I hope everyone who attended the Voynich Conference 2022 hosted online by the University of Malta enjoyed the presentations and the Q&As.
In Lisa Fagin Davis’ final presentation, she mentioned her recent theory that p/f were in fact ke/te: and mentioned that she’d thought this up, but then found it on Cipher Mysteries. If you want to see the original page I put up in September 2020 suggesting this idea (along with her comment near the bottom), it’s right here, along with the August 2020 page where I started exploring the behaviour of single-leg gallows.
There’s an additional aspect to the set of gallows/e/ch groupings I discussed in 2020, which is that you can usefully compare the (parsed) ch:chch ratio in the text as a whole (which is 10616:18 (0.17%)) both to the (parsed) ratios of strikethrough gallows preceded by ch…
- ckh:chckh = 634:242 = 38.17%
- cth:chcth = 766:139 = 18.15%
- cph:chcph = 185:27 = 14.59%
- cfh:chcfh = 58:15 = 25.86%
…as well as to the (parsed) ratios of strikethrough gallows followed by ch:
- ckh:ckhch = 871:5 = 0.57%
- cth:cthch = 902:3 = 0.33%
- cph:cphch = 211:1 = 0.47%
- cfh:cfhch = 73:0 = 0%
This, too, is a strikingly asymmetric result; and would seem to suggest that the ch:chch ratio is practically identical to the ch:c<gallows>hch ratios, yet completely unlike the ch:chc<gallows>h ratio.
I would take this as reasonably good support for the idea that c<gallows>h is actually a visual proxy (and it doesn’t really matter whether this is for scribal, cryptographic, or steganographic reasons) for <gallows>ch, because Voynichese seems to want to avoid c<gallows>hch almost exactly as much as it wants to avoid chch.
Perhaps combining this result with the pe/fe result (and other “forbidden” Voynichese combinations) might be the start of something really positive…
I’ve liked p = ke for a while, but it makes me wonder why we then don’t see kech as in similar proportions to those of pch…
Tavi: I guess the real story of the day is perhaps that we collectively have not joined together all the forbidden contacts and top-line (eccentric paragraph!) behaviours in a holistic enough way yet – or rather, that we are all being smart but too isolated, or overly granular. Perhaps we now need strikingly bold hypotheses that try to play groups of these annoying behaviours off against each other, rather than seeing them all as a single large jigsaw with too many jangly pieces. 🙂
Definitely, but I do tend to think that the annoying behaviours/jangly pieces are clues themselves…at least that helps me cope with their annoyingness!
Tavi: the thing I keep coming back to was how Dave Oranchak, Sam Blake and Jarl van Eycke (Jarlve) cracked the Zodiac Cipher Z340. The single axiomatic result that they built on was a “knight’s move” transposition, where the transposition offset value kind of ‘shone out’ from all the noise – I (and no doubt hundreds of others) had tried to crack it using that same offset, but without success because of a whole bunch of other confounding features that they were (after a lot of effort) able to force their way past.
And so I often wonder what it is about Voynichese that could prove to be its “single axiomatic result” (there could, of course, be several) that a similar concerted effort might be able to power past. My suspicion for a while has been that the “forbidden contacts” in Voynichese are a really strong candidate for this, but you would still probably need to align these with a little bit more stuff… but perhaps we’re now closer than we think to being able to do this.
Nick Pelling: Would I be correct in assuming that the VM Maltese conference set out specifically to address certain language contradictions and not to tackling the contentious unarguably more important Imagery, provinance (if applicable) and associated dating conundrum, so as to avoid contrary opinion at all costs?
Hi Nick. The characters F + P in the manuscript are identical. But I already wrote to you ten years ago. It’s not a mystery. First of all, those characters have the same value, namely the number 8. So where there is a character for the letter P, it is read as a character P or a character F. According to the word.
Second. It’s the phonetics I already wrote about. Only someone who speaks German and Czech can understand that. Example : the word Von. It is written – Von. But phonetically it sounds – Fon.
Third. Even where the number 8 is – the letter F or P is read. Again, according to the meaning of the word.
Fourth. Lisa Fagin is wrong. So it is not – ke or – te.
But they are completely ordinary signs of the letters – F and or -P.
Fifth. Every researcher should find out why Eliška painted herself on a large foil, like a fish. Then he will have a chance to understand the method of encryption of the text of the manuscript. This is just about – one word. And I can write to you here that there are many such words in the manuscript.
Sixth. This method of notation was practiced by many scribes of the time. That is, the Middle Ages. And quite a few of them also had a fish symbol in their coat of arms.
(example – the chief scribe of the Czech kingdom had 3 fish in his coat of arms.)
Here’s my bold hypothesis – that the Friedmans’ initial (and final) hypotheses were wrong and have been maintained by blind determination ever since as an historico-cultural strait-jacket on the study. Their primary hypothesis was that the text is a ‘normal’ text, cleverly enciphered, though you were correct in saying as you once did that the fundamental problem is that we don’t know what sort of text it is.
