Voynich challenges, updated…

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Every few years, I get around to posting a list of Voynich challenges – things about the Voynich Manuscript that we would like to know or to find out.

Looking back at my 2001 list of Voynich Challenges, I seem to have been flailing around at every codicological nuance going: yes, there are hundreds of interesting angles to consider – but how many stand any chance of yielding something substantial? With the benefit of just a little hindsight, I’d say… realistically, almost none of them (unfortunately).

Stepping onwards to my 2004 list of Voynich research tasks, which was instead mainly focused on a particularly narrow research question – whether Wilfrid Voynich lost any pages of the VMs. (Having myself consulted the UPenn archives in 2006, I’m certain the answer is a resounding ‘no’.)

Also in 2004, the release of the (generally excellent) MrSID scans by the Beinecke Library (even though it carried out test scans in 2002) was also an important landmark for study of the VMs, because it allowed anybody to look closely at the primary evidence on their own PC without having to trek to New Haven. Many old questions (particularly about colour) that had bounced around on the original VMs mailing list for years were suddenly able to be answered reasonably definitively.

Hurling our nuclear-powered DeLorean fast-forward to June 2009, what things do we now want to know? And moreover, even if we do find them out, does any of them stand any chance of helping us?

For all the determined work over the years that has been put into trawling the post-1600 archives (particularly Kircher’s correspondence), I can’t help but think that there can be precious little left to find of significant value. It has been a nice, well-defined project – but can I suggest we put it behind us now? The presence of 15th century handwriting (on f116v) and 15th century quire numbers surely makes this avenue no more than a fascinating diversion, no more useful than a forensic dissection of (say) Petrus Beckx’s life. Ultimately, “what happened to the VMs after 1600?” is surely one of the many convenient (but wrong) questions to be asking.

But what, then, are the right questions to be asking? In my opinion, the seven most fruitful historical research challenges currently awaiting significant attack are the  following…

(1) Understanding the ownership marginalia on f1r, f17r, f66r and f116v, in particular what caused the text on them to end up so confused and apparently unreadable – even their original language(s) (Latin, French, German, Occitan or Voynichese?) is/are far from certain. Whatever details turn up from this research (dates, names, places, languages, etc) may well open the door onto a whole new set of archival resources not previously considered. Alas, delayering these marks is just beyond the reach of the Beinecke’s scans – so unless our Austrian TV documentary friends have already deftly covered this precise angle (and I’m sure they are aware of this issue), I think this would be a fantastic, relatively self-contained codicological / palaeographic research project for someone to take on. Do you know a Yale codicologist looking for a neat term project?

(2) Palaeographically matching the VMs’ quire numbering scheme – abbreviated longhand Roman ordinals (but with Arabic digits for the most part). Again, this should be a self-contained palaeographic research project, one that a determined solo investigator could carry out (say) just using the British Library’s resources. Again, if this suggests links to documents with reasonably well-defined provenances or authorship, it may well open up an entirely new archival research angle to pursue.

(3) Examining the “aiiv” groups for steganography, both in Currier A and in Currier B. I’ve made a very specific prediction, based on carefully observing the VMs at first hand – that in the Herbal-A pages, the “scribal flourish” was added specifically to hide an earlier (less subtle) attempt at steganography, based on dots. A multi-spectral scan of some of these “aiiv” groups might well make reveal the details of this construction, and (with luck) cast some light on the writing phases the author went through. Definitively demonstrating the presence of steganography should also powerfully refute a large number of the theories that have floated around the VMs for years.

(4) Reconstructing the original bifolio nesting of the VMs. Glen Claston and I have attempted to do this from tiny codicological clues, but this is in danger of stalling for want of applicable data. But what kind of data that could be collected non-destructively be useful? Ideally, it would be good if we could perform some kind of DNA matching (to work out which bifolios came from the same animal skin), as this would give a very strong likelihood of connecting groups of pages together – and with that in place, many more subtle symmetries and handwriting matches might become useful. Would different animal skins autofluoresce subtly differently? I think there’s a fascinating research project waiting in there for someone who comes at this from just the right angle.

(5) Documenting and analyzing the VMs’ binding stations. If the VMs happens to go in for restoration at any point (which the Beinecke curators have mentioned at various points as being quite likely), I think it would be extremely revealing if the binding stations and various sewing holes on each bifolio were carefully documented. These might well help us to work out how the various early bindings worked, which in turn should help us reconstruct what early owners did to the manuscript, and (with luck) what the original ‘alpha’ state of the manuscript was.

(6) Carefully differentiating between Currier-A and Currier-B, building up specific Markov-like models for the two “languages”, and working out (from their specific differences) how A was transformed into B. This may not sound like much, but an awful lot of cryptological machinery would need to rest on top of this to make any kind of break into the system.

(7) Making explicit Glen Claston’s notion of script & language evolution over the various writing phases. This would involve a combination both of palaeography and statistical analysis, to understand how Voynichese developed, both as a writing system and a cryptographics system. There’s a great idea in there, but it has yet to be expressed in a really detailed, substantial way.

In retrospect, a lot of the art historical things that preoccupied many Voynich researchers (myself included) back in 2002-2005 such as comparisons with existing drawings, the albarelli, etc now seem somewhat secondary to me. This is because we have a solid date range to work with: the Voynich Mauscript (a) was made after 1450 (because of the presence of parallel hatching in the nine-rosette page), and (b) was made before 1500 (because of the presence of two 15th century hands, in the quire numbers and on f116v).

Some people (particularly those whose pet theories don’t mesh with this 1450-1500 time frame) try to undermine this starting point, but (frankly) the evidence is there for everyone to see – and I think it’s time we moved on past this, so as to take Voynich research as a whole up to the next level. Though researchers have put in a terrific amount of diffuse secondary research over the years, collectively our most productive task now is to forensically dissect the primary evidence, so as to wring out every last iota of historical inference – only then should we go back to the archives.

Will these seven basic challenges still all be open in 2012, a hundred years after Wilfrid Voynich claimed discovery of his eponymous manuscript in a Jesuit trunk? I sincerely hope not – but who is going to step forward to tackle them?

