A few days ago, Rene Zandbergen very kindly pointed me in the direction of Lat. Borg. 898, a cipher manuscript newly digitized by the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana. This has 410 pages of handwritten text, written using an alphabet formed almost entirely of astrological symbols (though with a few words apparently of Arabic right at the start, occasional Latin words fragments near the start, and a page of Italian right at the end).
Now, apart from Giovanni Fontana’s technical notes (early 15th century), the Voynich Manuscript (15th century) and the Rohonc Codex (16th century), you’d be quite hard pressed to find any other book-sized manuscript written in cipher from before 1650 (when shorthand started to become fashionable: Samuel Pepys began his shorthand diary in 1660.) So naturally, Lat. Borg. 898 was something I wanted to know more about.
According to the manuscript’s inside cover, it contains “Itineris de septentrionales fructus”, ‘the fruit of a journey to the North’: which also means it is a copy of Montpellier H.505, a handwritten manuscript written by Johannes van Heeck. “Van Hoo?” you may ask.
Actually, Johannes van Heeck was one of the small group of people who founded the ultra-influential Accademia Lincei in 1603, which ran until 1630. Yet not long after, he was jailed for killing an argumentative apothecary in a vicious brawl: even though his ultra-well-connected fellow founder Cesi managed to extricate him from prison, Van Heeck was still quickly banished from Rome. And so it was that he suddenly found himself with the time to go on a naturalist-themed journey to Poland, Pomerania and all points north to look at all of their flora and fauna.
(Incidentally, Johannes van Heeck wrote a book on the 1604 supernova: moreover, van Heeck and Cesi were both at the famous feast in honour of Galileo Galilei where the ‘telescopium’ was first given its name: Galileo and Della Porta both became Lynxes too.)
Johannes van Heeck (‘Heckius’) wrote his notes in Latin using what David Freedberg calls (though without elaborating) the “Lincean code”, which is presumably the simple substitution cipher described above. It shouldn’t be hard to crack, now, should it?
Computer Says No
It seemed obvious to me that the encipherer had not bothered to try to disguise the lengths of words (what American Cryptogram Association people would call an ‘aristocrat’ cryptogram, as opposed to a ‘patristocat’ cryptogram), so immediately it was highly probable that this was only lightly enciphered.
I therefore briefly looked for obvious Latin language cribs (a word with a highly unusual letter pattern, that would only have one or two possible Latin plaintexts) in the early pages, but noticed only this one:
This could easily be MISSUM or MITTAM: but because I also thought it likely that Latin would have several other words that matched the same pattern, decided not to pursue this further.
However, the cipher shapes had already suggested a likely cryptographic pattern to me: that the encipherer was using the astrological aspect glyphs (conjunction, sextile, square, trine, opposition) for vowels, and the astrological sign and planet glyphs for consonants. As a result, I was confident that I should be able to crack it easily.
But when I transcribed the first half of folio 2r (most of the first folio seemed to have been ripped out) and put it into CryptoCrack… the computer said no. That is, it didn’t find anything remotely like Latin. Or Italian. Or Dutch. Or anything, in fact. And when I tried half a page from folio 52r, that too failed to work (though it suggested a word “DISTILLA”).
That was a bit odd: so, with the briefest of nods to my first headmasterly Latin teacher (Richard Sale), I instead put the first few lines of Caesar’s Gallic Wars (“In tres partes” etc) into CryptoCrack: which decrypted them with ease. So CryptoCrack seemed to be working OK: the problem was apparently with Lat. Borg. 898’s plaintext.
At this point, though, I could see enough of the patterns to have a go at it by hand: and so got almost all of the alphabet.
Why did CryptoCrack fail to work on such a lightly enciphered Latin ciphertext? Having thought about it, it now seems to me that the way Johannes van Heeck and his contemporaries used Latin was essentially quite different from the way Julius Caesar wrote: and so using a single overarching “Latin” corpus / statistics is probably far from optimal.
So if in future I find myself desperately needing Cryptocrack to break tricky Latin texts circa 1600, I might put together a much later Latin corpus and see if I can get Phil Pilcrow to add that in as a “Late Latin” language option.
Through Philip Neal’s eyes
One nice thing about code-breaking is that even though a ciphertext usually has only one genuine plaintext, there are often many paths to that destination: while all will employ cunning of one sort or another, none is exclusively right.
And so it was that Philip Neal was having a good cryptological chortle at my expense: he asked me if I had seen the “glaring crib” in the section headed ‘Contra Tremorem Cordis‘. I thought he was referring to the MISSUM / MITTAM crib-like word above (which actually turned out to be TOLLIT), but it turned out he was actually referring to the two words immediately after it.
Nice crib! I wish I’d seen it, because it would have saved me half an hour of crypto hassle – but both roads led to Rome.
The Eye of the Lynx
While David Freedburg’s book “The Eye of the Lynx” doesn’t mention Lat. Borg. 898, it does mention Montpellier BEM H505 (though note that the description there is hyperlinked not to Johannes van Heeck but to quite the wrong “Johannes Eck” (1484-1543)), the book-sized cipher manuscript from which Lat. Borg. 898 was copied (with a few copying errors, inevitably). H505 is apparently subtitled “Mechanica et Naturalia Ioannis Ecchi Lincei”, and (David Freedburg “The Eye of the Lynx”, p.444 note 10):
“is largely devoted to matters of technical and mechanical interest and contains Heckius’s typically rather awkward drawings of machines, instruments, chemical vessels, and a variety of mechanical devices. Introducing the manuscript are thirty pages of medical notes written in Arabic, Syriac, and a strangely hermetic combination of Arabic and the Lincean code, as well as a passionate and moving invocation to the Virgin to assist him in his exploration of the hidden parts of nature.”
[Update: I found a scanned image from H505 here and inserted it below:]
So it would seem that Borg.Lat.898 is nothing more than the dreary text-only child of H.505: but, almost inevitably, H.505 has not yet been digitized, so as far as Lincean cipher manuscripts go, we currently have what we have (Borg.Lat.898) and no more.
Incidentally, If you want to know more about the Accademia Lincei, then David Freedburg’s (2003) “Eye of the Lynx” is a nice accessible read. For more on Johannes van Heeck, Freedberg mentions Alessandrini’s (1978) “Cimeli lincei a Montpellier” pp.288-293 and pp.68-77, plus Gabrieli’s (1989) “Contributi alla storia della Accademia dei Lincei” pp. 1055-1078): but nothing much else is obviously online. Which is shame, because he was a particularly colourful character.
