John Fanning Watson on Philadelphia’s pirate treasure…

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Before revealing the precise modern equivalent of the location near Cherry Garden where the Society Hill treasure was allegedly buried 😉 , I think we need to take a brief detour into the world of Philadelphia’s pirate treasure lore.

Our guide is the ever-detailed (and not infrequently skeptical) (1830) “Annals of Philadelphia, being a collection of memoirs, anecdotes, and incidents of the city and its inhabitants, from the days of the Pilgrim founders” compiled by John Fanning Watson. For all its flaws, Watson’s book is surely the first (wary) port of call for anyone sailing the murky depths of Philly’s early history: and remains a comfortable lapdog of a read (though the reader’s eye inevitably tires after each few chapters).

In short, think of Watson’s Annals as a Philly equivalent of Captain Charles Johnson’s “A General History of the Robberies and Murders of the most notorious Pyrates”, and you shouldn’t go too far wrong. 🙂

Captain Kidd

Watson, having done much research on the subject, seems in no doubt of Captain Kidd’s connection to Philadelphia, or at least to Kidd’s crew:

A writer at Albany, in modern times, says they had the tradition that [Captain] Kid once visited Coeymans and Albany; and at a place two miles from the latter it was said he deposited money and treasure in the earth. […]

In 1699, Isaac Norris, sen. writes, saying, “We have four men in prison, taken up as pirates, supposed to be Kid’s men. Shelly, of New York, has brought to these parts some scores of them, and there is sharp looking out to take them. We have various reports of their riches, and money hid between this and the capes. There was landed about twenty men, as we understand, at each cape, and several are gone to York. A sloop has been seen cruising off the capes for a considerable time, but has not meddled with any vessel as yet, though she has spoken with several.”

The above quoted letter, in the Logan MS. collection, goes to countenance the prevalent idea of hidden money. The time concurs with the period Captain Kid was known to have returned to the West Indies. It may have been the very sloop in which Kid himself was seeking means of conveying home his treasure, and with which he finally went into Long Island sound to endeavour to make his peace. Four of the men landed at Lewistown, were apprehended and taken to Philadelphia; I saw the bill of their expense,” but heard no more of them, save that I saw that Colonel Quarry, at Philadelphia, was reproached by William Penn for permitting the bailing of the pirates; some were also bailed at Burlington. — Vide Penn’s letter of 1701.

Blackbeard

Watson is even more taken with the much-claimed connection between Blackbeard and Philadelphia:

Mrs. Bulah Coates, (once Jacquet,) the grandmother of Samuel Coates, Esq. now an aged citizen, told him that she had seen and sold goods to the celebrated Blackbeard, she then keeping a store in High street, No. 77, where Beninghove now owns and dwells a little west of Second street. He bought freely and paid well. She then knew it was him, and so did some others. But they were afraid to arrest him lest his crew, when they should hear of it, should avenge his cause, by some midnight assault. He was too politick to bring his vessel or crew within immediate reach; and at the same time was careful to give no direct offence in any of the settlements where they wished to be regarded as visiters and purchasers, &c.

This of course gives me an excuse to put in the famous picture of Blackbeard that everyone loves so much:

Watson adds:

There is a traditionary story, that Blackbeard and his crew used to visit and revel at Marcushook, at the house of a Swedish woman, whom he was accustomed to call Marcus, as an abbreviation of Margaret.

(Incidentally, there’s a 1735 plank-built house in Marcus Hook that the owners like to try to associate with Blackbeard and his friend Margaret, just so you know.)

All of which helps to support stories telling of buried pirate treasure in Philadelphia, though the spookier the better (obviously):

An idea was once very prevalent, especially near to the Delaware and Schuylkill rivers, that the pirates of Black Beard’s day had deposited treasure in the earth. The conceit was, that sometimes they killed a prisoner, and interred him with it, to make his ghost keep his vigils there as a guard “walking his weary round.”

Treasure Hunter Tales

Watson counted treasure hunters among his friends, though again with a spooky edge:

Several persons, whose names I suppress, used to go and dig for hidden treasures of nights. On such occasions if any one “spoke” while digging, or ran from terror without “the magic ring,” previously made with incantation round the place, the whole influence of the spell was lost.

And treasure hunters back then were apparently just about as gullible as their modern versions:

There was a prevailing belief that the pirates had hidden many sums of money and much of treasure about the banks of the Delaware. Forrest got an old parchment, on which he wrote the dying testimony of one John Hendricks, executed at Tyburn for piracy, in which he stated that he had deposited a chest and a pot of money at Cooper’s Point in the Jerseys. This parchment he smoked, and gave to it the appearance of antiquity; calling on his German taylor, told him he had found it among his father’s papers, who got it in England from the prisoner whom he visited in prison. This he showed to the taylor as a precious paper which he could by no means lend out of his hands. This operated the desired effect.

Soon after the taylor called on Forrest with one Ambruster, a printer, who he introduced as capable of “printing any spirit out of hell,” by his knowledge of the black art. He asked to show him the parchment; he was delighted with it, and confidently said he could conjure Hendricks to give up the money. A time was appointed to meet in an upper room of a public house in Philadelphia, by night, and the inn-keeper was let into the secret by Forrest. By the night appointed, they had prepared by a closet a communication with a room above their sitting room, so as to lower down by a pulley the invoked ghost, who was represented by a young man entirely sewed up in a close white dress on which were painted black eyed-sockets, mouth, and bare ribs with dashes of black between them, the outside and inside of the legs and thighs blacked, so as to make white bones conspicuous there. About twelve persons met in all, seated around a table. Ambruster shuffled and read out cards, on which were inscribed the names of the New Testament saints, telling them he should bring Hendricks to encompass the table, visible or invisible he could not tell. At the words John Hendricks “duverfluchter cum heraus,” the pulley was heard to reel, the closet door to fly open, and John Hendricks with gastly appearance to stand forth. The whole were dismayed and fled, save Forrest the brave. After this, Ambruster, on whom they all depended, declared that he had by spells got permission to take up the money. A day was therefore appointed to visit the Jersey shore and to dig there by night. The parchment said it lay between two great stones. Forrest, therefore, prepared two black men to be entirely naked except white petticoat-breeches; and these were to jump each on the stone whenever they came to the pot, which had been previously put there. These frightened of the company for a little. When they next essayed they were assailed by cats tied two and two, to whose tails were spiral papers of gunpowder, which illuminated and whizzed, while the cats whawled. The pot was at length got up, and brought in great triumph to Philadelphia wharf; but oh, sad disaster! while helping it out of the boat. Forrest, who managed it, and was handing it up to the taylor, trod upon the gunnel and filled the boat, and holding on to the pot dragged the taylor into the river — it was lost!

