It is both interesting and intriguing that Voynich f116v – the final page of the Voynich Manuscript – contains several lines of as-yet-unaccounted-for text. What is interesting is that these lines are almost entirely unlike the “Voynichese” text that fills the rest of the manuscript, and are written in a recognizably European gothic hand typical of the 14th, 15th and indeed early 16th century. Hence they really ought to be easily readable – but what is intriguing is that this seems not to be the case at all.
As with all cipher mysteries, their unreadability has spawned a myriad of dubious readings, starting in the 1920s with Newbold’s “Michiton oladabas multos te tccr cerc portas” (which he squinterpreted as “Michi dabas multas portas”), through the 1970s with Brumbaugh’s “MICHI CON OLADA BA” (which Brumbaugh thought somehow referred to Roger BACON, *sigh*), and onwards and downwards from there. Even Rene Zandbergen, tongue firmly in cheek, once proposed that because the main f116v text block begins with “mich” and ends with “nich”, it can surely only be a veiled reference to Mich[ael Voy]nich himself. (As if Rich SantaColoma needs any more hoaxoline to hurl on his fire, *sigh*.)
Objectively, though, the text on f116v really ought to be the most obvious ‘way in’ to understanding the Voynich Manuscript’s physical history, simply because there’s no obvious reason why it would be enciphered or encoded: and hence careful codicological examination should normally be sufficient to work out not only what was originally written here, but also – as I carefully described back in 2006 – what emendations later owners made (presumably in the name of ‘preservation’) to leave it in such a parlously unreadable state.
Some multispectral imaging has been carried out at the Beinecke, but (unless you know better) only low-quality images leaked out and no paper was ever written. Here’s what the f116v text looks like at (“MB570AM_027_F”), which – I think – shows that there were at least two codicological layers that need to be separated:
Yet here we are, more than a decade after “The Curse of the Voynich” and not obviously any further forward. 🙁 But perhaps there are ways we can make progress… 🙂
A Closer Look At The Top Line
Rather than getting hung up on the bottom three lines, I’d like to focus purely on the top line.
I’ve previously proposed (in 2009) that the ‘^’ shape at the beginning of two of the words might be an ‘s’ shape, e.g. “simon sint (something)”:
Looking at this line in one of the multispectral scans (“MB625RD_006_F”), we can see that there is also evidence of emendation in the letters, but that the base codicological layer is different to that of the “a+hia + maria” layer (which I suspect was the earliest layer):
I think this provides strong evidence – though far from definitive, of course, because of the low quality of the images – that we are looking at at least three codicological layers of text on this page.
What Is That ^ Shape?
Over the last decade, I’ve looked at loads of palaeography books; I’ve read Derolez’s “The Palaeography of Gothic Manuscript Books”; and I just haven’t founf anything that looks like the ‘^’ shape on this line.
I’m not really comfortable with J.K.Petersen’s 2013 claim that “The first letter might be a ‘u'”. And similarly, though I understand where he’s coming from, David Jackson’s reading of this whole line as “Por seber vm cn autentico afecto” seems a little premature, given the codicological difficulties I think we continue to face with almost every letter.
I happily concede that it is possible (as Anton Alipov suggested in a 2015 comment, and also in a post on his blog) the two ^ shapes are the heads of two ‘p’ shape, where the descenders have disappeared. However, given that there seems to be not a hint of this in the multispectral scans, it is far from my preferred explanation. Johannes Albus’ rendering of this line as “poxleber umen[do] putriter” is an example of a reading that requires the second ^ shape to have been a ‘p’.
The alternative remains that this ^ shape is a rare way of writing a Gothic ‘s’ shape, albeit one I’ve not yet managed to find anywhere. But if someone does, I suspect that it will probably be in a mid-fifteenth century document that was written not too far from Konstanz, just so you know. 😉
Has any Voynich researcher already tried hunting for this particular Gothic letter shape in the archives? If yes, then did you find anything? (I know about CSG 754 that Anton mentioned in the context of its spell blocks.)
Yes, that odd shape the looks like the top of a “p” in “umen” might be a “u”, although I’m not at all certain how to read the last two words on the top line and consider it guesswork at present. The only letters that seem clear to me in “umen” are the “m” and “n”. In fact, the letter in between the “m” and “n” doesn’t look like “e” to me. It almost looks like ç (it has a tick on the base that I’ve never seen on “e”).
