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Voynichese is a numeric cipher?
- Voynichese is a numeric cipher?
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Voynichese is a numeric cipher?
ololololo > Yesterday, 12:10 AM
Well, when I wrote my last post, I didn't think about sharing my opinion on this... I think it would be better if I wrote it in a separate post.
During my independent study of the Voynich manuscript (which took about a year), I came to the conclusion that Voynich is most likely a cipher based on numbers. I am not a cryptology expert, but I will try to explain how I came to this conclusion.
Let's start with what I wrote about in the previous post, which is that the text of the Voynich manuscript (or rather, the mechanism of word formation) is very similar to classical substitution: all words consist of a fixed set of characters and bigrams arranged in a certain order. Here you might think that I am reinventing the wheel, having in mind the concepts of "prefix-midfix-suffix" or Stolfa's "crust-mantle-nucleus" model (in fact, this is what some initially thought), however, this is not quite the case. The set of supposed minimal substitution units that I have compiled demonstrates some more dependencies besides the dependencies of position in the word.
I would like to suggest that you look at this from a different angle. If we can easily decompose any word in the manuscript into such minimal units, but at the same time we clearly see that this is not a regular "symbol-symbol" substitution, then we can use regular numbers to help us.
First, I'll add a list of the "letters" I've generated:
1). Single letters: o, d, e*, y, r, l and maybe s,
2). Bigrams: oi, ai(an), or, ol, ar, al, om, am, in, iin, ee (es)*, ch/sh, ir, il, im, qo
3). All gallows and EVA x.
Pay attention to the digrams al-ar and ol-or. Their peculiarity is that in such a combination they repeatedly appear both in words and standing alone. But by swapping the letters (ol-or to lo-ro, al-ar to la-ra), these properties are immediately lost, and the structure of words becomes "more fragmented" (let's take the word for example oralar. It can be decomposed as ol-ar-ar, and as o-la-ra-R. I think you can immediately see the difference between three bigrams and two extra letters around the edges. In addition, there are no words "lara" or "rala" in the manuscript). This remarkable property of bigrams suggests that the letters of the Voynich manuscript are not Latin letters, but numbers.
But if they were Arabic numerals, swapping the digits in a number would result in a different number (for example, 41 becomes 14, 310 becomes 103, and 80 becomes 08), and the meaning would not be lost. However, in the case of digrams, the opposite effect is observed. This already suggests that Voynichese is a cipher based on Roman numerals, as they have the same property: if you take the number 41 = XLI and swap the IXL, you will not get a whole number, as it does not follow the rules of Roman numerals.
This "position effect" manifests itself both at the level of individual semantic units (as in the example with bigrams) and at the level of multiple words and the entire text (this manifests itself in the form of the "prefix-midfix-suffix" pattern). Given the historical context (specifically, the realities of the 15th century, the author's tools, and capabilities), I assume that the Voynich manuscript's cipher is a kind of nomenclature that is additionally encrypted using the letters of an artificially created alphabet (this is not entirely unusual, considering that it was a standard substitution technique for the time, similar to the Theban alphabet), which encrypts both letters and abbreviations.
Why letters and abbreviations?
I came to this conclusion because the list of "letters" I provided is quite flexible. For example, it is easy to see that ch and sh are equivalent (in the sense that words using these letters are almost identical to each other: chey - shey, cheody - sheody, char - shar, chdar - shdar, chckhy - shckhy).
It's not suitable for letters alone, or for abbreviations alone, but it's fine for both.
**
With bigrams, we can conduct a small experiment that shows features that are not typical for substitution. Let's exclude ee(es), ch/sh, and qo from the list. From the remaining list, we can select al-ar and ol-or. We can generate a pair of words by taking a pair like ol-*-in and replacing the asterisk with ai: olaiin, oraiin, and alair. These patterns are not typical for regular substitution, but they align well with the typical numerical cipher-nomenclator. Thus, we should read the words of the manuscript not as words, but as an ordered sequence of numbers, e.g. chey as 50-10-5 (this is not a translation, this just an example of how it might look).
It's inconvenient/impractical/difficult to do!
Maybe that's true, but it's possible, even for the 15th century, plus, given that the manuscript is a product of collective labor, the argument about its bulkiness loses weight, because a group of skilled people would definitely be able to encrypt the text faster than a single person.
It's inconvenient/impractical/difficult to read!