For years afterwards they reproached Forrest for that loss, and declared he had got the chest by himself and was enriched thereby. He favoured the conceit, until at last they actually sued him on a writ of treasure trove; but their lawyer was persuaded to give it up as idle.

And other pirate treasure hunter stories float in the Philly ether:

As late as the year 1792, the shipcarpenters formed a party to dig for pirates’ money on the Cohocksinc creek, northwest of the causeway, under a large tree. £ frightened off. And it came out afterwards that a waggish neighbour had enacted diabulus to their discomfiture.

Pirate Treasure

Some claim to have found Blackbeard’s pirate treasure in Philadelphia, but without anything to support them:

Colonel A. J. Morris, now in his 90th year, has told me that in his early days very much was said of Blackbeard and the pirates, both by young and old. Tales were frequently current that this and that person had heard of some of his disgovered treasure. Persons in the city were named as having profitted by his depredations. But he thought those things were not true.

South Front Street, not far from the Delaware (“as you are well aware”), was specifically named as a place where treasure was dug up:

T. Matlack, Esq. told me he was once shown an oak tree, at the south end of Front street, which was marked KLP, at the foot of which was found a large sum of money. The stone which covered the treasure he saw at the door of the alleged finder, who said his ancestor was directed to it by a sailor in the Hospital in England. He told me too, that when his grandfather Burr died they opened a chest which had been left by four sailors “for a day or two,” full twenty years before, which was found full of decayed silk goods.

(As an aside, Cipher Mysteries readers may perhaps remember the meta-story of treasure locations being divulged by dying sailors which Ron Justron’s “Great Lost Treasure” claims revolved around: here’s an early-ish example.)

Philadelphia pirate treasure, previously hidden underground, tended to turn up when people dug cellars, such as at the Cock inn in Spruce Street:

Samuel Richards and B. Graves confirmed to me what I had heard elsewhere, that at the sign of the Cock in Spruce street, about 35 years ago, there was found in a pot in the cellar a sum of money of about 5000 dollars. The Cock inn was an old two story frame house which stood on the site of the present easternmost house of B. Graves’ row. A Mrs. Green owned and lived in the Cock inn 40 to 50 years ago, and had sold it to Pegan, who found the money in attempting to deepen the cellar. It became a question to whom the money belonged, which it seems was readily settled between Mrs. Green and Pegan, on the pretext that Mrs. Green’s husband had put it there! But it must appear sufficiently improbable that Mrs. Green should have left such a treasure on the premises if she really knew of it when she sold the house. The greater probability is that neither of them had any conception how it got there, and they mutually agreed to support the story, so as to hush any other or more imposing inquiries. They admitted they found 5000 dollars. It is quite as probable a story that the pirates had deposited it there before the location of the city.” It was of course on the margin of the natural harbour once formed there for vessels. In digging the cellar of the old house at the north east corner of Second street and Gray’s alley they discovered a pot of money there; also some lately at Frankford creek.

Certainly it was once much the expectation and the talk of the times — for instance, the very old two-story house at the north east corner of Second street and Gray’s alley, (i.e. Morris’ alley) originally built for Stephen Anthony, in digging its cellar they found there a pot of money, supposed to have been buried by the pirates. This story I heard from several very aged persons.

Treasure Maps

Finally, Watson sees no reason why there should not also be treasure maps or “hints”, and sees the idea as “natural”, though it does not sound as though he himself has seen one (for he would surely have gleefully included it in his Annals):

When we thus consider “their friends” thus “lodged among us every where,” it presents additional reasons for the ideas of buried treasure of the pirates once so very prevalent among the people, of which I have presented several facts of digging for it under the head of Superstitions. They believing that Blackbeard and his accomplices buried money and plate in numerous obscure places near the rivers; and sometimes, if the value was great, they killed a prisoner near it, so that his ghost might keep his vigils there and terrify those who might approach. Those immediately connected with pirates might keep their own secrets, but as they might have children and connections about, it might be expected to become the talk of their posterity in future years that their fathers had certain concealed means of extravagant living; they may have heard them talk mysteriously among their accomplices of going to retired places for concealed things, &c. In short, if given men had participation in the piracies, it was but natural that their proper posterity should get some hints, under reserved and mysterious circumstances of hidden treasure, if it existed.

A saunter through Philadelphia’s Society Hill to Cherry Garden…

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Following on from the 1716 treasure map letter I posted about a few days ago, it’s now time for a Cipher Mysteries historical saunter through Philadelphia. And why not?

The Blue Anchor Inn

“…at the South End of the town of Philadelphia is a Gutt of water with a few Planks Layd over it which the Inhabitants call a drau Bridge:…”

The history of Philadelphia begins with William Penn landing at the Blue Anchor Inn in 1682/1683: liking the dock and the creek beside it, he decided that this was where a “Greene Countrie Towne” should be built, between the Delaware and Schuylkill Rivers. Here’s an old newspaper reconstruction of what the Inn originally looked like:

Before very long (1691 is claimed), a drawbridge was erected across Dock Creek to allow boat access to the little harbour and foot access to the quickly growing city. Here’s a 1908 illustration by James Moore Preston (courtesy of blog page Early Philadelphia Inns and Taverns: Part 2:

Though far less colourful, Frank Hamilton Taylor’s (1922) drawing tells much the same story:

Dock Creek

Philly H20: The History of Philadelphia’s Watersheds and Sewers notes that “For many years after the creek was covered over the neighborhood was known as the “Drawbridge,” and as late as 1834 we read that the Drawbridge lot rented for $600 per year.”

