Back in August 2010, I posted up some observations on the Voynich Manuscript’s Quire 20, which included:
* Tim Tattrie pointed out that ‘x’ appears on every folio of Q20 except the first (f103) and the last (f116)
* I noted that these ‘x’ characters often sat next to ‘ar’ and ‘or’ pairs, e.g. arxor / salxor / kedarxy / oxorshey / oxar / shoxar / lxorxoiin, etc.
* Tim Tattrie also pointed out that the paragraph stars on f103 and f116 are notable because they don’t seem to have tails
* The tail-less paragraph stars on f103r looked to me as though they had been added in at a later stage
* Elmar Vogt pointed out that most of the paragraph stars followed an empty-full-empty-full pattern, except for “f103r, f104r and f108r”
* “The notion that Q20 originally contained seven nested quires (as per the folio numbering) seems slightly over-the-top to me”
* f103r doesn’t “look” it should be the first page of Q20, but f105r (with a nice ornate gallows) does:-

From these, I tentatively concluded (way back then) that Q20 might well therefore have originally been written as two separate codicological parts, which I proposed calling “Q20A” and “Q20B”. It was certainly an interesting suggestion… and, as I’ll explain below, one that I suspect was quite close to the truth, though admittedly not the whole story.

The “ytem” / “ydem” star tails

I then posted again in September 2010, where I proposed that the tails of the paragraph stars had been written first: and that they had been then been accessorized with a star to hide them from view.

That is, the tail is the meaning (they all read ‘y’ if you look closely), and the star is the deception. But what does the ‘y’ mean? Well, lists in countless medieval documents are very often itemized using the word “item” or “ytem”: which is why we use the word “itemized”, of course. So it seemed (and still seems) overwhelmingly likely to me that the paragraph star tail ‘y’ was short for “ytem”, and that each Q20 star with a tail marked the start of an item.

If you count up all the paragraph stars with tails, you get the following numbers:

f103r 0 + 19 (i.e. no stars with tails, but 19 stars without tails)
f103v 0 + 14
f104r 13
f104v 13
f105r 10
f105v 10
f106r 15
f106v 14
f107r 15
f107v 15
f108r 16
f108v 16
f109r ?? \
f109v ?? -\ missing
f110r ?? -/ bifolio
f110v ?? /
f111r 17
f111v 5 + 14 (something a little odd would seem to be going on here)
f112r 12
f112v 12 + 1
f113r 16
f113v 15
f114r 13
f114v 12
f115r 12 + 1
f115v 13
f116r 0 + 10

Add up all the stars with tails and you get 264: if the four pages from the missing central bifolio (f109 / f110) each contained 15 stars, we would seem to get a total of closer to 264 + 4 x 15 = 324 items (as opposed to starred paragraphs). I don’t know exactly what that means, but it is what it is.

Quire 20 “Block Paradigm”

When I revisited Q20 in 2014 , it was to propose that we might also profitably look for a “block paradigm” match to Quire 20. By this, I meant that we should go a-hunting for an existing book of secrets from the right time frame from which Q20’s contents might well have been copied / encrypted. As a pretty good candidate, I suggested BnP MS. 6741, which contains a set of 359 numbered recipes (plus various rhymes) compiled from various sources by Jean le Bègue / Jehan le Bègue [1368-1457] in Paris in 1431: in Latin.

But then again, when in the past others have suggested that this section might just as well contain 360 elements (as in per-degree astrology), or even 365 elements (one for each day of the year), it has been pointed out by way of response that the number of starred paragraphs doesn’t seem to fit: we have too many stars. “My God, it’s (too) full of stars”, one might reasonably say (if you are a cinema buff, that is).

This is because if you take Q20 as a whole, you would expect its total number of paragraph stars to be around 323 + (15 x 4) = 383, which is about 20-25 stars too many for (what I, at least, consider) the most likely scenarios (359 / 360 / 365).

Yet if you restrict yourself to “ytem stars” (i.e. stars with tails), it seems that you end up with roughly 324 “ytems”, which would seem to be 35 or so stars too few.

So how do all these odd-shaped jigsaw pieces slot together? Quire 20 would seem to be quite the three pipe problem, as Sherlock Holmes would have (fictionally) said. 🙂

…or is it?

