Here’s something neat and slightly unexpected from long-time Voynich Manuscript researcher (and Voynich theory über-skeptic) Rene Zandbergen I think you’ll probably appreciate.

Arguably the least-discussed subject in the VMs is the set of tiny plant drawings in the two ‘pharma’ (pharmacological) sections, which somehow usually manage to fly beneath most researchers’ radars. Yet it has been known for decades that a good number of these plant drawings recapitulate or copy plant drawings in the main herbal sections (though as I recall these are more or less all Herbal A plants, please correct me if I’m wrong) – mapping these correspondences properly is an interesting challenge in its own right, but one to which nobody (as far as I can see) has really stepped up in the last decade.

And so it is that the general indifference to the pharma section forms the backdrop to Rene’s latest observation, which is this: that the pair of roots depicted on the two (now separated) halves of the Herbal A f18v-f23r bifolio recur side-by-side at the bottom of f102r2 in the pharma section. Here’s what the f18v-f23r bifolio would look like if you took out the bifolios currently bound between them (ignore the green mark in the middle from f22v, that’s just my lazy editing):-

f18v-f23r-bifolio-small

…and here’s what the pair of roots at the bottom of f102r2 look like. Somewhat familiar, eh?

f102r2-detail-small

Actually, I think it’s fair to say that this is extremely familar.

Now, it should be obvious that that you can (depending on how strong a piece of evidence you think the above amounts to, and what other observations you think are relevant) build all kinds of inferential chains on top of this. Cautious soul that he is, Rene concludes: “the colours of the two herbal pages were perhaps not applied when the bifolio was laying open like this“, basically because the two green paints are so different, which is similar to my observation in yesterday’s post about the two blues in Q9. He continues: “I don’t even think that the colours were applied by the same person who made the outline drawings, not deriving from these drawings though.

Regardless, the pretty-much-unavoidable codicological starting point would seem to be that f18v and f23r originally sat side-by-side, and hence almost certainly sat at the centre of a herbal gathering / quire. It also seems likely that the two green paints were applied after other bifolios had been inserted between f18v and f23r (though not necessarily in their final binding order, or at the same time).

Furthermore, if you look at f23v (i.e. the verso side of f23r), you can see where the tails of the “39” quire number’s two long downstrokes have gone over from the bottom of f24v (the last page of the quire). This indicates to me that the f18v / f23r bifolio was already nested just inside the f17 / f24 bifolio when the quire numbers were added: and when combined with the new idea that f18v-f23r was probably the central bifolio of its original gathering, I think the implication is that (unless Q3 was originally composed of just two bifolios, which seems somewhat unlikely) Q3’s quire number was added after the bifolios had been reordered / scrambled / misordered. OK, it’s pretty much the same thing I argued in “The Curse” (pp.62-68): but it’s nice to see the same ideas coming out from a different angle.

q3-quire-mark

However, the range of green paints is a bit troubling. Even though I’ve just now looked at all the greens in Q3, I’m struggling to reconstruct a sensible codicological sequence: but perhaps the reason for this will turn out to be that there isn’t one to be found. Could it be that a significant amount of Herbal grouping data could be inferred simply by spectroscopically analysing the various green paints used, and looking for recto/verso matches? Glen Claston will doubtless argue otherwise, but the chances that a verso page and a recto page with precisely the same green paint were facing each other at the time they were painted must surely be pretty good, right?

So, Rene: another good find, cheers! 🙂

91 thoughts on “Rene Z’s bifolio surprise…

  1. rene zandbergen on February 18, 2010 at 12:14 pm said:

    I can even tell you my latest wild theory (it’s a while since I had one).

    I propose that originally there were 360 little drawings in the pharma
    section, and 360 recipes in the recipes section (or at least: meant
    to be).

    Each plant belonged to one degree of the zodiac, and the labels
    in the zodiac and pharma sections ‘somehow’ link the plant and the
    degree to a paragraph in the recipes section.

    Several variations are also possible.

    There’s a nice precendent formed by a sub-group of the alchemical
    herbals, where there are 90+ numbered plant drawings without text,
    and the corresponding text is on separate ‘recipes’ folios at the end.
    Oxford MS Canon.Misc. 408 (no typo 😉 ) is
    one example.

    I will of course also remain extra skeptical about this theory and
    look out for both the pros and cons….

  2. Christopher Hagedorn on February 19, 2010 at 11:31 am said:

    Did you check to see if the labels near the roots in the pharma sections are “words” that can be found on the corresponding herbal pages?

  3. rene zandbergen on February 19, 2010 at 3:30 pm said:

    People have tried this in the past, without any obvious success. I agree
    that these examples (there are a few more matches) deserve a closer
    look.

  4. Christopher Hagedorn on February 20, 2010 at 2:25 pm said:

    What’s the name of the Japanese researcher who did a fine transcription? I want to try and compare the labels myself but I forgot the guys name.

  5. rene zandbergen on February 21, 2010 at 4:23 pm said:

    That’s Takeshi Takahashi.

