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The Voynich Manuscript as an Iberian-African Voyage Record

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The Voynich Manuscript as an Iberian-African Voyage Record
The Voynich Manuscript as an Iberian-African Voyage Record

Kaybo > 27-10-2025, 03:17 PM

I want to share some information with you, that may help others.

I think the manuscript is part of an early version of the Roteiro de Guiné, a travel report of the first travels of the Portuguese along the west coast of Africa. The book itself is from around 1500 (the Roteiro) and some researchers think its based on earlier encrypted reports.
Around 1400 the Portuguese started to travel at the west coast of Africa. The information were so valuable that the reports of the travels were encrypted. The Voynich manuscript could be a report that is a transcript of an early travel report. That would mean it could be a homophonic substitution ciphers, with special nautical words have their own letter combination (maybe indicated in the letter columns of the book, were one word is next to 2 letters). Because of the valuable information Portugal was leading in encryption at that time.

What are the hints that can be found in the manuscript. Nautical reports of that time consist of 3 sections a descriptive part of what has been found. Nautical travel information section and a section with the pure log book.

First, the plants that are shown in the manuscript have similarity with plants in Africa. For example the plant on page 34r is a protea. There are many other plants that have similarities, however since it is probably a transcript by a writer that has painted it from oral information transfer they all look like fantasy plants.
Naked woman at that time were a symbol for Africa and it is normal for that time that they are painted in white. It should show the difference between norther world and Africa.

The star section of the book (last pages) are probably the transcript of the log book. It contains a lot of repeating information in short paragraphs that are marked with a star. Its very similar to the log book of vasco da gama You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

In the nautical travel information section we find a lot of circles with stars and compass roses. The compass roses have a typical wind god face in the middle which indicates in which direction the wind blows typically in east direction (shown by the direction of the face). This is absolut typical for Portugal around 1400. We found a very similar face in the compass rose of the well known Cantino_planisphere You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. . Which was stolen by "Italy" from Portugal around 1500.

However, the most important hint is in the zodiac sign section. There are two circle diagrams of aries. One is with woman that have clothes and the other one is naked. This round diagrams have been used for the astrolabe that has been used to navigate at that time in Portugal. However, if you travel around the west coast of Africa traditional Astrolabe made for the norther hemisphere became useless. You have to mirror the stars to navigate in the southern hemisphere. This was the key point and key secret that aloud Portugal to travel south. The both circle diagrams of aries show the two astrolabe versions, woman with cloth for the northern hemisphere and woman without cloths for the southern hemisphere.

The jars that are shown are typical jars from Sierra Leone of that time. You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

Why its so hard to decipher the manuscript. Probably because of the homophonic substitution cipher paired with a very telegram style nautical log book style, maybe with a lot of
abbreviations and special nautical words. Maybe some special nautical words have there own combinations.

The paragraph sign is P or variant of the TT, which maybe indicates a new word, or that the TT is a P (for paragraph) or a C (for chapter). However, I am not a linguist. I just wanted to share the information that the manuscript could be a nautical report from the area of Henry the navigator.

Maybe you find other hints that support this theory, I am happy to discuss my findings. Sadly I have no access to very old books from Portugal, it would be interesting to read this copy of the Os mais antigos roteiros da Guiné Valentim Fernandes, Duarte Pacheco Pereira.
RE: The Voynich Manuscript as an Iberian-African Voyage Record

Kaybo > 28-10-2025, 10:06 PM

I would love to have some feedback on this one. Maybe I need to describe it better? Or make a picture comparison to illustrate it better? There are many more things in it that hint to a roteiro of that time. For example, you would think that there is black pepper in it, because it was one of the most important plants from the west coast of Africa for Portugal. Thats why they called the west coast of Africa the black pepper coast at that time. If you look at page 18left, that is a black pepper plant. If you look in books of paintings from around that time, its always painted like that. Especially the long "tail". You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

I don't want to give aways everything, because I am so afraid that I biased, like everyone how has an idea on the manuscript and starts making things up. Thats why I need your correction.

Since I need some attention for my post, I tried to come up with ideas to translate it. So I looked little bit around and tried this and that, just to get a feeling and maybe say something of value to get attention to the things above.

