Last week (3rd February 2011) saw the US premiere of “The Book That Can’t Be Read”, the long-awaited National Geographic channel airing of the recent ORF documentary on the Voynich Manuscript. Though it prominently features the benign beardiness of everyone’s favourite Voynich expert Rene Zandbergen, for a pleasant change the star of the show is undoubtedly the manuscript itself, with the Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library’s acquiescence to radiocarbon dating of the vellum the shining jewel in the Austrian documentary makers’ crown. If you missed it, it’s showing again shortly (10th February 2011, 4PM): it’s a fairly up-to-the-minute introduction to the VMs, so you should definitely fetch a mid-sized bag of toffee popcorn and settle down on your sofa for this one.
Interestingly, I don’t know if they significantly re-edited the programme for an American audience, but I was pleased – no: delighted, actually – to see some scans of the manuscript the film researchers had taken dotted among the set of low resolution Voynich promo photos on the NatGeo webpage (all © ORF). For example, slide #11 has the infamous erased signature on f1r (the frontmost page of the manuscript), which – with a bit of low-impact Gimp-fu – looks like this:-
Voynich Manuscript f1r, erased signature
Having long ago slaved to produce not-quite-as-good versions of this from the RGB scans, it’s a pleasure to finally see this in its non-visible ultra-violet glory: to my eyes, it reads “Jacobj à Tepenece / Prag”, but I’ll happily defer to palaeographers working from higher resolution scans.
Slide #12 contains another UV scan, this time of my personal favourite piece of Voynich marginalia – the tiny letters at the top of f17r. Despite its ridiculously low resolution, what should be clear from the image (again, slightly Gimp-enhanced) is that the Voynich letters at the end (“oteeeol aim”, as per The Curse of the Voynich pp.24-25, 30) are an integral part of the writing, just as I claimed when I first saw them in 2006. The point being that if you accept that, then it becomes very likely that this and (by implication) the “michiton” marginalia on the end page were added not by a later owner, but by the encipherer of the VMs himself/herself. All fascinating stuff that, in my opinion, cuts deep to the heart of the VMs’ historical nature, but I’d be a little surprised if the documentary has been edited to cover it.
The "meilhor aller" marginalia from f17r of the Voynich Manuscript
Finally, the last photo of immediate interest to Voynich researchers is slide #13, which shows a close-up of the exposed quire bindings (i.e. with the manuscript’s cover partially removed). This kind of view offers a lot of information that you can’t normally see, because the bifolios are so firmly bound together that you can’t get at all close to the sewing holes in the spine of each quire – which is good for conservation, but bad for codicology.
View of the Voynich Manuscript's binding
Here, the features that particularly intrigue me are the faint writing on the inside cover (bottom left arrow); the non-continuous line of marks across the quire spines (mid-right arrow); and the many redundant sewing stations (needle holes from earlier bindings, indicated by short red underlines). These inexorably point to the manuscript’s complex reordering and rebinding history, i.e. where its quires and bifolios have danced a complicated quadrille over time to end up in their final order. What I don’t really understand is why codicologists don’t have entire conferences devoted to the Voynich Manuscript, because to my eyes it is surely the Everest of codicology – a complex, multi-layered artefact whose secret inner history can only practically be revealed through prolonged, collaborative, non-textual forensic analysis. And yet it’s only me who seems to have published anything substantial on it!
Anyway, set your PVRs to stun record and let me know what you think of the Naked Science documentary. Hopefully the documentary makers will now celebrate the occasion by releasing more information,data and photos on the Voynich Manuscript that they took during their research (hint: high quality versions of the above three images would be a very good start)!
In the Image referenced on http://www.alchemywebsite.com/baths_pozzuoli_voynich.html, referred to as a balnealogical image with similarities to the Baths of Pozzuoli, I see a very different image altogether.
It seems to me to be a pretty clear depiction of the female reproductive system. The “ladies” would be the eggs. One can see the eggs/ladies coming from the small opening at the bottom (the narrow end of the fallopian tube?) to move toward the vagina, repleat with all of its tiny, delicate folds and an awaiting penis and the “dawn of life”.
The fallopian tube itself is drawn with reasonable accuracy to the left of the uterus. While the position seems accurate if the direction is understood as top down, it doesn’t exactly fit if the flow of eggs is bottom up. However, this is, like all other drawings, not an attempt at exact representation but rather at an alligorical representation in which case, the two “main characters” are placed according to importance, not anatomical reality.