Their second hypothesis is that it was all ‘pure-white-Christian-European’ and this has always been an idea so general that to oppose it in any way is to meet immediate hostility in any public forum or arena.
Such monumental ideas, maintained for over a century, I would suggest can only be shown false by specific, ‘granular’ studies, whether of the text or of the drawings or of the codicology or of the asserted provenance which last is so rarely tested that it manages to survive as it does not deserve to be.
The post-production story is of no particular interest to me, but in service to better standards in Voynich studies, I might put up something about it one day.
PS – Time and an ongoing project prevented my being at the ‘zoom’ conference so until the Conference papers are available I have to rely on second-hand accounts of what was said.
So, you see P and F in the script? Fine, so you already made your language choices? As e. g. P doesn’t exist in Arabic, and P=F are in fact the same letter in Hebrew (one with dagesh) and Prof sees both as 80…
ch -> ch? Nick, are you a secret fan of the right to left reading? Because normally one would leave the first letter unmoved ch -> ch. But I use indeed the first variant in my transliterations. Too much attention to these letters (c,h), take them all for c (EVA-e), the connection line says simply, that they are somehow connected (there is nothing in-between, no gallows, no vowel – invisible anyway). The picture is a perfect delusion, because the gallows is set in-between.
c(gallows)h -> (gallows)ch? Nick, are you a secret fan of the right to left reading? Because normally one would leave the first letter unmoved c(gallows)h -> ch(gallows)
Darius: I’m a secret fan of looking at the stats and seeing what they tell me. And if (as I pointed out) EVA chch is pretty much forbidden, the stats say that we see many more chc[gallows]h than c[gallows]hch, implying that if we have to choose between the two, [gallows]ch would seem to be a more likely replacement than ch[gallows]. Though neither is certain just yet. 😐
Hi Darius. You write that I chose the language. Well, that’s a big mistake. I didn’t choose the language because I can read the handwriting, so when the text says Czech words. Or write in Czech. So, as a scientist, I logically concluded that the text of the manuscript is written in the Czech language.
To decode the text, it is very important to know the written characters of the letters. Otherwise the sign P + F. They are identical. Both have the value of the number 8. And so in the text they are read as letters F or P. Depending on the meaning of the word.
Furthermore, finding out one word is very little. You will only find out the correct meaning of the word in the sentence.
You also write here about the -CH sign. So they are two signs connected. And so logically you should see characters next to each other in the handwriting. c + H. So the numbers 3+ 5.
Number 3 = c,g,s,l.
number 5 = e,h,n.
Logically, you should also see the signs = next to each other in the text – c + e. = CH.
Or – s + n = CH. etc.
Text substitution is very complex.
I can tell you here that there are few CH characters in the text.
It is also very important to know where a word begins or ends.
Without this knowledge, no one will ever figure it out correctly.
What are the signs that you call gallows, I already wrote to everyone here ten years ago. So it’s not a mystery.
( M = 4. read as letter = m, or t, or d. No mystery, just plain substitution ).
( H = 5. Read as letter = h, or e, or n. No mystery, just plain substitution).
( lM = 34 , lowercase L, i.e. l + uppercase M. No mystery, just ordinary signs of the letters l+ M ).
(P or F = 8. Plain letters P + F. No mystery).
Rather, the mystery is that no one has been able to solve it in a hundred years. Well, I think it’s a big mystery.
“Their second hypothesis is that it was all ‘pure-white-Christian-European’ and this has always been an idea so general that to oppose it in any way is to meet immediate hostility in any public forum or arena.”
This is a sweeping statement that can be easily disproved. On the Voynich ninja site, the Turkish theory did not meet with “immediate hostility” – there was tentative encouragement, far more than other theories have received. There was also a Persian theory which hardly met with “immediate hostility”.
Ok, I understand, I think gallows should be moved to the left – too. Sometimes they are left of a ch-pair but hardly ever right of a ch-pair. Gallows misfit in the position right of a ch-pair and they misfit in the right parts of vords in general. They must be frequently used, important letters but are bound to special positions in relation to other letters. But what happens to their substitutions in the right vord-parts? Could it be, that they are alternative letters (something like capital letters), so they have another forms in the right parts? I think stats wouldn’t have anything to contradict this assumption… or would you argue, that we have not enough letters in the pool for that? But you know, I see a few more different letters in the pool (EVA-l with two short legs and EVA-l with a much longer left leg, EVA-a with a closed and open belly, EVA-o, which is open, more like a ω…).
Hi Darius. Are you asking what happens to their substitutions in the correct word-parts? After the correct substitution, you will read the correct word.
You also ask about uppercase and lowercase letters. So it doesn’t matter at all. It doesn’t matter if the letter is upper or lower case.