How to read this hidden book

Building on all of the preceding observations (and inspired by comments recently left here by Rene Zandbergen), here’s how I think Q20 was written, and how we should try to “read it” – that is, how our eyes should sequence its pages and comprehend its content.

It seems likely to me that the ornate gallows character on f105r marks not the start of a quire, but the start of a book – or, at the very least, the very first “ytem” in that book. Furthermore, if we group all the pages with “ytem” tailed paragraph stars together and put this at their front, f105r would have been either (a) the first part of a free-standing book (“Q20A”, as I proposed before), or (b) the first part of a book whose presence inside Q20 was concealed by fake paragraph stars. Either way, I now feel confident that we should be reading f105r as if it were the first part of the hidden book.

In which case, the fake-looking paragraph stars on f103r, f103v and f116r would indeed be fake, added to visually conceal the start and end of the book within Q20. f103r has nineteen of these fake stars crammed down its left margin: the more you look at them, the more fake they look, I think.

So: if we put the f103-f116 “fake paragraph star” bifolio to one side, and place the f105-f114 bifolio as the outermost ‘wrapper’ of the hidden book, the question then comes whether we can infer from any other statistical or visual properties what the nesting order (and orientation) of the other five bifolios inside it was (i.e. when the book was in its original, ‘alpha’ state).

Tim Tattrie insightfully noted in a comment here that:

* “lo” as a separate word is only found in f104r, f106r and f108v.
* “rl” as a separate word, or word beginning is only found in f104r, f108v and f113r.
* “llo” as a series of letters is only found in f104r, f108v, f111v, f113v, f116r

I think this suggests some kind of semantic, content-based link between f104r and f108v: and hence that f108v and f104r may well have originally sat facing each other in the original bifolio layout.

Unfortunately, I haven’t yet noticed any Q20 colour transfers dating back to its earliest phases of composition. The big reddish smudge on the top right of f103r (where some of the Voynichese letters inside it have been badly emended in a later hand) seems to have happened after the pages were in their final nesting order, and the same seems true of the (initially green, but then fading away quickly) stain at the centre top of the Q20 pages.

There are also some tiny green paint splodges on the very right hand edge of f104r: but these seem to me to have almost certainly been added by accident when the heavy painter was painting Quire 19 (f103 is a little bit smaller than f104, so the outermost edge of f104 stuck out a little beyond f103, catching the drips from the paint brush).

All in all, the problem with trying to reconstruct Q20’s original nesting order is that it was left in a very clean (i.e. unmessed-around-with) state, probably because it was the least visually intriguing quire. So unless we can find a magical Raman-style way of picking up close-to-invisible inter-folio paint transfers from the paragraph stars, we don’t seem to have much else to work from.

Hence at this point, I’m basically out of ideas: are there any other sources of information (whether visual, statistical etc) you can suggest that might help us reconstruct Quire 20’s original folio sequence?

33 thoughts on “The book hidden inside Voynich Quire 20…

  1. There is one tail upwards in 103r.

    And there are some stars without tails in the folios which mostly have stars with tails.

    >> “This is because if you take Q20 as a whole, you would expect its total number of paragraph stars to be around 345 + (15 x 4) = 405”

    Is not this a mistake? I counted 324 stars in Q20, not 345.

  2. Anton: there is indeed a single “tail upwards” star in f103r, though what we can or should infer from that I don’t know at all. Perhaps if the stars were looked at with careful Rama imaging, we might be able to separate the two (or possible more) construction layers that make them up.

    You are correct! I counted 323 stars in Q20: so have corrected this paragraph here, thanks for pointing this out! 🙂

  3. By the way, about the “x” symbol.

    There are actually at least four variants in the VMS:

    – EVA “x” – standing person with a vertical (“body”)
    – Extended EVA &185 – standing person without “body” (only hands and legs)
    – Person walking leftwards (as encountered in 66r)
    – Person walking rightwards (as encountered in 66r)

    Don’t know if the vertical (“body”) matters (it might have been omitted for brevity), but the walking and its direction clearly matters.

