Today’s first Voynich quote was overhead yesterday by Bill Tozier in an Ann Arbor restaurant (I presume?):-
I’m gonna find some fascist architecture!
Hmmm… might this have been that rarest of things, a Cipher Mysteries reader caught in the wild? Better still, might it have been a CM reader happy to ‘fess up? The comments section is ready and waiting for you here. 🙂
Of course, there has already been a theory linking the Voynich Manuscript with Michigan (for the simple reason that there is a theory linking everything with the VMs, if you’re bothered to look long enough). Specifically, Jan Hurych emailed me back in May about the f116v michiton oladabas page, saying:-
I got it – “mich::” stands for Michigan, apparently where the first sunflower came from 🙂
Today’s last Voynich quote (again from an unknown author) popped up on Google just over a month ago, courtesy of Wisam Mohammed:
Discoveries may excite our blood but mysteries sustain our soul. When we’re strong and arrogant, mysteries remind us how little we know of God’s world. And when we are weak and desperate, they only encourage us to believe that anything is possible.
So… who wrote that, then? 🙂
I’m gonna find some fascist architecture!
Vytautas: I think I see jain pinnacles in the map. What do you think?
Not sure about fascist architecture, but there has been serious discussion about “fortification imagery” such as seen by migraine sufferers during migraine aura. IMHO you don’t see it like you do in Hildegard of Bingen’s work. The stars come closer to qualifying as phosphenes.
Vytautas – wow. That makes three of us. Any links to your own thoughts?
“Discoveries may excite our blood but mysteries sustain our soul. When we’re strong and arrogant, mysteries remind us how little we know of God’s world. And when we are weak and desperate, they only encourage us to believe that anything is possible.”
I just read this passage in ‘The Source’ by Michael Cordy.
Im new. Have absolutely no knowledge of this book. But my imagination and how i think. After watching a documentary on the history channel. And going onto the web to briefly search some details to the book. Now what im going to say may be completely off. But im going to take a shot in the dark to say that i believe that the vonich book. Two thing’s that i question. Is the paper and ink date back the same time line?. And i believe the person who written this book. Was a scientist and biology plant life scientist. A wizard brainiac who probably had the formula for healing or maybe something else. But i believe that he had a chemical break through in science when this person was breeding and mutates hybrid plant’s that are stronger and more effective. In the writing looks to me like a chart. And he labels each plant and date’s them as the are to the time of the formula that was created. Im thinking medicine that could’ve healed millions but was kept a secret. The mystery that i see is not in the text. But in the photograph that he took and drew it on paper to the best of his ability because he wasn’t quite the artist. But was creative enough to write out a formula for the kind of medicine and hybrid plant’s that could potentially have other connections.
Adrian Nieves 3rd: Hi Adrian, welcome to the world of the Voynich Manuscript. 🙂 You’re suggesting a lot of things that have been proposed in the past by all manner of people – in time, the big win will be finding a way to prove even one of them. It turns out that proof is really hard, no matter how much you try to pare back your assertions to the bare minimum: but why on earth should this be so difficult? Therein lies the biggest mystery, I guess. 😉
NP: “Why on earth should this be so difficult?” you put to naive novice Adrien Nieves 3rd….Answer might almost be deciphered from the contributor’s own suggestive handle, ie., 3rd rate Naivety….No mystery at all Nick!
If anybody wants to proof something he/she has to specify the axioms, the calculus and put on a statement to proof. What should be here on the left-hand side and the right-hand side of the equation?
I would leave ‘proofs’ in the realm of predicate logic and at most physics where an experiment with results within a sufficient sigma can proof or disprove a theory predicting a concrete physical quantity value.
And as for images alone – you know – take a painting of Kandinsky or whomever, Magritte, give an interpretation and proof it!
‘ceci n’est pas une pipe’ 😉
However, in my opinion, imaginable is something like a verification of a decryption method in relation to the plaintext language. Let me explain this in a separate paper later this year.
Darius – You have not studied the history of art, or looked very deeply into the difference between the modern and pre-modern ideas about the purpose of graphic forms. That’s fine. I haven’t troubled to study cryptology either.
But if you know nothing about a subject, it’s perhaps wiser to say nothing about it, or seek to know more.
Let me guess – you think that art is how an artist expresses their personal ideas and feelings, right? And that no-one’s interpretation of an image is any more true than any other because it’s all subjective personal response?
From which it should follow that there’s no such thing as valid description of any painting, sculpture or drawing and no difference between an image of Kali and one of the Virgin Mary.
The “it’s all subjective” theory is a-historical, irrational and anachronistic. It imposes on the past, and on other peoples, ideas which have only applied in industrialised societies – chiefly western ones – relatively recently.