Getting back to the possible “u” interpretation (“v” is equally likely—anything that looks like “u” was basically also “v” in the Middle Ages—they were written interchangeably).
I have about 2,000 examples of the u-for-v and v-for-u transposition but… finding the ones with flat bottoms is a bigger challenge.
Several of the other letters on f116v have flat bottoms… the “b” on the top line and the “u” or top-of-p in “ubren” on the last line. Even the flat-bottomed “b” is not especially common. So, the flat bottoms, and some aspects of the loops seem to be peculiar to this scribe (which only complicates the task of interpreting the letters).
Would you like me to post examples of medieval “u” and “v” to illustrate the common ways in which they were drawn and how they are interchangeable? Or were you specifically interested in seeing u/v with the flat bottom, the way it is written on this folio? Finding exact matches to this handwriting is not easy, but I have many examples of u/v.
Nick: My understanding is that the marginalia are the product of someone other than the author; presumably some later person or persons who was/were trying to make sense of the manuscript and who wrote their notes on manuscript. If this is so, is it conceivable that they wrote their notes in such a way that they would not be legible to rivals who might get sight of the manuscript and so they deliberately obscured them? That seems to me an odd theory and yet it I find it hard to understand that none of this writing is legible. Is there a possibility that the author wrote some of the marginalia when they could not be bothered to encipher text instead making it illegible?
Nick: Is it common to have illegible text(marginalia) in medieval manuscripts? It just seems really strange to me to have illegible text in addition to enciphered text.
Most of the marginalia I have seen in manuscripts is readable in Latin or vernacular. Some of it is enciphered but it’s usually very easy to figure out what it says (they’re almost always substitution codes and sometimes only the vowels are substituted—I see quite a few of these).
I’ve never seen anything remotely like the VMS except in charms, where there are power words, angel names, crosses, and occasionally some unreadable stuff, but even those are not super close to the VMS.
Mark: you’re right, it is uncommon. Marginalia can often appear scrappy at first, but its ‘writing logic’ normally yields to careful examination – that’s basically what palaeography is for. However, my point has long been that many people have (wrongly) reasoned that if Voynichese is enciphered, then so too must michitonese. Looking at michitonese, however, I see no evidence of systematic encipherment – or indeed of systematic anythingment. Rather, what I do see is a set of tangled codicological layers, which is the knot I think needs careful unpicking before we start launching into the world of “billy goat’s liver” etc.
Marginalia will often be written by the author if they are pen trials. In that case we’re screwed, because they could write whatever gobbledygook came into their minds. They might even have added one word or stroke sequence at a time, without thinking much about. It’s a common phenomenon, though not often considered in the VM marginalia context.
Be that as it may, even pen trials can very often be understood to a large degree. The fact that we cannot make sense of any of the VM marginalia is in my opinion one of the top three absurdities about it.
Nick: Another thing I wonder is if the marginalia were written by a later individual or individuals making notes whilst trying to figure out what the Voynich is about then maybe they won’t actually say much of interest i.e. they will be akin to the comments and speculative ideas made by people on your blog and quite probably less well grounded in rigourous analysis. I am not saying this is the case more that I wouldn’t be shocked if it were. I suppose they could conceivably give insight into the sequence of ownership of the manuscript and thereby illuminate the origins of the manuscript, but maybe not. So I guess I am just wondering how much value we might expect the very difficult task of the reading of the marginalia might provide.
Mark: my point is that we ought to be able to treat reading the f116v marginalia (and in fact all the marginalia, which appear to be essentially in the same Gothic hand) as a challenge completely independent of everything else to do with Voynichese. I simply don’t think the notion that the marginalia are encrypted holds water, particularly when you look at the multispectral scans.
Strictly speaking, only the first line (“poxleber …” as per Johannes Albus) is in the margin, and so are the small drawings.
The mini clip of the first four lines (first figure in the blog post) also clearly shows that lines 2-4 are largely parallel, slightly inclined, while the marginal line is aligned with the top of the page.
This would normally indicate that lines 2-4 were written first, and the line in the top margin should be a later addition. “Later” is of course a flexible thing. It could be one hour later, but also 50 years.