Dock Creek was subsequently covered over for the simple reason that everyone put their sewage into it (and so it stank to high heaven). In the last few years, however, it has been (virtually) reclaimed by artists and historians, in the form of a walk along its former course being set out as an Art Installation by Winifred Lutz. The following nice map also shows the breweries and tanneries set up beside the creek, tipping their noxious wastes away:

Society Hill

“…a little to ye Southward of that is a Rising Ground called Society Hill…”

As noted in The Pennsylvania magazine of history and biography, Vol. XLVII (1923), this area was first settled in the early 1680s by The Free Society of Traders…

[…] which in 1682 was granted a charter by William Penn, and soon set up a warehouse and office in the infant city, on the west side of Front Street, near the south side of Dock Creek. It was located at the foot of the hill known as Society Hill and thence its city tract of about one hundred acres extended westerly in a tier of lots from Front Street on the Delaware to Front Street on the Schuylkill River. A map of the surveyor Thomas Holme made about 1683 shows its location.

Thomas Holme was William Penn’s surveyor general, and his map (which I found here) looked like this:

Hence Society Hill sat right at the heart of Philadelphia’s early history, though the Society it was named after closed in March 1723. Robert Morris Skaler’s (2005) “Society Hill and Old City” seems to be a pretty definitive reference on this subject (the first 33 pages are on Google Books), but I’m waiting for my copy to arrive in the post. 😉

All the same, Society Hill completely lost its shine during the nineteenth century, as fashion moved the City’s Centre ever westwards: many of the neighbourhoods turned into appalling slums, with W.E.B.Dubois’s famous (1899) sociological study “The Philadelphia Negro” focused on the City’s Seventh Ward, the long thin rectangle running West of the lower half of Society Hill all the way to the Shuylkill River. By the 1940s, the Hill was in almost complete disrepair.

And yet since then, the modern history of Society Hill is a rather strange thing. The area was consciously refashioned into Colonial-era kitsch, where rich owners with salvageable homes were given low-interest loans to make them nice again, poor owners were kicked out and their houses sold on to rich owners to salvage, and everything else was flattened and turned into Colonial retro townhouses. Brick pavements and faux-old streetlights added to the overall Disneyfication: the newly fictionalized Society Hill became a film set, populated by the genteel. (The 1770-era [but internally modernized] townhouse at 232 Spruce Street went on sale in 2017 for $899,000.) And now, while Philadelphia’s demographics are getting younger, Society Hill’s demographics are getting older, richer and whiter: so as neighbourhoods go, it’s a curious socio-economic and real-estate bubble that the City consciously inflated.

Just so you don’t get too taken in by it all if you happen to go on a walking tour. 🙂

Cherry Garden

“…upon which hill is a pretty good Brick house with one apple Orchard: But called Cherry Garden…”

According to an entry in the online Philadelphia Encyclopaedia, William Penn’s intention for the town was for each plot to comprise at least half an acre, with the house placed right in the middle, so that “there may be ground on each side for Gardens or Orchards, or fields”. The entry continues:

A number of wealthy Philadelphians did create gardens in their large city lots, as well as at their country estates outside the original city limits, and many Philadelphians visited these gardens in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. […] The first early gardens fully accessible to the (paying) public in the city, however, were associated with entertainment and refreshment rather than science and education. These included the “Cherry Garden” in the area that later became known as Society Hill […]

John Fanning Watson’s (1830) “Annals of Philadelphia and Pennsylvania in Olden Time” mentions this explicitly:

“Society Hill”, a name once so prevalent for all the region south of Pine street, even down to the Swedes’ church, has been discontinued for the last sixty-eight or seventy-eight years. In olden time we used to read of “Cherry Garden on Society Hill”, the “Friends’ Meeting on Society Hill”, the “Theatre (in 1759) on Society Hill”, “George Wells’ place on Society Hill, near the Swedes’ church”, &c. The name, we take for granted, was derived from the “Free Society of Traders”, who originally owned all the land “from river to river, lying between Spruce and Pine streets”.

A History of The Pennsylvania Horticultural Society (1929) tells us a little more about the Cherry Garden:

“Cherry Garden” down on Society Hill (all the section south of Pine Street) was famous in its day as a place of recreation. It had large grounds, facing on Front Street opposite Shippen Street, occupied half the square and extended down to the river. There was a small one-story house where refreshments were sold. In 1756, it was advertised for sale as the property of Harrison. When it was at its height it was said to have had “an abundance of every shrubbery and greenhouse plant.”

The quote at the end was from Martin I. J. Griffin’s (1907) “Catholics and the American Revolution Vol.1” (p.330):

The Clifton family owned also “The Cherry Garden” on Society Hill described in Watson’s Annals [p. 494].”

However, the Clifton family ownership is from around the time of the American Revolution. Before that, the sale is listed in the Pennsylvania Gazette, 23rd September 1756 and 7th October 1756:

To be sold by the subscribers, living in Gloucester county, New Jersey, the following lots of land, situate at Cherry – garden, in Society Hill, in the city of Philadelphia, viz, one bank lot, fronting Water – street, thirty feet, and extending back to Front street ; and one water lot, fronting the said bank lot on the lower side of Water street, and extending into the river Delaware two hundred and fifty feet. For title, and terms of sales enquire of Samuel Harrison, and John Hinchman.