Transcription of fol 1r2r
[R] calamenti thimi
pulegt cardui benedic-
ti rosarum menthe cr
ispe anam [l. se.] anisi
feniculi ozimi urthi
ce aneti [an }s vad:] angeli
ce feniculi althee
squille iridis turbit
elle: albi ana [}y. Esula9
propter: }y] asali [}vi] galan
ge cinamomi calami [azo:
an }s] infundantur trita
omnia in aceti fortis
simi [ttx.] tridup in lo-
co calido in uase ui-
treo uel terreo uitre
to deinde bulliant
Transcription of fol 2v
in uase fictili uitre
ato ad casum medietatis
fieru coleture adde
sachari melli despuma
ti [an }XX] fiat strupus
hui aromatizetur cum cr
cimacis cinamomi zin
ciberis [ana }y] suspen
datur in saculo intus
et seruetur urui
[Contra tremore Cordis]
nos sumus experti
si tollatur puluis [An]
rubeorum et croci et
uino bibatur subtili
statim tollit tremore
cordis
Transcription of fol 3r
magnum secretum indo
lorem mamillarum pellistal
pe superposita mirabilis
est si permiseris
talpam mori in manu tene
do oculos irsius con
tra radios solis si
tetigetis cum illama
nu mamillam dolentea ces
sat dolor
[Hands stoldis] uxor passa
est apostemata mamilla
rum usq ad mortem et tale
adposuit emplastrm a
factum lacte rani quod
est pingue super natans
lacti post quam stete
ris ad tempus et cum cre
ta communi et superpone
[batur]
Transcription of fol 3v
batur et in [1/4] quore ces
sauit et dolor requieu
per noctem dicebat quo
prius plura erant appli
ta et nullum contulit
sequenti die fureran
applicate aque camphor
et alie resolutiue
[Alia experta medicin]
[R] ceram nouam ex afac
as pileum siue capsam
in quam totam mamillarum
pone diu noctuq gest
itauit mamilla intus pos
sudare et tunc stati
omnia apostemata mitigant
durities et nodos dis
souit et quando urte
[ate]
on page 2r in the middle the text is written: Esula(9 subscript abrev) propter
If you look at that r, it is the same as the 4 used, is it not?
Did you transcribe a page already, i can use for analysis ?
If i look at the titles, the content of this book is not for those faint of heart.
It talks about fistula, laxating medicine and internal examinations.
David: there’s a page of Lat.Borg.898 transcribed (well… deciphered) at the bottom of this page, but I also have the next three pages transcribed at home. What do you want to do with it? Seeing as the cipher key is on the page too, you can decipher any part of it you like yourself if you want. 🙂
Nick, what a team ! You, Rene, and Phillip Neal ! I won’t go there … too much eye strain and brain strain (for me, anyway). It’s been a while since we’ve seen any of Mr. Neal’s research. Two thumbs up, each, for all three of you!
beady-eyed wonder – er
Cryptocrack isn’t going to be able to approach the problem in the same way a human brain can. I don’t know how it’s programmed – you’d understand that far better than i would – but I would guess that a combination of letter and digraph frequency plus a corpus of known words in a given language would be enough to crack a decent-length monoalphabetic substitution cipher. Of course, if you have abbreviations for common Latin prefixes and terminations like -us, -um, -am, pro- and per-, you’re taking many of the common digraphs out of the equation. And would Cryptocrack recognize something it read as ‘ppinqu’ as an abbreviation for ‘propinquum’? Probably not.
Philip Neal noticed that a plaintext heading gave a crib in the adjacent ciphertext; again, I’m not sure that a computer program would be designed to look for a shortcut like that. And it certainly wouldn’t have spotted that one class of astrological glyph represented vowels while another represented consonants. Just as with the various ‘analyses’ of EVA text, a computer’s results are only as good as the programming and the data with which it works – and I know that’s obvious, but it seems to be forgotten or ignored in Voynich studies.
So what we have, once again, is a fairly simple monoalphabetic substitution cipher. Secure enough to prevent anyone reading the contents of this book without expending a fair amount of time and effort; simple enough that the author can still refer to it relatively easily. Much like the Greek letter cipher in the Trinity College manuscript you’ve just posted about. But the Voynich Manuscript, if it is indeed a ciphertext, isn’t enciphered in a similar way. Which, in my opinion, is what makes people keep looking for ever more recherche natural languages, and which had some of the finest cryptographic minds of World War Two grasping at the anachronistic straws of artificial ones. But if you discount those two possibilities, as I think you should, you find yourself positing an early fifteenth century cipher of such excruciating complexity that even those who understood the secret must have found their enciphered text hopelessly difficult to use.
Every other mediaeval or early modern cipher manuscript of which I’m aware uses fairly trivial systems of encipherment. Why should the Voynich Manuscript be different? What was so special that the systems which great minds had found perfectly adequate for centuries were not suitable?
And why do I have a nasty feeling there’s something wrong with this picture?
PS: the Rohonc Codex isn’t securely dated to the sixteenth century; the paper is Italian and from about 1540 if I remember rightly, but I don’t think anyone has determined when the writing was added to it. I think that Lang’s article mentioned that a Hungarian noble library is known to have contained volumes which contained quires of unused sixteenth century Italian paper – in the nineteenth century, when the Codex appeared from…somewhere. (A completely different scenario in all respects from the Voynich Manuscript, I hasten to add).
“there’s a page transcribed” you stated that is f1r, but that is the arabic page.
Yes nick, please Lat. Borg. 898,
if you have transcribed pages. Could you please email those to me. I can check/fine tune my analysis tool with that.
david: it’s actually the transcription / decipherment of 2r (as per the image at the top of this page), sorry about that – I’ll add the following three pages this evening. (It’s actually very quick to do once you get the hang of it).
Nick, you mention that book-length ciphers from before 1600 are rare. Isn’t this a reasonable, if inconclusive, argument against the Voynich manuscript being a cipher? It seems that were it a cipher it would be doubly unique, being both of a script and a format otherwise unknown.
Emma May Smith: the problem is that, as one of my stats lecturers liked to say, “stats begins at thirty” – if you haven’t got a good number of observations to work from (and there are specific theoretical reasons why stats people tend to pick thirty as a starting number), you will only ever draw unreliable inferences.
Moreover, all these book-length cipher manuscripts seem very much like outliers (albeit each in their own way), which makes generalizing from them significantly harder.
Emma: are book-length manuscripts of the same period, written in an unknown language and script, any more common?
SirHubert: book-length manuscripts from the 1400s, written in a language with a script are incredibly common. There are thousands and thousands of the things. The difference is that for most (all?) of them we know the language and the script, whereas those of the Voynich manuscript are unknown. But while a cipher would still be a cipher once we know how to read it, the unknownness of the VM would disappear.
And there’s the thing: “unknown” is a property inherent to our time and knowledge, not of the world where and when it was written. Back then, it was just another language in just another script. And there were lots of languages and a fair number of scripts. Many of these had the potential to spawn Voynich-type manuscripts had history been different. That we have only one is an accident of history, not a statement of the VM’s inherent likelihood.