Now I would not want to leave the impression that I know what this means…
Rene: “marginalia” can only literally be in the margins if there are actually margins on the page, and f116v doesn’t have any margins, so perhaps debating this point would make us “two bald men fighting over a comb”, Borges-style. 😉
Technically, I could instead have described the writing on f116v as “apostils” (words added after a book was written), but that would endear me only to the kind of pedantic purists I’d prefer to pique. 😉
Nick: I concur, that sounds very sensible indeed. I was not suggesting that they are enciphered; frankly not having studied them it would be foolish to venture an opinion on that question and so I am very happy to defer to you on that. My point was not that I believe they are enciphered. I was just speculating on what we could realistically hope to learn from this independent source, if it was not produced by the author of the Voynich. Obviously this is no reason for not endeavouring to read it which seems to me a valuable exercise. I was just thinking that if, hypothetically, they were written 100 hundred years after the manuscript was completed, by someone trying to figure out what the Voynich says then their notes could be a poor source of information in the same way as might the notes of a modern Voynichero, should they outrageously be given permission by Yale to write their comments on the manuscript. I am not trying to be discouraging at all, but, as I say, just wondering what we might expect to learn from the marginalia.
Without further elaboration. The words are still in use today.
amen = an einem = at one
umen = um einem = by one
vmen = von einem = of one
imen = in einem = in one
and
bi nem, binem = bei einem = at one
usw.
I do not know if the English translation is correct
Mark: if we can learn from the handwriting – perhaps through some characteristic letter shape, or some turn of phrase, or perhaps even some name – where, when or by whom it was added, this would give us a crucial insight into the very early years of the manuscript’s life, perhaps even within a decade or two of when it was originally written.
Bear in mind that we already have a reasonably good guess as to when and where the quire numbers were added (using the same kind of methodology), so having another historical datapoint (even approximately) would help us make further good guesses as to the manuscript’s trajectory across Europe. This might help us sharply reduce the number of archives we would need to look at more closely: I’d estimate that less than 1% of 15th century manuscripts have been checked to date, so there is still a lot of room for research. 🙂
When you say “pox” Bock, you should not just think about a goat. That’s just the name for a male animal. there is…
Ziegenbock = billy-goat
Schafsbock = ram
Steinbock = Capricorn
Gemsbock = Gemsbok
und alter geiler Bock = and old horny goat 🙂
Then the sentence would make sense;
Bock Leber von einem ???? = Bock liver of one ????
Nick, your ^ is nothing but the left half of a minuscle p, ascender, descender and a semicircle. The first line is ‘pox liver primum putrefacit’. – roe buck liver is the first (thing) that putrefies. And may i say that it’s really a joke that you crypto freaks don’t notice that the writer on 116v has left out some of the vowels, no abbreviation sign as in most of the ms.
Helmut Winkler: I can see exactly why that particular mix of German and Latin makes linguistic sense to you, but I’m not yet convinced that the codicology that implicitly underpins your reading works.
Nick, I’m not completely sure what you mean by codological layer, but I assume that you mean units of the text. I think that the two anchiton lines form such a unit, the poxleber line with the two drawings of an animal and a opened up animal, the voynich glyph line where the German text seems to explain the voynich glyphs and as last unit the nymph. The anchiton text is a typical probatio pennae and I think it is the first entry, the pox leber and the geis milch lines are later and seem to be connected somehow and I think the 116v writings are by one person later than the ‘Voynich scribe’, second half of the 15th c. I would say, the exception is the nymph, which belongs to the V. scribe and is in this sense the first thing on 116v
Helmut Winkler: much as Rene wrote a few comments back, I would say it seems reasonably clear that the main block of three lines on f116v probably predated the top line. However, even though it may at first seem that the first two lines of the main block of three (i.e. containing the ‘+’ shapes) might have been a first phase (e.g. a spell or charm), I think the multispectral images make it look very much as though all three lines were originally written in the same ink (i.e. probably at the same time).
If you take that as the starting point of how the f116v text was constructed, you should then see (again, from the multispectral image) that large parts of all three lines in the block have been overwritten in a different ink, including the much-discussed “gas mich o” end section (though the stereotypical “o nim” appears to have escaped being corrected/emended).