“….therein lies the biggest mystery, I guess” offers N. Pelling, when puting the age old question of why proofs should be so difficult to come by, especially in that so many sharp intellectual minds keep offering up their wise counsel, all clear as the driven…., subject to exoected scornful ridicule by peer group travellers with similar grounding in confounding medieval manuscripts..
As for my own simple layman’s working class offering, here I am patiently holding aloft conclusive proof of shenanigans in the form of Dr. J. L. Bouveloque’s clever obstetric device as tabled in plain view on page f80r; complete with it’s tell tale patented measure stick circa 1789 and given King Louis’ Oyal assent, It surely offers proof at least of it’s post medieval origins that only the meekest amongst us might appreciate.
Diane, the post was about proofs and proving…
There are disciplines like math where we can reach a high consent about statements (theorems). Probably, you won’t find many people asserting there is a finite number of primes. Almost all would say these people didn’t understand the proof why there are infinitely many of them. We will never reach the same level of confidence and agreement regarding a decryption or a plaintext as result of that decryption and even less agreement we will establish when we take images on its own. That’s all about this post.
I hope that we can at least agree on this: the more pages are decrypted according to a well-defined decryption method and the more images are reasonable explainable or interpretable in relation to the plaintext the higher the probability of a correct global solution. This seems to be obvious but sometimes I think the opposite really happens – the more evidence the more unreachable are the people…
But your topic as such is very exciting. You think I’m a kind of a post-modernist regarding the art – the whole perception and reality is created in one’s head, there can’t be a common understanding anyway, because there isn’t a common reality at all? Of course not, I think there must be some common conceivability, otherwise you couldn’t talk about styles, schools, periods and epochs in art at all.
I think Magritte was like a fox, he fools people, a bit like our scribes. In German you can say ‘jemanden hinters Licht führen’ (to fool somebody) and he was playing with light very often. In the mentioned painting he created a double paradox. Did he lie about his image? So, he was a liar in word and true as painter? Or other way round – he deceived us with his image but was fair enough to say the truth as word. But can you be a liar and non-liar at the same time? You are right, I have not studied the history of art, but I’m so bold to interpret images – not only in the VMS.
Nick, Nick, Nick…No need to strain to link our beloved MS 408 to U Mich:
When the older part of what is now the Graduate Library was dedicated in 1920, the events included a display of manuscripts on loan from W. Voynich, including “By far the most important manuscript ever brought to America, however, is the extraordinary cipher manuscript of a work on The Secrets of Nature, profusely illustrated, and unquestionably dating from the thirteenth century. This manuscript has been the subject of extended study by various scholars, and it seems likely that Professor Newbold, of the University of Pennsylvania, has succeeded in finding the key to the cipher. It is probably the work of Roger Bacon, and may even be in his handwriting. It seems impossible that the various drawings in the manuscript could have been produced without the aid of a microscope; and if the text is deciphered. it may show that the microscope was invented by Bacon centuries before its later discovery and use.” (https://bookserver.archive.org/acquire/librarybuildingw00univrich.pdf)
The June 3,1921 _Michigan Daily_ article “MICROSCOPE AND TELESCOPE,
USED BY MEDIEVAL SCIENTIST” reported on a talk by Newbold (https://digital.bentley.umich.edu/midaily/mdp.39015071755719/1365)
Apparently U of M considered buying the Mss, but couldn’t afford it (https://www.voynich.ninja/thread-2836-post-34394.html).
Follow the breadcrumbs…
Darius,
I apologise for sounding exasperated. As a mathematician, your ways of thinking about what’s involved and how to resolve a problem are very, very different.
In maths, the proofs are just ways to test your method, given that a math problem is self-contained, limited in range, discrete and comes with set routines. Our problems don’t work like that, though it’s perfectly possible to know whether the answer to problems raised by a particular image, or group of images, are acceptable or plain wrong.
Not sure if the metaphor will work – but If maths problems are single-plane, art historical problems are geodesic. Voynich theories are the nearest model we have for the theory of parallel universes.
Everyone understands that people with no understanding of, or aptitude for, cryptography are annoying when the barge in with ideas compounded of total ignorance and flights of imagination – but don’t seem to understand that images in a problematic, six hundred years old manuscript aren’t a fun-and-games variation on the Rorschach tests.
Darius, if the subject really interests you you might possibly find something useful in the post I’m putting up tomorrow (May 15th).
