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Cribs in the Voynich MS

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Cribs in the Voynich MS
RE: Cribs in the Voynich MS

Aga Tentakulus > 08-05-2023, 11:33 AM

I've read a few old books now, just to get a feel for what the structure of a text was like at the time.
So it often happens that with plants and recipes it says:
The master Albertus says.... or Pontius and Pilate. However that they are also called.
Just a few days ago I read in a Bavarian copy the word "veldon". ( fehl getan ) "don" Vergangenheit von tun. Thanks to the context, I know what it means. "mis-done" or simply, done wrong. There are 2 words.
I need the crib as a base. You can also try it with dice.
RE: Cribs in the Voynich MS

Mark Knowles > 08-05-2023, 11:34 AM

I guess the kind of crib I am interested in arriving at is one where one can precisely say:

Voynichese Word <-> Text Meaning

For example:

eva-dakod <--> "banana"

That is pretty unambiguous. The word for "banana" is, I would guess, the same in many European languages, though not all it appears.(So even in this seemingly obvious case there is scope for uncertainty) I think if one has a crib of 20 such one-to-one mappings then one would be in a good place.
RE: Cribs in the Voynich MS

Aga Tentakulus > 08-05-2023, 11:42 AM

Are you sure ?

"Banane" ( bana ne ) is Turkish and means "I don't care".
RE: Cribs in the Voynich MS

Mark Knowles > 08-05-2023, 12:42 PM

(08-05-2023, 10:49 AM)Antonio García Jiménez Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Responding to Mark Knowles, you have an excellent illustration of the 28 mansions of the moon in the Catalan Altas, which is more or less from the Voynich era.

Do you have any links? And when does it date from?
RE: Cribs in the Voynich MS

MichelleL11 > 08-05-2023, 02:17 PM

(08-05-2023, 12:42 PM)Mark Knowles Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
(08-05-2023, 10:49 AM)Antonio García Jiménez Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Responding to Mark Knowles, you have an excellent illustration of the 28 mansions of the moon in the Catalan Altas, which is more or less from the Voynich era.

Do you have any links? And when does it date from?

Hi, All:

So I spent some time down this rabbit hole this weekend. As with everything related to medieval studies and therefore, the Voynich manuscript there is no simple answer to any of this.

The medieval European understanding of the mansions of the moon names derive from the likely first translation into Spanish and Latin of the Arabic Ghāyat al-Ḥakīm as well as an insertion into Alfonso X's translation of the Ghayat of a discussion of talismans that include a name listing attributed to "Plinio." These two listings are present in what is known as the Picatrix (an amagamation of a range of disclosures about similar subject matter, collected by Alfonso's translators but a big part is the Ghayat).

Because there are both Spanish and Latin versions of each of these two lists, that single translation results in five total lists of 28 names (actual Arabic, Spanish transliteration of Ghayat name, Latin transliteration of Ghayat name, Spanish transliteration of Plinio name, and Latin transliteration of Plinio name). Other than the actual Arabic, which is relatively unlikely, it is possible that if the Voynich 69v 28 words are those names it could be from any four of these (depending on how likely you see a Spanish transliteration version used).

You can get/derive these lists from this reference, where Pingree actually lists them out (sort of):
Pingree, D., Between the Ghāya and Picatrix I: The Spanish Version, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, Vol., 44 (1981), pp. 27-56. You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

I've done this (now I'm going to sound like JKP) and there are definite, sometimes drastic differences because of the use of variants from the Arabic. Also, sometimes the name is spelled more than one way for a single list -- as I'm sure surprises no one who has spent any time with medieval manuscripts and their "spelling is optional" approach. But I simply do not have time to wrestle posting my chart onto the forum this morning.

The approximate date of these Spanish lists is 1256 or 1258 (it is controversial) and the Latin lists are thought to be shortly after because Alfonso's translaters were known to be quick with other Spanish to Latin manuscripts, but the exact date was not recorded. So this is pretty early but likely by far the best "known" list(s) existent at the carbon dating of the Voynich period.

There is also a list from Urb. lat. 1384 (a separate translation from the Arabic into Latin from the Picatrix) but that dates from 1480 or 1481 so likely just a bit too late for the Voynich. See, Lippincott and Pingree; Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, Vo. 50, 1987; You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. [the differences here are relatively small as the translater likely had the Picatrix available to him when translating(?) but there are differences].

Just for comparison, the other list given by D'Imperio (Agrippa) dates from 1531. So very late. But again, likely derived through who knows how many iterations, from the Picatrix.