The manuscript is essentially not a work of fiction, but a reference book (all herbals are reference books), which means that the reader does not have to spend time deciphering the entire book. By knowing the key, they can apply it to the relevant pages without any problems.
Apparently, the book was not written for a wide audience (as evidenced by its design and lack of decryption), but for someone who at least knew the key. This suggests that there should have been no difficulties... if the book had fallen into the right hands
.
...And super-highly interested fact...
Let's look at the top right corner of the You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. page. In the context of the Roman numeral version, it takes on a new meaning...
Rotate the red symbols 90 degrees to the left, and you will get the Roman numeral 102. Such a bold coincidence, and on the first page... Could this be the key?
P.S. I am not an expert, and what I have written may be complete nonsense. The purpose of this post is not to prove that I am right, but rather to reach out to you, to find out your opinion, and to discuss this version together.
I hope this will help whoever deciphers the Voynich manuscript. -
RE: Voynichese is a numeric cipher?
Jorge_Stolfi > Yesterday, 12:49 AM
(Yesterday, 12:10 AM)ololololo Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.During my independent study of the Voynich manuscript, I came to the conclusion that Voynich is most likely a cipher based on numbers.
As I wrote on the other thread, You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view., but I think is not true because it would be too impractical. Besides, I am now convinced that I found the "solution", and it is totally different.
[quote]Rotate the red symbols 90 degrees to the left, and you will get the Roman numeral 102. [quote]
I rotate them by 180 degrees and You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view....
All the best, --stolfi -
RE: Voynichese is a numeric cipher?
ololololo > Yesterday, 12:31 PM
(Yesterday, 12:49 AM)Jorge_Stolfi Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.[quote="ololololo" pid='85246' dateline='1780528254']During my independent study of the Voynich manuscript, I came to the conclusion that Voynich is most likely a cipher based on numbers.
As I wrote on the other thread, You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view., but I think is not true because it would be too impractical. Besides, I am now convinced that I found the "solution", and it is totally different.
Quote:Rotate the red symbols 90 degrees to the left, and you will get the Roman numeral 102. [quote]
Oh, thank you! Please, let me ask you about your solution, it sounds unexpected.
I rotate them by 180 degrees and You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view....
All the best, --stolfi
As for the red symbol, it's just a coincidence that I noticed.
I also agree with your opinion that it would be too complicated and impractical. But! It is possible that Voynich's cipher is simpler than we think. It is also possible that the encryption process was done in stages, with a simple substitution or number-based encryption at the beginning, followed by an additional algorithm (such as sorting the numbers in descending order). Perhaps it's not a nomenclature at all, but something else based on numbers (given the amount of work and resources involved, the encryption algorithm should be relatively simple).
However, again, I would note that the Voynich manuscript is a product of collective work, and it is possible that the scribes knew how this cipher works. Working individually on the same book, they could generally encrypt it even using a nomenclator without much difficulty.
(What is quite interesting is that the amount of work done by the supposed scribe B, who wrote part of the botany, all of the balneology, part of the pharmacy, and part of the prescription section, is much greater than that of scribe A and C, who wrote the diagrams. Apparently, he was really willing to do this). -
RE: Voynichese is a numeric cipher?
Stefan Wirtz_2 > Yesterday, 12:41 PM
(Yesterday, 12:10 AM)ololololo Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.[..]
Let's look at the top right corner of the You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. page. [..] to find out your opinion,[..]
ok, let‘s look at this:
- it is one of the just three big red chapter-opening characters which to do not appear anywhere else in the VMS
- function of such red letters is known from many other medieval manuscripts — maybe these are inspired by that common custom, maybe not.
- the position of this „weirdo“ (Stolfi‘s branding) is too weird for a function as „chapter-starter“. What happened here?
- the right part of „the red“ is very weak — looks like the colour was accidently tranferred from a previous page written shortly before, where it was right in the position to open a chapter ‚normally‘.
- the outlined parts and stronger red colour may have been added later or were also contact-transferred by closing the books‘ pages a bit too early.
For me, this is the probable assumption - but still just an assumption.
So I would mirror it along the vertical line:
It may have looked this way on a previous page, if ever existed („folio 0.5“). Otherwise, it could be a hint that there was at least 1 more folio ahead of f 1r.
Of course, not helpful at all now.
But yet another opinion, maybe helpful for others; you started to collect these here.