    And e.g. the symbol in 105r is clearly not the EVA “x”, but the guy walking rightwards. I did not check all Q20 through, but these variants should be thoroughly distinguished, I believe.

    I remember reading somewhere (was it Wikipedia?) that the symbol of the guy walking leftwards meant subtraction, and rightwards – meant addition in some ancient Egyptian documents. Don’t know if that’s the meaning in the VMS – most probably not, as with all Latin abbreviation symbols found in there.

  4. Helmut Winkler on January 24, 2016 at 8:47 pm said:

    Nick,

    to tell the truth, I doubt your ydem idea very much.

    y is a letter rarely used in the Middle Ages, what looks like a y is in most cases a ij, short and long i, a 15th c. enumeration should start with an i[tem] or it[em], y[dem] is rather 16th/17th c.. Another example in the VMs are the month names, where June is usually transcribed as yony, but there really is ijonij.

    I have not taken a look at all the Q 20 stars, but on f. 104r the third star from below is surly not made out of a y and the fourth looks at least dubious. And there seems to be a 7 point/8 point star pattern.

    I don’t see why the f. 103 stars should be from a later stage, but perhaps you can explain. at least one of them has a tail, the last on f. 103r, even if it looks different from the others.

  5. Helmut: a Google Book search for “ytem” prior to 1500 immediately revealed a good number, so I don’t think this issue is any way near as clear cut as a casual reader of your comment might think.

    Your reading of “yony” as “ijonij” may be correct, though I’d personally say it’s 50-50 between “yonij” and “ijonij”. The zodiac month names are, in any case, clearly written by a different (very probably later 15th century) hand, so it would be unwise to try to draw any inferences from this as to elements in the main text.

    Your comment about the stars on f104r seems to assume that all the “stars” were made in the same way: but there is a counterargument which is that almost everything in the Voynich seems to have evolved slightly along the way, perhaps modified to better fit the needs of the text or writers, and so these may easily have changed very subtly too. Or the writer might just have been a little bit lazier with those specific letters, who can tell?

    If the argument about the tails being written first as a letter (whether that is y or i or j) and the stars being added later is correct, I suspect it would make no sense to add a tail upside-down. So its presence there would seem to me to support the suggestion that these specific stars were added later.

    More generally though, I’m doing my best to explore difficult reasoning right on the edge of what it is possible to work with reliably. Is your own position merely to say (something along the lines of) ‘it is without doubt difficult to reason about the paragraph stars, so therefore we should not attempt to do such a thing‘?

  6. bdid1dr on January 25, 2016 at 1:53 am said:

    Nick, Anton, & Helmut,
    Have you considered/compared various stars (with or without tails) as being simply
    “bullets’ or asterisks. And maybe the ‘tails’ indicate ‘more discussion on following pages or specific folios with ‘item’ being a pictorial element/specimen which can be matched with the discussion? In other words: a type of cross-indexiing of labels, discussion, and pictorial elements?
    It takes one file clerk (expert) to recognize a particular type of indexing/cross-filing individual folios/drawings/colorists efforts, inquisitional notes/symbols, and ‘most recent’ discoveries/translations/discussions/letters of merit and/or the opposite.
    At one time in my work with the City’s Records Clerk (and the City’s Attorney), I indexed and cross-indexed some 30,000 file codes/numbers. I have letters of gratitude and commendation from 50 or 60 regular visitors to my ‘realm’. Some of whom tried to lure me away to their ‘realms’ .
    Lately, though, I have to admit to not being able to keep up with y’all ! Still fun; and still opportunities arise for me to tease Nick…..
    Beady-eyed-wonder-er

  7. bdid1dr on January 25, 2016 at 1:59 am said:

    Thank you, all — and this latest (update?) of the quires and/or folios mapped by Mr. Zandbergen — Beautiful !

  8. The total manuscript we have now is 229 pages. If you include the assumed missing pages there should be 257 pages. Perhaps that assumption is wrong and there are more pages and the number of stars = number of pages.

    (See my old count on http://voynich.webpoint.nl/?page_id=1754)

    It doesn’t really tell us much, as i agree that the stars are used in the MS as an “item-marker”.