Gary: Mary D’Imperio (“An Elegant Enigma”, section 5.1.2) noted in 1976 that Newbold & Kent pointed out this parallel in 1928, and that “This seems to be a frequent reaction on the part of modern students to the naked female figures on folios 75 ff.” To be precise, Newbold discussed gynaecological parallels with f78r, f84r, f86v, and part of the nine rosette page (Plates V, VI, VII and VIII, all in Chapter III), but I’m sure you get the basic idea.
The problem is that though there are numerous possible parallels between the VMs and other things, which one of them is the right one? And even if that one is indeed right, how does it help us decipher the text?
*** Hola Nick: Es muy interesante la imagen del F17R, hay alguna información al respecto? o teorías?
*** Hi Nick: It’s very interesting picture of the F17R, there is some information? or theories?
VMS author was a genius in knowing people psychology. Especially I like his mastery manipulation with scale of things… 🙂
Sergi: apart from being discussed at length in The Curse of the Voynich (Chapter 2), nobody seems to see how important this is. The f17r marginalia contains (what appears to me to be) French or Occitan as well as Voynichese in the same hand, which I think is a pretty solid indication that it was written by the author. This further implies that the same person wrote the marginalia on f116v (as this also contains some apparently emended Western European text and Voynichese) and f66r. But what do these all say? This would be a fantastic knot for a careful palaeographer to unravel… but we’d probably need better scans (preferably multispectral) and nobody wants to get involved. 🙁
I haven’t seen this on TV. Does this version include the young Leonardo da Vinci (which was cut in the shorter German version on ORF)?
The book being the main star of the programme is how it should be. The best part for me were the microscope shots. All recordings were in HD and so was the ORF transmission. How is this on Natl. Geographic?
W.r.t. the Tepenec signature, the image is still not the best one could possibly get. Otherwise, one could clearly see that the text below the signature does not read ‘Prag’ but ‘No X’ where X looks to be 19, but this is hard to read. This ‘No’ looks the same as on all books that bear his signature. The table I have so far includes:
4: (Jacobj à Tepenecz) Dialectica Aristotelis, in the Czech Nat.Library
7: (Jacobi Synapij inscriptus Anno 1602) MS kept in Strahov Monastery
18: (Jacobi Synapij anno 1602 inscriptus) Opus Ruralium Commodorum, Strahov
19?: (Jacobj à Tepenece) Voynich MS
40: (Jakuba z Tepeneze) Knihy M.Albertana, Karls Univ. Prague
Rene: I haven’t seen the documentary yet, I’ll post here as soon as I do – thanks for the clarification on the signature, much appreciated! 🙂
It’s nice also to see the picture of the Voynichese text on top of f17r. It isn’t that clear, but this is the first picture of it to my knowledge. I also think it’s relevant, though I’m not quite as excited about it as you are, Nick.
But I know the feeling. I am really intrigued (and am apparently alone in this) about the pencil mark you pointed at in the above picture. This is actually visible in the Beinecke scans and says J1022.
Alexander Sperl once made the very intriguing suggestion that this could be a ‘Blotius signature’. This would place the MS firmly in Rudolphinian Vienna. However, the style isn’t quite right and Blotius skipped the letter J….
Since there are other MS’s that have J991 and J992 and these were also bought by Voynich at the Mondragone, they would either be entries from Voynich, or from the Jesuits before him. The J990 and J991 did not pass through Kraus.
Voynich tended to use codes like a4567, so my best guess that this is from either the Mondragone or the Collegium Romanum time of the MS.
Rene: you’re definitely not alone about the pencil mark, I was going to chase this up this evening but you got there first. 🙂 Right now, I’m thinking Jesuit rather than Blotius, but it would be nice to know for sure…
*** Nick: Hay otras pruebas de occitano o catalán en el manuscrito, por ejemplo en el zodiaco.
La Corona de Aragón tenia en 1450: Este de España, Baleares, Corcega, Cerdeña, Sicilia, Napoles, Rosellón, Atenas…
Pienso que el texto es catalán – nápoles.
*** Nick: There is other evidence of Occitan or Catalan in the manuscript, for example in the zodiac.
The Crown of Aragon had in 1450: Eastern Spain, Baleares, Corsica, Sardinia, Sicily, Naples, Roussillon, Athens …
I think the text is Catalan – Naples.
Sergi: though the zodiac month names are indeed apparently in some kind of Occitan, there’s no evidence directly linking them with Voynichese – in fact, they give the impression of having been written by a different scribe with a different quill in different ink. I find f17r so interesting because it seems to directly link one of the marginalia hands with the VMs’ author.
*** Nick: Tienes razón.
Pero, del autor original? esta borrado, pero no se ha escrito encima.