  6. Paul Ferguson on February 21, 2010 at 6:01 pm said:

    “What’s the name of the Japanese researcher who did a fine transcription? I want to try and compare the labels myself but I forgot the guys name.”

    Teru Agata?

    http://ciphermysteries.com/2008/11/24/japanese-voynich-academic

  7. It was definitely Takeshi Takahashi, though there are a fair number of other transcriptions out there (some complete, most partial). Here’s Jorge Stolfi’s interlinear transcription 1.6e6 as a starting point (is there a 1.7? is there a 1.8? what happened to the whole EVMT project?)

  8. Christopher Hagedorn on February 22, 2010 at 9:41 am said:

    Thank you for the links. Do you prefer Stolfi’s transcription, Nick? And why?

  9. Christopher Hagedorn on February 22, 2010 at 9:48 am said:

    Oh nevermind, I see now that these are one and the same in this context.

  10. rene zandbergen on February 22, 2010 at 10:02 am said:

    EVMT was overtaken by the publication of the
    high-resolution scans.
    I still do have my transcription, but I see that it
    is not reliable.

    What is available from it is:
    – the definition of the extended Eva (characters
    ‘b’ ‘u’ and ‘z’ (http://www.voynich.nu/extra/eva.html)
    and all the weirdoes
    – the identification of the loci has been taken
    over in Stolfi’s interlinear, if I am not mistaken

  11. Diane on March 23, 2010 at 4:12 pm said:

    Rene,

    I wasn’t going to mention this, in case it seemed too far from 15thC Italy, but it may be of some use to you.

    An Indian astronomer of the 5th century put together a collection of bits (Samhita) on all sorts of things, including astronomy and plants if I recall correctly. Much of it was translated by Al-Biruni, incorporated in his account of India. From there the material went on to influence the the Beit Hikmah, and so became part of what we conventionally term ‘Arab’ science.

    The astronomer’s name is usually Anglicised as Varahamihira.

    His collection is very like what you’re describing. You might like to keep that medical tradition in mind, although I think it’s difficult to get English copies.

    There might be an out-of-copyright translation on line, I suppose.

    Anyway, here’s a wiki article.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Varahamihira

  12. Rene, again on astrological correspondences for plants:
    not only the Brht Smhita does this;I have lists of these correspondences, some for the month-stars (lunar mansions) and some actually day by day.

    The former are often interesting, linked to deities and so forth.

    The latter come from a tradition of memorised agricultural calendars.Of those still remembered, not every day now has its plant – religious days etc are interpolated. And the plants are pretty dull in them too; dates and barley and so forth.

    Happy to give bibliog. details ( if you ever see this post).

  13. Rene, I am not an expert of any kind, but as I saw enormous number of people involved in attempts to decipher the manuscript I had a thought… Has anyone ever tried to show the document to an autistic person? These people are known for their talents and where professors cannot, maybe it would be a good idea to get others involved? Could you please let me know what do you think? Many thanks. Bea

  14. The British secret service (GCHQ) hires folks with Dyslexia and Dyspraxia as some of their top code breakers.

  15. Mark Knowles on June 16, 2019 at 12:46 pm said:

    Nick: Given that I have spent quite a bit of time looking at labels it follows that I have spent quite a bit of time looking at the part of the manuscript with arguably the most single word isolated labels, namely the recipes section. True, there are a number of single word isolated labels in the cosmological section and also on the 9 rosette page and most probably on the Zodiac pages (If we can be really confident that they are isolated, which I think we can.) There are also a few labels on the pages with the naked women on.

    Anyway talk of matching up plants in the recipe section with the herbal section sounds like a sensible, if a little tedious an activity. I have matched up a few, but I suppose a more concerted effort soon would be a good idea, though I would think it unlikely that they can all be matched up correctly. Generally from my experience the plants in the recipes sections tend to show roots rather than the whole plant, I suppose due to root being the medicinally important part of the plant.

    It seems to me the reasons for matching up plants in the recipes section with the herbal section is that it means we have two illustrations of the same plant to work with in identification of the plant and also if it has attached (non-null) label then we can hopefully associated that label word, and possibly some of the sentence text on the corresponding recipe page, with the corresponding text on the herbal page; for example there could be shared words or phrases between the two not found or rarely found elsewhere.

    Having looked at the plant in the herbal and recipe sections that looks to me like it is probably mandrake, because if its crudely shaped human-like roots, I can see one someone wouldn’t think so, as normally mandrake as depicted and generally appears has flat spreadout leaves rather than with a stalk with leaves coming from it, however I have seen mandrake which looks more like what we see in the drawing, though I am thrown by the different varieties of mandrake and possibly the mandrake plant today doesn’t look the same as 600 years ago or some varieties have gone extinct (many cultivated fruit and vegetables have changed dramatically in appearance.) If it is mandrake I think it more closely resembles a young or pruned form of the plant.

