Just a quick heads up for you, that Yale Assistant Chief Conservator Paula Zyats (who you may remember having a tete-a-tete with Rene Zandbergen in the 2009 Austrian Voynich Manuscript documentary) will be giving a talk entitled The Mysterious Voynich Manuscript: Collaboration Yields New Insights.
It’ll be on Thursday July 10th 2014 at The Library Company of Philadelphia, 1314 Locust Street, Philadelphia, PA 19107, from 5.30pm to 7.30pm, followed by the opening of an exhibition of miniature books made by the Delaware Valley Chapter of the Guild of Book Workers (it says here). If you go, let me know how it goes (and no heckling, ok?) 🙂
Oh boy! Collaboration with whom? Will they be filming her discussion (if discussion it will be)? Will Rene or any of your collaborators be attending? I wonder if EllieV would be anywhere nearby enough to attend.
Questions, and more questions. Perhaps ThomS’s daughter (an art conservationist living in Florence Italy) might be aware of this event?
Will they show cool yet unrevealing animations like this one 🙂
http://www.voynichese.com/2/image/folio-density.gif
Hee! Funnies! I’ll be danged! I wasn’t able to translate ‘on the go’, so to speak.
I did, however, spend a great afternoon at our local historical museum. So, Nick, I’ll be going into DNA research as far as possible origins of the Uto-Aztecan prehistoric group, which has recently been given the name (by our archaeologists)
of “Wari”. So Taiwan-(maybe Easter Island)-Maori-Wari-Peruvian-Olmec-Aztec-Tewa-Hopi-Navajo—-(?)
Will you be giving us a recap of Miz Zyats talk? Soon?
🙂
@Job what the hell is that? Cool site though.
bc, that’s an animation where each frame highlights the words that occur in a particular folio – starting with f1r at the top left.
The individual plots are available on the main site, under experiments, but an animation is easier to consume.
While the images don’t reveal any clear patterns, it’s interesting that the Currier A & B language division is not as apparent as one might have expected.
What i think needs to be explained, by advocates of the natural language VM theories in particular, is why a couple of consecutive folios in the same Currier language (e.g. f53r and f53v) share almost no words:
http://www.voynichese.com/#/lay:f53v-density/440
Would two texts with apparently similar subjects, written on the same piece of paper, with the same hand and same language look so different?
But Job, how does one stop the animation long enough to click on any one teeny-tiny square?
Conservation of writing material (rough draft notes ‘scribbled’ on animal skins). The very first folio contains info on how script is to be organized, and the illustration on its ‘back-side’ is accompanied with its own discussion (folio 1v begins the word ‘ix-tl-ce-r-geus-ce-a-aes-a-mox—–ox-ell-e-ce-geus–ecas-physa–ca-tius. The last character can be ‘itius’ or ‘itilius’, or ‘tius’ or even ‘dios’, ‘deus’
All that information on the very first line identifies the illustration as being a ‘tomatillo’ plant (physalis ixocarpa).
The illustration and discussion is NOT discussing the tomato.
The very interesting thing about the tomatillo is that it is also identified as being closely related to what current-day botanists refer to as the ‘Chinese lantern’ botanical specimen.
Yesterday I found some interesting information about the “date” (fruit) family: Not all date fruit is from a palm tree. I’ve just discovered that not only the yucca roots were used (for soap) but the yucca FRUIT is described as ‘date’ in South America. I shall be exploring our North American natives’ uses of the Yucca as well (California, Colorado, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas).
Apparently the Anasazi used yucca fibers for sandals/footwear. A lot of very interesting ‘history’ can be found at the Canyon de Chelley headquarter’s office/museum.
BD: can you please help me?
“ix-tl-ce-r-geus-ce-a-aes-a-mox—–ox-ell-e-ce-geus–ecas-physa–ca-tius.”
Are you saying that all of these syllables in fact just boil down to “physalis ixocarpa?” And isn’t this a fairly modern botanical name? Wikipedia suggests late eighteenth century, although I do not trust Wikipedia very far…
Yes, the term physalis ixocarpa is the latin translation of the Aztec/Nahuatl spoken language. The very best source for translating the syllables is a beautiful, small ‘hand-size’ paperback dictionary: Hippocrene Concise Dictionary, Nahuatl-English, English-Nahuatl (Aztec), author Fermin Herrera.
Senor Herrera. He explains that prior to Spanish contact Nahuatl was written in an indigenous pictographic script, which continued to be used well into the seventeenth century. He also explains the regional ‘varieties’ of Nahuatl. His pocket-size little book uses 8 pages (for example) of the xa, xe, xi, xo, and xu (Aztec/Nahuatl) alpha-syllables explanation, grammar, and their usage in context. He also very carefully explains combinative changes, and word endings, syllabic emphasis, and what activity might be occuring. The price of a brand new copy of this precious paperback book is $14.95 American Hippocrene Books also has a website — http://www.hippocrenebooks.com
🙂
@Job Thanks for explaining. Did you make that? As for your point about natural language, I think you’d have to actually measure word similarities in various VMS page pairs and natural language books before suggesting there’s a difference. Intuitively I agree with your point but measured data can hold surprises.