“In maths, the proofs are just ways to test your method, given that a math problem is self-contained, limited in range, discrete and comes with set routines. ” There are many problems in maths problems that have never been solved and ‘set routines’ certainly don’t offer solutions for them. Thinking outside the box and doing what noone else has done is the only way to go about solving them
James,
Not sure if your remark is for Nick, Darius or me to reply to, but in Voynich studies I’ve often noticed that people who come to it as mathematicians and cryptographers and so on, place so much emphasis on ‘doing what no-one else has done/said’ that they’re ok while still working on trying to ‘crack’ the written text and address technical problems, but as soon as they try talking historical studies or inventing another theoretical narrative-as-model, using the manuscript’s images as illustration for their own storyline, they seem to lose all sense of (a) what *has* been said/done before and (b) the world of knowledge that exists beyond the Voynich bubble.
It’s an interesting phenomenon – one and the same person will be rational, logical and pretty objective when addressing the written part of the text, its statistical properties, and while commenting on others’ work, but the minute they turn to inventing quasi-historical storylines or speaking about the manuscript’s drawings, reasoning, rigor, an understanding of appropriate evidence, and the capacity for reasonable debate seem to vanish.
I’ve never quite been able to understand why, if one cryptographer points out an error in another’s calculations, the second says ‘Thanks’ and means it – but point out an anachronism in their theoretical narrative, or that it cannot explain e.g. absence of perspective, or the inappropriateness of a claimed match between two images, and the same person will fly into a rage, or ‘just ignore’.
I find the phenomenon fascinating, if counterproductive for the study as a whole.
I suggest only that people wanting to contribute to the study of this manuscript concentrate on areas where they can hope to shed light on some particular issue by applying existing competencies. Otherwise, as the history of the study shows, people competent in one area start imagining themselves competent in all and much nonsense is produced.
Diane, sorry to say that… but I think in math is almost nothing ‘single-plane’, the most is a deep intellectual flight which requires mental strength and discipline. I don’t know if somebody says ‘thanks’ when a serious flaw is found in his proof because this means that years of research were futile, sometimes you can repair your proof… here natural sciences are merciless – your way to the truth was wrong.
And if you work on a hard problem, sometimes you feel very lone, like the only man on a desert planet. Why don’t you share your intermediate results with others? Sometimes simply because to explain your way to others would at that stage cost more energy than simply to proceed further, sometimes because you know that others try to prove the same or develop a similar theory and you don’t want to place the ball on the penalty spot for someone who has only the last but decisive idea.
I close this with an anecdote. As Einstein was developing his general relativity theory, he struggled a lot with the mathematical foundations for his new ideas. He was not so gifted with math like with physics. David Hilbert, an ingenious mathematician, read about Einstein’s ideas and realised what Einstein needed (a mathematical term with a metrical tensor btw). There were already rumours, Hilbert will present a revolutionary new idea in math, which then as a consequence will lead to a new view on physics and on the universe. But Einstein gave meanwhile some lectures about his ideas in Berlin, even if they still weren’t properly founded as formalism. Later they worked together on that…
Darius, I’m not knocking mathematics or mathematicians who work on mathematical problems. I’m saying that it has been my experience that people naturally inclined towards mathematics and the pragmatic sciences are often very poor in acquiring the skills needed in my field.
With regard to the Voynich manuscript, for example, you see that so many presume the ‘problem’ is the manuscript, and have an idea their job in hand is to solve the manuscript, where if there is any one problem, it is our own ignorance – Voynich studies itself is the problem and it’s a whole complex of accumulated errors in basic premises, methodologies, ethics and more. Some of the problems are systemic – I expect you know the maxim that system error creates error exponentially.
More generally, I’ve simply found over the years that people naturally good at math imagine historical developments as if they were a logical ‘forward march’ where when you work at the level of primary documents what you find is more like an eightsome reel.
I’ve also found it much more difficult to get people naturally gifted in maths and technical subjects such as mechanics, robotics and so on, to grasp the reason that it is important to distinguish between an image and objects referenced within an image. Many are simply unable to grasp the matter of stylisics and cannot drop their assumption that at all times and in all places anyone who could draw or paint was expressing personal feelings and could use any style s/he liked.
I suppose the hardest of all maths-thinking habits to be undone is the one which leads a person to think that the aim is to get the ‘right’ answer and that if they get a ‘right answer’ that’s that whole item done and dusted.
I’m not sure why that should be so, but I’ve wondered occasionally if it hasn’t something to do with ideas about efficiency.
Classic ‘east is east and west is west’ scenarioo when a pair of experts advanced in two non alligned areas of expertise, are destined to remain at loggerheads in their attempts to advance their ego driven cases. Not a big problem for your average already confused Voynichero in coming to terms with, both party’s in the quest for overall intellectual supremacy being so far off topic as to render their arguments moot.
John –
(a) I don’t regard exchanging points of view as being at loggerheads and
(b) I can’t agree that a conversation between Darius and me, sharing this information about our experience in research, is fairly described as ego-driven.