When I looked at the EVA translation, one thing that I don't understand is, why K and T should be different Symbols. Isnt it obvious, that it is the same? If you make analysis of the EVA translation it shows you that there is an extrem K <-> T substitution in words. So there are a lot of words that exchange K for T or vice versa. First I thought thats a homophonic substitution, but it is just the same word in the original document, just one time transcribed into T and the other time into a K. How can someone use this EVA transcript to analyse anything?
RE: The Voynich Manuscript as an Iberian-African Voyage Record

rikforto > 29-10-2025, 01:51 AM

(28-10-2025, 10:06 PM)Kaybo Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.When I looked at the EVA translation, one thing that I don't understand is, why K and T should be different Symbols. Isnt it obvious, that it is the same? If you make analysis of the EVA translation it shows you that there is an extrem K <-> T substitution in words. So there are a lot of words that exchange K for T or vice versa. First I thought thats a homophonic substitution, but it is just the same word in the original document, just one time transcribed into T and the other time into a K. How can someone use this EVA transcript to analyse anything?

This is easier so I will start here. EVA-k has no loop on the left side and EVA-t has it. It's important to understand that all the EVA transcription is claiming is that those two variants exist and you can usually recognize them. And, in the great many cases most people agree which is which, but with any transcription choice you will find some instances where the judgement of the community divides. It is not claiming that those variants are different letters in the manuscript, and indeed there's good evidence EVA-a and EVA-y might be variants of each other. If you want to analyze EVA-k and EVA-t as the same---you are not the first person to suggest this---it's as easy as replacing all the "t" in the transcript with "k" and they will be the same. Had they been transcribed as the same, those of us who believe the difference is likely significant would have to redo the transcript.

To your bigger question about how to get more recognition for this idea, it needs more convincing proof. Before I offer some ideas how you might provide that, I am going to ask: Did an LLM play a role in generating this hypothesis and have you checked to make sure everything it said is verifiable? I see some signs that there may be some hallucinations here.
RE: The Voynich Manuscript as an Iberian-African Voyage Record

Kaybo > 29-10-2025, 03:23 AM

(29-10-2025, 01:51 AM)rikforto Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
(28-10-2025, 10:06 PM)Kaybo Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.When I looked at the EVA translation, one thing that I don't understand is, why K and T should be different Symbols. Isnt it obvious, that it is the same? If you make analysis of the EVA translation it shows you that there is an extrem K <-> T substitution in words. So there are a lot of words that exchange K for T or vice versa. First I thought thats a homophonic substitution, but it is just the same word in the original document, just one time transcribed into T and the other time into a K. How can someone use this EVA transcript to analyse anything?

This is easier so I will start here. EVA-k has no loop on the left side and EVA-t has it. It's important to understand that all the EVA transcription is claiming is that those two variants exist and you can usually recognize them. And, in the great many cases most people agree which is which, but with any transcription choice you will find some instances where the judgement of the community divides. It is not claiming that those variants are different letters in the manuscript, and indeed there's good evidence EVA-a and EVA-y might be variants of each other. If you want to analyze EVA-k and EVA-t as the same---you are not the first person to suggest this---it's as easy as replacing all the "t" in the transcript with "k" and they will be the same. Had they been transcribed as the same, those of us who believe the difference is likely significant would have to redo the transcript.

To your bigger question about how to get more recognition for this idea, it needs more convincing proof. Before I offer some ideas how you might provide that, I am going to ask: Did an LLM play a role in generating this hypothesis and have you checked to make sure everything it said is verifiable? I see some signs that there may be some hallucinations here.