So it would seem that Cherry Garden was a substantial plot at the time of the letter, though with but a single-storey house selling refreshments to treasure hunters 😉 . Clearly this house was the place to which the letter refers. But where in Cherry Garden was it?

The House in Cherry Garden

In fact, John Fanning Watson’s account (p.494) tells us reasonably clearly where the house was:

“Cherry Garden,” down on Society Hill, in the parlance of its day, was a place of much fame as a place of recreation. It was a large garden fronting on Front street vis-a-vis to Shippen street, occupying half the square and extending down to the river. The small house of one story brick, in which the refreshments were sold, is now standing with its dead wall on the line of Front street. In 1756, it was advertised for sale as the property of Harrison, who advertised to sell off some of it in lots “on Front and Water streets to the river in Cherry Garden.” Colonel Morris spoke of it as he remembered it in the time of Clifton as its owner — said it had abundance of every shrubbery and green-house plant. See a picture of the house in my MS. Annals in the City Library, p. 282.

Furthermore, Watson adds elsewhere that:

There was once “the hill” near the “Cherry Garden,” inclining from the southeast corner of South and Front streets towards the river. The houses still standing along Front street in that neighbourhood have their yards one story higher than Front street.

Note that the original (and rather ‘raw’-feeling) 1830 edition of Watson’s book has very different illustrations, and many curiosities and oddities that seem to be absent from the later edition. But that doesn’t contain a copy of the drawing of the house in Front Street in Watson’s Annals, “p.282”.

So, it would seem that the trail leading to the drawing of the one-storey brick house in Front Street in Cherry Garden ends in Watson’s MS Annals in the Historical Society at the City Library. My best guess is that this contained the original full-length version of his Annals prepared for the Philadelphia Historical Society, that was subsequently printed in 1830 (though with fewer illustrations and some less important sections removed, etc). However, I don’t seem to be able to find that anywhere online. So this is where I’m blocked for the moment. 🙁

Therefore… could I please put out a request for some researcher better versed than me in Philadelphia research minutiae to please help out here? Are John Fanning Watson’s “MS Annals” (the ones in the Historical Society in the City Library, and to which he repeatedly refers to in his 1830 book) scanned and/or online anywhere? Thanks!

Mental Floss does the Beale Ciphers…

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I know, I know: this is the same Mental Floss that also publishes articles like 10 Things You Might Not Know About Jeff Goldblum (sample fact: “My first wife and I would bring our juicer on planes, and we’d do a carrot cleanse for a week, until I’d turn orange and all my poop would be orange”).

But bear with me on this, because the long-form article by Lucas Reilly on the Beale Ciphers / Papers / Treasure that just came out is really good. No, it’s really good.

And I’m not just saying that because Reilly quotes me a few times: he covers all the important ground at a nice even pace without getting overly technical. As part of his research, he even tried to walk the Beale walk a bit (though without actually hiring a backhoe), and even got the desk-full-of-documents Beale treatment when he visited the Bedford County Museum and Genealogical Library in Montvale. Which is nice.

Reilly also managed to dig up a couple of Beale decryptions I can’t remember seeing before, including this one mentioned in a Washington Post article from 1984, attributed to an “M.C.D.”:

ONE RAN TO COVER THE TOP / HIT THE
RAM NUB ON THE TOP OF THE NEST /
BEST I TRY HEAT / SEE CALL TO FIT
TOY SO HAT NOD IF FULL / I WILL BE
IN THE CUT FIND AND DIG IT … GO WIN
YOUR SLICE AND BE LONG IN LOVE

…as well as this one:

LEND AN EAR / I LEARNED A
TRADE TO READ FINE ART OF ROTE
… / I FEEL GREAT / I FIND TEN
TON ORE IT IS STORED ON NORA,
NORMAN, BROWN FARM / ROAD RUN
AROUND RED BARN.

Incidentally, the Washington Post article (“Legendary Treasure Quests” by Hank Burchard, 5th October 1984) also give this decryption:

CEMETERY OFF GAP / TOOK RIDGE / PINEWOOD 4 M /
NORTH TOP OF HOLCOMBS ROCK / RIGGED A BOOM OF LOGS /
GOLD ORE HID / BARGE HOLDING TUBS /
CABOCHONS FACE LIDS / BUFORD VA /
VAULT CACHE OF GOLD / TB.

Is there no end to the fun people can have staring at a blank wall? Apparently not, it would seem.

But all the same, you can now tell all your friends the important life lesson you learned from the Beale Ciphers: Go Win Your Slice And Be Long In Love. Enjoy! 😉

Király and Tokai’s Rohonc Codex decryption…

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Hot off the Cryptologia presses comes news of Levente Zoltán Király & Gábor Tokai’s (2018) paper “Cracking the code of the Rohonc Codex” (Cryptologia, 42:4, 285-315, DOI: 10.1080/01611194.2018.1449147). This is part of a long series of papers and articles the two authors have been putting out that try to explain different technical aspects of the Rohonc Codex decryption they have been developing (though they initially started independently), and which Hungarian uber-crypto-guy Benedek Láng has favourably mentioned a number of times.

I now have a copy of the paper (which Lev Király kindly passed me) and have spent the last few days combing over it. Even though what they have done is thoroughly fascinating, I have to say that what emerges for me overall is a very mixed picture. I’ll try to explain…

Rohonc Codex codicology

Though at least half of the account of the history of research into the Rohonc Codex they present (pp.286-288) somewhat immodestly discusses their own findings and conclusions, Király and Tokai have clearly put a lot of effort into trying to understand the physical object itself (pp.288-293). Though a few of their codicological inferences are based on their interpretations of the pictures and text (and a number of their decryptions are inserted directly into the text as fact), most are based on exactly the kind of careful observation and physical insight you would hope to see.