“Nobody was writing books in cipher at the time,” could be an absolute statement (were it true), but, “nobody was writing books in an unknown language and script in the 1400s,” could only ever be a contingent statement based on present knowledge. Whichever way the VM is solved, the statement will be proven false.
To me, the Voynich MS text is clear: it’s largely based on a meaningful text with additional meaningless (arbitrary) components, onto which some unknown layer of encryption has been applied.
That last layer at least includes writing in a fantasy alphabet, but apart from that, the ratio meaningful / meaningless and level of encryption are parameters that still need to be determined…..
This reads like a (not particularly good) joke, but can also be taken as a serious model.
I agree with Nick that we lack sufficient numbers of examples to be able to say anything about the likely range of each of these parameters.
The existence of a MS like Borg.Lat.898 certainly suggests to me that there wasn’t a pressing need some 150 years earlier to devise a cipher for encoding scientific knowledge that was way beyond contemporary standards.
Emma: that wasn’t quite what I was asking, though I take your point about forgotten scripts and languages not being originally intended to be obscure or difficult. But of all the thousands of manuscripts produced around the period you mention, how many were written in a language and/or script which is currently unintelligible?
If the answer to that is none, as you yourself suggest, then that’s 2-0 to the cipher manuscripts. As Nick says, that’s hardly statistically significant, but if we have two cipher manuscripts and no unknown language manuscripts, I don’t think that can be taken to make the unknown language option more plausible.
Rene: far from being a joke, that’s about the most sensible assessment I’ve read. You’ve cheered up a cold evening 🙂
Nick and Regulars,
Quite a while ago, when Nick first posted the Rohonc ‘code’. I posted my point of view and cited sources:
Rohonc was “Chrono’ . I followed up with illustrations and discussions of various clocks and their inner workings, including several examples of still existing clock towers ‘here and there’ in Europe. Fascinating — no code.
Even today, some ‘watches’ are referred to as chronographs (whether worn on a wrist, or on a belt, or on board a boat or ship.
“Emma: that wasn’t quite what I was asking, though I take your point about forgotten scripts and languages not being originally intended to be obscure or difficult. But of all the thousands of manuscripts produced around the period you mention, how many were written in a language and/or script which is currently unintelligible?”
SirHubert: my point applies to that question too, unless I’m missing something. There have been other unintelligible manuscripts and languages in the past, now solved, and there are still a few others unread. I think the Khitan and Jurchen scripts were for a long time wholly unreadable, and are still only imperfectly understood.
The point remains that we can’t judge the Voynich manuscript based on characteristics which are not inherent.
Rene’s reference to a “fantasy” alphabet makes curious.
It seems to me that when people, back then, set out to create a set of signs, they drew from sets already known to them: the symbols of astrology, or of geometry and so forth.
In theory, it should tell us something about the persons who either invented, or employed the glyphs if their source were identified.
One table I’ve always hoped to see was a frequency table of similar forms. Some appear in Abkhaz/Ubyk, some in Armenian, many in Aramaic and scripts derived from them – the number of those gained by way of Aramaic is large.
Then, I suppose one would have to include the most usual forms of Greek and Latin abbreviations.
If it turned out that the glyphs used for Voynich script were explicable – just for example – in terms of Greek, Ubyk and Latin, then we might be looking at the Byzantine-Armenian area.
Whether anyone would have the interest to make such a comparative table, I don’t know. Do we have the technology?
– and the usual disclaimer: not my area.
BD that is nonsense as the book is named after the town of Rohonc now refered to as Rechnitz, Austria where the book was kept. Please do a lttle fact checking because your theories hold little water
Diane: as far as the shapes used for the Voynich Manuscript’s alphabet go, it seems to me that we have a mixture of:
* the very old (-9, placed at the end of the words in exactly the same way as in Tironian notae, yet apparently with different meaning);
* the very familiar (the aiir / aiiv family of medieval page references, yet apparently with different meaning);
* the apparently cryptographic (4o appears in some mid-15th century cipher alphabets, but I suspect it has a slightly older scribal history); and
* the bespoke (the four gallows characters appear to have been designed in a systematic way, yet don’t appear as a system in any other document yet found).
To my eyes, it is the design of the four gallows that most strongly confounds visual comparisons with existing scripts: taken as a family of shapes, they seem to be expressions of some kind of deeper rationale or logic that eludes us entirely.
Nick,
re: “as far as the shapes used for the Voynich Manuscript’s alphabet go, it seems to me ..”
I think I’ve seen a number of arguments against each of these propositions, but being a ‘natural blonde’ when it comes to ciphers, I haven’t paid as much attention as the subject deserves.
About the “aiir/aiiv” group, I think the arguments tend to run “if it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck” etc. But then I always wonder if the person’s ever heard of the lyre bird.
The design of the four gallows doesn’t seem such a problem, really, if you look across a range of scripts. In particular the one I think of an an ornate ‘P’ occurs in many derivatives fro Aramaic, and always within the “S-towards-T” shift as far as pronunciation goes. I noticed it in scripts from the Black sea all through the inland route to as far as the Yemen, though the old Yemen; that script was Sabaic minuscule.
I’m wasting your readers time here. What I was hoping was for a competent linguist to express themselves intrigued … Guess not.
Diane: if you’re going to duck every issue… quack quack quack. 🙂
Diane,
that is why i suggested many times a more serious environment such as a forum, where you can really cooperate on certain matters. I did not get 1 positive response on that yet
I made freq. analysis and more textual analysis on at least 32 languages and compared that with the VMS. Three good candidates popped out. I showed this to 1 professor and 2 other people in the area, but they do not understand the method and/or seem to show no interest in the method whatsoever.
Currently i am doing paleography self-study/research the period 1000-1600 Europe in order to fully understand the time-frame and writing method. And also for fun !
Unfortunately, most people only want to blog, write and read for entertainment purposes.
The very fact that the Voynich MS characters are a mixture of very familiar and very unfamiliar symbols suggests that it is an invented alphabet.
Many symbols that may not be familiar to everyone were used commonly as abbreviations, and people not familliar with them are usually shocked (in a positive way) to see them page after page in books like Cappelli. But not so the gallows.
Of course, they also appear in Cappelli, but as ornamental extensions, not characters in their own right.
Some plainly legible Latin MSs are so abbreviated, that, to me they are as illegible as the Voynich MS. This is a nice case:
http://digi.vatlib.it/view/MSS_Vat.lat.869/0007
Rene: the problem with Cappelli is that, for any kind of post-1400 Voynich dating, the shapes he lists were all ancient history (the story of Trithemius and the supposedly “Armenian” book was only slightly in the future): by that time, only a tiny handful of late medieval Latin abbreviations remained current, to the point that even referring to them as “Tironian” is hopelessly inaccurate.