  16. Mark Knowles on January 13, 2020 at 12:15 pm said:

    Here is a beginning list of my ideas for the matching of plants in the herbal sections with plants/roots in the botanical sections:

    f10v = f101r3-rw1cl2
    f31v = f89r2-rw1cl4
    f38r = f102r2-rw3cl1 – Is this Mandrake?
    f44r = f89r2-rw1cl1
    f54v = f102r2-rw2cl1
    f90r3 = f88v-rw3cl2

    As mentioned before could this be 2 different matching?

    f18r= f99r=f99v-rw5cl1

    Any suggestions for better matches would certainly be appreciated. I have made some effort at matching, but I am sure that I will review my matching list in the future to see if I can improve it. Obviously there are many more for me to match.

  17. Mark Knowles on January 13, 2020 at 12:21 pm said:

    Nick: When you say: “the pretty-much-unavoidable codicological starting point would seem to be that f18v and f23r originally sat side-by-side”

    I would be inclined to be dubious that f18v and f23r originally sat side-by-side. Looking at my matching list the matchings don’t appear to be sequential. I think it also is worth considering that the same plant may appear more than once in the botanical section, so that the plant is drawn at least 3 times in the manuscript. Likewise it is possible that there are plants drawn in the botanical section that do not appear elsewhere in the manuscript.

  18. Mark: the presence of a speculative notion inside your head does not invalidate or supplant codicological reasoning based on entirely different kinds of evidence.

    I think you can do better than that.

  19. Mark Knowles on January 14, 2020 at 2:52 pm said:

    A couple more herbal botanical matches:

    f7v = f100r-rw1cl9
    f51v = f99v-rw2cl1

  20. john sanders on January 14, 2020 at 10:49 pm said:

    Mark: Here’s some more from ELV’s notebook No. 6 :- 36r, 5v, 65r, 57r – 31r, 48r –
    4v, 56v, 66v, 52r, 6r, 89r, 49r – 24r, 24v – 43v, 7v – 39v, 40r; from memory no doubt.

  21. Mark Knowles on January 15, 2020 at 12:47 pm said:

    I have noticed what looks like a label on f42r, in the top left hand corner of the text. I wonder if there are other labels like this that I have missed.

  22. Mark Knowles on January 15, 2020 at 1:01 pm said:

    John Sanders: I am not quite sure what your list means.

    My way of listing is as follows:

    whole folio -> “f” + Folio Number + Side “r” For Recto(Right) and “v” For Verso(Left)

    This is of course standard.

    plant/root on multiplant folio -> whole folio + “-” + “rw” + Row Number + “cl” Column Number

    I have used an “=” sign to indicate that I think that 2 plants are the same

    This could be when comparing:

    1) a whole folio plant to another whole folio plant
    2) a whole folio plant to a specific plant on a multiplant folio
    3) a specific plant on a multiplant folio to another specific plant on a multiplant folio

    I may use the “=” sign more than once if I think the same plant occurs more than twice in the manuscript.

  23. Mark Knowles on January 15, 2020 at 1:18 pm said:

    John Sanders: Do you have a link to Ethel Lilian Voynich’s notebook number 6, so that I can see what she has written?

    When you say

    36r -> It is unclear what you are matching that with
    5v -> It is unclear what you are matching that with
    65r -> It is unclear what you are matching that with
    57r – 31r -> Are you saying these two are the same plant?
    etc.

    It is rather unclear what you are saying here.

    For me it is important to know what the suggested match is not that someone thinks it potentially has a match.

    What I am doing initially is going through all the individual plant/roots in the botanical section then looking through all herbal folios to find the one(s) that look most like it. I am starting with those with the most distinctive drawings in the botanical section as there are some roots that are drawn there that are so crudely drawn with no leaves that confidently arriving at a match will be almost impossible. In addition if I think there is no match I will record that as I am open to the possibility that there may be plants drawn in the botanical section which do not occur in the herbal and vice versa may also be true.

  24. Mark Knowles on January 15, 2020 at 1:23 pm said:

    Is that michtonese at the top of f17v?

  25. Mark Knowles on January 15, 2020 at 1:28 pm said:

    On the last line of some herbal pages the text is centred, but on most not. What does it mean when the text is centred? There is a chance, admittedly not necessarily a big chance, that this text in a label such as plant name, probably it isn’t, but I think it is worth putting that idea out there.

  26. J.K. Petersen on January 15, 2020 at 7:57 pm said:

    Mark,

    The f17v top-of-folio script is a common form of script for the 15th century and it’s a small amount of text, so it’s hard to know if it’s the same handwriting as text on 116v, but it looks like it might be (I think it probably is).

    It’s also not completely clear whether all the text on 116v is by the same hand, but I think enough of it is to learn something from it.

    This is not just an off-hand opinion. I’ve spent years collecting and analyzing script samples to try to answer these questions.

