The Translation of The Voynich Manuscript: Folio 1r

[bi3mw]

The Translation of The Voynich Manuscript: Folio 1r
Jessica L Scott
June 7, 2024

ABSTRACT: The following paper reveals the language of the Voynich Manuscript as Latin
and is a celestial, herbal book of hours to treat ailments according to an individual’s birth
chart and humoral disposition.

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I have difficulties understanding the path to the translation. Perhaps there are other opinions on this.

[Ruby Novacna]

Maybe we should start with the previous article
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[bi3mw]

Hmm, two articles in a very short time. That seems a bit arbitrary.

[Ruby Novacna]

I like the identification of f1v's plant as an olive tree, except I've seen such a suggestion made years ago by Darren Worley.

[Koen G]

I like the identification of f1v's plant as an olive tree, except I've seen such a suggestion made years ago by Darren Worley.

It's always a bit suspicious when the reference list shows zero interest in previous Voynich research.

With both papers I'm still not quite sure if I understand how her system works. Some of here ideas don't look too crazy in isolation but it's a long step from those to her translating a whole page and somehow identifying an author. Also, gestalt perception is not the kind of term I would ever use in a context like this.

[ReneZ]

On the positive side, I would like to give high marks for the effort that was put into this. However, I immediately ran into something strange. In the very beginning of the earlier paper:

Our primary source for Rudolf II's ownership comes from a 17th-century letter discovered by Wilfrid Voynich, the 20th-century antiquarian who purchased the manuscript (Clemens, 2016). This letter mentions a sale to Rudolf for 600 ducats, a significant sum suggesting the high value placed on the manuscript. However, the lack of corroborating evidence from the imperial court records raises questions about the letter's authenticity (Schmeidler, 2019).

This isn't entirely logical. This should not question the letter's authenticity, but it may question its
correctness. On the other hand, absence of corroborating evidence is hardly something unusual.
However, more interestingly, a source is quoted for this, and this is:

Schmeidler, S. (2019). Book transactions of Emperor Rudolf II, 1576–1612: New findings on the earliest ownership of the Voynich manuscript. CEUR Workshop Proceedings, 3313, 201-212.

Something went wrong here, because the title and reference (CEUR workshop proceedings) are those
of Stefan Guzy's presentation at the Malta workshop in 2022: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. .

That paper leads to quite the opposite conclusion: there are records of a sale of a book to Rudolf for 600 gold pieces (which may or may not be the Voynich MS).

I remain curious whether a 2019 paper by S. Schmeidler exists, but this is more out of curiosity.

[Bluetoes101]

Isn't the overall idea of pressing vast amount of olives with feet (in Germany?) in the 15th century a bit far fetched? Context also considered (impossible cipher employed), so the olive police don't find out? People rebelled against the olive press? Are all the other plants going to be olives too?

"It is now determined that the purpose of the Voynich Manuscript is to make olive oil based electuaries to fight infection and other ailments, depending on one’s humoral disposition and time of birth during the year indicated by an individual's star sign (see rotulo sideris in the translation of Paragraph 4)."

[Koen G]

It's also unclear why the olive tree in the beginning is presented like a herb with a single flower/fruit

[Aga Tentakulus]

My olives in the garden are not wrapped in petals.
They grow in the same way as cherries and just hang around like that.
The flowers also look completely different.

[Ruby Novacna]

The flowers also look completely different.

Without wanting to defend the choice of the olive tree, I would like to point out that we should not compare the image of a plant with its real appearance, but rather with the presentations of this plant in other manuscripts.