Italian Voynich talks…

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Of course, the minute I post about Voynich talks, several more suddenly pop up. 🙂

The ‘Heaven Astrolabe’ blogger (Margherita Fiorello) gave a nicely-meandering (but picture-heavy) description of wandering across Rome to see a talk on the Voynich Manuscript, held on the 23rd June 2009 at the Libreria Aseq esoteric bookshop (a bit like an upmarket Italian version of Treadwells, if you like). The occasion (“L’Enigma del Manoscritto Voynich – Il più grande mistero di tutti i tempi“) was prompted by the release of the Italian edition of Marcelo Dos Santos’ book (he’s Argentinian, just so you know), and consisted of discussion by Stefano Verdini (who researches things “beyond reality”) and Rome-based Japanese medievalist (and Voynich fan) Yoshi Ohashi, who also brought along some of his artworks to display (I think).

And then I found another recent talk, this time called “Voynich: il libro che nessuno sa leggere” from 15th April 2009 at the even more evocative location of the Villa Mondragone (yes, really!) Of the two people at the front table, presumably one is a PR lady from Edizioni Mediterranee and the other (with his thumbs superglued to his chin, if you like early Steve Martin films) Marcelo Dos Santos himself.

What is acutely ironic, of course, is that if my whole Filarete-as-author-of-the-VMs theory is correct, then the VMs started its life in Rome. But I doubt that got mentioned at either talk, right?

Incidentally, in “The Curse of the Voynich”, I allocated a paltry 13 pages to the history of the Voynich Manuscript – and even that was a bit excessive. Yet the whole history-of-a-mystery angle is all that journalistic angles on the VMs (particularly Kennedy & Churchill’s book, and Marcelo Dos Santos’ book to a lesser degree) tend to focus on. Yet the actual problem of the VMs is not one of provenance – because it doesn’t really have one, sorry René! – but rather one of intellectual history. That is, why don’t any of the myriad of details fit together, either individually or when taken as a whole?

I suppose I’ve now become hungry for an entirely different type of public discussion – what I term “broadcast-only” lectures don’t really work for me any more. I’m also hugely tired of people repeatedly trotting out the wrong answers (such as “alchemy” or “conspiracy”) to the wrong questions (“what secrets might the VMs contain?”). Technically, what Annales historians call the “problématique” – the linked set of questions people use to define a research area – is massively ill-defined in the case of the VMs. Basically, if Claude Lévi-Strauss is correct in asserting that “the scholar is not he who gives the right answers, but he who asks the right questions“, I think I can honestly say that there are precious few genuine Voynich scholars out there – and we are all the worse for that scarcity.

Upcoming François Almaleh talk…

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As part of this year’s week-long typography event at Lurs (August 2009), long-time Voynichologist François Almaleh will be giving a talk on “Le manuscrit Voynich” – but ignore the typo on the page which makes it look as if his session is something to do with HELMO (which is actually the joint name of two French graphic artists – here’s a nice example of their work), because it isn’t.

Incidentally, Almaleh’s website has plenty of interesting pearls for the reasonably determined diver to harvest, such as his discussion [in French] of American artist Timothy C Ely’s mysteriously beautiful book “The Flight into Egypt” (1985), which also tangentially notes points of comparison with Luigis Serafini’s Codex Seraphinianus.

Hmmm… what with Rene Zandbergen not so long ago and now François Almaleh as well, it does make me wonder whether I should give some talks on the Voynich Manuscript. Our much-appropriated manuscript has stoically endured such a lot of nonsense over the last century, so perhaps it is time to make some kind of public stand. Basically, I think we now know enough to start piecing together its real secret history – so really, if a satirical XKCD mention is enough to treble the VMs’ online visibility, we ought to be doing rather better at getting that essential story across.

But what would be the best format for a Voynich talk session? In some ways, a formally-structured lecture is of little use circa 2009 – does anybody need a Wikipedia-esque recap? Perhaps if people planning to attend the talk (or, in fact, anybody) were to email their own questions in beforehand (or even submit questions on the night), that might give more of a interactive taste of what Voynich research is all about.

What questions would you have me answer on a Voynich talk? What questions do you think would really put me on the spot? 🙂

A new Voynich research angle…

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On the one hand, I’ve spent years trying to reconstruct the “inner history” of the Voynich Manuscript: while on the other, I’ve spent the same period trying to deconstruct the subtle fault-lines in its cipher system. History and science: the ultimate epistemological pincer attack, if you will.

In that general vein, here’s a new research angle on the Voynich Manuscript’s cipher to think about, that’s supported on both sides by very specific art historical reasoning and statistical reasoning.

Firstly, the art history. Quite independently of the question of authorship, I recently argued (in my post on Voynich Q13) that Q13b (baths) is to Q13a (something disguised as baths) as Herbal-A (agriculture) is to Herbal-B (something disguised as agriculture). This same relationship may well hold true for the ‘pharmacological’ pages, in that Q19 pharma (visual recipes) may bear the same relation to some or all of Q15 pharma (something disguised as visual recipes).

I have also argued on codicological grounds that the patterns resembling aiiv and aiir we see densely scattered throughout the VMs were intended to resemble medieval folio references, while concealing some other information (probably Arabic numbers). My hypothesis is that this steganography was initially achieved (early in the Currier-A phase) by placing dots over the various aiiv instances, but that the author then decided this was too obvious and so went through the text adding scribal flourishes connecting the right-hand edge of the v-shape to the flying dot. However, by the time of the Currier-B phase, the same aiiv pattern was used as a covertext, but a different kind of steganography was used for the concealed text – here, the overall shape of the final “v” letter seems to have been used as the enciphering mechanism. What I like about this is that it should be able to be tested by a careful spectroscopic scan of the aiiv instances. I suspect that it will be amazing how much you can tell from the evolution of a single pattern across the VMs’ pages.

Put all this together, and what I think emerges is a picture of a cipher system that is evolving across multiple phases – the Currier-A dot phase, perhaps a Currier-A pure loop phase, a Currier-B v-shape phase. Glen Claston has his own ideas on the evolution and gestation of the pages (along broadly similar lines), so this isn’t really massive news on its own.