@bdid1dr It’s a GIF so you can’t pause it in a browser. There’s a way to pick individual pages in the website but I forgot how I did it. The interface is a bit confusing.
BD,
Can I be sure I’ve understood you correctly? You’re claiming that “ix-tl-ce-r-geus-ce-a-aes-a-mox—–ox-ell-e-ce-geus–ecas-physa–ca-tius” is a Latin transliteration of the Nahuatl language? So it’s Nahuatl written in Latin script?
@SirH: Yes, you can be sure. Once you understand that there isn’t a ‘glyph’ for the sound of dr (as in dress) or tr (as in trade), but rather a ‘tapped’ or ‘trilled’ R as in the word ‘extraordinary’, then some of the underlying text becomes apparent as being Latin. The other most important, and most often used alpha-character is ‘x’ — which appears to be similar to a smaller numeral 9, but which loop extends to behind the downstroke. Compare the larger ‘9’ (for ‘g’ or ‘k’) with the smaller ‘9’ which loop extends to the back of the downward ‘leg’.
Apparently the most mysterious of all the “Voynich” glyphs is the elaborate larger “P’ which most often begins the discussions in many of the folios. Depending on the number of loops or ‘curlicues’ which appear, and which sometimes loop to the back of the upright, one can read words such as
‘Specie’ ‘Paragraph’ ‘Precious’……
Once in great while, one comes across a character which ‘looks like’ an ampersand but has a short ‘leg’ on its left side before completing the ‘ampersand’: it can be translated to words or syllables which make the sound of ‘itius’, ‘dius’, or even ‘Dios’. Perhaps a prayer?
beadier-eyed than ever 😉
BD: forgive me, but C14 dating places the vellum of the Voynich Manuscript in the first half of the fifteenth century. The first attempts to write Nahuatl in Latin characters by Sahagun and others took place a century or more later.
Vellum/parchment of ms B-408; material which Sahagun would have brought with him — to use as a ‘rough-draft/field notes’ for some thirty-year’s travels and translations of his interactions with native populations. Sahagun’s final publication was written on ‘amatl’ (fig-tree bark) paper.
No need for you to beg my forgiveness — whatever keeps my brain cells working despite what might be encroaching Alzheimer’s disease!
bdid1dr 😉
bc, yes i generated that animation.
I ran some queries with other languages, in an attempt to determine how probable it is for two “folios” to share only a couple of words.
In the VM, as a whole, there are 752 pairs of folios that share no more than 2 words (excluding the rosettes folios). This number goes down to 528 if you exclude f65r, which contains only three words.
Among the VM A folios there are 44 pairs of folios that share no more than 2 words. There are only two such pairs in VM B folios.
For the other languages, I took an italian text by Dante and split it into blocks of 15 lines, then I did the same for a section of a latin text by Pliny as well as the latin and hebrew bibles.
In Dante, no two blocks shared fewer than three words.
In Pliny, the same.
In the latin Bible, the same.
In the hebrew Bible, of the 217 blocks, 1212 block pairs shared fewer than three words. In fact, 52 shared no words at all.
If we bring down the block size, then we start to see blocks in the latin and italian texts that share just a couple of words – this happens around the 50 word block size.
While this analysis didn’t take into account proximity or subject, it seems that the VM folios are not incompatible with a natural language like Hebrew – it’s just less probable for a language like Latin or Italian.
Here’s another cross-language analysis that favors a non-latin language, though slightly.
Suppose that, for every word in a given text, we randomly pick another word and merge the first half of one with the second half of the other – e.g. “hello” and “world” yields “herld”. What’s the probability that the new word exists in the text?
I ran this a few thousand times for VM, VM A, VM B, Dante Italian, Pliny Latin, Bible Latin and Bible Hebrew, which yields pretty consistent probabilities.
I should mention that, if the composed word is the same as either of the two originating words, then it’s not counted.
The results were the following:
VM: 16%
VM-A: 15%
VM-B: 16%
Dante Italian: 2%
Pliny Latin: less than 1%
Bible Latin: less than 1%
Bible Hebrew: 6%
The value of 16% for the VM is quite high and probably reflects the word structure that has been discussed by Stolfi and others.
Note that, in all languages, and for most words, there is another word that can be split and combined with it such that it yields a valid word – this is just much more common in the VM.
For example, suppose that we check, for each word, how many other words it can be split and combined with to yield a valid word, and compute the averages:
VM: 1273
VM-A: 493
VM-B: 749
Dante Italian: 143
Pliny Latin: 62
Bible Latin: 42
Bible Hebrew: 262
In the VM, if you pick a word at random, there are on average 1273 other words you can split and combine it with to produce a valid word.