Codicologically, what emerges more or less exactly mirrors what we see in the Voynich Manuscript:
* bifolios missing, swapped, and moved around arbitrarily, coupled with other sections that seem to have stayed intact.
* misleading foliation that was added long after bifolios had been shuffled
* misleading marginalia and notes added by owners who did not know what the text said
* some places where the picture was drawn first, others where the text was written first
* rebuttals of unjustified claims that there are no corrections
* rebuttals of unjustified claims that it must surely be a hoax
* and so forth.

As a result, I think that Király and Tokai’s codicological analyses imply that the Rohonc Codex has almost all the same physical and historical structures that the Voynich Manuscript has (niceties relating to textual analysis aside).

Cracking the Rohonc Codex’s numbers?

Király & Tokai point (pp.296-297) approvingly to Ottó Gyürk’s (1970) paper “Megfejthető-e a Rohonci-kódex?” [Can the Rohonc Codex Be Solved?]. Élet és Tudomány 25:1923–28, and extend the set of (what looks like) number instances that Gyürk found:

The underlying number pattern they infer from this sequence is as follows:

While their proposal that this is a number system that works like Roman numerals but where the ‘6’ has a shape instead of the ‘5’ (“V”) is possible, I have to say that to me it seems unbelievably unlikely (e.g. there’s nothing remotely like it in Flegg’s “Numbers Through the Ages”). It also seems likely to me that the text we see includes copying errors, and it may well therefore be that the specific sequence they highlight should have begun “III”, “IIII” (or probably the more idiosyncratically medieval “iij”, “iiij”) rather than “IIII”, “IIIII” as written. Instead postulating a 1-6-10 numbering system to explain this away seems too implausible to me.

What seems far more likely is that this is a kind of very slightly bastardized Roman numerals where you can write 5 both as “IIIII” and as “V”, in the same way that you can validly write 4 (additively) as “IIII” and (subtractively) as “IV”. Hence I’m currently far from convinced, based on what they have presented so far, that they have managed to nail down this basic part of the number system as well as they think they have.

They then proceed to construct an even more arcane number system which they assert encodes dates as if they were in Arabic numerals, but where the thousands digit and hundreds digit are reversed (i.e. what is written as “5160” actually means “1560”, where 1560 is a magic number “which is dated by old Christian tradition to the year 33 CE”):

When Gábor Tokai [discovered] the number 5166 next to the drawing of the three kings (21r) and 5199 (058r09 − 10) in the vicinity of drawings of the resurrection of Christ (56v, 59r), he affirmed that the numbers denote years.

OK, I can see how the logic arguing for this is so going to be so complex that it would need to be written up in a separate paper. But I can also see how I don’t believe what they have presented here at all: so I’m going to say that I’m sorry, but even though a good part of the underlying codicology and analysis is very likely highlighting some good stuff that needs working with and developing, I don’t believe the reconstructed number system claimed here is yet correct. 🙁

Cracking the Rohonc Codex’s code?

The paper tries to explain (p.293) what the authors have found (i.e. that ‘Rohoncese’ is a code, though one so complex that’s clearly not easy for them to explain why or how, which is why it is going to take several papers and several years of their effort) and what they are aspiring towards with their decryption efforts:

The principles of our criteria and method of codebreaking may seem banal to the reader, but we must emphasize them because of the bad reputation gained by the amateur researchers of the codex. Furthermore, as many examples in our next paper on the “wobbliness” of the code will show, the writing system is far from being simple and clean. We must affirm that these results are not due to methodically deficient research but to the writing itself, which was analyzed with painstaking care and strictness.

We demand that one symbol signify one thing, and whenever there is any digression from this principle — either by more symbols signifying one thing or one symbol signifying more things — it must be sufficiently supported by argument. Our case is difficult because the codex has codes signifying words of a language, and words behave less regularly than letters. In every natural language the presence of homonyms and synonyms creates ambiguity. Yet we demand that even this amount of ambivalence in our proposed solution be supported by evidence.

OK. So how does Király and Tokai’s actual decryption measure up to the lofty ideals they set for themselves here? Well… after a long series of caveats, concessions and defensive clauses, the whole section concludes (p.295):

Thus the plausibility of our proposed solution is difficult to specify. The core of our reading has such strong inner and outer evidence that we may affirm that it stands beyond doubt. The rest is of various degrees of certainty, which is indicated wherever necessary.

Their text then includes long readings of sections taken from the Rohonc Codex where tiny groups of letters are read as individual codes, which are in turn interpreted as individual words, all supporting each other. As a single line example, here’s the first part of the section that they believe is the Lord’s Prayer (p.303):

At the same time, the decryption never goes below the level of individual words. Are these pronounceable? What language are they derived from? How does this fit into the tree of European languages? These are all parceled off to be answered in future papers.

Probably the Best Part of the Paper

For me, the most persuasive-looking of all the authors’ codebreaking details relates to the Parable of the Talents:

Here’s the same section in the Rohonc Codex (bearing in mind that the real text runs from right to left, whereas the transcription they present runs left to right), where I have highlighted the first line blue, the second line red, and the third line purple:

Despite having an O-Level in Religious Studies, I’d be the first to admit that my knowledge of the Bible is patchy. But even I knew that the above wasn’t quite how it was told in Matthew 25:14-30. Rather, the three servants got 5, 2, and 1 talents respectively, which is why they write up the “3” (actually 2) talents as [sic] on p.300:

14 For it will be like a man going on a journey, who called his servants and entrusted to them his property.
15 To one he gave five talents, to another two, to another one, to each according to his ability. Then he went away.
16 He who had received the five talents went at once and traded with them, and he made five talents more.
17 So also he who had the two talents made two talents more.
18 But he who had received the one talent went and dug in the ground and hid his master’s money.