Secondly, the statistics. Since Prescott Currier proposed his two-language (Currier A and Currier B) model in 1976, it is sadly true that far more people have picked up on what this “split” might imply than have tried to actually statistically analyze it in a deeper way. What are those differences, though?

  • -dy: rare in A, very common in B
  • chol-, chor-, and chot-: very common in A, rare in B
  • cth-: common in A, rare in B
  • chain, chaiin:  medium frequency in A, rare in B

To which I would add that qol- occurs 20x more often in B than in A, and that if you remove all ol and al pairs, the remaining freestanding ls occur 8x more often in B than in A.

All of which leads to this basic observation: currently, I think that the very best explanation of why the ‘formation rules’ of Currier B differ from the formation rules of Currier A is that I believe that the Voynich’s author evolved the system from A to B not to accommodate another language or dialect, but rather to hide perceived weaknesses in the Currier A cipher system.

This then suggests a new cryptological research angle: if we can statistically identify what specific patterns were removed from Currier A during the transition to Currier B (and perhaps even identify matching patterns that were added to Currier B), then we might, with a little luck, start to work out why the author thought they were weaknesses in the cipher system.

As an example, could it be that many of the instances of ch (or, more likely, cho)in Currier A reappear as freestanding l in Currier B? If so, why did the author evolve Voynichese in this way? Was he hiding a weakness in the cipher system? Did the author judge that the first phase’s cho was unnecessarily verbose, and so came to replace it by the (much more compact) freestanding l in later phases?

Roberto Salvidio’s Italian Voynich novel “Codex”…

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Words reaches Cipher Mysteries ears (via the Italian Wikipedia Voynich page) of a new Italian Voynich-themed novel called “Codex” by Roberto Salvidio. The story begins when an unknown person sends a manuscript to Mary Radclyffe’s family: from then on, she’s on the run until she can decode the Voynich Manuscript. There’s plenty of esotericism and a sprinkling of Leonardo in the mix – sounds like a bit of fun.

Naturally, I then contacted Roberto Salvidio via Facebook: he told me that he is currently looking for an English translator for “Codex”: if that sounds like something you might like to be involved in, please feel free to contact him.

Intriguingly, Roberto also mentioned that he put his own cipher challenge at the end of his book. Would you like to see it? Of course you would! So, here it is (with his permission):-