And my point about the gallows (to which Diane turned up her bill) is that they manifestly form/formed a self-contained (and, as you suggest, probably authorially-invented) system, something which doesn’t seem to have any visual parallel before, during, or even after that time. You can easily find matches for each individual gallows shape if you cast your net over a wide enough swathe of millennia: but never together as a coherent system, as here.
Nick: Whatever happened to any discussion of Van Heecks’ cipher?
I refuse to get into more argumentation in re the “Voynich” or “Rohonc”. Especially when the so-called “Rohonc” manuscript is loaded with visual clues — and not a lot of written dialogue to accompany that illustration.
So, can you give us any more clues/discussion of Van Heeck’s cipher? My husband’s forefathers of New Netherland, Rensaellerswyck, Long Eyeslandt, Beverswyck, Schenectady, and Canajoharie — all of them left manuscriptorial ‘family history’ in Church documents, land ownership documents, trader’s documents (beaver fur for making hats)……
In the nineteenth century (Gold Rush Era) one Putman/Putnam young man came to California by ship. Evidence for that adventure was a tiny Mohawk basket, a miniature ‘totem pole’, and a silver napkin ring engraved ‘All around the Horn”.
Just trying to stay on track of whatever you present for discussion.
bd
Diane: the validity of your question depends on whether the script is natural or invented. I live in England, but if I happened to have an interest in the Far East I might choose to use Korean and Japanese characters if I were devising a cipher alphabet.
If you were to draw up a table of world scripts used in the first millennium AD, including variant forms, you’d end up with something which any amateur Voynichologist with any preconceived theory could use to support that theory.
If you are interested in my opinion, I think the script is invented and was devised in Europe. Whether you think I’m a competent linguist, a narcissistic pseudo-historian or an angry deluded conspiracy theorist is up to you. Stephen Bax, and indeed Emma May Smith (whose blog I think is excellent) would very probably disagree with me on this.
Does that help?
Nick,
I understand that we have a new idea being floated one which – like so many others – seems chiefly designed to reach a conclusion without the hassle of doing any initial work to determine whether such a proposition is justified.
One recalls the many similar instances in Voynich studies, and the effort then needed to correct the fallacy: that ‘hatching’ is in the manuscript and proves it originated in fifteenth century Italy; of ‘cloud-band pattern’ as supposedly a sure indicator of ‘central European’ cultural character – and most bizarrely of recent months, the notion that the only time and place in the world where women braided their hair was in medieval central Europe!
Surely sometimes, before thinking up a notion which might avoid having to do any work outside one’s comfort-zone, it would be worth asking and attempting to discover whether, in fact, the proposition is true.
So – I ask again: what effort has ever been made to find where, and when (if ever) the same forms were used regularly in a form of script?
At least one ‘gallows’ type glyph is demonstrably present in an Armenian manuscript, one recently been revived (after Thomas, I believe, first found it), by another Voynich-er, and even re-presented – as the blogger informs me – by Rene.
The one which I found time to research is one of a ‘set’ – found within a definable range, and one contiguous that where Armenian was used.
Seems to me that it is imposing a little to expect anyone, including me, to simply believe it without any evidence that the ‘fantasy script’ notion has some basis in fact, or that every effort to find comparable forms within a limited range turned up blank. Seems to me we have about as much proof that the glyphs are invented as we have that aliens landed in New York last week.
Show me.
———-
postscript for David. There is a new forum. Voynich ninja.
I think the last two sentences should be the other way round – at least, I hope so!!
Diane: you have your own blog to sneer at and belittle everyone from, please don’t use mine for that purpose.
Nick, can you tell us anything more about Johannes van Heecks, himself? Several years previous to our marriage, I participated in settling my husband’s parents’ estate.
In a large basket, which had somehow gotten thoroughly wet, I found a heap of correspondence, diaries, and family history archives. Putman/Putnam. Some of the history began with Pootman and Van Alstine/Van Ylstein family arrivals in America. I’m fairly certain that Rene may find this history fascinating. Several members of the Putman/Putnam family were killed during the invasion of Fort Schenectady. At that time, the Putnam family were living in Canajoharie. The fort was where business and trading took place. Some villagers would take refuge at the fort during troubled times.
I’ll see if I can dig up some history of the Van Heecks. A very good source of New York/ Long Eyslandt/Rensaellerswick history can be found in books by Russell Shorto and his collaboration with historians involved in preserving the remains of the “Halve Moon” — and building a replica.
🙂
SirHubert,
I apologise for not having seen your reponse to mine. Thank you so much for addressing the question itself.
For what it’s worth, and I’m not a palaeographer, let alone one with the range of a comparative palaeographer, I think the script may have been one used in Europe too – or I should say scripts.
In my wholly unqualified opinion, I think the basic script looks as if it may have been written by a hand trained in Sephardi cursive – and that that, together with other details, is why Panofsky immediately attributed it to the southern (Sephardi) Jews. That region would also explain the inscriptions on the month-roundels – for which I find Artur Sixto’s argument for Judeo-Spanish convincing.
However, in addition to the usual Assyrian, or Sephardi scripts, there was another informal script (or maybe more: I’m researching that at the moment) which was used to write Yiddish outside the schools and formal environment. I do wish that Panofsky had written more about the manuscript, but a combination of those elements could possibly explain why later he posited that the work had been inscribed (not composed) in central Europe.
That, of course, doesn’t tell us what was being written, or copied, but as you say, one reason for such a combination of *real* forms, might also be to represent sounds not in the writer’s usual range. The example of that map found in a Franciscan monastery in Dalmatia shows how easily a text could have become incomprehensible, though in that case the writer kept to Venetian orthography.
It’s good to have someone converse about the manuscript. The experience has been rarer than one might hope, these past eight years.
And Nick, that’s just a fact.
Diane: a fact? From where I’m sitting, that comment looked more like a whole bunch of speculations and opinions, formed to resemble the shape of an argument but with neither substance nor genuine logical structure.
Oh my goodness! Some people are so focused on argumentation, that they miss entirely, any other discussions which are relevant to Nick’s presentation of the Van Heeks manuscript.
I’m hoping Rene will be able to research a little of the history of New York. Before it was “New York” it was New Amsterdam, Long Islandt, and Rensaellerswyck. Current day archaeologists and writers (Russell Shorto, for one) have been re-writing the history of New York City and the rest of the state of New York. The last thing I’ve recently read was that New York scientists, archaeologists, mariners, and Native Americans — all have been investigating and verifying where Henry Hudson, his son, and several of the ship’s sailors disappeared into obcsurity. I think they are planning to do some scuba diving in the areas being discussed.
> SirHubert on February 10, 2016 at 11:24 pm said:
> Rene: far from being a joke, that’s about the most sensible assessment I’ve read.
> You’ve cheered up a cold evening
Thanks SirHubert. I actually omitted one more feature, at the end of the process:
– an unknown level of error introduced by a more-or-less accurate copyist.
(zero if such a role did not exist in the MS creation).