Or, if you prefer, here’s the same section in the Latin Vulgate:

14 sicut enim homo proficiscens vocavit servos suos et tradidit illis bona sua
15 et uni dedit quinque talenta alii autem duo alii vero unum unicuique secundum propriam virtutem et profectus est statim
16 abiit autem qui quinque talenta acceperat et operatus est in eis et lucratus est alia quinque
17 similiter qui duo acceperat lucratus est alia duo
18 qui autem unum acceperat abiens fodit in terra et abscondit pecuniam domini sui

So: if their claimed block equivalence to the first half of Matthew 25:15 is indeed correct (and there are arguments both for and against this), perhaps the right question to be asking is whether there is there some odd Mitteleuropa tradition whereby the number of talents in this parable is not 5/2/1 but 1/3/5?

So, What Does Nick Think About All This?

In the best footballing tradition, Király and Tokai’s paper is (as the above should have made abundantly clear) a game of two very different halves.

By which I mean:
* the first 45 minutes stand as testament to the authors’ codicological hard work, almost all of which I’m convinced will stand as really strong, freestanding research (but which would have been further strengthened by unpicking various assertions that derive from their decryption). I would further include here the grounds from which they inferred the existence of a numbering system (though not the actual numbering system they describe itself)
* the second 45 minutes revolve around an attempt at a decryption that occasionally seems to work at a word level, but without ever getting to the bottom of what is actually going on (i.e. in terms of letters / grammar / structure etc).

The authors approvingly summarize (p.287) Benedek Láng’s view of the Rohonc Codex:

Láng’s greatest achievement was his attempt to identify the type of the cipher or code. He saw three options as equally possible: a monoalphabetic cipher with homophones, nullities, and nomenclators; stenography; or an artificial (“perfect”) language.

And yet, just as with the Voynich Manuscript, reducing the question of a writing system to precisely three mutually exclusive pigeonholes is an intellectually barren starting point, one which the astute Láng himself would surely be uncomfortable with. There are many more overlapping possibilities to consider, such as abbreviating shorthand (i.e. where words are contracted or truncated), alphabets based on pronunciation, and so forth.

Personally, I would be entirely unsurprised if the codicological analysis Király and Tokai carried out that led to their finding even half a line of a block equivalent (i.e. the the first half of Matthew 25:15) will turn out to be the first glimmer of a Rohonc “Rosetta Stone”: and for that all credit should be due to them. However, I don’t yet believe that the rest of their analysis has born the tasty fruit they think it has: and so there will likely be many more twists and turns for them to go through in their quest to decrypt the “Hungarian Voynich”.

The Society Hill Treasure Map…

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Jenny Kile has recently turned up an interesting item on her blog: a 1716 letter describing the location of buried treasure in Philadelphia, originally uncovered by Historical Society of Pennsylvania historian Daniel Rolph in around 1996 or so.

According to her commenter Buckeye Bob, though Jenny probably found it in a 2016 Philly Voice article, it was 2008 when the details first came out in an HSP blog entry. Though the original page is still there, it has mysteriously lost the image of the treasure map letter it once proudly displayed.

But no longer! Thanks to the Internet magic of the Wayback Machine, I was able to find a 2012 grab of the post including the image, and so here it is (click on it to see a much larger scan):

So (of course) here’s my first pass at a transcript:

Society Hill Treasure Map Transcript

(The main peculiarity of the spelling is the use of ‘u’ where we would now use ‘w’.)

01 – D[ea]r
02 – brother. Having said to you in my 2 Letters all that was nesisare it now
03 – remains that I give you the proper directions which is as followeth, V[i]z that
04 – at the South End of the town of Philadelphia is a Gutt of water with a few –
05 – Planks Layd over it which the Inhabitants call a drau Bridge: a little to ye
06 – Southward of that is a Rising Ground called Society Hill: upon which hill is
07 – a pretty good Brick house with one apple Orchard: But called Cherry Garden
08 – Observe at the front of the S[ai]d house which fronts the west is a porch :-
09 – Measure exactly 45 foot from that Porch along the lane due South
10 – there you will find a Stone post in the ground if not moved which may
11 – be easily done by accident or perhaps by makeing a Neu fence : 3 foot
12 – or perhaps 4 foot west from the s[ai]d stone is a Chist 4 and a half foot long 2 foot
13 – broad and half foot and the same depth accordingly being about 6 foot from the
14 – bottom of the Chist to the surface of the Ground. It contains 15 hundred peases of
15 – Silver or peases of Eight. So called and 4 times the fill of my hat in Rials and
16 – Double rials otterways Bit and double bits: and further contains 250 quadruple pistole
17 – peaces Comonly Caled Double Double Loans: perhaps ther may be a feu more or
18 – les: for time would not alou of ane exact reaconing
19 – N B: if you wil not folou my my Advice and go there with the first opportunity
20 – I order you Imediatly to burn this direction and both my Leters and send me
21 – a particular act and direct for me Exactly according to my direction. But Be
22 – sure to put the Leters in the post office and trust not to your Whistling acquaintances
23 – for I expect your Imediat answer
24 – St Jago de la Vigo in Jamaica
25 – May 14 1716
26 – PS: I have in my 2 letters to you Re[……..] actions you can make posibly

(Please feel free to suggest corrections and improved interpolations, I shall be happy to update the above accordingly. Thanks to John Comegys, James Comegys, milongal and Greg Stachowski for their corrections and comments [which I have incorporated], much appreciated!)

Finding The Treasure…

The various landmarks mentioned in the letter do make historical sense, according to the Philly Voice article:

[…] Philadelphia historian John Fanning Watson, who died in 1860, referenced the drawbridge, Cherry Garden and a “precipitous and high bank” in Society Hill in his 19th century manuscripts detailing the city’s history, Rolph said. The drawbridge and creek running along Dock Street are included on old maps, but by the 1680s – some three decades before the letter was written – many brick houses were being constructed in the area.

“I get the impression it had to have been buried many years before,” Rolph said. “By 1716, it was built up along the docks and all down that area.”

Moreover, professional treasure hunter Dennis Parada of Clearfield PA claims to have identified the exact location where the chest would be: “at one of two locations along Second Street between Spruce and Pine streets”.