12 6 7 1 ­ 8 5 27 5 8 / 6 8 7 27 ( – 7 2 8 5 7 9 / 5 9 8 6 _ 4 33  4 3 23 7 ) 7 5 34 5 ­ 13 4 5 1 ( 7 1 7 4 5 _ 12 3 6 \ 3 15 8 9 5 4  ­ 16 ) 3 9 3 5 1 _ 8 9 4 3 1 7 5 ( 2 6 ­ 3 29 7 16 2  2 ­ 9 7 5 24 9 5 27 \ 4 7 5 8 _ 5 8 9 8 4 / 13 9 7 1 ) 4 5 6 7 8 5  12 \ 2 7 9 5 2 43 1 ­ 7 6 28 5 4 5 7 9 / 3 5 6 8 9 8 3 4 _ 3 21 3  26 3 \ 4 24 3 7 9 3 27 ( 5 9 7 13 2 8 2 7 6 _ 8 13 15 7 \ 8 5 4 ­  2 8 9 3 4 / 12 _ 4 9 3 23 ) 3 7 3 9 1 ­ 9 14 8 7 9 7 2 6 1 \ 8 16  8 6 3 1
2 7 44 9 ­ 5 7 28 5 – ( 3 8 4 4 9 _ 9 5 1 3 ) 3 26 7 9 ­ 9  9 8 13 1 5 4 \ 5 38 1 5 _ 5 89 8 4 ( 7 1 9 ­ 2 61 7 2 ) 4 9 3 6 7 _  6 89 49 8 36 8 9 5 ( 9 1 4 4 1 3 ­ 1 7 3 9 ) \ 81 ( 56 7 84 3 1 /  4 77 6 1 7 19 / 3 8 65 84 _ 76 94 9 3 2 ) 6 8 94 ­ 5 87 9  ­ 2 7 / 1 7 58 28 4 / 7 3 ­ 8 13 9 ­ 1 7 9 3 / 5 7  5 7 1 4 ( 6 2 ­ 51 7 3 ) 3 15 9 3 \ 4 91 7 2 ­ 9 8 75 8 4 / 3  3 65 8 _ 6 9 44 3 7 \ 5 4 3 15 ­ 32 6 7 9 3 / 1 5 49 8 ( 5 4 19 9 8  5 ­ 19 / 6 8 9 _ 8 5 3 44 7 ) 6 8 49 5 1 ­ 6 7 18 18 ­ 7 2 88 6 ­ 4 2 7 9 6 3 ( 9 8 5 8 4 / 4 6 1 7 9 ) 8 4 7  7 23 \ 8 7 7 1 6 – / 7 13 _ 2 45 8 7 4 \ 7 6 18 ­ 4 8 7 9 16  ­ 5 8 9 4 3 1 ( _ 5 8 5 9 3 1 _ 5 8 33 6 5 8 4 4 _ 4 9 6 7 6 32 \  7 4 24 7 8 9 ­ 23 9 16 ) 8 3 7 2 _ 7 5 8 29 8 1 3 4 _ 27 \ 13 4 5  1 ( 2 7 8 66 _ 4 9 6 7 6 3 2 )
– 2 6 7 14 9 ­ 9 16 8 5 1 7 5 4 ­ 5 18 8 7 8 9 ( 7 14 9 5  5 / 4 8 66 7 5 7 9 / 4 8 2 7 1 78 _ 4 8 7 \ 4 91 7 2 ­ 66 23 7 13 9  ) 15 3 9 _ 3 28 9 8 3 ( 4 23 6 9 7 2 ( 7 21 8 7 _ 23 24 9 3 ) 8 7 6 ­ 8 9 15 8 14 ­ 3 2 8 5 7 5 4 ) 1 8 \ 2 17 6 2 ­ 1 €“ 1 9 6 / 11 7 5 8 28 4 _ 8 5 3 4 7 2 _ 12 ( 2 4 6 7 8 9 6 2 ­ 1 7 3  19 3 / 4 9 5 8 7 12 _ 4 9 3 2 6 7 6 3 _ 5 9 8 82 1 72 9 4 ( ­ 9 8  7 5 48 ) 4 7 _ 6 3 9 8 6 5 _ 66 9 5 1 8 13 \ ( 6 5 7 6 8 3 _ 6 5 9 4 9 3 6 \ 5 16 25 ­ 4 8 7 6 9 ) 7 4 23 9 6 9 4 _ 8 27 6 _ 3 18 6 3 \ ( 12  7 8 5 8 5 9 4 _ 4 3 23 7 ) 5 7 18 66 9 14 8 ­ 9 1 7 ­ 3 7  7 6 2 7 9 / 5 6 34 43 8 9 _ 66 7 7 9 4 3 6 9 7 3 _ 5 8 4 6 3 4 6 5 ( 3 15 8 9 5 4 ( 1 7 2 18 7 _ 2 3 17 8 5 4 ) 2 3 8 6 ­ 5 8 9 8 7 \ 7 8 5 9  44 27 ) 3 2 6 7 3 9 7 ­ 4 7 26 11 ­ 6 79 / 9 8 3 4 9 8 _ 9  9 3 5 1 \ 9 8 5 4 5 13 ­ 2 ­1 ( 8 9 3 4 8 _ 3 9 24 9 23 ) 9  9 7 4 19 / 5 6 9 8 6 59 _ 13 15 9 \ 3 6 4 5 2 7 9 ­ 3 2 6 7 9  ­ 5 6 3 15 ­ 9 4 8 6 9 / 5 6 8 6 8 9 _ 5 8 11 2 47 \ 9 8 5  5 4 4 5 13 \ 12 36 _ ( 7 2 5 9 4 5 ­ 28 7 5 ) 15 _ 8 27 12 8 4 _ 9 3  6 4 27 6 \ 4 7 26 9 4 ­ 1 7 6 14 7 19 / 3 6 8 5 6 _ 4 9 5 6 8 7 12  5 8 _ 4 8 9 5 55 6 3 ( 4 13 5 4 1 \ 9 5 19 3 11 _ 7 8 6 2 7 _ 6 9 7 4 2 3 9 4 ) 7 5 34 5 ­ 4 5 13 5 4 3 \ 5 8 6 _ 3 6 8 6 7 5 ( 3 1 8 9 4 3  15 \ 3 5 3 8 1 5 ) 2 3 ­ 4 1 9 5 8 89 5 4 ( 6 3 4 9 5 _ 3 2 6 7 2  3 6 \ 14 15 3 4 \ 5 8 \ 4 7 27 14 3 9 ­ 7 1 9 4 5 8 8 2 6 ) 3 2 9  6 4 9 7 6 _ 9 8 9 4 1 7 5 / 7 25 8 7 / 41 7 5 4 _ 4 5 12 8 7 8 11 \ 21 7 2 3 9 ­ 7 5 16 9 6 2 8 4 / 6 8 7 27 _ 4 2 \ 6 7 19 3 ( 5 9 8 8 6 9 5  6 _ 6 9 3 4 9 ) 6 6 11 7 2 ­ 2 7 9 16 14 \ 5 9 3 1 5 \
\ \ 5 13 5 4 3 ( 15 9 8 4 / 3 7 5 8 8 2 3 5 4 ­ 6 7 9 3 1 6 2 \ 4  44 9 5 8 7 12 ) 4 8 6 5 7 9 5 7 6 / 12 8 3 1 9 5 _ 6 3 7 6 9 4 3 \ 6 7 4 16 2 ­ 6 9 6 7 4 5 8 4 / 8 34 8 ( 3 18 8 9 3 ­ 7 8 9 9 5 8  8 4 5 5 7 / 8 27 6 88 4 _ 7 21 8 7 4 6 8 15 \ 9 13 14 1 ­ 7 13 9 7 )  9 3 6 5 4 _ 9 3 8 8 9 4 3 / 6 4 48 / 1 7 2 8 4 7 _ 3 6 3 7 2 \ 5 1 ( 5 13 4 / ) 4 23 9 4 _ ( 4 18 7 6 1 ­ 23 4 5 8 ­ 6 7 ­ 3 €“ 3 7 5 4 35 7 )
\ 7 3 6 72 3 9 4 ­ 7 12 6 3 29 6 / 6 8 ( 55 19 8 4 18 ­ 16 16 ) 9 55 31 _ 5 7 1 3 4 5 6 ( 5 27 ­ 3 5 7 11 / 28 3 12 3 _ 3 6 ) 9  3 7 27 ­ 27 3 4 9 17 ( 3 8 _ 9 2 3 9 4 2 _ 5 8 4 8 9 98 / 5 8 7 25  ) 11 8 _ 5 5 7 2 13 4 9 8 / 4 8 7 6 9 6 / 4 9 5 6 9 21 7 6
( 7 8 6 16 7 ­ 2 7 3 88 4 5 7 ) 9 3 \ 4 9 22 13 ( 7 8 5 4 27 1 _ 7  24 23 4 8 ) 16 7 8 5 ­ 3 4 \ 3 5 7 31 8 5 _ 6 8 9 _ 9 4 37 6 _ 6 5  8 9 ( 4 5 27 9 4 7 ­ 5 8 2 6 4 9 1 ) 7 8 4 5 7 _ 7 5 8 4 1 ( 1 5 2  7 66 16 8 7 ­ 6 27 19 37 ) 3 9 4 23 27 6 _ 27 5 8 14 9 _ 69 4 3 \  9 13 14 ­ 6 7 9 7 3 26 / 3 6 _ 3 18 6 13 \ 9 8 13 15 4 ( 785 _ 4 9  5 23 15 8 6 7 ) 4 8 5 6 7 5 9 8 ­ 8 76 16 25 ( 7 11 _ 5 1 8 6 7 8  _ 6 3 6 5 6 7 _ 4 23 9 ) 3 9 3 7 19 ­ 3 15 8 8 9 3 ­ 6 4 7  7 9 7 16 \ 9 8 44 5 8 13 ( 9 5 8 7 2 _ 3 9 ) 39 1 7 3 9
– 8 7 44 2 ( 5 18 9 4 5 _ 8 5 31 ) 4 8 7 5 4 / 4 5 ( 5 8 1 ­ 3 7 9  1 ­ 33 1 8 9 ­ 27 1 7 1 ) 44 5 9 3 \ 15 14 1 9 18 9  9 ­ 6 28 7 4 3 9 / 6 3 4 6 5 _ 4 7 2 1 8 5 \ 5 8 13 4 9 ­ 15 15 ( 7 14 / 44 8 7 6 9 ) 18 5 1 _ 8 9 5 6 8 ( 3 4 15 ­ 4 3 7 5 4 ) 3  4 2 5 15 3 _ 5 8 9 8 4 8 ( 16 7 8 7 2 5 3 9 ­ 9 8 5 4 5 7 5 8 / 66  88 7 2 ( 5 8 9 4 31 ­ 6 8 4 3 9 17 ) 3 4 5 8 13 7 ) 9 8 4 5 7  ­ 27 19 6 44 9 ­ 48 7 6 19 1 / 8 4 7 2 8 21 _ 12 6 3 12 3  3 \ 3 4 2 7 9 4 ( 2 7 88 6 _ 4 5 8 67 1 23 ) 8 5 7 / 7 28 _ 7 28 5 4 21 \ 6 3 7 9 6 7 2 ­ 6 17 2 3 7 9 / 11 7 6 3 8 2 ( 9 7 1 44 5 2 4  ­ 11 77 9 7 6 ) 4 5 6 7 8 7 3 5 \ 11 3 9 8 1 ­ 7 4 9 4 6 /  / 5 9 _ 3 5 13 7 18 \ 2 7 12 ­ 3 5 1 7 3 / 6 7 2 8 6 _ 8 5 4 2 3 7 \  8 5 4 19 8 ­ 8 7 4 3 9 28 6 ­ 9 88 5 14 ( 2 7 1 _ 5 7 4 2  2 \ 9 31 8 9 ­ 3 77 9 11 ) 4 9 6 7 6 3 2 _ 3 8 3 44 3 66 ( 3 14 5 \  4 9 3 24 \ 13 2 4 3 2 7 9 ­ 19 7 3 ) 4 5 8 7 24 \ 6 2 7 12 ( 8 66  _ 8 5 9 31 \ 8 5 9 44 3 1 ­ 8 4 ) 5 8 6 7 _ 4 9 ( 5 88 9 3 11
­ 7 16 4 7 6 9 / 3 6 8 55 6 _ 9 33 2 4 9 6 77 \ 88 7 12 5 9 8 4 5  ­ 88 6 8 7 9 34 / 32 88 9 8 3 _ 6 7 2 4 9 5 18 66).
Doubtless if you do crack it, he’ll put a trickier one in the English edition. Enjoy! 🙂