  27. JKP: I think it’s almost certain that the Voynich’s three main lettered marginalia were by the same hand, though I would add that I think it highly likely that the reason they can’t be read is that they have each been emended by a later (probably German-speaking) owner. There must surely be a good scientific process to determine what the (unemended) text originally looked like, though such a wonderful process has yet to be performed. 🙁

  28. Mark Knowles on January 18, 2020 at 12:58 pm said:

    A few more matches:

    f53r = f90r1 Row 1 Column 3
    f17 = f89r2 Row 1 Column 3
    f90v = f101r1 Row 2 Column 2
    f44v = f100r Row 1 Column 1
    f2r = f102r2 Row 3 Column 2

  29. Mark Knowles on January 19, 2020 at 4:06 pm said:

    Some more matches:

    f17v = f88v Row 4 Column 1
    f3r = f100r Row 4 Column 1
    f99r = f100v Row 1 Column 2
    f93r = f100v Row 1 Column 3
    f38r = f102r1 Row 2 Column 1

    Alternative suggestions for matches are welcome, if someone thinks they can do better in any specific case. I have crossed checked my matches here and in earlier comments, but it is possible I have made a typing mistake.

  30. Mark Knowles on January 19, 2020 at 4:10 pm said:

    One more:

    f33v = f89r2 – Row 3 Column 2

    There are more to come…

  31. Mark Knowles on January 19, 2020 at 6:39 pm said:

    A nice unexpected match:

    f19v – f103r Row 2 Column 2

  32. J.K. Petersen on January 20, 2020 at 2:18 am said:

    I have a whole list of big-plant small-plant matches from about 11 years ago. I just don’t have time to look it up right now. I am up to my eyeballs in work AND my VMS-projects list is long since over-full.

  33. @Marc Knowles
    Marc, d’you have a blog where we can read the results of your research, instead of drawing from a large number of your comments (which are not tagged)?

  34. Mark Knowles on January 20, 2020 at 10:46 am said:

    JKP: Well, that is useful when you do find it as we can do a comparison to see where your list agrees with mine and where it differs.

  35. Mark Knowles on January 20, 2020 at 10:51 am said:

    JKP: I don’t know on your list whether you have included big plant to big plant matches and small plant to small plant matches and unique small plants.

  36. Mark, I did not check all in detail, but f103r in your last messages looks like a typo.

  37. Mark Knowles on January 20, 2020 at 6:44 pm said:

    Rene:

    I think the “herbal” plant on folio 19 verso is the same “botanical” plant as we see on folio 103 recto on the bottom row, i.e. 2nd row from top, and in the middle, I.e. the 2nd column from left. If you put the 2 images next to each other then the similarities become more striking.

    The text to the right of the botanical plant image says: EVA-loralody
    (According to the Voynichese.net transcription)

    If necessary I can email you 2 images just to make sure I haven’t missed something.

    When I have finished I will try to produce a spreadsheet with all the entries and include images as much as possible. Where it is unclear from the drawing I will try to list alternative possible identifications.

  38. Folio 103 has no plant drawings on it.

  39. J.K. Petersen on January 20, 2020 at 10:59 pm said:

    Rene is right, it looks like a typo. f103r is a dense-text section, not a plant section.

  40. Mark Knowles on January 21, 2020 at 12:21 am said:

    Another nice unexpected match:

    f33r = f102r3 Row 1 Column 2

  41. J.K. Petersen on January 21, 2020 at 7:11 am said:

    Mark, where are you getting these numbers?

    There are no plant drawings in the 102r/103r section. It is all text. Look at the foliation on the VMS scans in the upper-right corner of the recto folios.

  42. john sanders on January 21, 2020 at 8:21 am said:

    J.K.P. & Mark: Get with the program fellas; both of you. f102r is full of weird plants and f103r comprised of untillegible scrawl.

  43. Well, f102r has, but there is no f102r3

  44. J.K. Petersen on January 21, 2020 at 9:01 am said:

    Sorry, 102r does have small plants, but 103r is where the dense text starts and there are no plant drawings (or any other drawings) in that section.

  45. Mark Knowles on January 21, 2020 at 12:23 pm said:

    To quote Nick from the above post:

    “…and here’s what the pair of roots at the bottom of f102r2 look like. Somewhat familiar, eh?”

    Which seems to fit though I would have called that f102r3 instead of f102r2, but I guess where I have written f102r1 others may be using f102r.

    It is possible I have got recto and verso sides confused, though I don’t think I have. I have been taking recto as what looks like the right hand page and verso as what looks like the left hand page. I could use page numbers out of the 214 pages if this would be clearer.

    So what I have written as f102r3 would be the 3rd side of page 180 of 214.

  46. Mark Knowles on January 21, 2020 at 12:29 pm said:

    Well, I probably need to shift my numberings then, so the folio recto to folio minus 1 verso or something like that might be correct. Feel free to tell me what I should be mapping my numberings to. I don’t have the manuscript or facsimile in front of me, so I have tried to guess and what seems to me to be the correct numbering, but I may well have got some folio numbers shifted by one side or something like that.

