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How many people penned the main Voynichese text?

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  • How many people penned the main Voynichese text?
• How many people penned the main Voynichese text?

• RE: How many people penned the main Voynichese text?

  Rafal > 29-11-2025, 08:54 PM

  I am quite convinced it was more than one guy but not convinced about 5 scribes of Lisa Fagin Davies.
  Still she's the expert, not me.
  
  And writing hands are strongly correlated with Currier A and Currier B language, right?

• RE: How many people penned the main Voynichese text?

  Mark Knowles > 29-11-2025, 09:08 PM

  I put "I don't know anything about this and am happy to follow majority/expert opinion"
  I may have selected "more than 1" if this was an option.
  
  I have never investigated this specific question and from what I think both one scribe or many are possible. However, having looked very carefully at the text there being multiple authors(and therefore multiple scribes) seems likely.

• RE: How many people penned the main Voynichese text?

  Bernd > 29-11-2025, 10:19 PM

  I have a hard time voting here.
  While I admit I have no idea and would not rule out any of these options, I'm generally not happy blindly following expert opinions, let alone the majority unless they present extremely convincing evidence. Until then, I believe the most important thing is to remain agnostic
  
  I generally stay away from text analysis and leave that to others. But taking a step back and looking at the overall picture, I'd say a parsimonious hypothesis should go with the absolute minimum of people involved that is needed.

• RE: How many people penned the main Voynichese text?

  ReneZ > 29-11-2025, 11:48 PM

  Hard to decide. I prefer to listen to people who know what they are talking about, but not necessarily majority opinions. It is always a case-by-case situation. In this particular case, the expert opinion is far better than anything else we have. Still, options 3 and 4 overlap...

• RE: How many people penned the main Voynichese text?

  Aga Tentakulus > 30-11-2025, 06:09 AM

  I voted for more than 2.
  Why? I can already see 2 writers on one page. Not only the writing, but also a completely different writing style. It can be made visible, and I have already shown this.
  This overlaps with the colouring of the drawings.
  One paints in watercolours, in thin colours, just like Diepold Lauber. The second uses opaque colours, but still carefully.
  And then there's the third. Hmmm, it would have been better to give him washable finger paints.

• RE: How many people penned the main Voynichese text?

  qoltedy > 30-11-2025, 12:35 PM

  I voted one person penning the Manuscript.
  
  Although I think the evidence LFD presents for 5 distinct handwriting styles is compelling and makes sense, I think the jump in conclusion to this correlating to 5 distinct people is based entirely on speculation. While this speculation is based on LFD's experience with other medieval manuscripts, expertise in other medieval manuscripts tells us essentially nothing about the Voynich. The Voynich is such a singularly strange and unprecedented object in history, that expertise has been all but useless in telling us much relevant or verifiable information about the Voynich.
  
  I would not consider deference to experts being any more justifiable in the case of handwriting analysis than analysis of the meaning of the text. We should take seriously the observations, but not the conclusions necessarily.
  
  I find it generally more plausible, given various other observable facts of the Manuscript, that it was made over the course of a long duration. If someone wrote the Manuscript in bursts, over the course of decades, that could also plausibly explain the variations in topics ("languages") and handwriting style.
  
  What I find plausible, is that the 5 distinct scribes identified by LFD correspond with 5 distinct eras where the author wrote the various sections. 
  
  Compare your handwriting now to when you were in grade school. Imagine not only changing as a person, but also developing and refining an entire custom conlang or cipher writing system over the course of many years. Perhaps the author experimented over time with different methods of holding their pen. We just don't know, and can't know without more information. I find assertions of "likelihood" of this vs multiple scribes inadequate, because it's all ultimately speculation.

• RE: How many people penned the main Voynichese text?

  LisaFaginDavis > 30-11-2025, 02:57 PM

  I think you can guess which option I picked! 

• RE: How many people penned the main Voynichese text?

  dashstofsk > 01-12-2025, 09:06 AM

  (30-11-2025, 12:35 PM)qoltedy Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.If someone wrote the Manuscript in bursts, over the course of decades, that could also plausibly explain the variations in topics ("languages") and handwriting style.

  
  I am also of that opinion. Especially since it is likely that the writers used the alphabet and language just for this manuscript and used it no-where else, made little use of it between topics and had lost some fluency in it when they next sat down to write the next section.
  
  
  

  (30-11-2025, 12:35 PM)qoltedy Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Compare your handwriting now to when you were in grade school.

  
  I have and can see it is now very different. I now write my 'b's and 'd's as one loop without a cusp. My 'A's and 'E's ( unless I am writing all capitals ) are now rounded and not square and linear. My writing has become distinctly left-leaning. Also I have recently switched to preferring to write with a fountain pen which I don't have to grip so hard as with a cheap biro. I can glide the pen over the paper and the ink flows without effort. I don't have to force it down.

• RE: How many people penned the main Voynichese text?

  Koen G > 01-12-2025, 09:16 AM

  (01-12-2025, 09:06 AM)dashstofsk Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

  (30-11-2025, 12:35 PM)qoltedy Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.If someone wrote the Manuscript in bursts, over the course of decades, that could also plausibly explain the variations in topics ("languages") and handwriting style.

  
  I am also of that opinion.

  
  Again, this is possible. But why would this explanation be preferred over the usual assumption in manuscript descriptions that different hands = different people?

• RE: How many people penned the main Voynichese text?

  oshfdk > 01-12-2025, 09:38 AM

  (01-12-2025, 09:16 AM)Koen G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Again, this is possible. But why would this explanation be preferred over the usual assumption in manuscript descriptions that different hands = different people?

  
  The usual assumption works when scribes use familiar scripts, that they have practiced writing for years. It's highly unlikely that the established well learned handwriting of a professional scribe will noticeably change over the course of a single manuscript, hence if there is a change in handwriting, usually another scribe is assumed.
  
  However, when writing in a new unfamiliar script, it's expected that the handwriting will evolve and writing habits change as the hand adapts to the script. Interestingly, if I remember correctly the work of Lisa Fagin Davis, the most striking difference between the hands was in the execution of the gallows characters, the very characters that are highly specific to the Voynich script.
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