Por le bon Simon Sint… what?

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Here’s a quick Voynich Manuscript palaeographic puzzle for you. A couple of months ago, I discussed Edith Sherwood’s suggestion that the third letter in the piece of marginalia on f116v was a Florentine “x”, as per Leonardo da Vinci’s quasi-shorthand. I also proposed that the topmost line there might have read “por le bon simon s…”

Going over this again just now, I did a bit of cut-and-paste-and-contrast-enhance in a graphics editor to see if I could read the next few letters:-

por-le-bon-simon-sint

OK, I’m still reasonably happy with “por le bon simon s…“, but what then? Right now, I suspect that this last word begins “sint…” (and is possibly “sintpeter“?) – could it be that this is the surname of the intended recipient? Of course, in the Bible, St Peter’s name was originally Simon, so “simon sintpeter” may or may not be particularly informative – but it could be a start, all the same.

But then again, the “n” and/or “t” of the “sint” could equally well have been emended by a well-meaning later owner: and the last few letters could be read as “ifer“, depending on whether or not the mark above the word is in the same ink. Where are those multispectral scans when you need them? Bah!

Feel free to add your own alternate readings below! 🙂

Post slowdown…

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Just to let you know that the normal summer “news drought” appears to have arrived a little early this year – apart from a couple of shiny new Voynich theories working their way through the pipeline and some long overdue book reviews to write up (most notably Christopher Harris’ novel “Mappamundi”), there’s really nothing much happening.

So… please don’t be unduly alarmed if your daily Cipher Mystery fix fails to arrive – it’s the world’s fault, not mine. 🙂

The Juan Roget telescope inventor theory, revisited…

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In early 2008, I became interested in the mystery surrounding the first invention of the telescope. The year was the 400th anniversary of the first Dutch telescope patent application – yet the more accounts and explanations I read (even the very best ones, such as Albert van Helden’s exemplary “The Invention of the Telescope”), the less I believed any of them. For the greatest part, probably the most appropriate take on the evidence as it stands is simply this: a cultured state of tolerant disbelief.

But all that seemed to change when I stumbled upon a reference to some little-known research by José Maria Simón de Guilleuma, a Spanish historian from fifty years ago. A Barcelonan optometrist by trade, he had long been intrigued by Juan Roget, a Catalonian spectacle-maker from the same town who the Milanese courtier Girolamo Sirtori claimed was the real first inventor of the telescope. Fascinatingly, when I combined Simón de Guilleuma’s (apparently archivally precise) references with the telescope history research from the decades following his death, what emerged was far from the generally accepted historical account – taken as a whole, it suggested a radically different historical narrative involving a mad dash across Europe to the Frankfurt Fair in September 1608.

And so I wrote an article that brought all these pieces together, and (as an intellectual historian) presented the detailed secondary evidence as best I could, together with a suggested reconstruction which attempted to reconcile all the differing accounts into a satisfactory monoptic timeline: this first appeared in History Today’s September 2008 edition, with a translation by Enrique Joven following on in the Spanish telescope magazine Astronomia in October 2008.