Yo no tendría esperanzas. 🙁
*** Nick: You’re right.
But, the original author? this deletion, but not written over.
I would have no hope. : (
Hi, Images in the middle of circular diagrams.
They express what the alchemist did great work.
Sagittarius = Ceratio
Piscess = Projectivo
Gemini = Fixatio
Weight = Sublimatio
atd.
Rene: You say, “The best part for me were the microscope shots.”
Really? That means a lot to me, being my contribution to the show. They used my suggestion of the Carter’s diatom/VMs “wheel”, but made their own graphic. Here was the original it is based on:
http://www.santa-coloma.net/voynich_drebbel/diatom_overlay.jpg
They also used my sunflower “root” crop, but compared it to a pollen, which I did originally (and showed Klaus and Andreas), and not the marine organism from Carters, which is on my site. I consider the latter a better comparison… almost exact, in fact, color and all.
This aspect seems to have interested several people already, as I have gotten a smattering of emails asking about microscopic organisms in the Voynich… three of them did not realize it was me in the show, but came to the VMs-net, and my sites. The point is, this aspect of the show seems to strike a chord with people.
It is all very interesting, also, considering any microscopic illustrations should be impossible there. So for some time, long before me, and now, this seems to be something about the Voynich people find hard to ignore.
“All recordings were in HD and so was the ORF transmission. How is this on Natl. Geographic?”
I do not get HD in my home, nor do I have an HD television. It seems to be 720p, or was for me. It seemed very sharp and colorful, nonetheless. And also, Edith Sherwood’s interview is back in the show, as you expected it would be.
Oh Rene… I just realized you mean the microscope shots of the inks and so on…
Nevermind.
And yes, they were really wonderful… extreme closeups of that sort of detail is something we are otherwise missing. There are several small details I wish I could look at like this, but it would of course never be allowed.
Sorry Rich, yes, your second guess is the better one….
Well watch it again, and you’ll get it right this time! JK, Rich.
Nick,
Sorry to be picky, but the needlemarks on the quires dont necessarily indicate a single book which has had its parts reordered. It might, equally, indicate a book gained by extracting bits from other books, and sending them off together to the binder, to serve as a mini-encyclopaedia of the common kind.
I assume we know that the pencil lettering isn’t a binder’s mark?
Diane: I think the evidence that the VMs was written for a single reason or client (unique cipher system) in a few bursty phases (Herbal A, Herbal B, etc), then reordered (multiple ordering inconsistencies) and rebound (multiple binding stations) paints a good enough picture of its construction. I’m pretty sure the pencil lettering was added much later, though can’t remember a reference for this, sorry!
I must keep track of my outofdate questions; I miss your responses all the time.
Thanks for this. Not sure I’m persuaded but I see what you mean, I think.
Nick
someone mentioned recently a pencil-mark on f.86v.
I’ve hunted for it, but .. Any ideas about it?
Any comments on my Trotula idea? Was this idea suggested before? Couldn’t this be close? I understood that doctors also needed to have astrological knowledge? Could this be some later thing, but unreadable because this kind of info was in some taboo sphere? Is that the meaning? Or was it overwritten later in mnemonics to calculate Eastern date? Does it matter for this n00b to try to make sense against you smart people? Or should I stop?
All I can say, if I had your most respected knowledge, I would try to make logic sense of the VMS. I’ve read computer-language models and much more, but isn’t it more simple to find similar pieces from those days and compare them to the VMS?
I would suggest two ways of investigating:
1. Assuming they mean numbers, calculate Eastern date and make sense of the cipher disk and compare it with other calculations.
2. Assuming the text is text, and related to the drawings, it is very likely to have some trotula-origin, and I would compare it with similar works from those days.
I believe, that in this way, you will come up with a certain word that must have that particular meaning, and thus have a key to translate the rest.
Do I make sense? Or should I leave this website forever? Haha I don’t mean to eehm.. bother your investigations… Just tried to help… My next reaction will be after I translated it. So never ;-))
Has anyone ever found a map of Europe in the Voynich archives? I’m thinking particularly of one marked with letters of the alphabet, there being other evidence to suggest that Voynich referred to the locations of his finds not by a direct code such as “J for Jesuit” but by locations, in alphabetic order according to his first access to the collections and/or items available for sale.
“J” may well be Mondragone if the number is, indeed, one which Voynich added. Otherwise, mightn’t it be a simple sort of shelving or accession number inscribed by the Jesuits or their binder? (‘J’ for Jewish, or ‘J’ for shelf under the statue of St. John in something of the Cotton manner?) What more do we actually know?