Job: I have a few suggestions as to why this might be so. There are some words in Latin which you’d find it really, really hard not to use in even quite a short text. In particular, parts of the verb “esse”, meaning “to be”, would be very hard to avoid. This isn’t only used to mean “I am” or “he is”, but also as an auxiliary verb for the past tense of passive or deponent verbs, so “occisus est” means “he was killed” and “locutus sum” means “I spoke”. Also, conjunctions like “et” (“and”) or “sed” (“but”) are written separately.
I know little about Hebrew grammar, but if it’s similar to Arabic as I believe to be the case, then there is no fully conjugated verb “to be”, and some conjunctions and prepositions (including “and” and “to/for”) are attached to the word which follows them. Also, I think the Hebrew bible uses several different words and expressions for “God”, which one might otherwise expect to be a fairly common theme…
SirH & Job, a term often used by judges/attorneys/law officials is the phrase ‘res ipsa loquitur’ (the thing speaks for itself). Another term I’m trying to recall is the latin for ‘bring it with you’. So, I wonder if Paula Zyats might be bringing B-408 with her (or at least a copy of that precious manuscript). ?
Oh! subpoena duces tecum It took a few more seconds for the term to work its way through my gray matter.
I’ll let you guys take a look at those ‘ec’ and ‘ce’ combinations which appear most commonly in B-408. Hard ‘c’? Sibilant ‘c’?
Duces is sibilant. Tecum is ‘hard’ as in ‘candy’.
ciao! 🙂
BD: the ‘c’ in ‘Duces’ was actually hard in Classical Latin. It’s a ‘ch’ in current English/American ecclesiastical and legal Latin, ‘ts’ in current German ecclesiastical Latin, was simply ‘s’ in England during the sixteenth century, and has been pronounced in yet more ways in Spanish-speaking countries.
Si non e vero, e ben trovato, as Averlino might have said.
BD: So you’re suggesting that Sahagun, who I think came to the New World in the 1530s, brought with him a pile of 100-year-old blank vellum/parchment which he’d acquired somewhere, and used this some twenty or thirty years later for his field notes, which for some reason were written in an invented script?
So where do Busbecq, the Ancyra Monument and Ceyx and Alcyone fit in with all this?
What makes the VM text really stand out against the other languages that i’ve checked is the composition of the longer words.
For example, suppose we focus exclusively on words with at least six characters. For each word we pick another word at random, also containing six characters or more. Then we merge the first half of one word with the second half of the other. Does the new word still occur in the text?
Here are the results:
VM: 11%
VM-A: 10%
VM-B: 11%
Dante Italian: 0.5%
Pliny Latin: 0.5%
Bible Latin: 0.5%
Bible Hebrew: 0.8%
For reference, here are the total number of words in each of the texts containing at least six characters:
VM: 5,619 (70%)
VM-A: 2,147 (63%)
VM-B: 3,303 (67%)
Dante Italian: 4,827 (67%)
Pliny Latin: 8,030 (84%)
Bible Latin: 4,550 (80%)
Bible Hebrew: 959 (20%)
Even if we consider words with five characters or more, of which Bible-Hebrew has 50%, then the result for Bible-Hebrew only goes up from 0.8% to 1.5%, and the VM still goes up from 11% to 13%.
The conclusion is that, if you take at least three characters from the beginning or end of a VM word and replace them into another, the resulting word is still valid 11% of the time. For other languages it’s less than 1%, despite similar word counts.
Well, Busbecq returned to Europe/Austria with some 200 manuscripts gifted to him By Suleyman. Shortly after Busbecq’s return Suleiman laid siege to Vienna. Not too long after that, quite a lot of material from the Viennese huge archives ended up in Rudolph’s court. Shortly before the outbreak of the Thirty-Years War, Rudolph was committed to isolation as being insane. His successor wasn’t very capable in picking up the reins, so to speak, and was not very effective in staving off the ensuing expansion of warfare into the 100 years war. Nevertheless, perhaps we can now be diverted from the tedious speculation of Roger Bacon and his cronies having anything to do with that manuscript. The story of how the manuscript re-appeared and ended up in Mr. Voynich’s possession in the early 1900’s, and ultimately landed on the doorsteps of US military decoders, and D’Imperio’s publication, has already been told many times. So, I’ve been trying pin down the location of that small ‘derelict’ outpost of the Pope’s holdings, which monks were selling its contents in the 1920’s. Father Kircher was the last-known occupier/teacher of the “Roman School”, which was eventually remodeled and absorbed into the expansion of the Gregorian University. In following centuries, various RC popes have visited South America — and sent missionaries to educate, enlighten, and convert the native populations. Perhaps present-day archivists at the Gregorian University may still be photographing the enormous archive manuscripts which were discovered behind the wall which was being torn down to enlarge that University’s building. (In 2010?)