(Here’s a link to my current set of bibliographic references on Juan Roget: this should be a useful starting point for anyone wanting to read more about this subject.)

However, the nagging question remained of whether my whole story was properly supported by the primary evidence. And so a few days ago, I went for a (carefully chosen) short family holiday to Barcelona: while my wife and son explored the foody wonders of the Boqueria, I instead headed off to the Arxiu Històric de Protocols de Barcelona (the “AHPB”) not far away, where the most relevant primary notarial documents in this story were to be found. What would I find?

The AHPB is part of the Col-legi Notaris de Catalunya: you buzz at a large (but fairly nondescript) door at #4 Calle de Notariat (ignore the sign that tells you to ask at #2, you’ll only get sent back to #4) – it’s the one with a surprisingly fancy “pan/tilt” hi-res entry camera. Go in and ask the guard at reception that you’re there to consult the AHPB, and he’ll direct you to the lift to go up to the second floor. Oh, yes, how could I forget the AHPB’s unnervingly James Bond-style lift, with four underground floors (-1 to -4), holding the 12,000 linear metres of storage.

Once you’re out of the lift, you find yourself in what feels like an embassy’s nondescript internal corridor, with only the giant circular “BIBLIOTECA” embossed in the floor (a bit like a film prop, it has to be said) to persuade you otherwise. Follow the corridor to the right, and you find yourself in a fairly bijou library area, with only a handful of tables for researchers to work on. Perhaps because of the short opening hours (10am to 1pm Monday to Friday, plus 4pm to pm on Wednesday), there’s a palpable feeling of urgency to the place, quite unlike most other research libraries I have been to.

To call up AHPB notarial documents, you:

  • Find the appropriate section of the multi-volume printed inventory (arranged chronologically, broadly by century)
  • Look up the particular notary’s name in the alphabetic index near the back to find the starting page number
  • Turn to that page
  • Scan forwards until you find whichever bound set of documents matches the date you are interested in
  • Copy the call number(s) onto a request slip, together with the name of the notary
  • Hand the request slip to the person on the small table on the right

…and your documents appear on your desk surprisingly quickly. Very quick, efficient, & straightforward.

The brick wall I immediately ran into was that even doing this cast significant doubt on the archival precision of that part of Simón de Guilleuma’s work relating to early mentions of telescopes by notaries. You see, he had referred to the four main documents I was hoping to see as:-

  1. Notary: Francisco de Pedralbes. Pedro de Cardona, 10 April 1593.
  2. Notary: Francisco de Pedralbes. Maria de Cardona y de Eril, 13 December 1596.
  3. Notary: Geronimo Gali. Jaime Galvany, auction held on 5 September 1608.
  4. Notary: Miguel Axada. Honorato Graner, 6th August 1613 (though this could well be in the Biblioteca de Catalunya instead).

The problem here is that according to the LL. Cases’ “Inventarii de l’AHPB” vols S.XVI and S.XVII/1, Jeroni Galí (call numbers 699/1 and 699/2) acted as a notary from 1635 onwards, while Miquel Aixada (call number 643/1) was a notary between 1622 and 1623. And so if Simón de Guilleuma got the notaries’ names right, it would appear that he got the dates significantly wrong… by 25+ years and 10+ years, respectively.

Now, it has to be said that it takes a while to get the hang of any historical handwriting, and I was extremely short of time: so I can’t claim to have read every word of every page in the documents I called up. But I can say that I didn’t manage to find any of the references I was looking for.

The most frustrating AHPB documents of all were those of Francesc Pedralbes, a notary from 1562-1599. For the two dates given (call numbers 426/106 and 426/116), the notary’s ink has soaked its way right through the paper, leaving each folio’s two sides of text awkwardly merged together – extremely difficult to read slowly, let alone fast. And so it might well be that I was indeed squinting hard at the two Pedralbes documents Simón de Guilleuma described, but unable to make them out at all.

[The irritating thing is that I didn’t know that the AHPB allows researchers to take cameras (I’d guess with the flash turned off?) in with them: so I could easily have taken photos of all the likeliest candidates to pore over at my leisure – but there was simply not enough time on that Friday morning before the AHPB closed to find my wife and borrow her camera.]

The problem, of course, is that the my article’s whole narrative (as far as 1608 goes) hinged on the timing. If a telescope was sold at a Barcelonan auction on 5th September 1608, then that is big news – but if that auction was actually held three decades later, it’s no news at all (which is, of course, why I went looking for this particular document). From what I’ve seen, I’d say that the odds are high that this did not happen in 1608 – hence the latter category beckons (unfortunately).

Right now, I have to say that this side of the research into the Spanish telescope appears stalled: not only do I not know why Simón de Guilleuma apparently got these dates so very wrong, I don’t know why Spanish historians haven’t checked this in fifty years.

Another thing I don’t currently understand is that when I asked the Biblioteca de Catalunya about these documents, they said that they were in the Arxiu Històric de la Ciutat de Barcelona (AHCB), and that:-

The sections of Francisco Pedralbes have the following topographical data: XII.3 and XII.9 of the Protocols notarials collection. The topographical data for Gali’s protocol is XIII.8 of the same collection 

However, when I emailed the AHCB, they seemed to think that these would instead be in the AHPB. Given that there’s an air of uncertainty over all of this that I don’t claim to understand, I thought I ought to flag every detail: someone with more experience of the ‘system’ might very well be able to make more sense of it all than me.

All in all, I do think that this is something which a local history graduate student could probably get an interesting paper out of: for if Simón de Guilleuma didn’t simply make this all up, what was he looking at?

* * * * * *

Of course, you might simply think that all the above casts doubt on Simón de Guilleuma’s reputation as an historian. Yet an entirely parallel lead popped up since my September 2008 History Today article, which appears to vindicate the other half of his research (into the life of Juan Roget and his nephews).

After my History Today article came out, University of Madrid urban historian Jim Amelang – whose name tourists may possibly recognize as a co-author of the book “Twelve Walks Through Barcelona’s History”, as mentioned in the Time Out guide to Barcelona – contacted me to say that he had found an interesting research lead on the Roget family in the AHPB.