I AM a bit doubtful, though, about your attempt to stop it by attempting to denigrate us, and in my opinion the mere fact of trying to shut down a conversation rather than contribute to it is pretty high-handed. That you’re doing it on a blog you neither own nor manage might well be described as an over-stepping the mark.
Some Voynich quotes:
“It is somewhat futile to try to decode any document without being able to put it into a context of time and place. It is time and place which give us our first clues to probable purpose and language. ” – Patrick Lockerby
“I have a problem with people who are not presenting data and methodology because I believe they are contributing to the bad reputation that surrounds the study of this manuscript.” – ‘Robin’ at the voynichninja forum.
“I believe that an essentially forensic approach is our only real hope of making progress” ~Nick Pelling, ciphermysteries.
“I have to admit that to the best of my knowledge no one has been able to find any point of connection with any other mediaeval [European] manuscript or early printed book. This is all the stranger because the range of [European] writing and illustration on the subject of the plant world from the early middle ages right through into the 16th and even 17th centuries is very limited”.
Brigadier John Tiltman.
PS – please don’t refer to me as an ‘expert’. It’s true that I’ve specialised, but even in that smaller field are colleagues past and present more acute and more experienced than I.
D.
D. Claim of denigration on my part is a tad severe if you don’t mind me saying so but, if that what it takes to extract an educated response to my own albeit KISS origins of VM, then so be it.
Brigadier General John Tiltman. He was certainly a good warrior, but here in this complicated case of ours. It burned like salami paper. This is because this general did not know the Czech language. And also Jewish substitution. The manuscript is very complex. Otherwise, honor his memory for his bravery and efforts to decipher the text of the manuscript.
In my humble opinion, no general, corporal, major, or sergeant will ever be able to understand the text of a manuscript.
Shame on you Prof. Josef, you forgot all about one of your very best and cunning linguists in ‘Good Soldier Svejk’ who, unlike ‘Brig’ Tiltman MC, was a Czech speaker of some note who reluctantly played for the losing team in WW1. Czech author Jaroslav Hasek wrote a good yarn based on this middle aged soldier’s fine humour, simple logic for solving difficult problems and his utmost respect for those with contrary points of view.
While you are all here, is it heliocentric or geocentric ?
Meton of Athens: Tychonic (geoheliocentric) not good enough for you? It’s clearly the best of both worlds, I’m sure you’d agree (had you lived 2000 years later). :-p
@ John Sanders. Dear colleague. I just wanted to say that when the manuscript is written in the old Czech language. So no one will succeed in deciphering it. I can write to you here that find out how the author expressed himself and what words he used is a long run. Further. Everyone is trying to stuff the manuscript into Italy. Why ? Are Marci, Tepenec, Bares and others Italian? No no no. They are Czechs. So where was the manuscript? In Italy ? No no no. He was in the Czech kingdom.
so, when it is written in many of its manuscripts: I write in Czech. Or it is written there: Czech words. So everyone who would like to succeed in decoding should know the Czech language. That’s logical, isn’t it?
It is very good that a colleague you know Master Hašek and his classics. Thumbs up.
Diane, many things you write about mediaeval drawings, proportions, dissimilarities etc. are good observations, as far as I can judge. In my opinion, an interpretation of the VMS-images without any text understanding will be mostly impossible. I think you don’t claim that but point at the need to embed them into the right context (cultural, technical, timely, etc.). Here I agree completely. From the folios I reviewed (take the plant folios) I see the images as a kind of confirmation of the plaintext. The images are interpretable in a supportive way with respect to the text. We have symbolism in them, which is clear cultural-, technical- and time-dependent and for me the big cultural framework around this symbolism is the Hebrew bible – it’s not apparent, the scribes tried to obscure the most obvious – but you can find these connections (e.g. the withering leaves, the stone seeds, young grapes, …) and the adequate citations from Isiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, etc.
What I can’t assess (and don’t want to do) is the psychoanalysis behind Voynich studies and motivations of people who partake on these studies to do this or that and to keep back this or that. But it seems to me that some are so deeply embroiled in figures founded on doubtful, questionable fundaments – like the Laokoon-group with no chance to move forward.
In my view, what emerges from the obscure is a text which couldn’t be more exciting – a controversy or rather a dispute about the right way to the Father… A dispute over centuries where the mediaeval orthodox, dogmatic and Irenäus-influenced Europe reacts to an ancient, knowledge-oriented, gnostic script – on one side the opinion that nobody will be able to add any important new findings to the knowledge as everything essential to say and to conceive is already said in the written testimony and the canonical gospels and doubts about their completeness is simply heresy (expressed in the short one-line comments), on the other addresses and teachings, which show thirst for knowledge or even more – express the obligation for everyone who is talented and eligible to climb the knowledge mountain to find new knowledge and to teach it – to climb high enough to oversee the landscape and see the light, the light of Fathers glory.