As a curiosity, here are the images of all words that start with EVA ‘p’ or ‘f’ sorted and side by side:
http://www.voynichese.com/sample/pf-words.jpg
And the same for all words that start with ‘t’ or ‘k’:
http://www.voynichese.com/sample/tk-words.jpg
These are sorted without distinguishing ‘p’ from ‘f’ or ‘t’ from ‘k’ and are 1.8Mb and 7.2Mb in size, respectively.
Maybe i’ll print a t-shirt with the first one :), or just a poster.
@Job wowza that’s quite an analysis. This is getting off track, do you have your own site to publish and continue talking about this? Is the voynichese dot com site also yours? I should make a blog sometime.
Your findings about merging words aren’t surprising but it’s good to have a number to it. I have a number of hot leads that I haven’t had time to delve into, and one of them could explain that if it pans out…
To address the post, I won’t have time to get to PA on the 10th.
@bd1d1r Where are you getting things like Taiwan, Maori and Peru from??
@Nick can you please move the search bar on the mobile version of this site from the bottom to the top? It’s a pain to scroll all the way down to find something.
Finally, as an example of the word variability present in the VM, here are all the words that differ from “chedy” by one insert, delete or replace, sorted:
http://www.voynichese.com/sample/chedy-variants.jpg
bc: good suggestion, I’ll try to move the search bar up this evening…
With the development of DNA analysis, human hereditary origins became much clearer. I have, in the past, referred you to a tremendously interesting book by Bryan Sykes (publication in 2001) “The Seven Daughters of Eve”.
What is most amusing is some of the studies which began with the “Iceman” in 1991, “Cheddar Man” “Gough’s Cave” & Lord Bath…
Over the latest years, worldwide DNA studies are pointing to Taiwan as the primitive origins of the Pacific Islanders and South American migratory routes.
ps: Taiwan used to be called Formosa.
bc, no and yes. I will setup a blog site for voynichese.com to publish some statistical and computational analysis. It’s on my todo list, I just can’t find a really good image for the blog header. 🙂
Another fascinating book (paperback), which may still be in print (publication 1995) is titled “Easter Island – Mystery of the Stone Giants” – Catherine and Michel Orliac. Both are/were Professors at the French Centre National des Recherches Scientifiques. Publisher: Harry N. Abrams, Inc.
Of particular interest to me were the three botanical items which appear on pages 56 & 57: sweet potato, yam, and paper mulberry. The last page of discussion is chronology.
One more reference from the Orliac publication: The Museum of Mankind, in London, has “The Stolen Friend” — page 25.
🙂
@Job impressive site then 🙂
How can I contact you outside this comments section? I have an idea for collaboration for some statistical/computer stuff
bc and Job: If either of you ever want a hand with design or maybe some programming, maybe I can help as well. Or Nick, for that matter… I’ve been longing to get into it as a hobby.
Sorry to be off-topic.
The “Stolen Friend” being one of the huge monolithic statues. If some of my comments seem to be obscure or nonsensical, it is because Nick (our most gracious host) takes all comments in the chronological order in which they appear. Gracias, Nick!
I’ve arranged with our local public librarian to purchase the copy ( which is falling apart) in order that he can order a new copy for the library shelves.
I’ve also gotten in touch with our local archaeologist and anthropologist in re the “Wari” migrations. So, full-rowing ahead, maybe, as opposed to ‘full-steam’ ahead?
Lots of study still being done (deoxy-ribo-nucleic-acid) as far as the Pacific migrations and subsequent invasions and enslavement of the Easter Island natives during the 1700-1800’s.
a tout a l’heure!
@Ralph thanks, got contact or site details?
bc, if you want to discuss something project related, the Issues & Feature Requests section of the project site can be used for this – for everything else you can send an email to voynichese.project at gmail dot com.
My current focus is on identifying the glyph areas for each transcribed character, but i’ll take VM query requests as well.
Ralph, if you’re interested in writing some OCR code i’m planning to upload high res images of each individual word (e.g. http://www.voynichese.com/sample/24.png) to be processed for glyph recognition (e.g. http://www.voynichese.com/sample/24_blobs.png), and paired with the transcribed values (which we already have) – this type of data would help improve existing transcriptions and add support for new types of analysis.
bc and Job: I can be emailed at… grgr0327 at colorado dot edu. To Job: a very interesting idea. Perhaps you could send me what you have so far. I’m not confident I can help here, but I did a perceptron classification project for handwritten digits once…
Just a few moments ago, I left a post on Nick’s most recent blog entry. Here is the name of the Peruvian mountain: Llullaillaco
Take a look at the ‘Voynich manuscript and its pair of poles which are connect by a small loop on each pole. Maybe just one more way of pronouncing words which ‘need’ a “Y”?