LLMs were used later, but just for general information. The idea started by looking at the plants, like probably a lot of ideas started. After we discovered some plants we know from Africa, we just looked at the time frame of the carbon dating. And thought that this does not fit together. I googled it and the only explanation how there could be plants from Africa is that the manuscript is from Portugal. And then everything makes sense. What is LLM: Portugal started to hide their information (not encryption, that is only known later) and that this were very valuable information. I also got the information from LLM that naked woman were used symbolic for Africa, but you can find evidence for that everywere. Like You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. or here You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

And then no further LLMs were used. It was too obvious (probably like always when you are fixed into one idea). You look up what a nautical logbook/report would look like, that it is obvious that it contains information about everything you can exploit from this area, like plants or valuable jars. Then it was simple to look up what kind of jars at that time were made in the Guinea area of west Africa...than the ivory jars pop up which was one of the most valuable things for Portugal to exploid there and of cause black pepper. Which already identified before in the manuscript, but made even more sense then.

Then I was looking up how they navigated at that time and found out that they used the Astrolabe which is an instrument like a circle and that circle diagrams were used to show the settings in books that need to be used. And that it was a big problem at that time because the astrolabe data was only available for the northern hemisphere and was not working for the southern hemisphere. And then by accident I see that the first zodiac sign was there 2 times. One time with woman with clothes and one time with woman without cloth. Which then made completely sense, because the version with the woman with the clothes are a symbol for the northern hemisphere, like civilized and the version with the naked woman were the new version that would be needed to navigate in the southern hemisphere.

By accident, I was reading about how Portugal kept there valuable information secret, I came across the cantino planisphere, because it was a big thing that "Italy" stole it. Books are written about that ;-) However, if I looked at compass rose, there was this face in the compass rose, which is the god of wind. It looks like the same in the compass rose (and it is definitely a compass rose) in the voynich manuscript. If this manuscript contains a compass rose...then it is something nautical, not something something for astrology or a herbal book or something, that makes no sense.

And so on...hints pile up. So LLMs were not really used, because they are mainly not useful, just to get context and then look things up.
RE: The Voynich Manuscript as an Iberian-African Voyage Record

rikforto > 29-10-2025, 03:57 AM

This is going to run into the the problem of discrimination; how can any of this evidence show your theory uniquely? To focus on the artwork you link as an example, those are well over a century after we think the manuscript was drafted and from a very different part of Europe from Portugal. Nudity is pervasive in Western artwork over the centuries and does not uniquely mean "Africa", even if she is represented that way in some distant art. There are fairly big differences too---a lot more nymphs than just one, and few other clues they are meant to be African.

To give a sampling of other problems I see: Codes were used outside of Portugal, and did not look like the Voynich inside the Portuguese navy. The plant identifications are famously hard to get a consensus on. The jars have European precedents. The structure of the Voynich does not match the three-part nautical reports you say it does very well at all.

A more careful comparison with period Portuguese evidence might answer some of these concerns, but you're going to have to find documents and do the comparison for this to seem all that convincing.

The similarities here seem very superficial to me, but if you think they are obvious, you shouldn't have any problem coming up with a lot of detailed examples from the right time and place and convincing people and I encourage you to do that

Finally, and somewhat unrelated to your thoughts on the origin, whatever Voynichese is, it is not a homophonic cipher because it has entirely too few characters for that.
RE: The Voynich Manuscript as an Iberian-African Voyage Record

Kaybo > 29-10-2025, 01:41 PM

(29-10-2025, 03:57 AM)rikforto Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.This is going to run into the the problem of discrimination; how can any of this evidence show your theory uniquely? To focus on the artwork you link as an example, those are well over a century after we think the manuscript was drafted and from a very different part of Europe from Portugal. Nudity is pervasive in Western artwork over the centuries and does not uniquely mean "Africa", even if she is represented that way in some distant art. There are fairly big differences too---a lot more nymphs than just one, and few other clues they are meant to be African.

To give a sampling of other problems I see: Codes were used outside of Portugal, and did not look like the Voynich inside the Portuguese navy. The plant identifications are famously hard to get a consensus on. The jars have European precedents. The structure of the Voynich does not match the three-part nautical reports you say it does very well at all.

A more careful comparison with period Portuguese evidence might answer some of these concerns, but you're going to have to find documents and do the comparison for this to seem all that convincing.

The similarities here seem very superficial to me, but if you think they are obvious, you shouldn't have any problem coming up with a lot of detailed examples from the right time and place and convincing people and I encourage you to do that

Finally, and somewhat unrelated to your thoughts on the origin, whatever Voynichese is, it is not a homophonic cipher because it has entirely too few characters for that.