Why did they bother to preserve these words? I don’t know! In my opinion they burned the originals or copies of them. Can be they were afraid to destroy something completely what they still secretly ascribed to the apostles or early church fathers…
Who knows what the further folios still conceal, might be we will find out if they had the geo-, heliocentric or Tychonic view of the universe.
…to overlook the landscape…
Darius, I think it might have been better to post your comment at my blog, rather than using NIck’s. This isn’t about Voynich quotes, is it?.
I spent my spare time, except during a sabbatical year, working through this manuscript, from mid-2008, publishing summaries of that work as it progressed. I did that until 2017, when I tired of the way that a couple of persons whose ambition is greater than their ability, attempt to make up the difference by plagiarism, and attempt to conceal the plagiarism by slandering any scholar whose work they mine for what they call ‘ideas’.
So I’ve long ago answered most of those points you bring up.
Yes, I do think it more likely than not that the written- and the pictorial- texts are related, but we don’t know that. We have no evidence which proves it true, except for the labels written across the emblems now filling the calendar diagrams.
Why people repeat, without thinking it through, that idea that you can’t understand pictures unless you’ve got writing to explain them, is something I really can’t understand.
Think about it. Do you need labels and explanatory writing to tell you that a carpet is a carpet, or a cup is a cup, or that the designs on a Persian carpet represent flowers?
When you walk through the pre-modern galleries of a great museum, do you find you can’t make any sense of any image you see unless you read the labels?
And if you really think that – do you think the people for whom those pictures were made needed someone to explain the image?
Are you saying that non-literate people can’t make images?
Are you suggesting that information can’t be transmitted *except* through writing? If you think that, you might take time to consider the Nebra disk.
There’s a huge difference between someone’s saying, “the images can’t be understood without written explanation” and “I can’t read the images…”
It’s not the manuscript’s fault if people living in a different time and with their own habits and assumptions can’t understand it. It’s *their* fault if they can’t or won’t do the work needed to understand its pictures.
I don’t mean the various exercises in historical fantasy which have bedeviled Voynich studies since 1912 – fiction don’t become true just because it looks internally-consistent.
I mean, approaching images in this manuscript as people normally would with a manuscript containing matter of unknown origin. That’s what I did, and do. It is hard work, even for people who come with a fair background. But I find it interesting.
Darius,
On one thing we agree:
“.. it seems to me that some are so deeply embroiled in figures founded on doubtful, questionable fundament[al]s … no chance to move forward”.
It’s with the dubious fundamental assumptions of Voynich writers past and present that my blog ‘Voynich revisionist’ is concerned. That’s its whole raison d’etre.
Darius: I guess what D.N. O’Donovan was trying to explain is that ‘a picture paints a thousand words’, which is a darn sight easier than having a full dissertation to work through to the same end, don’t you think?
In books with picture stories for young children, there are usually only pictures without text. Nevertheless, they are easy to understand. It is not surprising, it was also written by adults for children.
Let’s turn it around and let a toddler write a picture story. Would an adult understand it just as easily?
Since I assume that the VM pictures were drawn by adults, I probably shouldn’t look too far away. Especially if the topic (medicine) is given.
Since it doesn’t look like a Psalter, I shouldn’t try to look for religious texts either, even if there should be such.
Then there are the images with the note……without words. Also easy to understand.
Translated with http://www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)
John – what I’m actually saying is that what is understandable in one place and time may not be, in another.
In terms of western manuscripts and books, image was regarded as ancillary to written text, and hence the current assumption by a predominantly western audience that all images are optional, and mere illustration.
The same relative priority doesn’t apply always and everywhere – and may not apply to not in the case of the Vms. To suppose that *all* images need written text before they could be understood is way over the reasonable limit.
Diane: the layout of the VM text and accompanying images, undeniably point to the artistic affects having been applied prior to application of the glyph line detail, in such a manner as to convey a relationship between them. My thinking suggests this may have been a deceptive ruse designed to challenge a class of public school educators for their attempt at decryption by traditional means. Authorship of the hoax being of course generally ignored proponents of futuristic tutoring methods of teaching more suited to a needs of the new era.
“And if you really think that – do you think the people for whom those pictures were made needed someone to explain the image?”