🙂
Book: ‘The Eighth Land’, Thomas S. Barthel, Chapter 5, page 99, second paragraph:
Hotusaid to his assistants Teke and Oti, “Go and take banana shoots, taro seedlings, sections of sugarcane to be planted, yam roots, sweet potatoes with leaves (?rau kumara), hauhau trees, paper mulberry trees, sandalwood trees, toromiro trees, ferns (riku), rushes, yellow roots, tavari plants, moss (para), and ngaoho plants.’
Besides this verbatim excerpt from page 99 of this book, the legend continues with the need for the travelers to bring along flies (for fertilizing the plants: ‘when the flies die, the human population dies too’).
Another very interesting term: ‘maori tuku miro’ — master shipbuilder.
Further discussion on the same page is about yams. Page 100 is entirely devoted to the care and conservation of the yam — and thievery of them. A footnote at bottom of page 100 mentions a list of thirty-nine varieties of yams [Dioscorea specie] that belong to Maeha and Teke.
The next thirty or 40 pages deal with 24 place names,twelve months, ‘star hole’ – ‘swirl of stars’ – and an activity calendar which “Ko Koro (December) ends with ‘a good time for surfing (ngaru) on the beach of Hangaroa O Tai’.
🙂
A personal aside: When in my teens, and not having a surfboard, I used to ‘body surf’ (layout and tuck and roll to shore). Torture getting home: salty sunburn and sand ‘everywhere’. And, yes, the danger of great white shark attack was great; but ‘what the hey’ — you only live once!
;-^
Somewhat puzzling to me is that there is no mention of the star formation by which southern hemisphere navigators would have used: the “Southern Cross”.
@bc: The term ‘wari’ — you queried: National Geographic (June 2014, pages 54 through 76)
Fascinating, as well as verifying quite a lot of earlier discussions on various archaeological diggings (high mountains to lowest desert regions) ongoing in South America AND the Pacific Islands — Easter Island being one of the most important.
Note that the “Wari” were seafarers who landed on Peruvian shores. I’m going to backtrack on the prehistoric seafarers who rowed (mostly) from Taiwan (formerly Formosa), New Zealand, Tahiti, Samoan Islands, Easter Island, and eventually “washed up” on Peruvian beaches.
BTW, Heather Pringle, writer for this newest NG (June 2014), wrote a book in 2001: “The Mummy Congress – Science, Obsession, and the Everlasting Dead”.
beady-eyed wonder
ps: I won’t be venturing too far into the Atacama desert region, yet; too much fantastic and ‘airy’ speculation. It would be very interesting to find out if Ms Pringle will be writing a sequel to her “Mummy Congress”. Perhaps she might even be interested in Ms Zyats’ presentation, this afternoon?
😉
So now that it’s the 11th, is there any news about how the presentation went?
@ bc: X ur fingers!
bd 😉
Job & friends: Might you be interested in the earliest development of “OCR” technology? The US Post Office/Postal Service began installing huge machines which could optically scan 15 ZIP coded addresses a second, and sort the envelopes into bins mounted onto a huge conveyor belt. Rincon Annex in San Francisco had two of those monstrously noisy machines (the size of locomotives).
A lot of mail still ended up in the “Nixies” section because the new ZIP codes were very new and often mis-numbered.
It wasn’t very long after the Post Office became the Postal Service, that private industry developed the ‘scanners’ which are used in many industries for OCR debit/credit cards, warehouse inventory, grocery clerks, …… and even book publishers. Take a look at some items you might have at hand which have a ‘bar code’ imprinted upon them.
🙂
bdid1dr, that was the end goal of my project I mentioned above. The version of Mathematica just released will classify digits with about two lines of code. How quickly technology moves…
Also, there’s a street performer in Boulder who has memorized every zip code. We watched him sort about 20 people geographically, then recall the numbers and locations one-by-one, tossing in basic facts about many of the locations. He’s got a great deal of international codes memorized as well. Even he couldn’t do 15/second though.
I’ve done a little more research on the term “ama-tl”, which discusses the “fig-tree” and “paper-mulberry tree”. It turns out that that both terms are referring to the one and same tree, which inner bark was peeled in thin strips and criss-crossed (but not woven) and then pounded/mashed into a fabric (tapa cloth) or into paper manuscript material.
What amazes me is that same tree “morus alba” had its uses in China (the leaves) for feeding silkworm larva — and its bark was pounded into paper.
An old nursery rhyme: “Here we go ’round the mulberry bush, the mulberry bush….so early in the morning!”
🙂
So, as I type this note, I am looking at a souvenir my mother gifted to me when she returned from vacation near Puerto Vallarta (in the 1960’s).
It is a piece of ‘amatl’; upon which an unknown artist, using what looks like poster paint, has painted what looks like a large feather fan, and a ‘quetzal’ bird.