About VMS being a numerical cipher: what would that change or deliver? So, no. -
RE: Voynichese is a numeric cipher?
ololololo > Yesterday, 01:12 PM
(Yesterday, 12:49 AM)Jorge_Stolfi Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.[quote="ololololo" pid='85246' dateline='1780528254']During my independent study of the Voynich manuscript, I came to the conclusion that Voynich is most likely a cipher based on numbers.
As I wrote on the other thread, You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view., but I think is not true because it would be too impractical. Besides, I am now convinced that I found the "solution", and it is totally different.
Quote:Rotate the red symbols 90 degrees to the left, and you will get the Roman numeral 102. [quote]
Oh, I noticed that the image doesn't always load. If anything, I'm not referring to quirks, but rather to the strange symbol in the top-right corner that's separate from the text.
I rotate them by 180 degrees and You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view....
All the best, --stolfi -
RE: Voynichese is a numeric cipher?
Jorge_Stolfi > Yesterday, 01:27 PM
(Yesterday, 12:41 PM)Stefan Wirtz_2 Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.this „weirdo“ (Stolfi‘s branding)
It is not my branding. Back in the mailing list days, "weirdo" was standard Voynichology nomenclature for glyphs that occurred only once or twice in the whole book. Is that term taboo now? Was Beinecke sued for offensive language by the International Association of Special Glyphs and Symbols?
Quote:the right part of „the red“ is very weak
That part lies withing a stain which looks like a liquid spill. I would think that its red paint and outline were originally as strong as those in the left part, but were mostly erased by the liquid.
Quote:the outlined parts and stronger red colour may have been [...] also contact-transferred by closing the books‘ pages a bit too early.
I don't think it is a likely scenario. The paint is too strong, and the outline is too sharp and continuous. An offset print would be even fainter and more irregular than the right part.
Besides, even flipped left-to-right it does not look like anything.
Quote:About VMS being a numerical cipher: what would that change or deliver?
If it is a codebook cipher, it will be harder to crack than any letter-based algorithmic cipher. But not impossible. However, the solution would come come out piecemeal, one word at a time, rather than in one finger snap. Like the solution of Etruscan, or of the Rohonc codex.
Character statistics would be useless. Instead one would have to guess the meaning of certain key words and phrases. Hopefully the Herbal section will contain recurring phrases like "make into a tea" or "will be cured" or "it is proven", which could provide useful "cribs".
One may begin to solve it even without identifying the language.
All the best, --stolfi -
RE: Voynichese is a numeric cipher?
ololololo > Yesterday, 01:34 PM
(Yesterday, 12:41 PM)Stefan Wirtz_2 Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
Well, in this form, yes, this version doesn't give us anything, because it's just a suggestion that needs more thought. Perhaps some calculations or experiments could be conducted. I could do it myself, but there's a high risk of inaccuracies, so it's better to leave this to a professional.(Yesterday, 12:10 AM)ololololo Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.[..]
Let's look at the top right corner of the You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. page. [..] to find out your opinion,[..]
ok, let‘s look at this:
- it is one of the just three big red chapter-opening characters which to do not appear anywhere else in the VMS
- function of such red letters is known from many other medieval manuscripts — maybe these are inspired by that common custom, maybe not.
- the position of this „weirdo“ (Stolfi‘s branding) is too weird for a function as „chapter-starter“. What happened here?
- the right part of „the red“ is very weak — looks like the colour was accidently tranferred from a previous page written shortly before, where it was right in the position to open a chapter ‚normally‘.
- the outlined parts and stronger red colour may have been added later or were also contact-transferred by closing the books‘ pages a bit too early.
For me, this is the probable assumption - but still just an assumption.
So I would mirror it along the vertical line:
It may have looked this way on a previous page, if ever existed („folio 0.5“). Otherwise, it could be a hint that there was at least 1 more folio ahead of f 1r.
Of course, not helpful at all now.
But yet another opinion, maybe helpful for others; you started to collect these here.
About VMS being a numerical cipher: what would that change or deliver? So, no. -
RE: Voynichese is a numeric cipher?
ololololo > Yesterday, 01:52 PM
(Yesterday, 01:27 PM)Jorge_Stolfi Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
On this occasion, I will share some of my observations about words:(Yesterday, 12:41 PM)Stefan Wirtz_2 Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.this „weirdo“ (Stolfi‘s branding)
It is not my branding. Back in the mailing list days, "weirdo" was standard Voynichology nomenclature for glyphs that occurred only once or twice in the whole book. Is that term taboo now? Was Beinecke sued for offensive language by the International Association of Special Glyphs and Symbols?
