but it doesn't seem to be something that's been brought up. 

Has anyone noticed on the very first page of the manuscript that there seems to be "a b c d e f g h" along the right hand side at the top where the damage is? I looked up the high res copies of the document through the online Yale library and I was zooming in to look at detail to analyze it and noticed these letters along the side (g & h are a bit hard to see as they're so faded but if you look at the original yale images it's a lot easier) 


My first reaction was to think it was perhaps a cypher that transferred from another sheet of paper by someone who previously owned it and was trying to decode it. But then I noticed that the handwriting (to me at least, I'm no expert) looks the same as the handwriting in the rest of the document... any thoughts on this? I could be way off base and it could just be more faded text on the edge (as it seems there's some more letters right to the edge as well) but it just seemed odd to me that the sequential alphabet would show up in this document.

[bi3mw]

Hello nihon.no.yume, welcome to the forum.

Whether it is the beginning of an alphabet or not is hard to say, but I agree that it most likely belongs to the original text and was not written afterwards.

[nihon.no.yume]

Hello nihon.no.yume, welcome to the forum.

Whether it is the beginning of an alphabet or not is hard to say, but I agree that it most likely belongs to the original text and was not written afterwards.

Thank you for the welcome and the reply ^_^

It's very strange right? I actually just noticed (I got a little overly focused on the top as I've been trying to analyze the pages one by one deeply) more sequential letters on the bottom of the page: 


there seems to be "o p q" and then "u" further down as some of the image has rubbed off. 

I just think it's genuinely interesting because I feel this may signify that the text is in fact translatable some how lol

[RobGea]

Hi nihon.no.yume, here are some links on this topic.

ABCDEFGHI...OPQ on the first page
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ABC Marginalia
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[nihon.no.yume]

Hi nihon.no.yume, here are some links on this topic.

ABCDEFGHI...OPQ on the first page
You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

ABC Marginalia
You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

Thank you!!

idk why I couldn't find this myself haha

[-JKP-]

I have written blogs on the column alphabet (the left column, the one that is more clear than the others). I'm not sure this is all of them, but it's most of them:

colorizing the column text for easier reading: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
palaeographic investigation, similar styles: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
palaeographic investigation, updated chart: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
palaeographic investigation and re-creation: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

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I consider the You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. column text to be similar to the labels added to the zodiac-figures. Two different people who were probably trying to solve the VMS.

[bi3mw]

In any case, it would be remarkable if someone had written down a Latin alphabet here. The question is, what sense it could have in this place. It might not have contributed much to the solution of the VMS. For example, there are no glyphs written behind it that would indicate any attempt at decryption.


Edit: Maybe it is a later entry by Kircher after all

[-JKP-]

There are VMS  glyphs next to the Latin characters, so this does suggest an attempt at decryption. But they are hard to see. It has been mostly wiped clean.

With image-processing I was able to bring it up a little bit, but only the first column (the column closest to the VMS main text was not obliterated as severely). The other columns, with another row of Latin glyphs and another row of VMS glyphs, are mostly gone... unfortunately. The third column looks like it may have been incomplete, same with the fourth, but it's hard to tell.

[-JKP-]

The handwriting in the first column has some distinctive palaeographic characteristics that I already mentioned in the blog series, but I'll summarize them here:

• very long ascenders and descenders
  
• a long curve on the long-ess and f (long and rounded, not straight or short and severe)
  
• MOST IMPORTANT, the angle of the loop on the p and q—this is rare and distinctive to this scribe
  
• small "o" and rounded "c" (the z is also a distinctive style)
  
• a curl on the 9 abbreviation char (this is the older style, rather than the later one)
  

These characteristics, taken together, should make it possible to recognize the handwriting, if it can be found. I've been looking for this particular scribe for 12 years. Haven't found a match yet, but I have found a few that are close. If I can ever find time, I will post the more recent samples (I have some that are more similar than the preliminary ones I blogged in the charts).

[Anton]

If I remember correctly, in his blog postings JKP gave some dating estimates for these rows (based on paleography), so they are valuable in terms of the later history of the VMS.

Most probably those are attempts at solving the VMS as a simple substitution cipher.