🙂
BD and other “New Worlders”, You seem to argue that the VM codex, whose vellum was dated early 15th C, was taken to the Aztec part of the New World to compile what we know as the VMs in a mysterious Latin-related cipher. I hope this succinctly summarizes your position as hashed out with Sir Hubert.. This could reconcile dates but I have a major problem with the structure of Nahuatl which from my brief reading of Gates’ Dover reprint of an Aztec herbal, was a pictographic (i.e. hieroglyphic) language. How does this then end up as Voynichese?
Job reiterated an important point that others have made, including Nick as I recall, and that is a single scribe did both pages of a folio. It is sometimes difficult to separate the two scribes (that has to be admitted), but one tends to be looser with fewer glyphs per cm of linear line space; the other tighter with a more dense writing. Unfortunately it looks to me that when space is tight, the looser writing scribe will tighen up. There may be slight differences between the scribes in the shapes or slants of a glyph like “8” but they are scrupulous in their glyph formations, resembling each other very closely. The fact that a single scribe will not repeat a glyph sequence (loosely a “word) could be key if true. I find “eaf” “each” “eam” to be so commonly occurring that I remain unconvinced. I think “eaf” is just Voynichese for “leaf” as in a plant leaf not a folio; “each” is under review but “eam” is “that” in Latin.
Back to the Aztecs: I have not read that Nahuatl is phonetic but BD seems to make that work for her. Is this some kind of hybrid? I think an application of Occam’s razor would just cut the Aztecs out of the picture. Too complicated. Cheers, Tom
Dear all, A needed addendum: Job was referring to the two pages of a folio not sharing a word although written by a single scribe. I did not make that clear above. Cheers Tom
Nick,
Did you see the program? I’m hoping that some of its new insights might accord with or extend some of the mass of earlier work on this manuscript.
Nick & Friends (including John Comegys): Back on May 22 of this year, I left a translation of folio 1v of the “Voynich” manuscript on John Comegys blog-page as well as on Nick’s.
I followed up my identification of that botanical specimen with a letter-by-letter/word-for-word translation of the Aztec wording which appears, and which is then translated into Latin: “ix-tom-a-tl” (Aztec/Nahuatl) translates to “tomatillo”
The latin term for the tomatillo is Phys-a-lis i-xo-carpus. Note the elaborate “P” which begins the second paragraph of this folio (f-1v).
I’ve begun to organize my identifications into a coherent ‘encyclopedia’ of not just botanical discussions but also the various “rosette” pages. My husband knows what to do with them if I am no longer able to access the WWW.
I do understand Athanasius Kircher’s excitement when the VMS appeared in the archive he inherited from previous occupants of the “Roman School” in Frascati. I’ve tried to determine the historical timelines of the various occupants before and after the “Roman School” was enveloped into
the first enlargement and remodeling of the Gregorian University. Kircher was operating the School when Pope Gregory was re-arranging the calendar and establishing the Gregorian School.
Phillip Neal has a pretty good archive of Kircher correspondence. Perhaps he might be available to correlate and/or correct this latest info from me?
🙂
Dear all Job’s June 27th post under “Dummies” mentions seeing little or “almost no” “word” repeats between f53r and 53v. I agree the same scribe wrote both pages. But if a three or four glyph sequence is considered as a word, then this is finding breaks down. On f53r, we find (lines 1,2 and 4) the glyphs “ort” for “o-telephone gallows for “r” and 9″. I think the “9” is “t” and “orct” (line 7) is also “ort” as I think a single “c” is a null. On f53v, we find on line 3, the same three lettered glyph. There are many occurrences of “each”. “eam”. “ean” “eaf” as commonly found. But Job’s drawing attention to his thesis (yet to be proved conclusively in my opinion) caused me to spot on line 2 of f53v, what appears to be a rare scribal correction where a rocker is added to what was originally an “8”; (end of fourth word of line 2). Takes a hand lens to really spot this. So scribes cared enough to proof their work! I concede though that on longer “words” there seems little overlap between the pages BUT I think this is due mainly to words having been created by attaching one to another as has been shown or six letter seuences by Job in another post on this site on June 29. I think one has to break words down even more. For esample “8am=eam” is often stuck at the end of another word (2 examples on line 4 of 53v.
Keep at it Job. This is where mini Eurekas will come from in my opinion. Just resulting from tedious dissections. Cheers, Tom.
ThomS and Job: 8-am is aes-am. 8-a-tius, 8-ce-atius, 8-ceus, are all syllables which appear frequently throughout. Now and then aes-ce-re-ge-us, and aes-ce-re-ge-at-tl-i-a-tius also appear.
When one gets past the botanical items and focuses on the various star charts, and the ‘rosettes’ pages, some of the labels begin to make sense, using the latin terminology I’ve just laid out.
Several months ago I referred Nick to some archaelogical digs which were occurring (in 2013) at a South American site called “Monte Alban”. At that time I wondered if there might be a connection between Father Kircher’s Alban Hills Frascati location and his discussion in re “Coriolanus” (and the VMs “Nine Rosettes” folio which has a hilltop castle portrayed). So, once again I go ’round and round’. I’m still having fun on the ‘merry-go-round’.