  9. david: it would be a funny kind of list that counted the pages used to write itself. 🙂

  10. bdid1dr on January 25, 2016 at 5:19 pm said:

    I wonder if the assumed missing pages may have been removed by the inquisitioners in order that Fray Sahagun and his scribes would ‘pass’ their inspection/inquiry/with a cautionary note and recommendations for ‘revision and/or deletion’ of borderline items which may have appeared as sacrilegious .
    It appears, to me anyway, that there was much competition/rivalry going on between the Franciscan and Dominican monks in ‘New Spain’.

    One of the botanical items in B-408 I’ve identified and translated is the ‘monkshood’ plant. The accompanying written dialogue refers to the plants roots as being very aggressive or inimical to other plants in the gardens.

    Interesting enough, I have not been able to identify/find mention of the opium poppy.
    bd

  11. bdid1dr on January 25, 2016 at 5:47 pm said:

    I did, however, find illustrated discussion of the mandragore fruit JUICE being used as a tranquilizer for women/girls entering their fertile and/or childbearing years. When you find the particular folio where tiny persons (female) appear to be holding up a huge ‘balloon’ , you will be able to translate the dialogues (there are no labels for that huge fruit specimen).
    Have fun wandering the ‘pharmaceutical” realms and gardens. The ‘recipes’ illustrations and discussion folios do not refer to either the opium poppy nor the mandragore botanical items.

    However, you will find discussion in re the hallucinative effects of eating the ‘wrong’ mushroom and its ‘dreamy effects’ as told in the myths of Alcyone and Ceyx.

    In the past couple of years, I have tried to contact Rene to ‘back up’ his discussion which refers to that particular folio as being a ‘myth’ (If I recall various commentary over the past four years, at least).
    bd

  12. bdid1dr on January 25, 2016 at 10:01 pm said:

    Another reference to the use of the mandragore (I can’t remember if I’ve already posted to Nick several months or times before) :
    On various medieval battlefields (Europe and Ottoman) mandragore root was burned to create smoke which badly injured men would inhale and become unconscious while their injured limbs were being amputated.
    Apparently, the opium poppy was a very ‘touchy’ item to be discussed or illustrated. At least I have not been able to find that beautiful poppy being discussed in either B-408 or the Florentine Codex.
    Perhaps you might find some references and accompanying ‘pharma jar’ recipes which discuss the use of opium poppy ‘sap’ and or mandragore smoked root. ?
    beady-eyed as ever

  13. bdid1dr on January 25, 2016 at 10:13 pm said:

    ps: I’m further 1-dring if all of those flower-star references may be preliminary notes/extracts from other manuscripts to which Fray Sahagun may have been planning to use in his creation of the Psalmodia. (Spanish/Nahuatl columns of text).
    Apparently, the Psalmodia was not a ‘great hit’ with either the Europeans or Native Americans.
    It was, however a big addition to my translating efforts.

  14. Where you see some stars with tails, I see flowers : Ornithogalum umbellatum aka The Star of Bethléem… I suppose that are bullets. And what about the red core ? But it’s just my advice !

  15. Christophe: I say “potato“, you say “frites“… but who’s to say we’re not both right on different levels?

  16. bdid1dr on January 26, 2016 at 6:28 pm said:

    Nick & Christophe: You’re both right! On one of Nick’s more recent discussions (color transfers/bleed-through), I suggested that he take a look at an illustration of a large botanical item (agave)…….

    I offer (as an excuse for sometimes veering off the ‘beaten path”) my ever-more impending blindness.

    Again, Nick, I urge you to see if your favorite library has a set of the “New Illustrated Encyclopedia of Gardening” — and take a look at Christophe’s offering of the Ornithogalum Chincherinchee – aka – “umbellatum” …….

    bd

  17. bdid1dr on January 26, 2016 at 11:59 pm said:

    Several hours later: I was shocked to find your “latest” (?) Alphabetical translations of script which appears in every folio of the so-called Voynich manuscript. I am nearly in tears because apparently you have ignored my translation of every ‘encoded’ character which appears consistently throughout every folio.
    I won’t be bothering/confusing you (any more) and the very intelligent persons who depend on your decoding of the VeryMysteriousScript which appears throughout some 116 or so folios of the manuscript which is held by various docents, researchers, and professors at the Boenicke/Benicke Library at Yale.