Hence there appear to be multiple codicological layers present on this page, by which I mean not just the units / blocks of text (e.g. three lines then the top line), but also layers of ink on top of each other (e.g. corrections, emendations, guesses, etc). So there are layers here that are not just blocks added over time but also vertically, i.e. on top of one another.
It may be that whoever emended the text was able to read exactly what had originally been written and was able to reconstitute the original text. In some cases – e.g. “michiton oladabas” – I think we can already say that they were probably not entirely successful.
In the case of the top line, I would agree that if the first ‘^’ was originally a ‘p’, then I completely agree that the word would indeed most likely have originally been “p[ri]mum” (with a curved macron over the top of the ‘p’, and a longer descender below the ‘p’ than we now see). Arguing against that view is the lack of a curved macron and a descender in the multispectral scans, but that’s far from definitive, and a different type of visual examination might easily reveal this to be true. At the same time “putrif[acit]” currently remains a stretch too far for me, so I’d like to examine that word far more microscopically than I was able to when I visited the Beinecke back in 2006.
In French there is putrifier which, in medieval times, might well have been spelled “putrifer” if it were written by a scribe who dropped characters (and 116v has signs of dropped characters all over the place).
There are many places along the north-south Burgundian corridor (and elsewhere) where the border moved back and forth between German and French possessions numerous times.
There’s something so satisfying about shrinking down to the level of anAmoeba and investigating the minutiae of scribblings addendum.
On the other hand (hello…hello…Earth to Nick !!!) there is the release of a major book, “Unraveling the Voynich Codex”, by Dr. Arthur Tucker, which, even if one does not agree with the Meso-American origin hypothesis, turns out to be a well organized panoply of Voynich delights, with handy dandy textual categorizations, interpretations and a layout which should be the model, the exemplar for any book dealing with this kind of topic.
We await Nick’s outraged and peremptory dismissal…or…maybe,just maybe, his appreciation of the work and scholarship, no less than his own attempts, which went into this work. Even if the hypothesis is wrong, (it isn’t but that’s just my opinion) the approaches of this book starts ones gray cells percolating in a thousand different angles . Don’t miss it, playing now at a bookstore or website near you !!
Save the goofy handwriting scribbles for a forensic graphologist,we’ve got better things to do (sigh !). 🙂
James Pannozzi: it is, of course, on my list of Voynich books to buy, read, and review. Given that the last six Voynich books I bought were all too shamefully awful to review, it would be indeed nice if Janick and Tucker’s book broke that particular run.
Having said that, the book’s cover – if it is supposed to provide conclusive visual evidence of jaguarundi, sunflowers, armadillo, ocelot, prickly pear cactus + agave, and various New World volcanoes – doesn’t bode well for me in that regard. That’s what anyone else would class as a load of suppositional hooey, sorry.
But nonetheless, I shall try to keep as open a mind as I can, and let the rest of the book do its persuading thing, to whatever degree it is able.
Regardless of v116, I have to consider page 66r. Again, I have a drawing, a VM text and a German text.
Again, it seems that the drawing and the environment text has the same ink.
On the rest of the page I see of eye but also no difference in ink consistency.
I don’t see any overwriting, only an irregular ink flow, like someone dipping his pen in too late, I suppose Yale has its reasons for not publishing multispectral images
Helmut Winkler: the multispectral images were made by a particular researcher or research group, and Beinecke has a policy not to publish images made for external researchers unless the researchers give their consent. In this case, the Beinecke wouldn’t let me know who the researcher(s) was/were, and wouldn’t forward a request from me to him/her/them, I just happened to find some low-quality JPEGs left hanging around the Beinecke website, otherwise I wouldn’t even know about them.
You have your opinion about the images, and I have mine, and in many ways they’re not so far apart: but it just seems faintly ludicrous to me that far better multispectral images were captured in 2014 but the study done on them has never been made public.
Way to go Nick !! Kick the tires, give the “Unraveling the Voynich Codex” a test drive and pick it apart.
If it were easy, the crazy codex would have been decoded long ago.