Nick,
The fact was that I have found it relatively rare to receive a response about the manuscript when asking a question or offering an observation about the manuscript.
Santacoloma seemed unable to understand that being a female does not mean that all one says or thinks is motivated by one’s uterus, and that it required therefore a response at the level of interpersonal emotions, largely informing me about what the person thought were my psychological motivations for asking a question, or my supposedly ‘female’ angle in any observation.
I asked whether anyone has yet researched the question of whether or not the Voynich glyphs do exist in one or more recorded scripts.
In reply to SirHubert’s sharing his angle on the script, I shared some information about the state of my own research, and referred to Panofsky’s comments in that context.
I sometimes wonder whether, if I had adopted a pseudonym – say Jemmy. L. Fortescue – I might have had a much easier time of it.
🙂
Diane: the reason you find it difficult to get responses is that the questions you tend to ask are so deeply rooted in your historical methodology and specific outlook that they are not even rhetorical so much as solipsistic.
As to whether research has been carried out into whether “the Voynich glyphs do exist in one or more recorded scripts”, you know full well that it has, and to a large degree, and by a large number of people, but to no avail (so far). The difference is that “historical timelessness” (though “achronicity” might be closer, if such a word exists) is so deeply rooted in your methodology that you don’t see any possible reason why we should all not instead look for matches with cuneiform or proto-whatever scripts. As a result, from the outside your question actually appears to be saying: “aha – do you, gentle reader, not perhaps think that this absence of matches indicates that we should be looking much further back in history? i.e. thus proving me right all along?”
For almost everyone, the answer to that question would be a resounding no – that it instead seems many hundreds of times more probable that we are looking at an invented alphabet (specifically an invented cipher alphabet) than some lost ancient language. But far be it from me to suggest that you should stop re-ploughing what seems an arid furrow: feel free to keep on keeping on.
This is a disgrace!
Many women have contributed very significantly to the understanding of the Voynich MS and it is easy to name them.
The one single case that I know of, where any one of them was ever attacked for being a woman, came from Diane O’Donovan, who is here complaining for not being taken seriously because she is a woman.
Nick, I guess I should feel relieved that you very seldom respond to my contributions to your various presentations. Not that I am asking for validation, but rather I am trying to give leads to various anthropological events which are ongoing. Especially when it is about the Netherlanders (and Swedes?) and Walloons arrival on the East Coast of America:
My current reading: “Beverwijck” Janny Venema – “Amsterdam” Russell Shorto -“Mohawk Frontier” Thomas E. Burke Jr” — ” Dutch New York” Roger Panetta (with foreward by Russell Shorto) — to name a few.
So, I shall attempt to find more discussion/reading material about Johannes van Heecks.
bd
Rene, is there or are there any fragments of transcribed texts of that Capelli document? I really need as much transcribed text as possible to compare from that period around 1400. Then in 5 seconds i can see if it makes any sense looking at it any further. My main focus now lies in italy.
Diane, yes i have found similar glyphs but as nick points out, not in the combination as in the VMS. By examination of the paleographic details around 1400 in the countries surrounded by seas (yes, many..) I will try to get the corrrect “feeling” on the significance of the used letters, and/or glyphs.
The armenian path was abandonned by me after i discovered that other languages have more similarities. Also the armenian people were not in their best during the time period around 1400, which reflects on the poor armenian text during that time.
There are more important let’s call it things, i found, that are not really evidence if you look at them one by one, but as a whole they are convincing enough that the text originates from a eu country. (sorry for any bad gammar)
I ‘swore off’ on anything referring to the “Voynich”. I’m somewhat relieved to see what may have been a diversionary ‘cipher puzzle’. So, whatever happened to any information/discussion in re Johannes Van Heecks (more likely Van Hoeecks) ??
For what it is worth: I refer you a book “Mohawk Frontier”(Author Thomas E. Burke Jr. ) where there is brief mention of Bennony Arentsen van Hoeck , was killed February 8, 1690. This book was published by: State University of New York Press, Albany – copyright Cornell University 1991.
ps: I’m gritting my teeth — can you, Nick, explain why every single new ‘puzzle’ you present ends up in pages of “Voynich” discussion and ARGUMENTATION ? Apparently you have no real interest other persons’ possibly provable presentation of Johannes Van Heecks ‘cipher’.
So, have you had a chance to review my possibly relative reference to:
Bennony Arentsen Van Hoeck — as being a second or third generation relative of Johannes van Heecks. Don’t get me started on another similar name:
Van Voorhees. Rene may be in a position to do a little research on your behalf.
Just so you may be able to understand ‘he female persons’ points of view — especially when most genealogical societies follow the female lines of family history, war history, biblical history, graveyard memorials …., town and city names (Amsterdam, Nieuw Amsterdam, Rotterdam, …. History: New York City – Brooklyn, Long Islandt… were all first settled and developed by the Dutch. The bloody ‘_astard English pretty much destroyed “New Netherland territories, settlements, and treaty agreements with the surrounding Native American tribes.
I can bet that the ‘gentlemen’ in London, England just loved their formal headgear (the ‘top hat’) — felted beaver-hair. There was, pre-English invasion, a hat-maker who lived and worked in Beverwyck.
@ Rene: I am surprised that you seemingly have no interest in this latest discussion page which Nick has very presently presented.
So, I’m hoping ‘somebody’ can give Nick some ‘clues’ which may lead to solving this latest mystery.
Dear bdid1dr,
I find this book of interest and it’s another rarity, but I don’t see any great mystery in its origin.
Actually, what is just a bit intriguing is an entry on the German wiki page about him:
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johannes_van_Heeck
that he ended up at the court of Rudolf II. If this is true then, given his apparent interest in cipher, he could be entry #142 on the list of people who might have brought the Voynich MS to Prague.
On the Italian version:
https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johannes_van_Heeck
we read that he returned to Rome in 1614 and seems to have lost his mind by 1616.
However, his name does not seem to appear in the enormously long list at the ‘Documenta Rudolfina’ website:
http://documenta.rudolphina.org/Indices/Ind_Pers_dehtml?logLevel=FINE
so one may doubt……
The Prague evidence seems to depend on a letter by van Heeck written from Prague in 1604 and edited in G. Gabrieli, Gli scritti inediti di Giovanni Ecchio Linceo (1577-1620?), quoted in the Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani article quoted in the German wikipedia which is giving some additional (and different) information.
Thank you Rene and Helmut. (Zandbergen and Winkler).
@Nick — I sense a great weariness (and some impatience) in your current state of mind.
@ Rene: I’m hoping you may get around to reviewing one section of B-408 which is discussing the confusion between an edible mushroom which causes hallucinations if ingested with a glass of wine. You came close in calling it a myth/fairy tale (?) . The folio is quite large and folds out in such a way that the illustrations on the four corners, and edges of the unfolded document carry the discussion for each of the illustrations.