Quote:the right part of „the red“ is very weak
That part lies withing a stain which looks like a liquid spill. I would think that its red paint and outline were originally as strong as those in the left part, but were mostly erased by the liquid.
Quote:the outlined parts and stronger red colour may have been [...] also contact-transferred by closing the books‘ pages a bit too early.
I don't think it is a likely scenario. The paint is too strong, and the outline is too sharp and continuous. An offset print would be even fainter and more irregular than the right part.
Besides, even flipped left-to-right it does not look like anything.
Quote:About VMS being a numerical cipher: what would that change or deliver?
If it is a codebook cipher, it will be harder to crack than any letter-based algorithmic cipher. But not impossible. However, the solution would come come out piecemeal, one word at a time, rather than in one finger snap. Like the solution of Etruscan, or of the Rohonc codex.
Character statistics would be useless. Instead one would have to guess the meaning of certain key words and phrases. Hopefully the Herbal section will contain recurring phrases like "make into a tea" or "will be cured" or "it is proven", which could provide useful "cribs".
One may begin to solve it even without identifying the language.
All the best, --stolfi
1). In the botanical section, daiin is often used after words ending in -ol, especially after chol and otol.
2). The word qotchy, which is quite popular in the botanical section, often precedes words ending in -iin and -ol (but not always, and I am not entirely sure about this pattern).
3). In the prescription section, lines marked with stars often contain words such as okey/otey (by words such as okey/otey, I also mean oteey, okeey, okeedy, etc.). These words are usually located closer to the beginning, in close proximity to the name of "drug".
But I don't know how to extract meaning from all of this. -
RE: Voynichese is a numeric cipher?
RobGea > 10 hours ago
Your observations about words could well do with their own thread.
A quick check in Notepad++ on RF1b-er.txt for "ol.daiin" gives credence to this ngram-word unit appearing more often in the Herbal sections
with a second peak in the Pharma section and also a strong absence in the Balneo & Stars sections. Quite interesting, very well observed.
As for this thread, if you could give a clear walk-through example of how this numeric cipher would work, that would be most helpful.(to me at least) -
RE: Voynichese is a numeric cipher?
ololololo > 8 hours ago
(10 hours ago)RobGea Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Your observations about words could well do with their own thread.
I don't know for sure, and I can't say what kind of numerical code is used in the manuscript, but if it's a nomenclature code, it seems to be quite simple and doesn't contain any special words (this can be easily proven by breaking down any word into "letters"; in fact, this can make decryption more difficult, as nomenclature codes rely on specific words for decryption).
A quick check in Notepad++ on RF1b-er.txt for "ol.daiin" gives credence to this ngram-word unit appearing more often in the Herbal sections
with a second peak in the Pharma section and also a strong absence in the Balneo & Stars sections. Quite interesting, very well observed.
As for this thread, if you could give a clear walk-through example of how this numeric cipher would work, that would be most helpful.(to me at least)
To disguise the message, the author could rearrange the inserted numbers in ascending or descending order (if d = 15 = e, a = 5 = s, and iin = 3 = s, then est = 15-3-5 = diina, but if the letters are arranged in descending order, it becomes daiin).
It's also possible (but it seems strange) that after encrypting the text, the author divided the resulting numbers so that they were the same length, and then added null elements to them.
Example: we have a set of numbers 3, 4, 89, 01, and 23. We encrypted the text, resulting in 349 89 0123. However, to ensure that each number has an equal number of digits, we split it into 349 890 123. As you can see, the letter 01 was divided into two parts. The simplest thing we can do is this: 349 8901 0223. 02 is not part of our alphabet, so it means nothing and can be ignored. From this series, we can easily get back 349 89 0123 if we know that 8901 is nonsense and 0123 is a word.
However, there are no elements in Voynichese that can be called outright nulls, but there is something similar, namely rows of similar words (choky chol cthol shol, as Torsten Timm called it, "self-citation"). However, this only looks similar on the surface, but maybe the author just divided the words equally without adding any garbage.
In general, the most I can say is that the encryption algorithm is a number-based substitution. And then it's unclear...