The key problem is that there are all sorts of legal issues concerning treasure hunting in Philadelphia, so nobody is sure who would own the treasure if it were to be found. And so there seems to be little appetite for digging anything up to have a look, a process that might well destroy much but gain little.

All the same, it’s a great story, right? 🙂

Coming soon, a paper where the Voynich Manuscript meets Cushing’s Syndrome…

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I recently had a nice day out in Whitstable (marred only by a little light rain and a touch overhoneyed squid tempura dipping sauce, upstairs at the otherwise excellent Crab & Winkle Restaurant). I only mention this because Whitstable’s Wetherspoons – The Peter Cushing – is named after the famous British horror actor (who had a house in the town for many years), famous for playing Grand Moff Tarkin and vampire hunter Van Helsing. And so some people might suspect Cushing’s Syndrome to be a condition involving, say, irrational fear of vampires.

Alas no! In 1912, the same year that Wilfrid Voynich was (supposedly) buying his now eponymous manuscript, it was American brain surgeon Harvey Williams Cushing (1869-1939) who described his patient Minnie as suffering from hypercorticism, though he originally assumed that this was some kind of polyglandular disorder. By 1943, this was known to be “an endocrinological syndrome caused by malfunction of the pituitary gland”, and was named Cushing’s Syndrome in H. W. Cushing’s honour.

So: all distracting mentions of sanguivoriphobia aside, how does Cushing’s Syndrome present? “Symptoms include rapid weight gain, particularly of the trunk and face with sparing of the limbs (central obesity). Common signs include the growth of fat pads along the collarbone, on the back of the neck (“buffalo hump” or lipodystrophy), and on the face (“moon face”).” It is also far more common in adult women than in adult men.

This should be just about enough of a trigger for long-suffering Voynich researchers to work out precisely where this is all leading…

Alexander N. Gabrovsky, Ph.D

It is a certain Alexander N. Gabrovsky, who styles himself as a “Medieval Consultant“, who is about to have a paper published in the Spring 2018 issue of “Source: Notes in the History of Art” (Vol. 37 No. 3). This paper – “Galenic Humoral Theory and Amenorrhea: Cushingoid Phenotype in a Fifteenth Century Illustrated Cipher Manuscript,” – which he asserts will be “one of the first peer-reviewed art historical perspectives on the Voynich Manuscript” will surely link the Voynich Manuscript (specifically its preponderance of Voynich nymphs, almost certainly) to the way Cushing’s Syndrome typically presents.

With my Art History hat on, I’ll be interested to see whether or not the whole “Cushingoid Phenotype” was ever depicted in a recognisable way in the centuries before 1912: it would be a strange paper were it not to even pose that question.

Gabrovsky describes himself as…

“[…]an American medievalist and hold a Ph.D. from the University of Cambridge (England), specializing in medieval literature, alchemical manuscripts, paleopathology (study of ancient diseases), history of art, Chaucer, and history of the occult sciences from Antiquity to the Middle Ages.”

Tom Juzek on the Zodiac Killer Ciphers…

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A few days ago, German cryptoblogger Klaus Schmeh mentioned a recent paper by Tom Juzek on the unsolved Z340 Zodiac Killer cipher. This first appeared in March/April 2018, but I was not aware of it before Klaus flagged it.

Juzek’s MSD metric

The metric Juzek uses to drive much of his argumentation is what he calls ‘MSD’ (“Mean Squared Distance”), which is simply the sum of the squares of the instance frequencies of bigrams (or trigrams), but then divided by the number of individual bigrams (or trigrams).

As an example, the 14-letter text “AAAAAAAAAABCD” is made up of thirteen bigram instances AA, AA, AA, AA, AA, AA, AA, AA, AA, AB, BC, and CD. Hence it contains 9 x AA, 1 x AB, 1 x BC, and 1 x CD: and so would have a bigram MSD of (9*9 + 1*1 + 1*1 + 1*1) / 13 = (84 / 13) = 6.46.

The same text contains twelve trigram instances AAA, AAA, AAA, AAA, AAA, AAA, AAA, AAA, AAB, ABC, and BCD. Hence it contains 8 x AAA, 1 x AAB, 1 x ABC, and 1 x BCD: and so would have a trigram MSD of (8*8 + 1*1 + 1*1 + 1*1) / 12 = 5.58.

However, Juzek quickly flags that this raw metric is not really good enough on its own:

The problem with the msd is that there are difficulties with comparing msd’s across data sets. This is because the length of a text influences the msd, as well as the length of a text’s character set. A 400 character cipher using 10 characters will see a different ngram distribution to a 100 character cipher using 40 characters.

Hence Juzek instead generates a “delta MSD”, which he defines as the difference between the ngram MSD of each ciphertext read horizontally (i.e. the generally presumed ‘correct’ symbol ordering) and the ngram MSD of its vertical transposition (i.e. every 17th character). This is to try to ‘normalize’ the raw MSD against a kind of statistically flattened version of the same.

Juzek then applies these two final metrics (bigram delta MSD and trigram delta MSD) to a number of real and fake ciphers, before concluding that the Z340 is quite unlike the Z408, and that it in fact presents more like fake ciphers than real ciphers.

What’s Wrong With This Picture?

Clearly, Juzek’s motivation for squaring ngram instance counts at all is to try to somehow ‘reward’ ngrams that are repeated in a given text being tested. Unfortunately, I think this is no more than a rather clunky and misleading way of looking at entropy / negentropy, which has a long-established and rigorous calculation procedure (and an enormous theoretical literature ranging across Computer Science and indeed Physics).

As a result, I think he may well have reinvented a perfectly round wheel in a somewhat square format: sorry, but I don’t think this is going to roll very far or very fast.

If the same calculations were repeated with different order ngram entropies, I think we might have something more interesting to work with here: but that’s already been done to death in the Zodiac Killer research world.