But, instead of focusing on a bottom up approach (oh look, this supposed new world thingy can’t be right or….ha ha ! he ‘s transliterated that letter differently here…foul !!! deduct 3 points), try to go top down. In other words, assume we’ve got one or several well educated playful Aztecians, fully converted to Christianity and educated with a nice knowledge of Spanish and Latin, ready to have some fun, maybe even codify some native herbal knowledge while thumbing their noses at their stuffy European scholar-priest teachers. But, darn it, if you have a bit too much “fun” it could get you burned at the stake in an “inquisition” so their t h inking must have been, if we’re going to do this, we’d better make it REALLY flame proof….you get the idea.
It’s a hypothesis, speculative but let’s see where it leads. Sure there will be inconsistencies and contradictions since every theory will h ave those until the pattern of the tapestry is fully known and unraveled..
As always, have fun ! (After all, let us admit it, we’re all crazy anyway).
James Pannozzi: the problem with being a tyre kicker is that people like to present you as a tyre hater, whereas it’s just the ones with holes in that you don’t like much.
Anybody ever heard about a bunch of Indos in balsa rafts sailing into Castille around 1415, then after handing over their kings fifth in silver bullion to King John and pretty Bella, being given a nice little free selection Ponderosa spread on a picturesque lake up in the Pyrenees. Rumour has it that they interbred freely with the local Cretins, and were renowned for their planetary knowledge, plant appreciation and apocetharic skills. They had apparently melded so well into local custom and RC ritual, that within a half century, they were seen as being locals, albeit with funny haircuts and a writing style that folks couldn’t quite get the hang of.
https://www.e-codices.unifr.ch/en/csg/0590/317
This one from St Gall has P, V and W starting with similar stroke.
Hi Elli
Since you’ve opened a nice page. I have translated a small part here.
Do not forget that (u). v …. w …. u …. p are similar
Er gehört zu den Mönchen in züchtigung und aller Wollust der gegenwärtigen Welt, um Gottes liebe ganz zu verzichten. Und so überwunden sind die fleischlichen gird(e), die allein Gott ????? anhangen.
He belongs to the monks in discipline and all the lust of the present world, to renounce God’s love altogether. And so overcome are the carnal gird (e), the only god ????? cleave.
Hi Peter,
Thanks for the translation 🙂 I didn’t know that Trithemius was so much fun.
I was pointing at the penmanship only.
Nick – re the Beinecke’s policy about research security and the multi-spectral scans. I should expect that the source of the payment determines the limits of dissemination for research: if public funding pays for the work, then it should be public access without discrimination. On the other hand, if I were to pay for a comprehensive report on all inks and pigments used, the results would be mine… I suppose.
Recent communications from the Beinecke also reassure me that research-security has recently been tightened up from what it was a few years ago, when I received an email from the Beinecke saying that a technical question about medieval codicology – and their reply to it – had been sent – supposedly to me – via a third party who is neither a specialist nor a member of their staff, nor anyone I’ve ever been introduced to. I’m glad to know such practices have ceased, but I do sympathise with your response to the other side of that coin. Presumably the multi-spectral scans were privately commissioned and paid for – but because any fiscal transation should be transparent in an organisation publicly funded, the name of the commissioning organisation or individual should, I expect, be public record and you could in that way find who to ask about them. If you felt like pursuing the matter.
And Nick, one difference between a first-class scholar and a used-car salesman is that the former usually appreciate having the ‘holes’ brought to their attention with a reasonable question or three.
Diane: first-class scholars are also able to tell the difference between genuine peer criticism and academic trolling.
And, for that matter, non-academic trolling.
Nick,
I agree, they can and do know the differtence. In Voynich studies, you need only consider Emma May Smith’s blog, or Philip Neal’s pages to realise that such research builds from a basis of solid, objective scholarship in one or more recognised disciplines, these existing beyond the borders of Voynichland, and permit that scholar’s statements to be tested and verified.
On which subject – I am always as unwilling to disbelieve as to believe things said about this manuscript and I have to confess that despite my best (if desultory) efforts, I’m yet to find any external material which provides a basis for the things which James asserts or assumes or imagines: that is,any historical documents, museum catalogues, secondary references or European-made pictures made before Columbus’ voyages and which prove the presence in Europe (before 1440) of objects or persons from the Americas.