Diane, John your posts inspired me to ask myself a simple question: for whom were these pictures made? I don’t think for the inner circle of the scribes or people who received the key, as they understood the message of the script, they could read it, better or worse. Non-initiates shouldn’t read it at all, they should be deceived. So, the only group of whom I can imagine is us! Some people in the future who try to decode it. Don’t stone me for this speculation but I think the images should help to understand and to confirm the text. I’m not saying that the pictures couldn’t be understood before the decryption at all, but if so conceived, the scribes over-estimated our ability to put them into the proper context. You know, I think the framework (might be not all over as the script seems to be a compilation) is the Hebrew bible and they probably couldn’t imagine a time in the future, where the understanding of the bible stories would be so poor as in our times (with the exception of the bible researchers and some preachers with wide knowledge but who never heard about the VMS). So, you’re right, Diane, you can walk through the pre-modern galleries and make sense of the images but mostly a deep knowledge about the cultural background is prerequisite. That’s obvious:
“I’m actually saying that what is understandable in one place and time may not be, in another.”
One example from the folio 1r – the weirdos! We all see something like a bird, which try to take off, but what should this pictogram mean? If you know, that in sabbatical years, among others, releasing of the bird stock was a Hebrew custom, you can probably assume this beforehand (before you know the text). If your text reports about events from the schmittah-year 70 CE then you can take it as confirmation, or other way round, if you start with the text. Ok, that’s my personal view on these weirdos.
Btw, I put my decryption of the entire first passage of 1r on my website. The text, as I interpret it, is surprising and spectacular (unfortunately without an image), if not to say hot. I have used some modern terms and definitions in my interpretation to crystallize out the described conception. It’s clear, these terms didn’t exist in the ancient world (in the medieval time neither) – but they make the concept comprehensible. I would appreciate your comments.
Darius: The two seagulls, top left marginal indents of f1r, first aforesaid being used as logos wide since 1910 and oft pictured in VM commentary, presents as being a full feathered bird in flight; Whilst his mate below, missing it’s tail feathers and so never ever popular with fussy Voynicheros, gives every indication by the looping effect above, that it’s spiraling to earth. Some may see the bird as having been brought down by a good 15th century slingshot exponent, other realists opting for the blast from a modern day shotgun. I’d be most reluctant to put money on it either way however.
John,
Images are not ‘artistic effects’ – these are coloured drawings.
Although within much of Latin Europe (to keep just to Latin Europe) the formal custom was for the page to be ruled out by the scribe who would, at that time, assign the position and place for the pictor’s images by creating virtual boxes.
Next, the scribe laid down the written part of the text, and then the pictor was obliged to fit the wanted illustrations within the assigned space. The written word certainly did have priority over the drawings in that environment.
However, while the practice of first ruling out the page (sometimes using ruled lines, sometimes impressed lines etc.) was a near-invariable order within western, Christian Europe, there are exceptions, such as the occasional insubordination of an illustrator (I’ve noted examples in a couple of southern herbals) and in earlier Spain we find works where the images take priority over the text. One notable example here are pages from copies of Beatus’ Commentary on the Apocalypse.
Where the Voynich fifteenth century folios – we can no longer speak of a fifteenth century manuscript – differ from the norms of western European Christian works is that there is only one detail where any ruling out is evident and since there is also no sign of its text-block having been trimmed back as might happen in re-binding, we must conclude that both the priority given image over text, and the absence of ruling out argue against first origin for the material in works of western Christian Europe.
,
Note – the recent codicological studies include immensely valuable codicological research undertaken by Wladimir Dulov.
To find this reversal of priorities with absence of ruling out, and with inclusion of (pacePelling) both quinion and septenion quires and fold-ins of a kind unparalleled in western European Christian works strongly suggests when added to imagery illegible by the conventions of western Christian medieval art and a script and written texts also illegible in those terms, that what we are seeing is more likely material copied from external sources than some extraordinarily convoluted thinking from a fifteenth-century European.
And of course we have Georg Baresch’s letter of in which, as I read it, he is insisting rather than hypothesising that the matter had been gained by some good soul who went east and collected it.
I can imagine inventing a cipher, even with imaginary glyphs, but I can see no reasonable scenario in which anyone would envisage – let alone do – something as weird as inventing a new codicology and a new visual language used in all but but a few images. The ones which do speak the language of medieval western Christian art are, naturally enough, the ones on which have proven most instantly attractive to people expecting images speaking that language: the ‘castle’, the emblems used to fill the centres of the month-folios, the odd image among the plant-pictures (notably folio 9v) and some details added to the back o the Voynich map. Oh, and in my opinion folio 57v which in my opinion might even have been added by Athanasius Kircher – but I won’t explain again here why I think so.
Like the universe, these drawings are not only stranger than you imagine, they are beyond what can be imagined.
Hence not guesses-as-theory, but research, is most helpful.
Diane: let me enlighten you; The word ‘images’ and the phrase ‘artistic effects’ are alligned in that they describe the very same application, no ifs or buts. Time to shake that greater than thou petty nit picking nonsense and get with the program mate!