  47. Mark Knowles on January 21, 2020 at 1:10 pm said:

    Well it appears what Nick has called f18v I have called f19r and what Nick has called f23r I have called f23v

    So, sorry guys I would imagine that my numberings should be subtracted by a 1/2 folio. So:

    folio X r -> folio X-1 v and folio X v -> folio X r

    I can’t believe it I have got “left” and “right” the wrong way around. I suppose it is because the left and from the point of view of the page is different from the “left” and “right” from the point of view of the manuscript. Nevertheless I think I have got them right before looking at the botanicals. I may need to shift my numberings accordingly.

  48. Mark Knowles on January 21, 2020 at 1:18 pm said:

    Yes, it looks like:

    recto verso

    So they just need to be swapped.

    And I have been numbering side 1 of a foldout page as 1 instead of blank/zero.

    So my folio X rN would become folio X r(N-1) I.e. my f102r2 -> f102r1

    Sorry for the confusion, I think that should fix it now. Please check.

  49. Mark Knowles on January 21, 2020 at 1:24 pm said:

    Though I am not sure quite what that means with Nick’s f102r2 as then that would be f102v2

    With hindsight using scan page numbers would have been easier, but the convention seems to be using folio numbers and I am not sure if there would be confusion over which page number corresponds to which page.

    I may renumber everything to use page numbers and let someone else figure out all the folios and foldout indexes.

  50. Mark Knowles on January 21, 2020 at 1:30 pm said:

    Ruby: I am not doing anything profound here. I am simply doing the arduous task of selecting a botanical plant/root/leave drawing and then systematically going through every full page plant drawing in the manuscript and seeing which page or pages best match.

  51. Mark Knowles on January 21, 2020 at 1:32 pm said:

    For my current research it would be very useful to have all the plants matched up. This is why I have embarked on this task, but I still have some way to go.

  52. Mark Knowles on January 21, 2020 at 2:47 pm said:

    So in my first entry when I wrote->

    f10v = f101r3-rw1cl2

    I meant ->

    Page 25 = Page 178 Side 3 Row 1 Column 2

    (I think that should have been f10r = f101v3-rw1cl2 ??)

  53. Mark Knowles on January 21, 2020 at 3:08 pm said:

    It looks like to convert from page numbers to folios one does the following:

    P = Page Number

    So I think:

    page P = folio (P – 1) / 2 recto or folio P/2 verso

    depending on whether P is an odd or even number

  54. Mark Knowles on January 21, 2020 at 3:19 pm said:

    I should add that when I say page number I mean scan page number. So scan page 1 is the front cover of the manuscript and scan page 2 is the one with the Yale University label.

  55. Mark Knowles on January 21, 2020 at 3:21 pm said:

    Course missing folio numbers throws the page numbers out of sync.

  56. Mark: are you turning into a spambot? You’re wearing my moderate button (and my patience) thin.

    Every page & panel has its own unique number, when in doubt look to the top right, or look to Voyage the Voynich, that’s easy too

  57. Mark Knowles on January 21, 2020 at 5:50 pm said:

    Nick: Sorry, I was just trying to sort out the confusion of numbering. I was conscious of the need to address this issue quickly to save others confusion. Yes, it was not very organised of me. I guess I got used to my own way of numbering pages, which was internally perfectly consistent, however it was not the same of the standard way of numbering pages which has confused other people.

    Anyway I have carefully undertaken and am undertaking a considerable task. The only problem has been the numbering, which is easily resolved. So you shouldn’t lack patience regarding it. You say yourself in this post that “mapping these correspondences properly is an interesting challenge in its own right, but one to which nobody (as far as I can see) has really stepped up in the last decade.” Well I am stepping up and many of my matches are very close, so what I am doing hardly constitutes spam.

  58. Mark Knowles on January 21, 2020 at 5:53 pm said:

    I will re-list my results here or if you prefer on Ninja with the correct numberings.

  59. Nostradamus on January 21, 2020 at 5:57 pm said:

    Yes, a basic course in Aretmetic would be beneficial here.
    Higher mathematics or algebra would also be possible.
    Otherwise it would be a bigger mystery than the VM itself.

  60. Mark: repost them by all means, but in a single comment please, not ten comments in a row.

  61. J.K. Petersen on January 21, 2020 at 11:34 pm said:

    Mark Knowles wrote: “For my current research it would be very useful to have all the plants matched up. This is why I have embarked on this task, but I still have some way to go.”

    You won’t be able to match up all the plants. If you get 20% matches, you are doing well.

    I’m quite sure many of the plants in the small-plants section are not represented in the large-plants section. If they are, then they are represented differently (for example, one might have mnemonic roots, while the other might be literal, in which case the drawings are not going to match).

    It’s my opinion that the large-plants section is for identification and general plant information. The whole plant is drawn (some parts may be mnemonic or stylized but they still convey information about the plant).

    In contrast, the plants in the small-plants section focus on the part that is particularly important (probably the part that is used), which means the rest of the drawing is either greatly simplified or not there at all. With parts missing, there’s no way to be sure of a match except for a few of them that are very obviously the same.