Again, I thank you for your patience!
bd
@ Donald Vaugn (or however you spell your name) you are being offensive when you call some other persons’ posts nonsense. In fact, you are being rude to our host, Nick. I’m pretty sure that there is a limit to how much argumentation he will tolerate.
Forgive me, Nick, if I am assuming to speak for you.
bd
bdid1dr: I don’t speak for you, so please don’t speak for me.
Nick
“As to whether research has been carried out into whether “the Voynich glyphs do exist in one or more recorded scripts”, you know full well that it has, and to a large degree, and by a large number of people, but to no avail (so far).”
– no, I didn’t know that. If you’d care to add some references to this research, I’d be interested to read them.
Diane: if you honestly didn’t know that, then it would be hard not to conclude that you have failed to engage with the last century of Voynich research.
I no longer 1-dr why you seldom respond to or acknowledge any of my posts.
I also wondered why you let other persons (Mr. Vaughn, for example) attack other persons commentary (most often when it is a woman who has posted an item).
So, Rohonc or Chrono — what is being pictured is a clock. Not a cuckoo clock. If one can’t see the gears being manually turned by those tiny male figures, with sticks (so that their body parts/clothing/beards won’t get ground into the gears) — it is all about the passing of time — I will conclude my chronographic Rohonc conversation: Time Passes into oblivion for any living thing…..
bd
bdid1dr: “most often when it is a woman who has posted an item” – if this is statistically correct (and, transgender issues aside, there’s surely a 50% chance that is), I would be highly surprised if this was for sexist reasons, as you seem to want to imply.
Perhaps more realistically, my own guess is that it would (if true) be because more than half of the comments here have been left by women: you yourself have left 2,400 comments, which is at least 17.5% of all the comments left here by visitors.
Nick,
When I first asked if anyone had ever done a study of the glyphs and which scripts contain – or might contain – some of those used in the Vms – apart from the most ordinary-looking ones, it was in response to a proposal that the script was an invented one.
No-body then said that person x, y, or z had done that and found (say) that this percentage had come from Latin, or that percentage from Greek, or any other known language.
Nor did you.
I asked the same question several years ago, and received the same apparent “null” about that aspect of the study.
Recently I asked again on a form – again, no-one had heard of any such study’s having been conducted.
Today I received a personal response, some of which I’ll quote verbatim:
“we’re dealing with the work of (a) VERY creative mind(s) (and skilled hands, of course :). And so there exist no direct parallels to the Voynich glyphs whatsoever.”
So although you may recall some researcher’s having run the numbers to determine which languages provided these glyphs, that knowledge exists in your mind, but not in anyone else’s who is willing to share it.
The question was simple enough. I don’t see why answering it should require more than a simple factual answer. If you can’t recall any particular person’s study, that’s ok. At least now I know that you think it was done at some stage, to some level, by someone.
As to being solipsistic: I only wish that were true. Then perhaps I could dismiss the abuse as a figment of my imagination – and it would have the added advantage that I shouldn’t mind having so much of my own work “lifted” – one can hardly steal from oneself, can one?
As to my work being all about antiquity – I think the Avignon period began about 1305, didn’t it? That’s the period from which I date the immediate exemplars for MS Beineke 408. I date the manufacture to about 1427. The matter it contains, of course, is something quite separate, but I’ve treated most of that too.
(Just filling you in).
Diane: how about starting with D’Imperio and Tiltman? Or are they just too Eurocentric for you to consider?
I don’t know what “abuse” you’re talking about.
I also don’t know any examples of anyone “lifting” your work: please let me know if there’s so much as a line of text I’ve written that derives unattributed from your work, I should be pleased to remove it at great speed, it would certainly not have been intended.
As to your current non-Hellenistic opinion: it’s certainly a surprise to hear you talk about the Avignon period. That’s exactly the kind of thing you used to type shouty comments and sarcastic blog posts at everyone else for even considering, not so very long ago. How things have changed.
Good luck with getting anyone to take you seriously.
No, Nick,
Of course you haven’t used any of my work; in eight years I think you have not mentioned it, reviewed it nor, apparently, even read it.
The question I asked was about the manuscript, and I would have appreciated your attempting to answer the question as you might have done if the same question had been asked by anyone else.
My readers are numerous enough, and some have the necessary background or active interest, to follow what I’m saying about the imagery’s chronological strata.
You won’t remember of course, but I re-introduced the theme of the Franciscans as emissaries to the east in the context of explaining that the botanical imagery showed eastern plants, and not chiefly ones of value for medicine. That’s also why I first introduced the Armenian theme into Voynich studies – because they were in Nusantara and part of the east-west trade network. Thomas Spande took up the ‘Armenian’ idea – with due acknowledgement – and made it is own. I now credit him with having done the hard yards there.
That already takes us from the basic chronological stratum – Hellenistic – into the period when the material would appear to have reached the west. In 2010 I dated the shift to the mid-twelfth to mid-thirteenth century. But you wouldn’t know that – how could you?
My discussion of folio 86v was the first analysis of that folio which took it as a map – and you might recall that before bothering to write up those results, I asked you if there was any previous body of work I should cite as precedent. You, and the mailing list both answered firmly in the negative – so I wrote it up. I identified its orientation and places on it – including Avignon – and then wrote a series of posts about the situation there during the same time the Franciscans and Dominicans were acting as ambassadors. And lately, as you surely do know, I’ve posted on language studies among those orders during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.
I still believe that for much of its history the work was retained by Jews, and before them probably by Radhanites. By the early fifteenth century, when it was made, it was I believe in Latin hands, and that is why, for example, the micrography on folio 9v looks like an untrained hand attempting to write a semitic script, probably Hebrew. For this last, I have the opinion of one of the best-known and most respected specialists in that field.
But I shan’t waste more space on your blog. Enough people know my own, as you say.
Oh so now its the Franciscans, visiting the East huh, but only for the plant section…
And the putative proto Voynich, written by Franciscans, was then given to Radhanite Jews and retained, huh. Before it returns to “Latin hands”, which is as about vague as it gets!
Your little plot completely ignores the fact that it was the Nestorians (Eastern Church)who Christianized the Far East, not the Franciscans or the Dominicans : Jordanus Catalani went to China in 1321, whereas the Radhanites ceased to exist in about the 10th Century.
For some reason you seem really desperate to set up an “Anything but Europe” theory, even if your resulting claims are complete fantasy and anachronism.
And you have the gall to say your theories are based on facts, rather than preconceptions and assumptions!
From your own autobiography:
“Diane O’Donovan read Syriac and Near Eastern history and mythology under Professor Bowman in Melbourne before travelling to Japan, where she studied Japanese and Persian miniatures for two years. Upon her return to Australia, she studied Fine Arts (including semiotics), Near Eastern Studies (including Classical Hebrew),”
With this background, trying to convince people that you have no bias to the East and that your Voynich “discoveries” are purely based on objective analysis is a joke.