The characters of the number 6 are not written in the text of the manuscript (they are = U,V,W,X).
So that’s also the magic you’ll discover when you’re able to read the text of the manuscript. (I’ll reveal the magic. You have to take all the characters of the handwriting as numbers. So two characters next to each other of the letters C C = 6.
C has the value of the number 3. (3 + 3 = 6). And the number 6 = U,V,W,X ) .
This is called = the Jewish numerology system. A very complex system of writing words.
The text of the manuscript contains the following letters: a, i, e, n, m, R, M, H, P, F, u, c, o, q, 8, lM, 4.
their numbers: 1,1,5,5,4,2,4,5,8,8,6,3,7,1,8,34,4.
I can write here that no machine can do it. No computer. A colleague at VSB tried it. He has a huge machine at his disposal and he failed.
Maybe you should look at another manuscript. For example, Bestiary Ashmole and Bestiary Aberdeen are very nice. That’s a treat. At least there is a very good notation of letters. (how the manuscript got to England is a mystery to me. It describes the people of Luxembourg).
Nick: so, we have now the perception or strong suspicion, that we found a pattern ch(gallows)ch or ee(gallows)ee. But this realisation is useless unless we go a step further and ask in which languages can we find such patterns and the other abnormal strings.
Prof: you must present your plaintext (2 paragraphs at least) and verify your findings.
Darius: it doesn’t have to be a language yet, there’s still plenty of other stuff to work out first.
Nick, you and many others do a lot of stats (you are a fan of it, you said) but all the data and findings gathered make sense only if you put them in relation to concrete languages or what is more important to work out in the first phase? I’m not saying one pattern is sufficient…
O’Donovan is always consistent in his application of reasoning and critical thinking. He rightly points out that many times in academics the first to publish sets a standard that less erudite academics are trapped into. This is called a quoting circle. Those academics less inclined to do original work and simply state the obvious thereby becoming “Red Stop sign academics.” Recently, my name has appeared in academic circles so, I will review some of my own published work in an effort to bring order to this entropy. Much of my work since 1983, has been published through the Department of Anthropology, and my geodesy field work can be found in numerous occasional papers published by the Natural History Museum of the University of Oregon. I began studying the VM in 1987 was, at this time, employed as the Assistant Director of the U of O Map Library. As the AD it was my job to know of these early works. By 1985 I was introduced to Catalan Map as an example of the first time the rose compass image was used. As the AD it also fell on my shoulders to peer review the work of other professional cartographers.
The drawings on both 68v and 68r are not star charts. Nor are some of the leaves and flowers some secret herbal recipe. My specialty is archeoastronomy and I understand the use and development of star charts and images that date back 45,000 years. The images on these pages are mechanical parts to an unnamed apparatus. I have built this apparatus, and tested it, in the real world. Some of this work was published in the paper about Viking Sunstones through Academia.edu. When I wrote the paper “Using Nonspecific Fractals as a cypher” it was the foundation the Tucker STEM team needed to decode MS408. It is time to start another method and theory. My specialty is strongly mathematical and my first VM effort was to examine the various alphabets in use at the time. All systems in use at that time were not adequate nor consistent enough to solve MS 498. All known languages were tested against the EVA system. No response returned a statistical confidence greater than pure random chance. One of the languages tested was Klingon, the results of comparing that to the Voynich is to take O’Donovan’s advice, get a copy of my nonspecific fractals paper and start over. PS our STEM team is already 100 years ahead. DOC
Dr Wayne R. Tucker: you really are on a different page to the rest of us. Good luck with your research.
Dr. Wayne Tucker
You say, ” Take O’Donovan’s advice, get a copy of my nonspecific fractals paper and start over”.
I would like to assume that the O’Donovan you mean is not me (you clearly haven’t followed my research-trail too closely and speak of that O’Donovan as “he”) but to avoid others’ being confused, I should be clear that whoever made that recommendation, me it wasn’t. I cannot recall ever having read anything signed “Wayne Tucker”; haven’t a clue what he means by ‘fractal patterns’ and ‘ancient mechanisms’ though I have seen efforts to co-opt, distort and then claim credit for my bringing cartes marine into the discussion and in particular that which is part of Abraham Creques’ illustrated almanac, including its worldmap made in the style of a Majorcan carte marine. I will say here that Cresques’ charts are not the key to the Vms, but close study of the Voynich map (called the ‘Rosettes page’)undertaken from 2010-13 tells us a great deal about the rest of the manuscripts and its sections. It does not add a great deal to our ability to identify Voynichese, nor whether the written text is enciphered.
This had me thinking of Graham Hancock, the charlatan who invaded the field of archaeology and seems to be making a mint on Netflix. I am not suggested Wayne Tucker is of that ilk, as I don’t know him, but that these comment rekindled my annoyance with the likes of Mr. Hancock.