  62. Mark, what you are doing is certainly interesting, but you are mistaken when you think it has not been done before. It was done at least by:
    – Theodore Petersen
    – Jorge Stolfi
    – myself
    – JKP as he has indicated before

    Getting the page numbers right is necessary and also very easy. Nick already suggested that you use Jason Davis’ Voyager. You can also use the Beinecke digital library, but that is not very clear on the numbering of the various foldouts.

    If you go here:
    http://www.voynich.nu/folios.html
    you get access to pages with both links (Voyager and Beinecke) next to each other. The page naming / numbering is consistent between all of them.

  63. Mark Knowles on January 22, 2020 at 2:32 pm said:

    Rene: I just read Nick’s post where he suggested that this had not been done. As the small plant labels are of particular interest to me I decided to match them up with the large plants and other small plants. My intention was to share the output of this no insignificant job with others. However if other people have already done this then it would be helpful for me and I daresay others to make this available for copying or downloading. If I can improve on it then I will. I suppose this is a bit like a visual transcription. If there is no other matching available then I will be forced to make my own and then upload it here or on Ninja. Otherwise I see no reason to reinvent the wheel.

    The numbering was a function of my carelessly swapping “verso” and “recto”, but also correctly working out the numbering of the foldout pages proved more difficult than I thought it might be. Nevertheless renumbering is not very difficult.

  64. Mark Knowles on January 22, 2020 at 2:40 pm said:

    Rene: On your website you say:

    “An interesting feature was observed independently by Th.Petersen in the 1930’s and Jorge Stolfi in the 1990’s (13), namely that a number of drawings in the pharmaceutical section of the MS are copies of herbal drawings in the MS (or vice versa). Some cases are very obvious and others are less so. This still requires a more thorough analysis.”

    So as you say this requires a more thorough analysis; I don’t know what has been done so far, but I think I am on the road to doing a pretty thorough analysis. However it still would help to see what has been done before.

  65. Peter M. on January 22, 2020 at 2:45 pm said:

    In order to be able to determine a root, it is an advantage if I know the leaf. After all, they are underground and not visible.
    It has the advantage that you do not have to draw the whole plant.

    In southern countries you leave your paws on the rabbit, so you can see that it is not a cat.
    Trust is good, control is better.

  66. J.K. Petersen on January 23, 2020 at 12:02 am said:

    Peter, it’s not just an advantage. You NEED all the basic parts of the plant to make an ID.

    There are tens of thousands of plants that have almost every characteristic in common except for one single thing that distinguishes them from the others.

    The small-plants section is mostly partial drawings. In general, seeds are not shown and flowers are rarely shown. The focus is mainly on roots and leaves and many of the root drawings have no leaves at all and thus are difficult to identify even by experts.

    And, as I mentioned in the earlier comment, it’s possible that some of the plant parts are mnemonic in one case and literal in another, in which case even if it is the same plant, the drawings in the two different sections are not going to match.

  67. @ NIck, Mark and Rene,

    Am late to the party did miss something about matching. What is that?

    Anyway business has been good with this product:

    Voynich Manuscript: The Code Unchopped II

    I have to say this book I came out with has attracted a great deal of attention by the voynich community of would be decoders, artists, professionals, academia and Historians. The curiosity stems from the plain mystery of the Voynich itself and the drive to understand its text. What is amazing from the cover to the story, structures and cosmology is that it follows logic, flow and grammar even though ascertained through the lens of anagrams represented in the Italian language translated to English. I have some positive 5 stars and well some not so good remarks, yet it holds steady at 3.5 stars. I charge a mere $15.89 for the paperback which I receive $4.21 royalty. If you think that is expensive you have an option for the E-Book $3.49. With over 1000 books sold I’m sure it has reached many of coffee tables which in turn snowballs more sales.

    I will keep the intro sort of a mystery regarding the long narrative of the trials of Tone the Hero with the Cotones. You simply have to read it!

    Please post some of your thoughts in this thread if you purchase it, I would love to hear from you and yes I will repond!

  68. D.N. O'Donovan on January 24, 2020 at 2:26 am said:

    JKP – I am glad to see this acceptance of the argument suggested by a comment in d’Imperio and demonstrated at considerable length by myself (at the usual cost of sneering comments etc, and having to explain the term ‘mnemonic’ for a contemporary Voynich crowd) that the method informing the plant-pictures’ construction is consistent and highly intelligent, but that the result does not allow simple ‘matching’ of those pictures with the idea of ‘specimen’ drawings.

    Moreover, the mnemonic elements are almost all in the root, and require previous knowledge of the plants composing the group pictured in each case, including their economic and practical uses at the time.
    The literal elements include, for example, the way a leaf attaches to the stem, the habitat indicated – sometimes by employing local conventions in art (the majority non-European) – and the plant’s habit.

    Having explained all this, long ago, and beginning with the paper originally hosted here by Nick’s kindness, it is a bitter-sweet experience to see another wheel in existence being so slowly and laboriously re-formed, though at least now with less hostility than was the case with the original.
    Best of luck to all.