    Quite frankly, Paula Zyatz (Boenicke employee/representative) has not one clue/idea as to what the folios in manuscript 408 (B-408/Voynich) are saying, much less translate for the various small book clubs which she visits.

    Once again, I refer you and your followers to Miguel Leon-Portilla & his translator Mauricio J. Mixco. Another book (which may no longer exist for sale) by Jacques Soustelle (Stanford University Press) — “Daily Life of the Aztecs – on the Eve of the Spanish Conquest”.

    Vaya con Dios !
    beady

  18. S. VanHutten on January 27, 2016 at 2:27 am said:

    Nick: Regarding your count of star/bullets in order to find out the identity of the hidden book within Q20, please consider that some page(s) of the missing central bifolio may have contained an illustration instead of text. This could take the stars count closer to the astrological/calendar range. Also, some interesting, alluring, useful-as-stand-alone or tell-tale illustration may explain the loss of the whole central bifolio.

    Good luck and good hunt!

  19. S. VanHutten: it’s entirely possible, though the fact that every other page of Quire 20 (bar f116v) is full of text and has only paragraph stars as decoration would seem to be a reasonably strong indication as to the likely contents of the missing bifolio’s pages. 🙂

    The hunt continues!

  20. bdid1dr: what you call “translations” are in fact “transcriptions”, using a stroke-based representation called “EVA” which was devised many years ago for the purpose of capturing (mostly) what we see in the Voynich Manuscript’s text. It was designed to make it easier for people to argue about the Voynich, and seems to have achieved that goal many times over, though perhaps not quite as constructively as EVA’s authors hoped for. 😉

  21. bdid1dr on January 27, 2016 at 5:47 pm said:

    Nick: Has any one of your many long-time visitors/contributors been able to translate the EVA into any sensible written dialogue? The word dialogue, itself, would seem to be much easier to translate (and be correctly spelled) IF, and ONLY IF, the reader was able to ignore the EVA garble of qokeedy, and focus on the Espanol and Nahuatl words which appear in every folio, whether discussing botanical items, or celestial star formations, or birthdates, or gods and goddesses (now there’s some interesting words which can be easily translated into their languages of origins).
    So, are the inventors of the EVA still available to update their EVA symbols into Latin alphabet and/or syllables.? (Those are interesting words to translate (using the Spanish- Latin, AND the Nahuatl scribes translating the Espanol into Nahuatl

    It is then up to us (and our many ‘home’ languages) to translate, without argumentation or excuses ,but rather co-operation/collaboration. It is easy once one or another of your long-time followers (regardless of how far apart they may be physically) can jointly begin to coherently produce valid results/reading.
    I have, until now, used every letter of the alphabet except ” X ” and “Z” . ” X ” would have been written as if it were a ” + ” —- (cross) .

    So, a good X am pl eu lld P a oortl for “Christ” : X (cross)

  22. Lars Dietz on January 29, 2016 at 1:03 am said:

    Does anyone else see an erased number 30 in the lower right corner of f103r?

  23. Dr. James R. Pannozzi AP (ret) on January 29, 2016 at 7:08 am said:

    bdid1dr: I’ve been working on the Nahuatl/Spanish/Latin angle for some time. Your comments are of interest but are contextually dispersed, of necessity. Could you summarize where you think your approach may be leading. What is the importance of the books you’ve mentioned in relation to Voynich … to the “text”, pictures, or both ?

    Thanks
    JRP

  24. Well, bdid1dr, the direction of your findings are somewhat close to what i am doing.

    Many people seem to be working on the text, but it is a pitty many people are doing the same obvious things that lead to nowhere.

    It would be much more productive if everybody can see the (serious) attempts that went wrong, as well as the attempts that resulted in only a few readable lines (but for the text as a whole it does not work).

    Is there any serious interest in cooperation let me know, there is so much work to be done i can not do alone.

  25. bdid1dr on February 1, 2016 at 4:42 pm said:

    Gentlemen: Nick may be getting tired of my repetitive offerings of translations of Fray Sahagun’s diary which he wrote on parchment/vellum which he inherited or was gifted from either his family or the Franciscan (maybe Cordelierean ) monastery.