He documented it on pp. 383-4n of his 1998 book “The Flight of Icarus: Artisan Autobiography in Early Modern Europe”, Stanford: Stanford University Press (I ordered a copy last year, but it got cancelled by the bookseller after six months, *sigh*).

I can do no better than to quote in full Jim Amelang’s emailed summary of what he found:

It is the 10 Dec. 1617 testament of one Hierónima Verges, wife of Andreu Verges, a tanner of Barcelona, and daughter of Joan Roget, “ullarer” (eyeglass maker) and his wife Hierónima, both deceased. I fear that this document says nothing about astronomy or telescopes. However, it does mention several family members, especially a brother named Joan Roget, who lived in Barcelona on the Plaça del Blat, and to whom she left 5L for mourning clothes, and her uncle Magi Roget, who was like her father identified as an ullarer. Apparently she died on 19 December. It’s not much to go on, but it does give us a bit more information about the family, including the fact that the elder Joan passed the trade on to other members of his tribe. Also, the elder Joan was referred to as a “citizen of Barcelona“, which meant that he had been residing some time in the city before his death (which did not necessarily take place there). The precise reference, in case you are interested, is Arxiu Històric de Protocols de Barcelona/Antoni Masclans, Manual de Testaments, 1610-1630, s.n.

So, we are left with an apparently contradictory situation in which the half of Simón de Guilleuma’s research into Juan Roget seems confirmed as accurate, while the other half looking for mentions of early telescopes in Barcelonan wills, auctions and inventories seems possibly inaccurate.

I honestly don’t know what to make of all this – am I perhaps missing something really big (such as the existence of two separate Barcelonan notaries both called “Jeroni Gali”, with parallel documents in two different archives?), or did Simón de Guilleuma ‘tweak’ the 1608 and 1613 dates to make Sirtori’s claim of a pre-September 1608 Spanish telescope seem more convincing? According to his family, he simply wasn’t that kind of a person: but what, then, would explain it all?

The only solid thing I can say is that my inexperience with (and lack of time and camera in) the Barcelonan archives was a hindrance: and that, realistically, I think it would take at least a week to properly chart out what documents are (and are not) in what archive. Why is nobody in Spain looking at this? To me, that’s the biggest mystery of all.

Q13 and Voynich balneology sources…?

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One of the (frustratingly small) number of art history leads the Voynich Manuscript’s author dangles before our eyes is the balneology part of Q13 (“quire 13”). Specifically, there are two bifolios that depict baths and pools, where the pictures helpfully allow us to reconstruct what the page layout originally was:

          84r/84v – contains Q13’s quire number (which should be at the back for binding)
            78r/78v – contains left half of a two-page bath picture (should be centrefold)
            81r/81v – contains right half of a two-page bath picture (should be centrefold)
          75r/75v

The centrefold originally looked like this (my red boxes highlight a paint transfer):-

Voynich Manuscript, page f78v placed next to f81r

This codicological nuance demonstrates that Q13’s quire number was added after the bifolios had been scrambled, because the page it was written (f84v) on was originally inside the quire, on a bifolio that ended up both flipped and in the wrong position. In “Thc Curse” (pp.62-65), I tried to follow this through to reconstruct the original page order for the whole of Q13.

Fascinatingly, Glen Claston has now raised this whole idea up to a whole different level – he proposes that Q13 was originally two separate (smaller) quires which have been subsequently merged together. According to his reading, the four folios listed above originally formed a free-standing balneological quire (which he calls “Q13b“), while the remaining bifolios form a free-standing medicinal / Galenic quire all on its own (which he calls “Q13a“).

Even though Glen and I disagree on the likely page order of Q13a (apart from the fact that the text-only f76r was very probably the first page, and hence its bifolio was the outer bifolio for the quire) and on its probable content, I have to say that I’m completely sold on his proposed Q13a / Q13b layout (basically, I wish I’d thought of it first – but I didn’t, Glen did). We also agree that because there is no indication at all that f84r was the front page of the quire, there was probably an additional (but now lost) outer bifolio to Q13b in its original state.

Glen also infers (from the apparent evolution of the language between the two parts) that Q13b was made first, with Q13a coming later. Having mulled over this for a few weeks now, I have to say I find this particularly intriguing because of what I believe is a subtle change in quality between the drawings in Q13b and Q13a that strangely parallels the change in drawings between Herbal-A pages and Herbal-B pages.

My key observation here is that whereas Q13b’s drawings appear to be straightforward representations of baths and pools, Q13a’s drawings appear to have layers of rendering and meaning beneath the representational surface: that is, while Q13b is a small treatise on baths, Q13a is a small treatise on something else, rendered in the style of a small treatise on baths. As an example, on f77v you can see something literally hiding behind the central nymph at the top – but what is it?

voynich-f77v-central-nymph

This closely mirrors what I see in the herbal A & B sections: while Herbal-A pages (from the earliest phase of construction) appear to be representing plants (if sometimes in an obscure way), Herbal-B pages (which were made rather later) appear to be something else entirely made to resemble a treatise on plants.

My current working hypothesis, therefore, is that the representational (if progressively more distorted) Herbal-A pages and the representational Q13b balneological section preceded both the non-representational Herbal-B pages and the non-representational Q13a pages, both of which are disguised to look like their respective predecessor, while actually containing something quite different.

(As an aside, the same kind of mechanism might be at play in the pharma section: there, too, you can see ‘jars’ that seem to be purely representational, together with other things that seem to be disguising themselves as ornate jars. Very curious!)

This has a strong parallel with the way that recent art historians (such as Valentina Vulpi) decomposes Antonio Averlino’s libro architettonico into multiple writing phases: In “The Curse” (pp.106-107), I proposed a slightly more radical version of Valentina’s thesis – that Averlino (Filarete) targeted Phase 1 at Francesco Sforza, Phase 2 at Galeazzo Maria Sforza, and Phase 3 at both Francesco Sforza & Lorenzo de’ Medici. In the case of the VMs, I suspect that some of the difficulties we face arise from broadly similar changes in need / intention / strategy over the lifetime of the construction – that is, that the style of the cipher and drawings probably evolved in response to the author’s life changes.