John, the spiralling down seagull is good, but do you see the weapon involved? There is this third weirdo-brother, not nearly so popular as these both – a bit more confusing – at the end of the first line (for me it’s the beginning as I have this right to left drive). The pale piece to the right of the ‘2’ – I can guarantee this is a slingshot. At least I can see, from which corner this deadly shot came 😉
”the matter had been gained by some good soul who went east and collected it”
Diane, I didn’t know, that Baresch was aware of it, interesting. Came this information from Marci, Kircher? Hence, they knew about the provenience. My scenario is a place in the east, where the compilation survived over centuries being copied a couple of times to avoid decaying and being brought to Italy from the east in the very last time the east still existed (from Christian perspective): Saloniki, Constantinople… (?)
I agree about 57v (not to be a part of the original corpus) – seem to be conclusions and notes about grammar and enunciation of words, probably made by the scribes or even later.
Karl, I have seen your remarks, that there are not enough glyph repetitions in Voynich vords. My method/alphabet delivers an explanation for it. I put it as one point in my EVA critics. In my alphabet there are two (or even three) different glyphs representing the same letter. This applies however only to a couple of letters. I called them capital/small glyphs though capital glyphs don’t occur at the beginning of vords only, like capital letters in German substantives or in personal names, but can occur at the second-last or last position as well (I read right to left!) – then as gallows. So EVA-e (ל/ד d/l), but EVA-f (ל L) or EVA-p (ד D) – sometimes as gallows set inside a double c connected with a dash. E. g. folio 1r, 4th passage, 1st line, 3rd vord from the right:
יֶלֶד רֳאִי עַדָא yeled ro’iy aDa’
(first occurrence of ’d’ in this vord -> EVA-e, second occurrence of ’d’ -> EVA-p). In Aramaic both are the same letter.
Darius –
Basic references here
http://philipneal.net/voynichsources/
Neal translates as man ‘of quality’ – it doesn’t mean an aristocrat.
Darius –
You say,
“My scenario is a place in the east, where the compilation survived over centuries being copied a couple of times to avoid decaying and being brought to Italy from the east in the very last time the east still existed (from Christian perspective): Saloniki, Constantinople… (?)”
I’d be interested to see the research that has led you to that conclusion. Longer-term Voynicheros will know, of course, that this was the conclusion I reached from the cumulative historical and analytical studies whose summaries I ha published over nearly a decade (2008-2017) beginning from a paper on folio 25v which Nick kindly hosted before I began my own blog.
Diane, thanks for this link. Baresch speculated:
”it is my guess that the whole thing is medical, the most beneficial branch of learning for the human race apart from the salvation of souls”
Well, I’m afraid the second as true. However, ‘the man of quality’ seems to be an anonymous man, could be meant as ‘a wise man’ or ‘a noble man’ or both.
Research – a big word, but here is my small speculation. I see the original compilation as early (1st CE) Christian writings (putting aside which group exactly Essenes, Ebionites, early Jerusalem Christians from the Communion of James the Just…). Under this assumption, the compilation was very likely a part of the library of Pamphilos or Origenes and well known to Eusebius. So, take Caesarea as a putative spot where these texts were put together. Eusebius was a great admirer of Constantine of whom he wrote 4 books. Partly as a kind of gratitude? Constantine confirmed him as orthodox as he got in trouble and danger to be excommunicated (for what a misconduct, for Chistsake?). As the caretaker of the library of Pamphilos it’s thinkable he put some of the scripts into custody of ‘good man’ having Constantine’s heart so that the compilation came into possession of Byzantium (wherever exactly). There it remained for centuries until a precarious time came, but a noble, wise and brave man, a man of duty showed up and was asked for a solution…
Darius, you are absolutely right that there are potential explanations for the relatively small number of glyphs which appear repeated in the text (both linguistic and/or cryptographic). I’ve mostly been pointing it out for the implications it has/constraints it puts on verbose cipher theories.
Darius – Baresch admits he’s guessing about the purpose being medical.
I think that the general absence, in images in the VMs, of conventions governing expression in Christian art, western or near-eastern, mean theories of a wholly Christian origin and context would be impossible maintain if submitted to independent, external specialists for review.
To know what early Christian-related writings were circulating before the official canon(s) were established, I can recommend
Willis Barnstone (ed.), The Other Bible.
I’ve checked to see if it’s still in print and find it is being offered through Amazon.
Baresch didn’t know much. He was such a striver who wandered like various experts and academics, engineers, world experts and others. A scientist, historian and expert should work harder to study and then perhaps solve the whole thing to the satisfaction of all the scientists involved. So more work and more effort. Leave Bareš, it was zero.