🙂
Sometimes I just can’t help falling into “translation mode”. One of my first job assignments was with the USPO was with the dreaded “Nixies” parcel post section where the bulk of damaged packages were cuckoo clocks from the ‘Black Forest’ region of Europe. Because I was able to read the European writing and numerals, many recipients, here in the US, were presented with a flimsy cardboard box (more in the shape of a ball) which had been taped together and matched with a fragment of the original address label. What does all this have to do with the Voynich (you may be asking)? Sometimes it has to be a cognitively active human being doing translations or puzzle solving. I’m doing the best I can to show my side of the interpretation possibilities for the manuscript I prefer to call ‘Boenicke 408’.
I have been restraining myself when it comes to further discussion of the ‘paper mulberry’ tree which South Americans call the “fig” tree. They are one and the same, and are a sub-specie ‘morus’ of the Sycamore family; at least here on the North and South American continents.
Apparently the first use of the inner bark of Morus Alba was for Chinese manuscripts and artwork. Reputedly, the Chinese emperor also used the inner bark for making money for his treasury.
That is, the Chinese Emperor was probably the first in history to issue paper money (besides commissioning illustrated manuscripts).
🙂
Dear all, On scribal overwriting or corrections. I think that scribe #1 (the tighter writer) not only strengthens the rocker on f53v whereby a sort of “8” has a rocker added to the base, but many others in the 50 or so pages of the herbal/plant section. a good example is seen of f46r at the end of line 7. I am of the opinion that the “8” with a rocker is the Armenian “f” but the fact that it gets amended frequently indicates to me that at least scribe #1 is not familiar with that glyph (#2 has a fewer corrections). This might support Sir Hubert’s view that Armenian glyphs might be being employed by non Armenians. It will be noted that many of the “f’s occur at the end of a line. This glyph might serve as punctuation also? So to reiterate a point I have made several times, there are Three (3) “crazy eights”: a garden variety “8” whose slant seems to differ frequently between scribe #1 and #2 (point originally made by Nick as I recall), with it being more slanted in the writing of scribe #1; the “8” with a rocker, sometimes added as a separate stroke of the pen and the “&” which looks similar to the 8 with a rocker, that I assign to “f”.
BTW On f93r, the “sunflower” with the ink spill, I thought there was more ink being affected but I can only spot a couple of glyphs that might have been affected so I withdraw my comment on coloration and writing being done at the same time. Maybe at least we can conclude that the coloration is being done with a very fluid media like an ink or water color wash?
I wondered a bit about the disposition of the library of Monticassino and whether the VM might have found safekeeping at Villa Mondragone, even though it was not Bendictine. Caddach is somewhat vague on this point and indicates that the library was distributed to unidentified safe monasteries and convents in the area of Rome but maybe the disposition was not as definitive as to be just Benedictine as I have read here and elsewhere? Cheers, Tom
Dear all According to the book of D. Hapgood and D. Richardson on the WW2 Italian campaign, the library of the Montecassino abbey was transported to two Benedictine abbeys in Rome: “St Paul’s outside the Walls” and “St. Anselmo”. Time to write finito to this little topic. Cheers, Tom
ps. Schlegel was a Lt. Colonel in the Wehrmacht (Hermann Goering Div) and Becker was an MD and Lt. The manuscript material was kept out of the hands of Goering but not some of the artwork from the museum of Naples (that also had 30 crates of archaeological finds of Pompeii)..
Thomas: a lovely little meander nonetheless. 🙂
Dear all, Thanks to Nick for his patience in allowing some meandering, a lot of it in fact. BTW the original Meander R lies in Western Turkey. This comment amounts to a meander on the Meander.
To another, for whom meandering is a modus operandi and I refer to bd. I haved enjoyed your many posts on mulberry. I too, think it occupies a place of honor in the VM plant/herbal section. It is very faithfully depicted on f25r. Where are the lobed leaves I hear the observant comment? The Mulberry (Morus alba) typically can have three kinds of leaves, unlobed as on f25v, a mitten with one lobe and a leaf with two lobes. A whole plant though can have all three or just one kind and that I think is shown accurately on f25r where It is virtually identical with the image on my Chinese Materia Medica (p436, p438) and where exactly the same image is apparently used for two different species, (Cortex Mori Radicus and Ramulus Mori). The former uses root bark tea for cough, edema and lung problems; the latter uses twigs for aches and pains of the upper body or liver problems. The common English name for the former is the white mullberry (Morus alba) and has occupied bd from time to time. Where is this all going? Just that not all the plants drawn in the plant/herbal section are from Neverland; some may be out of China (or the medical uses might be) and on f25r you have a tree depicted that is common in China..Cheers Tom
Dear all, Just to put a period on the species of mulberry shown on f25r of the VM herb/plant section. I think it is the Cortex Mori Radicus where a root bark tea is made for cough, etc. The heavily brown-tinted roots emphatically displayed would support this use. Cheers, Tom
ThomS, I’ll be comparing the contents of B-408-f25r with
B-408-f11v. We may now be looking at the mulberry plant from several aspects of roots, leaves, and bark. Fun!