As far as art history goes, though, Q13b appears to give us a purely representational (if enciphered!) connection with baths and pools – places associated in the Middle Ages and Renaissance with healing. Bathhouses were usually situated in the centre of towns and were used by urban folk: while natural spas and pools were thought to have specific healing powers based on their particular mineral content, were usually in fairly inaccessible places, and tended to be frequented by the well-off at times of ill-health (for you needed resources to be able to fund a party to trek halfway up a mountain).

So… might there be an existing textual source where this (presumably secret) information on baths and spas could have come from?

The main source for medieval balneological information was Peter of Eboli’s much-copied De Balneis Puteo (which was hardly a secret): when I wrote “The Curse”, the two main Quattrocento balneological discussions I knew of were by Antonio Averlino and by the doctor Michele Savonarola. I also pointed out that that the (now misbound) Q13 centrefold (f78v and f81r) resembles “the three thermal baths at the Bagno di Romana. Of these, the ‘della Torre’ bath was used for showers, the ‘in-between bath’ was used to treat various illnesses and skin complaints; while the third one was more like a women’s spa.” (p.63)

However, I recently found a nice 1916 article online called “Balneology in the Middle Ages” by Arnold C. Klebs. Klebs notes (which I didn’t know) that the fashion for balneology died around 1500, fueled by a widespread belief that baths and spas were one of the causes of the spread of syphilis. Errrm… that would depend on what you happened to be doing in the baths (and with whom), I suppose. Here are some other fragments from the last few pages of Klebs’ article which might well open some doors:

In Giovanni de Dondis we usually hail the early apostle of exact balneology. Whatever his right to such honour may be, it must be mentioned that it rests on his attempt to extract the salts of the thermal of Abano.

Gentile da Foligno (died 1348), […] a great money-maker and promoter of the logical against the empirical method in medicine. He wrote a little treatise on the waters of Porreta, the chief interest of which may be found in the fact that it was the first to appear in print (1473).

Ugolino Caccino, of Montecatini (died 1425). He came from that thermal district not far from Florence, in the Valdinievole, which has still preserved its ancient reputation as a spa. Evidently he was a man of broad and open-minded scholarship, who in his treatise on all the Italian spas, the first thorough one of the kind, gives the results of his own personal observations, stating clearly when he is reporting from the information of others.

Matteo Bendinelli (1489) sums up for them all, in his treatise on the baths of Lucca and Corsenna,…

Michele Savonarola, representing Padua and the new school of Ferrara. To him European balneologrv owes the most ambitious work on the mineral springs of all the countries.

De Balneis omnia quae extant,” Venice, Giunta, 1553, fol., 447 leaves. This fine collection, the first text-book on balneology, offers to the interested student a mine of information.

Hieronymus Reusner & the Voynich Manuscript…

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Late in 2008, Adam D. Morris emailed me to discuss his Voynich theory: that the VMs might have some connection with Hieronymus Reusner. Finally, I’ve got round to posting about it (sorry for the delay, Adam!)…

Adam’s jumping-off point was the visual similarities between the VMs and Reusner’s 1582 book “Pandora” (a version of the ‘Buch der heiligen Dreifaltigkeit’, Book of the Holy Trinity) – colouring, faces, line-structure, etc. And so he wondered: might Hieronymus Reusner be (or be connected with) the author of the VMs? Or if not him, might it be connected to other Germans connected with him, such as Ulmannus or Franciscus Epimetheus? Additionally, manuscript copies of the “Buch der heiligen Dreifaltigkeit” go back to 1415, so at what point did the drawings we see in Reusner’s Pandora take that general form?

Adam was also intrigued by Bachmann and Hofmeier’s (1999) “Gehemimnisse der Alchemie“, particularly the drawings of people and objects on pp.103-123 which he thought were reminiscent of the VMs.

Alchemy expert Adam McLean has also studied Reusner’s Pandora, and concludes that it is the coloured drawings in The University of Basel, MS L IV 1, UB (entitled ‘Alchemistisches Manuscript’) that were very probably “the original for the woodcuts in Reusner’s ‘Pandora’, rather than their being directly derived from an early manuscript of the ‘Buch der heiligen Dreifaltigkeit’.”

I dug up a couple of images from MS L IV 1, UB on the web: Figure 1 on this page, and Figure 1 on this page. The accompanying text dates the manuscript to 1550, which is a little late for the VMs, but (as I’m constantly reminded by others) not one the current fairly scratchy dating evidence definitively rules out. And, as always, the Basel Alchemistisches Manuscript might well have been copied from a yet earlier source – so there may well be a significant (probably German-language) literature on this manuscript which explores its visual roots. Let me know if you happen to find any of this!

As with a lot of VMs research ideas, what we have here is something and nothing all at the same time. Is a slim visual resemblance a convincing enough reason to spend a significant amount of time attempting to build a case for an historical connection? And (for example) might similarities in paint colour merely suggest that the VMs was repainted in Germany in the middle of the 16th century, rather than anything to do with its actual origin?

Perhaps the bigger problem with this lies with trying to shoehorn the VMs into some kind of alchemical tradition (at whatever date) is that nobody has yet presented any evidence that suggests any sustainable parallel (however fleeting) between the VMs’ drawings and any known set of alchemical drawings.

In the past, Voynich theorists have all too often used “alchemy”, “heresy”, “magic”, “necromancy” and indeed “conspiracy” as catch-all that’s-why-it-must-be-secret buzzwords: but the good news is that people are now starting to see that “why is it secret?” is the wrong kind of question (as per point 5 on the DIY Voynich theory list) to be starting from. Given that the forensics mantra is “forget about the whys, focus on the whats”, I believe that an essentially forensic approach is our only real hope of making progress.

And so I applaud Adam Morris for trying to follow the drawings (for art history surely aspires to be a forensic study of stylistics?), as this is arguably the most sensible route to take: but as he has found, it is a far harder path to follow than it at first seems. Good luck!