EVA "qo" in 15th century Spanish cipher

[Jimmy123]

Just for curiosity, can we list some other places where there is eva qo?

I only know LS51 cipher document that has this symbols

[DG97EEB]

And here's one from a 15th Century Florentine Merchant's diplomatic cipher..

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[Mark Knowles]

And here's one from a 15th Century Florentine Merchant's diplomatic cipher..

You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.. (Page 93)

This is a well-known example. I can provide the original reconstruction of Gabrielli.

Listing all examples in 15th century ciphers of 4o(EVA qo) symbols would be a daunting task. What is more interesting would be to find examples of benched-gallows characters in 15th century manuscripts. I have come close to that with one example, but I would be keen to find even better examples.

[JoJo_Jost]

Just so there are no misunderstandings here.


‘qo’ and language

‘qo’ occurs 99.6 per cent of the time at the start of a word. It does not occur elsewhere within a word.
It cannot therefore represent a natural letter, because in almost every language letters also occur within words.

‘qo’ is not independent. There is an extremely narrow sequence of glyphs: initial ‘qo’ -> ‘k’ 59.8 per cent, ‘t’ 22.3 per cent (the gallows together 82 per cent).

This makes it even less likely that it is encoded as a letter and, of course, makes ‘qo’ as a word very, very unlikely....

Just as an aside...

[tavie]

I've moved two pages' worth of posts that seemed to revolve around Aga's theory to You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view..  

If anyone wants a thread on whether "qo" or "q" can be a plaintext letter, feel free to start one.

[DG97EEB]

I was actually interested less for the 4o but for the b and c which are gallows primitive and the m which is an upside down 9 ..

[BessAgritianin]

My hypothesis to share with the forum is that EVA "qo" is a single, indivisible character- used mainly as prefix.
 I believe that Voynichese borrows letters from Glagolitic alphabet, and "qo" is the symbol for the "z" sound (as Zemlja).
  (It may represent also the numerical value of 9.)


  Examples for Cyrillic Letter Z (1).pdf (Size: 138.9 KB / Downloads: 8)

[Jorge_Stolfi]

My hypothesis to share with the forum is that EVA "qo" is a single, indivisible character- used mainly as prefix.

My hunch is that "qo" is not a phonetic digram, but  a symbol for "and", like our "&"; which is used like the Arabic "wa-" or Hebrew "ve-".  That is, in Voynichese "qo" is a prefix not a separate word, and to say "A, B, C, and D" you write "A qoB qoC qoD".

That would not imply that Voynichese is Arabic or Hebrew (or Ge'ez), but may indicate that the Author's native language was Arabic or Hebrew, and thus he inserted the "qo-" on his own in conjunctive phrases because otherwise they would be confusing or "sound wrong" to him.

All the best, --stolfi

PS. The EVA font disappeared from the font menu after the last site update, and is still missing.  I tried "deep reload" with no effect.

[BessAgritianin]

My hunch is that "qo" is not a phonetic digram, but  a symbol for "and", like our "&"; which is used like the Arabic "wa-" or Hebrew "ve-".  That is, in Voynichese "qo" is a prefix not a separate word, and to say "A, B, C, and D" you write "A qoB qoC qoD".

That would not imply that Voynichese is Arabic or Hebrew (or Ge'ez), but may indicate that the Author's native language was Arabic or Hebrew, and thus he inserted the "qo-" on his own in conjunctive phrases because otherwise they would be confusing or "sound wrong" to him.

All the best, --stolfi

PS. The EVA font disappeared from the font menu after the last site update, and is still missing.  I tried "deep reload" with no effect.

Your idea is particulary interesting to me, because according my research -there is Arabic Influence in f67r1 for example ( I have recovered what do appear as the Arabic names of stars).

That suggested that Arabic sources wre used in authors documented material, or "user manual" (told in todays language).
But how your idea works in the text itself? Could you provide some specific examples how "qo" appears as "A qoB qoC qoD"?

[Jorge_Stolfi]

But how your idea works in the text itself? Could you provide some specific examples how "qo" appears as "A qoB qoC qoD"?

The Shennong Bencao (SBJ) recipes, as transcribed in the Starred Parags section (SPS), are typically the name of a remedy followed by the keyword 主 = "mainly for" and a list of diseases. In the Chinese text, each disease is typically one to three characters.  The diseases are listed without any commas or any "and" word.  For example, the "red rooster" recipe begins with

• 丹雄鸡主崩中漏下赤白沃补虚温中止血通神杀毒辟不祥 ...
  

which would translate, more or less literally, as

• red male chicken mainly-for sudden discharge drip-down red white discharge stop energy leak warm center stop bleeding connect divine-intelligence kill toxin ward-off inauspiciousness ...
  

except that there would be no inflections distinguishing verbs, adjectives and nouns.   A somewhat more meaningful translation, according to my faithful lalamos, would be

• red male chicken: mainly-for sudden discharge, drip-down, red and white discharges. stopping energy leaks, warming the center, stopping bleeding, connecting with divine intelligence, killing toxins, and warding off inauspiciousness. 
  

The matching SPS parag is quite certainly f105v.32, for various reasons.  The corresponding text is 

• poar.keeo.daiin.qoair.ar.acphhey.qoeedeody.qokaiin.qotedair.apo.rair.apy.lsheody.tair.oteey.oteeo.o.l.otaiin.okeey.qokaiin.or.aiir.al.dal. ...
  

Unfortunately I can't yet match precisely the words of the Chinese sentence with the Voynichese, other than 主 = daiin.  But anyway the theory is that those "qo" were inserted by the Author to separate the disease names, where he found the Chinese syntax confusing.

All the best, --stolfi

PS. To those who have asked for more examples of recipe-parag pairs: they are coming, sorry for the delay.  I decided do automate the generation of that matching plot, and that turned out to be harder than I expected.  I am running again my crib-matching program on the ~70 recipes I have extracted from the Zhenghe Bencao so far, and checking the results...