Also, with this background, how can you fail so hard at basic documentation and chronology?
Obviously you’ve had to backpedal quite a bit in recent years, because most of your pompous hogwash was untenable. Unfortunately this latest batch is no better.
But of course, when all else fails, play the sexism card.
You should be ashamed of yourself.
Diane: if you really are so desperate for an opinion, “solipsistic pseudohistorical tosh” would be painfully close. And that is from having read – often with gritted teeth – innumerable pages from your site.
Goose –
Now you’re being silly. If you want to have a conversation, or ask a question, or even be insulting and abusive – easier than reading – why not do it at my blog?
I hope the switch from an old theme to a more recent one might help the chronic problem with comments being rejected before I see them.
Nick – the only opinion I’ve asked for is whether in your opinion there is someone in particular who has investigated which other scripts, if any, use glyphs also used for the Voynich script. And no, I don’t mean things like ‘a’ or ‘o’.
You say that sort of study has been done, but none of the newer researchers seems ever to have heard of one, so if you can think of a name, or source, it would help. If not, not.
Nick, to be as frank as you, I had the same teeth-gritted reaction to your treatment of the botanical folios, and various others.
Thing is, my way does seem to get results. Such as identifying the type of bow used for the archer. If that had been presented by Jens Sensfelder, I daresay hats would be in the air, and it would be repeated widely. Or not. It doesn’t offer much support for the “central European” story, I agree.
Goose isn’t to know, either that I first mentioned the Church of the East, either – but if you’ve read so much, you should. I expected more of you, to be honest, that to let Goose’s nonsense stand, and then add to it yourself. You used to seem a fair-minded man, with an inclination to balance, if not necessarily to Truth with a capital.
Please don’t bother replying here. I don’t expect to be back – same goes for Goose of course.
Diane: if so, it would seem that the “newer researchers” to whom you refer form their opinions about the subject in an equally ill-informed way.
You berated me a large number of times for not expressing an opinion on eight years of your stuff: and you then berated me for expressing that opinion. But please be assured that it is an opinion formed from having read too much of your stuff rather than too little.
Diane,
how many times do people need to direct you to D’Imperio before you finally stop pestering everyone for the very answers she provides in detail?
Why on earth do you refuse to even acknowledge her fundamental research?
Same exasperation regarding your willful ignorance of Tiltman’s work.
No one needs to agree with them, but to act as if the things they discussed had not been addressed at all just comes across as bad research practice. Another FAIL for you.
As usual, for all your self-aggrandizement you have really brought no conclusive proof of anything you say. Your “archer” (crossbowman, by the way) examples on your site are no more convincing, and rather less, than the dozens of other comparisons others have made elsewhere. I won’t go to your new website because it’s even more migraine-inducing than the previous version. And it wasn’t the website rejecting comments before, it was you, you even stated that you had locked them, and got mad when BD found a way around it. Stop the hypocrisy.
Oh and Diane, if you are such a top-notch academic, where are your peer-reviewed publications (voynich or otherwise)? I don’t see ANY. “World of Playing Cards” and “Fourhares tarot studies” seem to be the only places that’ll host your papers, and no, that doesn’t count.
That’s pretty lame for someone so arrogant. Looks like you are full of… hot air.
You remind me of those people who comment online only to post the word “First!”, except at least they keep it brief.
Pathetic.
Yeah Nick, let’s talk about D’Imperio. She was NOT a member of the decoding team. She was a secretary. Too bad so many Voynicheros took her seriously. The booklet she published (using US Government funds) was a mishmash of incomplete decoding efforts which had been in progress with what’s his name and Tiltman. Voynich was only the buyer of a badly beaten up manuscript which was part of a book sale being held near Frascati.
Y’all came close when you held your group ‘decoding’ effort several years ago. While you were at Frascati, Diane, Ellie, and I were concentrating our efforts to back you up. Unfortunately, I for one, found no sense at all in your attempt to ‘decode’ what was obviously (to me, at least) not a code.
So, you aren’t viewing bias on my part; but rather solid Spanish/Nahuatl languages –written in a form as taught by Friar Sahagun — so that his Nahua-tl scribes and artists could write and illustrate the natural wonders of their home country and their way of living and gardening.
Midway between my second and third paragraphs we had an electrical outage for about an hour. Very fast-moving storms will be passing through what is left of our neck of the woods…
Still 1-dring about your latest ‘state of mind’ .
beady-eyed-wonder-r
bdid1dr: please don’t pretend that you know even the first thing about Mary D’Imperio. Because on the evidence of this comment of yours, you plainly don’t.
Nick, I know much more about Mary D’imperio than you will ever learn. She was as bad as Paula Zyatz. You have no idea of her manipulations. Did you not ever wonder why this lowly secretary was able to take over the publication of what was ‘supposed’ to be top secret? Never mind that the various decoders failed in their attempts to ‘decode’ a manuscript which was not encoded.
Take another look, from a newer view, and compare D’imperios’ publication with what we now know about Boenicke manuscript 408. It could be that our (United States) Security Agency MAY be able to tell you more about D’imperio.
Our US Security Agency may also be able to tell you a lot more about the Brigadier General Tiltman’s efforts while he was working with the US National Security Agency. Several of his decoding efforts can be found on the WWW.
bdid1dr: Mary D’Imperio was not a “secretary”, she was a cryptologer working at the National Security Agency. The only place where Paula Zyatz is some kind of arch-manipulator is in your mind. Please stop posting such nonsense.
* http://www.nickpelling.com/voynich/dimperio-1992.html
* https://www.nsa.gov/public_info/_files/tech_journals/Application_of_PTAH.pdf
OK, Nick, take a look at Brigadier General Tiltman’s efforts while he was visiting the US National Security Agency (NSA 631091) ? He didn’t come any closer to ‘decoding’ the “Voynich” than Currier or other members of the US Team.
Mary D’imperio’s publication(s) were quite wordy — but not forthcoming with definite statements of decoding a single item in the manuscript which was eventually posted on the WWW.
So, who was posting nonsense? At least my ‘nonsense’ makes sense to some people who lived through two world wars. Unfortunately not much of an archive for WW I
Apparently most of the NSA documents are now being released to the WWW.
Excuse me for presuming any ‘friendship’ with you. Also forgive my concern for your health and well-being.
If you happen to sneeze anytime soon — well — n’as drov nya !
beady-eyed wonderer who never stops wondering — and finding answers !
ps: Do you have a copy of D’Imperio’s (red plastic-bound booklet) ?
bdid1dr: Brigadier General John Tiltman was one of the greatest code-breakers ever, and in 2004 had the distinction of being one of the very few non-Americans added to the NSA Hall of Honor.
Please don’t be snarky about truly great people, it makes you look foolish.