  69. J.K. Petersen on January 24, 2020 at 9:50 am said:

    O’Donovan wrote: “Moreover, the mnemonic elements are almost all in the root, and require previous knowledge of the plants composing the group pictured in each case, including their economic and practical uses at the time. “

    Do you have evidence to support this claim?

    There are many examples of leaves or seeds/flowers that may have mnemonic elements. Root mnemonics do appear to exist, they might even be the majority, but if there are mnemonics in the VMS (this has not been proven yet, they might have other symbolic meanings that are not specifically mnemonic) they do not all appear to be in the root.

    “…and demonstrated at considerable length by myself…”

    I don’t remember you demonstrating anything about plants mnemonics at considerable length. I do remember you insisting on certain plant categories and certain plant IDs with many references to Arabic traditions, but mentions of mnemonics were not considerable and were less than those proposed by a number of other researchers.

    Do you have a link for where the “considerable length” mnemonic discussions occurred?

  70. Mark Knowles on January 24, 2020 at 8:07 pm said:

    JKP: I have discussed this earlier, it is true that there are some drawings particularly of roots that are so non-specific that matching them with any degree of certainty would be virtually impossible. Nevertheless I think one should consider the following as possibilities: small plant to small plant matches and even large plant to large plant matches. Given that we don’t really know what is going on here to make any restrictive assumptions about matchings doesn’t seem like a good idea. With my matchings I have listed internally the top 4 closest matches. With some it is completely obvious what the match is, with others not certain or requires more thought. With all drawings there is inevitably a spectrum of certainty/uncertainty. My aim is to do the best that I can to match all the roots, leaves and plants. Sometimes one can look at a drawing and it appears to be very generic or unclear, but on inspection of the large plant drawings there is a clear match. I think to do this job thoroughly and completely is a lot of work, but I have already done quite a bit. Doing this thoroughly I hope/think could provide me with information that is useful to me.

    Rene has referred me to some previous work at matching, but it appears very limited from what I have seen.

  71. “Rene has referred me to some previous work at matching, but it appears very limited from what I have seen.”

    The previous work has been extensive, but the tangible results may seem limited. Most of this work has not been published, but the matches that can be considered positive are indeed quite limited.

  72. Rene: in my opinion, the Herbal plants are a major source of the Voynich’s mystery, simply because they match the Pharma roots so rarely but yet so well when they do.

    It therefore seems that the two sections are related, but only in an infuriatingly sporadic way. There’s a rationale at play here, but we just can’t see it for looking. 🙁

  73. Mark Knowles on January 25, 2020 at 5:34 pm said:

    There is unsurprisingly a spectrum of confidence about given matches. There are some that it would be very hard to deny are the case and some which look very likely to be a match and so on down to those for which it seems hard to find any match. My approach has been to come up with a brief list of the closest matches. I think there are also some which can require closer inspection such as plants where the complete drawing doesn’t resemble the leaves illustrated amongst the botanicals, but a specific portion might. I also question the idea that one is looking for a simple one-to-one correspondence from herbal large plant pages to botanical drawings.

  74. Mark Knowles on January 25, 2020 at 5:48 pm said:

    Rene: It has been worth me looking at your website botanical matchings and there are 2 or 3 that I have not investigated myself. However there are some strong matches which have not been listed.

  75. Mark Knowles on January 25, 2020 at 5:57 pm said:

    I think it worth observing that one can have 2 matches for a plant: a root match and a leaf match and potentially even a flower match(though I can’t think of such an example) as there are pages with just roots and pages with just leaves.

  76. J.K. Petersen on January 26, 2020 at 8:17 am said:

    ReneZ wrote: “The previous work has been extensive, but the tangible results may seem limited.”

    Yes, that was my thought also. Big effort, small return.

  77. john sanders on January 26, 2020 at 9:12 am said:

    And for what original aim or benefit, one might be excused for asking

  78. Mark Knowles on January 26, 2020 at 10:02 am said:

    JKP: I am more optimistic or confident regarding the extent of the results, though it does depend to some extent what one means precisely by the word “tangible” in this context.

  79. Mark Knowles on January 26, 2020 at 10:13 am said:

    John Sanders: My interest, though I can’t say others, is in the labels in the botanical section of the manuscript. These, I think are the most interesting labels in the manuscript, arguably with a few exceptions, such as those I have discussed elsewhere. The reason I find them interesting is that they are each adjacent to an often very specific drawing of a plant; most other labels are next to much more non-specific drawings. So the interrelationship or lack thereof of the botanical label words to the specific herbal text corresponding to same plant drawing may give insight into the nature of Voynichese. More broadly these interrelationship or lack thereof across the text may tell us something about Voynichese. So my interest in matching up the drawings has nothing to do with the drawings per se, but serves rather as a way of getting at possible relationships within the text as a whole.