Thx a lot for your reply. I think this is maybe the major problem, because there are no documents from this time from Portugal they are all gone, burned in a fire in Lissabon. So we have nearly no documents from that time.

So thats why you do not find any facsimile. We mostly know things from secondary literatur, but no original documents. Thats maybe why we have not find similarity to other documents and would limit theories to well documented areas of Europe of that time.
But you can find some examples from Portugal that show naked woman from around 1520 from maps of America, so why should they not have done it for Africa the same way? You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
And there are a lot of examples around 1550 that show naked woman, in maps of Africa. And the first evidence of naked woman as a symbol of Africa show up around 1570.

However, in the reports from around 1450 we have a lot of text about nude woman bathing.

Anyway, I just wanted to get the idea out and maybe someone will look if it translates to old Portuguese or if you can find nautical words in the star pages.

I also need to go through the other theories to understand what the general problems are. But its very hard to understand most of the ideas.
RE: The Voynich Manuscript as an Iberian-African Voyage Record

Kaybo > 29-10-2025, 02:35 PM

(29-10-2025, 03:57 AM)rikforto Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Finally, and somewhat unrelated to your thoughts on the origin, whatever Voynichese is, it is not a homophonic cipher because it has entirely too few characters for that.

I tried to get more information about that. Need to crawl the forum. Is there a good sumary of things that has been done and tried?

I am probably repeating what a lot of others already have done. I just looked at the words, escpecially in the star section, because if its a logbook you would find a very limited amount of different words. Anyway, I see that some words in EVA just differ in one character. Which would by typical for homophonic cipher (in my limited view), if there is often the same word you would expect, that it has variations in the characters that are represented by many characters.

You can pick simply some words and try to find variations in one character. I did that and it shows that only specific characters are replaced and other are static, never change. For example the most comon replacement are {c,s}→s, {d,e}→e, {y,o}→o, {r,l}→r, {k,t}→t
Other characters are never replaced, like a or i.

That would fit for homophonic substitution. Since we have so few characters, characters also need to represent more other characters.
For example EVA c and s stand for the letter a, but EVA c can also stand for other letters like d.

But I think, I have to read here more, what has been already done. But its hard to find informations.
RE: The Voynich Manuscript as an Iberian-African Voyage Record

nablator > 29-10-2025, 04:08 PM

(29-10-2025, 02:35 PM)Kaybo Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.For example EVA c and s stand for the letter a, but EVA c can also stand for other letters like d.

But I think, I have to read here more, what has been already done. But its hard to find informations.

A reduction of the basic EVA alphabet and the identification of some of the remaining letters with several letters of the target language is a common tactic in many pseudo-solutions: you can find a list of threads You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view..
RE: The Voynich Manuscript as an Iberian-African Voyage Record

Jorge_Stolfi > 30-10-2025, 06:37 AM

(28-10-2025, 10:06 PM)Kaybo Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.When I looked at the EVA translation, one thing that I don't understand is, why K and T should be different Symbols

Well, these are the most common words with k (left) and t (right) in the Bio section:

163 0.02387 qokedy 49 0.00718 otedy
153 0.02241 qokeedy 47 0.00688 qotedy
150 0.02197 qokain 39 0.00571 qoteedy
112 0.01640 qokal 27 0.00395 qoty
86 0.01260 qokaiin 25 0.00366 otain
86 0.01260 qokeey 25 0.00366 qotal
61 0.00893 qoky 24 0.00351 otar
45 0.00659 okedy 24 0.00351 oteedy
45 0.00659 qokar 22 0.00322 chcthy
43 0.00630 qokey 22 0.00322 tedy
42 0.00615 chckhy 21 0.00308 otal
41 0.00600 okain 21 0.00308 qotain
35 0.00513 okeedy 19 0.00278 oty
33 0.00483 okaiin 17 0.00249 checthy
28 0.00410 shckhy 16 0.00234 oteey
24 0.00351 olkain 15 0.00220 otey
22 0.00322 okal 14 0.00205 qotar
21 0.00308 kedy 13 0.00190 qotaiin
21 0.00308 qokol 13 0.00190 shcthy
21 0.00308 sheckhy 13 0.00190 shecthy
20 0.00293 olkedy 12 0.00176 otaiin
19 0.00278 checkhy 11 0.00161 tal
19 0.00278 keedy 11 0.00161 tchedy
19 0.00278 okar 11 0.00161 tol
19 0.00278 olkeey 9 0.00132 otol
17 0.00249 okeey 9 0.00132 qotol
16 0.00234 olkeedy 8 0.00117 qotey
16 0.00234 sheky 8 0.00117 tar
13 0.00190 kain 7 0.00103 qoteey
13 0.00190 oky 7 0.00103 ytedy
13 0.00190 olky 6 0.00088 sheety
12 0.00176 okey 6 0.00088 teey
12 0.00176 qokchdy 5 0.00073 chety
10 0.00146 cheeky 5 0.00073 otchedy
10 0.00146 ykeedy 5 0.00073 teol
9 0.00132 cheky 4 0.00059 shety
8 0.00117 chckhey 4 0.00059 tain
8 0.00117 kaiin 4 0.00059 tor
8 0.00117 qokshedy 4 0.00059 tshedy
7 0.00103 kal 3 0.00044 cthdy
7 0.00103 lkedy 3 0.00044 cthedy
7 0.00103 olkaiin 3 0.00044 otaly
7 0.00103 qokor 3 0.00044 otchey
7 0.00103 ykeey 3 0.00044 otchy
6 0.00088 lkain 3 0.00044 oteol
6 0.00088 okol 3 0.00044 otshdy
6 0.00088 olkar 3 0.00044 qotchedy
6 0.00088 qokaly 3 0.00044 qotchy
6 0.00088 qokam 3 0.00044 taiin
6 0.00088 qokchedy 3 0.00044 tchdy

While words with one of the two gallows also exist with the other one with roughly proportional frequencies (qokedy and qotedy, qokeedy and qoteedy, qoky and qoty, etc.), there are also many words that have very inconsistent frequencies (okedy and otedy, okar and otar, etc.)

Thus the claim that k and t are just calligraphic variants of the same letter does not seem likely.

Voynichese words are notoriously shorter than words in "European" languages, and as a consequence there are more pairs of words that differ only in one letter.

All the best, --stolfi
RE: The Voynich Manuscript as an Iberian-African Voyage Record

Kaybo > 30-10-2025, 04:44 PM

(29-10-2025, 03:57 AM)rikforto Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.The structure of the Voynich does not match the three-part nautical reports you say it does very well at all.

Why it does not match? We have a deskriptiv part of the journey, which is normally were you find information what valuable discoveries are made, like what plants are valuable, what kind of people live their, what objects of value are there for the crown. In the voynich manuscript its the part with the plants.

Then there is a part with maps and its well known that this is a very few examples were we find folded pages in European books often (not exclusive of cause). Thats the part with maps and zodiac signs.

Then we have a pure logbook. Its very short paragraphs in telegram style, using always the same words. Thats the star sign section of the voynich manuscript.

To visualize it, I will link to pages of a roteiro of 1511 the Livro da Marinharia You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

I. Some pages of the descriptive section:
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What you can see is that there is a heavy use of paragraph signs. Which nearly all of the nautical documents use in that style, for nearly every paragraph in the book. Thats something which is very comparable to the voynich manuscript. Also the word count and word length match very good with the voynich manuscript.

II. Some pages from the map section/visual nautical information section

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If the time frame of the voynich manuscript is from 1400-1450 than this book is 50 years later, which means everything is more detailed with real maps and so on, but a similarity is visible.

III. Some pages from the logbook section
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Every paragraph starts with a mark. Wie have + signs as paragraph signs. Paragraph length, word counts and word length is very near the voynich manuscript. And I dont know how many books you found with a similar word length match before.

Overall the voynich manuscript is very similar to a nautical roteiro from Portugal around 1500. If you have books that have a better similarity than this roteiros, could you show me? Its always difficult to escape its own bias.
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The Voynich Manuscript as an Iberian-African Voyage Record

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