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• Questions about Greek influences

• RE: Questions about Greek influences

  Koen G > 10-04-2016, 05:07 PM

  Thanks for all the useful info, VViews. So many things to study, so little time...
  
  What you say about coins is especially interesting. I'd be mostly interested to see to know to what extent pre-300 AD Hellenistic coins *could* still have been known in later times. What you say about the metal value vs. face value is reassuring.
  
  To be completely honest, I don't expect much, or any, influence of Byzantine visual culture in the VM. I mainly cite Byzantium because it appears as a likely place where someone could have gathered information about the trade routes from various sources and made good use of them and reap the benefits of the mnemonics, whenever they were first made. But it might as well be another Greek speaking centre around Asia Minor on the trade routes. I'm much more certain about the identification of the plants and the working of the mnemonics, than about the specific cultural background, because that seems to be a many-layered hybrid tangle... as one might expect in a gathering of information about early intercontinental trade.
  
  The narrative mnemonics are an interesting case. Several of them feature in Ovid's Metamorphoses. I am planning to delve deeper into this in a blog post next week. If I match the featured story elements with those in various versions of the story, I might be able to trace some sources. The fact that Ovid's Cadmus story can be used literally to describe the entire mnemonic layer of this plant might be telling. I still have to check this for other narrative mnemonics.
  
  Oh, one more thing about the Artocarpus plant (Thalia). The online sources I consulted mainly stressed the fact that the fruit expired quickly, like you mentioned as well. Yesterday, however, by coincidence I noticed Diane has also written about Artocarpus, but then in the botanical section (large plants). You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. She digs much deeper into the historical uses of these plants, and found out that the fruits were often dried, and...
  
  

  Quote:In  that dried, condensed form it has been reported as remaining viable for up to seven years, and was one of the most widely-used of all ships’ provisions, both before and after the arrival of Europeans.

  
  That does solve one of my problems
  
  Edit: the source of the header image is unclear. Best I found is this: 
  
  

  Quote:Kadmos / Cadmus sows the dragon's teeth. Post-classical illustration, late 15th c., from an illuminated version of Ovid's Metamorphoses. Moncrieff, A.R. Hope. A Treasury of Classical Mythology. Barnes & Noble, Inc. 1992. p. 89

• RE: Questions about Greek influences

  Koen G > 12-04-2016, 08:30 PM

  f89r first plant... Note how the branches of the plant follow the same lines as those on the serpent's head.
  
     
  
  What is this, and what is it doing in my Greco-Roman plants?
  
  

• RE: Questions about Greek influences

  davidjackson > 13-04-2016, 08:05 PM

  I don't know without a better source, but I suspect it's depicting a snake-stone, as used in traditional medicine. That looks like a cobra snake, so it could be something like the Indian nagami.
  
  PS - I like the way you've aligned those two images

• RE: Questions about Greek influences

  Koen G > 13-04-2016, 08:29 PM

  David - It's an Egyptian deity, Isis in her snake form. I was a bit upset because it turned up in the "mythological foldout", which, I thought, only draws from either:
  
  - Hellenistic imagery 
  - Stories from Ovid's Metamorphoses. 
  
  The thing is - I'm a bit obsessed with this foldout and I know its every line by heart (slight exaggeration). When by pure coincidence I come across an image of the type that inspired it, I recognize it immediately, as if it slaps me in the face.
  
  I mean, look at the root of that plant - it's a cobra. I had seen that already. But if it's a cobra, it's got something weird on its head, and I had no idea what it was supposed to depict. Now it appears that there is a cobra deity with a typical hat that follows every line of that plant!
  
  
  
  Now, interestingly, this deity (the unfortunately named Isis) was readily adopted in later Greco-Roman culture - as Isis Fortuna by the Romans and Tyche by the Greeks. She retained the hat in human form:
  
  
  
  Now, where it gets really cool, since I've been talking about hybrid cultural elements a lot today - is that in Egypt, the Greco-Roman deity was also depicted in snake form:
  
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  Now, this will surely seem like random association to most people, but actually this is a really good example of an emblematic mnemonic. The cobra and the hat must have been recognized far and wide around the Mediterranean.

• RE: Questions about Greek influences

  Diane > 10-09-2016, 01:56 PM

  Koen,
  Talking about Greek influence and hybrid Greek influences, I thought a pair of my old posts might interest you.
  
  The first relates to the calendar's feline which you, Sam G, Linda and I see as closest in style to those pictured across a line from Delos to both North Africa and Syria.
  
  The second looks more at that 'red splash' on the Voynich feline's leg, one which I do not believe was accidental but what is known as an apotropaic mark: meant to ward off harm by damaging the image of a potentially dangerous thing.
  
  In the second post I show other examples of this, notably a manuscript from the 10thC, very probably influenced by pre-Christian Hungary, in which the old eastern Greek custom of cutting of the head of the bad snake (not the agatha daimon), and replacing it with another red splash.
  
  Interestingly, a passage recently noted in another post to this forum, treating later European images of the universe (but not particularly relevant to the Voynich map), use the same passage from Manilius that I think informs the image from the Ottonian manuscript.
  
  Certainly another instance of hybrid culture, descended from the Greek, anyway.
  
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