Another aspect is which item of discussion is a tree or bush?
BD, It is hard to tell from the Chinese Materia Medica but I think both a bush and tree are given on consecutive pages using the same drawing. On one, that I think best fits the VM, root bark is used for tea and I think this is indicated by the brown spread-eagled rootlets of f25r. The consecutive drawing uses twigs for an arthritis or liver tonic. That one is probably a tree. The Chinese materia medica implies that both are trees. Cheers, Tom
ps. Few plants/herbs of the VM show little clusters of berries (the mulberries I think) that come right out of the main plant stem. Also opposite (not alternate) side stems.
BD, I think the plant/herb shown on f11v of the VM is not mulberry but likely turmeric,sourceof curcumin used in curries etc. It is a fairly close facsimile.
BTW is a pdf or word doc available for the Paula Zyats’ lecture? I’d be grateful for any info. I think Zanbergen must have had access to it as he has updated his web site (excellent by the way) with the information that the VM was made of parchment not vellum and cites Zyats. Cheers, Tom
Ah, Nick and ThomS, we now have the two Z’s corresponding (if only via their individual websites)? Wonderful! I shall visit ReneZ’s site soon, very soon!
Thanx for the update. 🙂
Yo, ThomS,
You may want to review my comment (14 March 2014) on Nick’s blog subject ‘Stephen Bax Voynich’. Nick’s the ‘judge’ — gor-bless-im!
🙂
Dear all, I propose a plant ID for that shown on f20v of the VM. I think it is Flos Budleiae. It is depicted as a fair facsimile on p 148-9 of the Chinese Materia Medica (Oxford 2005) and one use is for clearing up corneal opacity. Note the opposite elongated ovoid leaves but most importanty the “joe cool” sunglasses atop each blossom in the VM. The dried blossoms are used in Traditional Chinese Medicine, not the roots. I think the “sunglasses” represent opaque corneas. Cheers, Tom
ps. My apologies to Rene for misspelling his last name; should have been Zandbergen as most of you will know.
ThomS, another remedy for sore eyes (a ‘site’ for sore eyes): Salvia Sclerae, aka “Clary Sage” — B-408, folio 8v. Apparently the posts which appeared on Nick’s “Brackets” discussion never did come to a ‘consensus’ of opinions/guesses. Heh!
😉
@ Ralph: ZIP codes and SCF’s — California Tertiary Scheme, Sacramento SCF — Alta, Al Tahoe, Amador City, Antelope, Auburn….Baxter, Bijou,Bowman,….Yolo, Zamora.
Just one of 36 SCF’s I had to memorize and sort to qualify as a specialized California Scheme Clerk for sorting mail which was missing a ZIP code.
I rode the Muni to work. Jam-packed passengers eyed me warily while I chanted the contents of each SCF.
Even today, some 40 years later, somebody can mention small towns like Weimar, Weitchpec, and Weott; and I go into auto-mode/memory of which ZIP code they belonged in the sorting schemes.
🙂
:
Correction to my earlier reference to the Roman School and the expansion of the Gregorian University, which basically walled off Kircher’s small Roman School (1500’s?) and its contents. Further expansion of the Gregorian University (some several hundred years later 2010-2014?) involved breaking down an existing wall to make the remodel/addition one large open space (2005? 2010?) A huge archive of manuscripts dating to 1400’s-1500’s is still being catalogued and archived at the remodeled Gregorian University. I’m hoping they will be available to on-line WWW researchers sometime in this century.
big smile 🙂
Yesterday I visited ReneZ’s website. I couldn’t find any references to new developments with solving the Vms dialogues. So, does anyone else have any news about Paula Z’s presentation at the Small Books forum? (If she had anything at all to say about B-408?)
I’m still hoping that ‘someone’ will be forthcoming and forthright.
beady-eyed wonder 😉
Nick, what does the ‘nicked-corner’ pdf symbol mean — which is now appearing on our posts? Am I wasting my time and energy on what may be a closed/ended discussion page?
-> bdid 1 dr
Re: Hippocrene Nahuatl dictionary -> yes this is a good one.
Re: “encroaching Alzheimer’s” -> Check with your MD on huperzia serrata.
-> Thomas Spande;
Re: Comment of Aug 4, 2014 at 4:37
F20v and Flos Budliae (Flos Buddlajae, Chinese Mi Meng Hua, “dense covered flower”)
(Source Chen and Chen Chinese Medical Herbology and Pharmacology, page 126)
Botanical: Buddlajae Officinalis