The ‘New World’ theory has been around so long that you’d expect it to have some basis in non-Voynich writings, but I cannot find anything which would justify the formation of that theory in the first place. It seems entirely based on inadequate knowledge of materials sciences, codicology, iconographic analysis, cultural and economic histories and so on. Forgiveable, perhaps, half a century and more ago, but hardly these days. Still, I may have missed finding the solid proofs and will happily accept details of any scholarly references.
James?Rene?Before anyone thinks of responding to Diane’s comment, I’d like to point out that one of my key criteria for trolling is where commenters name other commenters to try to troll a response from them, something which her comment exactly and precisely does.
Other times I just delete these, but today I’m letting this one through as a cautionary example of how not to do it.
Perhaps a first class used car salesman might just be the type of scholar we need to get a no nonsense appraisal on the perceived claim to ‘original’ breed/region calf sourcing for each and every velum parchment sheet. We, the no longer gullible buyers are by now, well fed up with detailed authenticating marginal support sales gimmicks as well as the circa.1432 model makers claim of dubious after factory, original Italian re-bindings and imported Nahuatl insect infestation holes. Be put on notice that the good Beinecke name is no guarantee that it hasn’t also, become part of a ‘shonky used calf deal’…ps. Do we have any ‘iron’ clad updates on inks as yet? Apologies if this perplexing question has been put over a dozen times before.
Nick,
I think it is a little harsh to describe Diane as trolling and people are welcome to reply to anything that she has said if they so wish or not. The only objection I would have is the non-specific nature of her critique.
Nick + ants.
116v. Beginning.
yax = 116.
yae Pcbev = i Jew crev. ( Czech language ).
I jef crev. ( I Jew crev ). ( f = w,v,x.u. ) – ( F = 8 ) . ( 8 = 6).
( jew substitution = 6 = u,v,w,x …8 = f,p ). ( 1 = a,i,j,q,y ).
I Jew blod . ( English language ).
——————————————————
The whole instructions is written in Czech.
Does the ant have any question ?
Language today.
I Jew krev . ( Czech ).
I Jew blood . ( English ).
Eliška writes the key . And when she was born. etc.
JK Petersen and ants.
You’re looking very badly. I’ll show you something else.
The second picture here on Nick blog.
anoiZicon……oPaSaba8.
ANO i Ží coez….Pisář i 8. ( Ano i ží co jez ….Písař i 8 ).
Ano = it is latin abbrevialion. It’s years.
i = is a clutch.
Zicono – means czech = Ží coez. English means = I live. ( Eliška writes that the date of her birth is in text ).
Word – Pasara 8 = reads – Písař i 8. ( This means in English – Scripture i 8 )
And 8 was Eliška von Rosenberg.
By the way, by the way. I came across it by accident.
The word “pox” was also used for a goat or cow when it gave little or no milk.
Josef, it doesn’t say “ano”. There is no “o” in there. You are inventing letters that don’t exist. That is “e” or “c”. The bottom does NOT close and the top is straight—”o” is never written like that.
The letter in the middle with the loop and the descending tail is “h”. No question. It is a normal, typical, absolutely ordinary medieval “h”.
If you don’t get the letters right, you cannot get the numbers right.
Petersen. I’ll show you one more thing.
anciZicon….. oPaSaba8.
A Elizi coez….Písař i 8. ( old czech language )
A Eliza co je….Písař i 8. ( the language of today ).
——————————————————————–
And Eliska who is…..Scribe and 8. ( English ).
The scribe it means writing a handwriting. ( czech – písař , author – autor ).
( Eliza = Elizabeth = Eliška ).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o08mjo4xwPs&t=716s
Voynich encoding system revealed
@GIUSEPPE BIANCHI
I’m sorry. But that’s a real nonsense again. Imagine that parchment would spin during the writing process. That would change the inclination, and thus the code. And that apart from the thousand possibilities. And then it’s even more complicated than Chinese
Really ….. without words!
if you are happy you can go on till eternity with replacement method…
@GIUSEPPE BIANCHI
It’s not about luck or bad luck.
It’s about right or wrong. Possible or impossible
and there is no second way in cryptology.
Their explanation simply does not work in practice.
Just think about it.
@GIUSEPPE BIANCHI
To be fair, I watched your videos again.
For me it’s clear what you do, that’s what you need in the modern handwriting analysis.
Maybe this will filter out a possible third person.
Maybe you want to find out the possible author. But for a decryption it will not work that way.