Nick, did you ever follow up on my comment in re Sally Caves being a professor of history at the University near New York? In fun (and because she is fun) I thought you might take note that she wrote a screenplay for a very popular (here in USA) science-fiction television series. My husband and I were able to watch that episode via a mail service called NETFLIX. I don’t know if they have a similar outlet in Great Britain.
Your loss if you didn’t take the chance to communicate with her (via your discussion pages. She has an on-campus mailbox also.
PS: We also get lots of stuff from BBC via Netflix — fun AND informative. So you might like to see what BBC has to offer in the way of historical puzzles in your area.
I have had a lot of fun, online with the song “Froggie Did A-Courting Go” My take on the song was about the French prince who tried to court Elizabeth Stuart and ended up courting (and marrying Mary Stuart).
@ Donald Vaughn: Can you give us the time frame in which the town of Rohonc became Rechnitz (whatever) — and why? If you can’t explain, perhaps Rene Zandbergen will have some ideas. But, I won’t blame him if he doesn’t feel like discussing my query.
Too many of my parents’ good friends disappeared into the Holocaust between WW 1 and WW 2.
Our most recent visitors (Vietnam refugees) got here, to the US, via the ‘holds’ of derelict ‘tramp’ ships They were sold ID cards (Mexican) when they arrived at Texas ports and California ports.
I know your next question is going to be “How do you know that?”
My response will be ‘none of your business’ — so, pretend to be ignorant of the facts.
bd
Nick, I was NOT deriding the “Brig’s” efforts at decoding the so-called Voynich manuscript. It is NOT his fault that he was unable to successfully decode a document which was not in code.
D’Imperio was a real ‘piece of work’, as we say in the US. When I received a copy of HER book, I was flabbergasted ! I’m pretty sure you have a copy of HER book. Have you found even one sensible/usable presentation of any of Currier’s and Tiltman’s whole-hearted efforts at decoding what was a latin-based language?
Quack Quack Quack at Diane ? Well, bark, bark, bark @ you, you dog ? Although when men address each other, here in the US, as “you dawg” , they are discussing each other’s sex-life……
bdid1dr: please understand that if I had to choose between 1% of Tiltman or 100% of you, the Brig would get the nod every time.
You bet, Nick! I greatly admire both of those gentlemen’s efforts! Why else would I be constantly referring to their efforts which eventually caused a nervous breakdown for one of them (their efforts, that is)? Oh, if only…..either of them – been alive to oversee the publication of their efforts (successful or not).
I am very glad that the NSA gave both those gentlemen full honors and recognition for their efforts ! Does D’Imperio mention, anywhere, the honors ( Governmental) which they both received from the US and Great Britain?
ps: Our Navajo and Hopi citizens (code-talkers) were also working for the military and US Government. Only a few of them received military honors. Several Apache also received honors. How do I know this? Because during our vacation travels through the mesas (and their historical monuments and their village museums) I had the privilege of meeting Valjean Joshevema. I’ve never forgotten his introducing me to photographs of his relatives (some of whom were code-talkers for the US Military during WW II.
A little more about Valjean Joshevema:
Silver was the traditional metal for making Navajo and Hopi jewelry. Two world wars nearly eradicated our United States and Canadian Native American populations; besides nearly bankrupting most of Europe, Canada, and the United States. No, I didn’t learn any of this in school. I learned this through my friends wherever I lived. Though my father enlisted with the army in WW II –he didn’t make it through boot camp. Rheumatic fever was rampant — and his mitral valve was damaged. He was, however hired as a night-watchman/guard for the military air field which was Vandenberg Airfield.
For about twenty years, now that airfield is now used for launching satellites into space.
bd
So, do you find any reference to any other ‘codiologists” in D’Imperio’s booklet?
Recently I had my father’s grave (California’s National/Military Cemetery) vacated and his ashes donated to the Cemetery”s landscape maintenance crews. We had quite a few of our Vietnam veterans interred there .
A little more about Valjean Joshevema”. Either Valjean Joshevema (of my acquaintance) or his son (with same name) have produced several (documentary) films of the destruction of huge areas of the North American and Canadian territories — by petroleum/oil field developers. Incredible environmental destruction — and displacement of Native Americans from their tribal lands to the barrens created by oil well developers.
Peter Coyote (not himself a Native American) has narrated for quite a few documentaries which have been produced by Mr. Joshevema and other members of his extended family.
Correction: Vandenberg AFB is no longer used for launching satellites. Recently, VAFB has been used as a ‘launching-pad” for experimental “manned hybrid rocket/jet airplanes.
Plain Crazy !
To answer a question someone presented (earlier) on this page:
YES, of course the so-called Voynich alphabet was invented ! It was invented by Fray Sahagun for his script writers and to accompany the illustrations: ll and tl being most commonly used. Because Na-hua-tl persons did NOT pronounce words ending in ‘er’ or ‘or’ or ‘ure’ — they used and wrote a glottal stop : ‘tl’ . They also didn’t have a script for the sound of ‘u-su-al-ly — or water — a-qa-tl . To try to keep the vocabulary simple and readable for his Na-hua-tl students, Sahagun taught them to be scribes as well as translators in two languages : Spanish and phonetic Na-hua-tl.
Nick, please understand that I could not stand even one of “Bax’s puffed egotistical nonsense. I did my best to give you and Bax the Nahuatl spelling and pronunciation which appears in the so-called “Voynich” manuscript (B-408). I’ve also told you and your long-time correspondents where you can find everything that is in the Voynich Mss , is in Fray Sahagun’s ‘Florentine Manuscript/Codex.”
Too late, even after three reiterations on different blogs?
A song I learned in fifth grade:
In days of yore
from Britain’s shore
Wolfe, the dauntless
hero came
and planted firm on
Canada’s fair domain
Britain”s Union Jack
The Lily, Thistle, Shamrock, Rose,
The Maple Leaf forever!
Totally unrelated to the discussion/cipher in Heecks — except ‘Somebody’ recently mentioned that Van Heeck’s work(s) ended up in Rudolph’s collection. As long as you all can remember Rudolph, himself, was committed to one of his other possessions, as being possessed (insane). A close relative (Matthias ?) became HRE — but not for long. The battle of ‘White Mountain’, Thirty-Years War, and the Hundred Years War — pretty much obscured a LOT of European history. Some professional historians are STILL duking it out amongst themselves as to ‘who started it’ — kinda like kindergarten catch-up?
bd
As a complete aside: Didja already know that Thomas Jefferson had a huge library? In that library he also had the Muslim “Koran”. I’m pretty certain I will find mention of the “Torah” somewhere in President Thomas Jefferson’s huge library. BTW — probably somewhere in our current President’s library — will be found literature referring to the codiologists efforts during WW I and WW II. Wouldn’t it be ‘something’ if he (The President) has a copy of the book “Divine Fire” ?