Prof, yes, it seems Baresch only relied on the skills of Kircher, his letters leave the impression of helplessness…
Diane, thanks for the recommendation. Before Nag Hamadi we hadn’t really much gnostic Christian material attributed to the 1CE origins and what we have of Christian writings before 70CE in general is attributed to Paul (Mark is already post-70 CE – opinion of the majority of the researchers). Naturally, I know about all the speculations about ’Q’uelle in Aramaic, but to say this: so far, I don’t see indications we have here something like the assumed Q (but we have still hundreds of unknown folios). If it existed at all, Q must have been a collection of short sayings of Jesus, similar to the gnostic Gospel of Thomas.
And this: the eastern orthodox churches in their much more gnostic tradition than the western (when you visit a Greek monastery, like one of the Meteora monasteries, you see still today all the pictures and frescos of the big philosophers, mathematicians – Pythagoras, Aristoteles, Socrates – in wedded unity with the apostles and the saints, no problem to incorporate them into the spiritual heritage of the church) were surly for centuries in possession of scripts, of which Rome wasn’t aware. Even when the schism came first in the 11th century, they had for centuries nothing to exchange except the view in the dispute of the role of the Son in the Creed of Nicaea. I think, some scripts were kept secret from the crowd, but still had influence on their elites and the adepts.
I know, what I’m saying about the content of the VMS sounds unbelievable and would be a gigantic sensation – I think what we experience now is the almost perfect calm before the storm (let it last so for some months more). At the end the ”Hagia Sophia” will require her tribute.
So we should expect a perfect thunder about Christmas 2033 ?
Prof – on the balance of evidence, I must differ from your assessment of Baresch. He did strive – to get the best possible opinions from informed persons (as e.g. opinions about the plant-pictures from contemporary German botanists, and opinion on the script from Kircher. If the conjecture is correct that it was he who bequeathed the ms to Marci, then he also spent many years labouring to understand the ms himself. And if anyone had learned something of its prior history I’d expect it would be the Jesuit scholars of Prague, and perhaps of the university in Rome. He was certainly in a far better position to have an informed opinion than anyone else.
Like you, I was led to believe that he was insignificant and his letter less important than Marci’s as historical evidence. What brought me back to according his views greater weight, by far, was that my investigation of the manuscript’s images kept bringing me back to that letter, by one, then another, then another avenue. But without that, in the normal way, we’d still give greater weight to someone who had held, and studied, the manuscript for decades over someone who had not.
Diane, an impressive analysis of the image on 85r (part) and the conclusion of the south-orientation of the “map”! You also mentioned 57v and my estimation is, you are right, that this folio doesn’t belong to the original material to be encrypted. But more about it further down.
My provenience story (Eusebius -> Byzantium) is for the moment a hypothesis, so take it for now as nothing else but the usual standard Voynich research outcome – a pure speculation, not supported by the text or image.
I decided to publish nothing less than complete passages – VMS blogs are already sufficiently full of disjoined word offerings. So, with the second passage I finished the decryption of 1r. All 4 passages are available in the docs 10…13 – a terrific, long text full of details (all 4).
Now 57v, I have two questions regarding the image. The text in the inner circle seems to be a compilation of, so to say, “project rules” (do this, don’t do that during the encryption), so the recipient for these rules was obviously the scribe team. Could it be, that the 4 figures in the inner circle symbolise the project leaders pointing at the rules to abide by the team? I see yellow colour in their hairs, were they blond? And what means the white stone in the hand of the women? So, these are 3 questions! And see the EVA-a glyphs in the inner circle, which are very clearly not EVA-a – a glyph without representation in EVA, a heavily used glyph…
Darius, the drawing you mean is one of those drawn on the *back* of the Voynich map. I concluded that that drawing (not the map) was designed south-oriented.
If you’d like me to reply to your comments about my posts, perhaps you should consider making your comments there.
btw – I understand you mean ‘impressive’ as a compliment, but I’d hope to enlighten, and even more to assist by such contributions those – any- who are seriously interested in this manuscript.
I called it “map” because I associate every depiction of cardinal directions with a kind of “map”. Sorry for the confusion.
Diane. German botanist? How can a German botanist understand a manuscript when the manuscript is not a botany. Do you know what is called a pictorial suggestion? You see a symbolic plant in the manuscript and you immediately begin to think that the manuscript is a herbarium. But everything is different than you hope.
Marci, Kircher, Bares? You can get that out of your head. Unnecessary work. The only thing that can help you is. That you will read well what I write to you. Otherwise you will still be at the beginning. As you really are. What does a particular image on a page in the manuscript mean? So, of course, it is written in the text of the page.
Specifically, for example, as Darius writes here, page 57. For example, it says this: My Brothers. (4 men). So the author drew her 4 brothers for you there. And of different ages.
Eliška had 4 brothers. 🙂