I'm sure there are other Voynich contemporary mansion of the moon lists but this is all the time I have to spend on this for now.

I'm also pretty sure Marco has spent some time on this, so I apologize if this is duplicative.

Hope this helps.

Michelle
RE: Cribs in the Voynich MS

Mark Knowles > 08-05-2023, 02:53 PM

(08-05-2023, 02:17 PM)MichelleL11 Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
(08-05-2023, 12:42 PM)Mark Knowles Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
(08-05-2023, 10:49 AM)Antonio García Jiménez Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Responding to Mark Knowles, you have an excellent illustration of the 28 mansions of the moon in the Catalan Altas, which is more or less from the Voynich era.

Do you have any links? And when does it date from?

Hi, All:

So I spent some time down this rabbit hole this weekend. As with everything related to medieval studies and therefore, the Voynich manuscript there is no simple answer to any of this.

Hope this helps.

Michelle

That's a brilliant effort.

This subject is far from being my area of expertise, as most people well know, however if we can transform this from being a loose crib to something more robust, maybe even a block paradigm, that would be amazing. A robust reliable crib of 28 items would be very valuable whatever theory about Voynichese one has. A "well it could mean this or it could mean that" kind of crib is much less useful.

The same applies to other suggested cribs.

Whether one is proving or disproving a hypothesis using a crib the confidence we can have in a crib is crucial.
RE: Cribs in the Voynich MS

Mark Knowles > 08-05-2023, 03:22 PM

If you have a robust reliable crib and your thesis is that Voynichese is meaningless then you could potentially use that crib to show that there is no kind of correspondence between the Voynichese words and their meaning. So a crib really is useful whether you think Voynichese is a known or unknown language in an unknown script, a cipher, shorthand, invented language or meaningless. A crib is relevant in all of these hypotheses whether it helps to support then or to oppose them.
RE: Cribs in the Voynich MS

Mark Knowles > 08-05-2023, 03:27 PM

Regarding the suggested 28 mansions of the moon, I imagine, though I don't know, that they are always featured in the same clockwise/anticlockwise order. However ensuring that one has the correct one to one correspondence depends on getting the orientation right i.e. establishing which is the 1st mansion of the moon in the Voynich illustration. I wonder if in these illustrations the 1st mansion of the moon was drawn at a specific angle, e.g. 12 o'clock and so from the top.

Also can we also produce a mapping for the rest of the text on this drawing?

I don't even know, myself, if this drawing represents the mansions of the moon. However it would seem that the precise number '28' would be strongly supportive of the idea that there is a correspondence, as I would guess this is unlikely to be a coincidence.
RE: Cribs in the Voynich MS

zobowiazanie > 08-05-2023, 03:55 PM

Let's assume that the 28 labels around the central star on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. are indeed related to the mansions of the moon. In that case I would be astonished, because some of the labels repeat themselves. The labels, along with their numbers of occurrences are as follows:

oar alys (1)
okcheys (1)
okeody (2)
okodchy (1)
okeod (3)
okeyd (1)
okeeydy (1)
otchy (1)
sarydy (1)
ykeody (1)
okolar (1)
saiir (1)
saral (1)
ykeydy (1)
oteol (1)
oteeys (1)
okeol (1)
otody (1)
okody (1)
ytody (1)
oeesy (1)
ytory (1)
ykeey (1)
ochoyk (1)
okeey sar (1)

It's really odd that okeod occurs 3 times and okeody twice if we consider that each mansion should have its unique name and star. Also, the labels themselves are also very similar to each other. This makes me think that when it came to picking the Voynichese labels the author was either drawing from a bucket of premade labels (and maybe sometimes mistakenly picked a label that was already taken?), or was just picking the next "closest" "free" label, whatever the criteria for those might've been. This is all assuming that a rather big Voynichese dictionary was involved, of course.
RE: Cribs in the Voynich MS

Mark Knowles > 08-05-2023, 04:05 PM

(08-05-2023, 03:55 PM)zobowiazanie Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.It's really odd that okeod occurs 3 times and okeody twice if we consider that each mansion should have its unique name and star. Also, the labels themselves are also very similar to each other.

This reminds me of when I was looking at other labels in the Voynich manuscript. At the time I wondered if some labels were just nulls or fillers. I suppose it could be something like "Al S", "Al S", "Al Sa" and so a lack of effort or bother to write the full name in many cases, which means they have the same abbreviation.
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Cribs in the Voynich MS

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