  80. john sanders on January 27, 2020 at 12:57 am said:

    Mark Knowles: An admirable quest to be sure and your particular interest seems to have been shared historically by others of a scholastic bent looking to make like text comparisons as a means of unlocking some perceived linguistic code. This line of investigation does not coflict with those of us in the modern day creation camp, much of our evidence to that end being based upon various VM pictorialised sketches of possibly aberrant, post medieval make-up. You’ll appreciate that my own interests have little or nothing to do with your linguistic based decipherment objectives. Such futility bein way beyond my level of understanding, though very praiseworthy nonetheless.

    Sketches from the botanical and herbal sections are of course difficult to identify with or without labels such as has been proposed in the thread outline. My past references to the herbals deal mainly with posed life forms that portray explicit scenes reminicent of modern era taste, without any explanitory captions. In the main however, the majority of my modernist offerings are based purely on ready observations without need for labels, involving concepts of a known period e.g. the 80/81 folio depictions of a compas d’ epaisseur obstetric device of 19th century invention and a number of free standing, lined bathing pools with plumbed pipe connectors, of a type developed in Philadelphia around 1900.

  81. petetheb on January 27, 2020 at 7:51 am said:

    Johnno, I don’t where you’re getting this blarney from, but it certainly is educational.

  82. Peter M. on January 27, 2020 at 8:45 am said:

    I’m gonna have to disappoint you on the pipes and connections. These were around 1300. No Roman water pipes.
    In the castle construction of “castle construction in guedelon” the water pipes were an issue. And they look quite similar to the pipes in the VM.
    And with the birth forceps I am not so sure that it is one. Too pointy. There is no roast chicken on a spit.

  83. Vladimir Dulov on January 27, 2020 at 11:24 am said:

    Mark. My posts No. 47, 48 (correspondence of large and small plants), similar elements of small plants No. 55, 56, 60 will help you. (The same plant can be found in different recipes, but designated by its different elements)
    Coen G convinced me that the pattern could be a hybrid (application from different plants).
    Mnemonics – post number 62
    voynich ninja//thread-159-page-5.html

  84. I know where he gets his ideas, sometimes I think he’s going to be in there all day.

  85. john sanders on January 27, 2020 at 1:45 pm said:

    Peter M….No hint of medieval engineering in the depicted mid 19th century cast iron pipes with jointless/sleeveless tees and elbows, let alone the accompanying Victorian porcellan-ware bathing accessories. Likewise with our 1789 patent Jean Louis Beudelocque’s pelvimiter and it’s standout dangling measure stick; in the hands of a competent midwife nymph with her young narrow hipped nervous expectant mum standing by. As for the spa pools, try telling the designers of Philadelphia Athletic club that their fitted canvas lined, slat timber sided pool in f81r was standard fare in 1421. The sensual A. Deco style tree root configurations, which you conveniently forgot to mention would speak for themselves no doubt.

  86. Nick please don’t tell us.

  87. Rene: it’s an old Morecambe and Wise joke. Probably pre-WW2. 😉

  88. thepetetheb on January 27, 2020 at 9:16 pm said:

    He just keeps on popping out these choice nuggets, copiously, in an unending flow.

  89. john sanders on January 27, 2020 at 11:55 pm said:

    Close Nick; Lou Jordon ’47 would surely fit the bill, with his ‘Open the Door Richard’ hit. Catchy little number includes ‘…..open the door and let me in….’ etc but slightly risque ‘black’ humour which might not click with today’s scholarly elite!

  90. D.N. O'Donovan on January 31, 2020 at 3:11 pm said:

    thepetetheb,
    It’s normal. The pattern in most voynich productions is (a) get an idea (b) find things that seem to support the idea (c) begin stating the idea as fact needing neither documentation or attribution.

    Same method, different focus, for the ‘new world’ as for the ‘Germanic’ theorists and again for the ‘fake voynich’ theorists.

    What I like about the ‘fake voynich theorists’ is that when I ask them where they got this idea or that, or who exactly introduced some detail, they answer civilly, plainly and in detail. It’s a nice change from the sort who instantly adopt a pose of immense hauteur and convey the impression that to withhold an act of faith pending production of evidence is to fail in the ‘gentleman’ stakes. (I like some of the traditionalists who – like Nick – respond civilly to queries about sources, evidence and precedents.

    So while you mayn’t find the particular Voynich narrative to which Sanders adheres appealing, his standards are no lower than most and are no reason for a happy group bashing in public. I also think the ‘fake’ theory ill-founded and poorly stress-tested by its adherents, but the same is just as true for things asserted and devised to suit theories of the conservative type.

  91. john sanders on February 1, 2020 at 9:21 am said:

    O’Donovan: Hi D.N. Just to keep you in the loop hon. ‘thepeteheb’ and I are a tag team duo with a keen sense of maintaining humility and reverence to stamp out trollery, our main targets of shame being the intellectual blowhards and knowalls who can’t get through their miserable existence without reminding we simletons, of our lack in scholastic graces ie. essential providence, pr3cedence and sourcing claptrap…..W.O.W. Di, see you have a new logo for 2020 (year of the rat); mind giving us the attribution details and any particular reason for dropping the old ‘Dick at his desk’ intro that has served you so well, so long and dare I say it, most deservingly.

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