    I’ve recently adopted a cat from our local pet shelter. I’m getting about three hours sleep during a 24-hour period. (Catnaps?) Please forgive my repetitions or memory lapses. I’m about ready to retrieve a rabbit cage from storage (and turn it into a ‘cat bedroom’ ) . Signing out now–cat is about to tippy-toe my keyboard…….

  26. bdid1dr on February 3, 2016 at 5:41 pm said:

    ps: Another ex-ample of how ‘x’ can be written,and so far, does appear only in B-408):

    It appears to be a number nine, but the loop of the ‘nine’ sits on the line and ex-tends to the back of of the longer down-stroke. Compare with the ‘g’ and or the ‘q’.
    This style ‘X’ appears (so far as I’ve been able to compare) only in B-408.

  27. bdid1dr on February 4, 2016 at 4:57 pm said:

    I’ve run out of ‘aes-ceus aes’ for other persons devotion to the outmoded codiological EVA (Electronic Voynich Alphabet (?) If I’ve hurt your feelings, Nick, (or your many long-term codiological friends) please let me know. I’ll ‘bow out’ from commenting. I will, however, be following the paths you lay out.
    Adieu !
    beady-eyed wonder (who no longer 1-drs )

  28. bdid1dr on February 10, 2016 at 5:14 pm said:

    ps: The elaborate “P” and curliqued items which you exhibit, herein, are itemizing the species of AQUATIC plants.
    Even today, Mexico City takes great pride in their aquatic gardens.
    Another section of this same manuscript portrays the squash blossom.
    Another section relates to cucurbits.
    Another section relates to the use of mandragore fruit juice.
    Another section relates to corn.
    Another section relates to butterflies (papillony) and the silkworm NOT heraldry.

    When it becomes apparent that we are getting close to valid translations, folio by folio, things begin to focus on whole quires. I can (and do) translate whole quires.

    Oh Lord, give me strength to resist the temptation to post any more discussions in re the “Voynich Manuscript”. I’ll be continuing my translations via the “Florentine Codex”.

  29. bdid1dr on February 14, 2016 at 1:00 am said:

    S p ecies aes am aes a s ec esp e geus a quo especegeus aquo tl e ce geus

    That’s about as close as I could, using typewriter alphabet, explain/translate the first line of subject discussion/illustration. I am weary.
    bd

  30. bdid1dr on February 18, 2016 at 5:13 pm said:

    Species aesamaes as species of aquatilegeus ———plants growing in water.

  31. bdid1dr on February 19, 2016 at 1:08 am said:

    @ Dr. Panozzi and David:

    Second line: aes cre ce r q e g = aes-cre-ce-r-q-e-g = aes crecerqeg —-

    Third line: ox-er-e-e-g qo aes on oaes ceq tl eceo aes ceg tl ec eo aes geu

    I’m hoping you can follow-up on the next several lines of botanical “latin” as heard by the scribes who probably were translating and enscribing at a furious pace. (It took me fifteen minutes for the second line — and a half-hour for the third line.
    Compare with the botanical items of the Florentine Codex…..
    bd

  32. bdid1dr on February 19, 2016 at 8:37 pm said:

    One can compare the ‘botanical’ discussion with the contents of Sahagun’s Psalmodia. The Psalmodia comprised ‘feast days’ — and particular flowers for each of the celebrations.
    bd

  33. bdid1dr on February 25, 2016 at 5:59 pm said:

    Dr. Panozzi and David: There is one more mystery glyph which I have found in B-408:

    It ‘looks like an ampersand — but with its ‘tail’ extending to one (almost as if a ‘leg/knee’ is cocked to one side: I call it ‘itius’. full words, such as ‘minu-tiae or ‘pro-pi-tious’ or mon-u-men-tious…….
    This symbol probably was created for the Sahagun’s scribes. Have you had a good look at the repetitive phraseology which appears in B-408 with the repetitive phraseology which appears throughout the so-called “Florentine Manuscript” ? Fray Sahagun’s entire “Florentine Codex” can be read online, if your computer co-operates with you.
    Fascinating AND absorbing!
    bd

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