Moreover, the long-standing suggestion (which I think has a fair amount of evidential support) that the Z340 may well have been constructed in two distinct halves (Z170A and Z170B) would also mess with just about all of his arguments and conclusions. I’d much rather have seen that tested than Vigenere (it’s not a Vig, not even close).

Forward Context vs Backward Context?

As I was reading through Juzek’s paper, I was struck by a quite different question. If we are looking at an encrypted homophonic English ciphertext (a fairly reasonable assumption here), is there a notable difference between the left-context entropy (i.e. the information content of the text using the preceding letter as a context for predicting the next letter) with the right-context entropy?

That is, might encrypted homophonic English ciphertexts have a distinctly asymmetrical statistical “fingerprint” that would give us confidence that this is indeed what we are looking at in the Z340? Perhaps this has already been calculated: if so, it’s not work that I’m aware of, so please leave a comment here to help broaden my mind. 🙂

Cipher Mysteries comments now online, plus Pameo Pose Voynich apparel…

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Just a short note to let you know that Cipher Mysteries’ website’ comment facility is (hopefully) now working again. I had configured it to use an anti-spam WordPress plugin called Mollom, which had its support withdrawn on 2nd April 2018: and so since then all comments to the site had been mysteriously rejected. Thanks to Mark, Rene and others for flagging this issue to me.

More generally, since early least month I’ve been tied up trying to resolve a number of non-crypto (i.e. real-life) issues, so please accept my apologies if you have found both the website and me to have been less responsive than normal. =:-o

Pameo Pose’s Voynich apparel

In the meantime, here is a selection of Voynich apparel from Japanese company Pameo Pose.

Firstly, a Voynich EVA ‘P’ themed beret, which comes in cream and tan (though both variants are sold out). Note that they have chosen the crossed-through single leg gallows from the EVA alphabet, which (of course) means that the ‘c’ and ‘h’ either side are missing:

Secondly, a Voynich lace collar, though I guess you would only be able to tell that it is EVA close-up. It also comes in two colours, and is sold out (I prefer the funky ear-rings, myself):

Thirdly, a Voynich lace dress, a snip at 33480 yen:

Finally (and my favourite of the lot) is the Voynich dance team top, which uses the well-formed EVA ‘cPh’ as its logo:

The “Liber de Angelis” and the Voynich Manuscript’s planet sequence…

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Thanks to a nice post on Marco Ponzi’s website, a new block paradigm candidate has presented itself: the short “Liber de Angelis”, the first eleven paragraphs of Cambridge University Library MS Dd.xi.45.

As Marco notes, this was transcribed and translated by Juris G. Lidaka in a chapter in Claire Fanger’s (1998) “Conjuring Spirits: Texts and Traditions of Late Medieval Ritual Magic“. (The full treatise, which is undoubtedly a collection of smaller treatises, is called “Liber de Angelis, Annulis, Karecteribus et Ymaginibus Planetarum”.)

“The Experiment”

Incidentally, this collection has the distinction of having been mentioned by the writer M.R.James in his story “The Experiment: A New Year’s Eve Ghost Story“, first published in the Morning Post, December 31, 1931 (as discussed here). Republished in “A Pleasing Terror”, p.402 refers to “Bishop Moore’s book of recipes”
James’ story concludes:

Bishop Moore’s book of recipes is now in the University Library at Cambridge, marked Dd 11, 45, and on the leaf numbered 144 this is written:

An experiment most ofte proved true, to find out tresure hidden in the ground, theft, manslaughter, or anie other thynge. Go to the grave of a ded man, and three tymes call hym by his nam at the hed of the grave, and say. Thou, N., N., N., I coniure the, I require the, and I charge the, by thi Christendome that thou takest leave of the Lord Raffael and Nares and then askest leave this night to come and tell me trewlie of the tresure that lyith hid in such a place. Then take of the earth of the grave at the dead bodyes hed and knitt it in a lynnen clothe and put itt under thi right eare and sleape theruppon: and wheresoever thou lyest or slepest, that night he will corn and tell thee trewlie in waking or sleping.

However, given that we are not presently concerned with asking the dead for advice about treasure hunting, I leave this merely as an aside / exercise for the reader. 😉

What we are actually concerned with is whether the eleven paragraphs of the Liber de Angelis might somehow be the plaintext of a section of the Voynich Manuscript: so, without any further ado, here they are (as transcribed by Lidaka)…

Liber de Angelis

[1] Signum admirabile experimentorum dixit Messayaac & incipit cum adiuncto Altissimi & est mirabile signum & ualde admirandum in quo sunt secreta Altissimi. Per illud autem ludei operabantur, Caldei, Egipcij, & prudentes Babilonici. Cum igitur operare uolueris, fiat annulus Solis, ex auro fiat, in quo scribantur carecter & nomen angeli solis. & hoc annulus habeatur in omni sacrificio super minore digito sinister manus. Cartam itaque cum mente curiose & studiose custodire in loco mundissimo, & inuolue in rubeo serico.
[2] & hec sunt opera annulus Solis. Cum itaque secundum annulum Solis die dominice ieiunes usque ad noctem, nocte autem facies sacrificium de quada aue non domestica prope litus aque decurrentis, & cum eiusdem auis sanguine scribe carecter & nomen angeli Solis in carta uirginea, & hanc tecum porta. Et cum uolueris transire de vna terra in alteram, depinge in terra carecter Solis & nomen angeli eius, & statim veniet equus niger qui portabit te vbicumque uolueris. Tene tamen cartam in manu dextera & annulum in manu sinistra.
[3] Sicus prius, habeas carecter & nomen angeli eius & scribantur in annulo, & ieiunes in die Lune quo fit annulus Lune, sicud fecisti in annulo Solis, in quo si operare uolueris continuo, sacrificabis anguillam flumalem, cuius sanguine scribe carecter Lune & nomen angeli eius in pelle tue, & inuolue in pelle anguille & reserua vt cum volueris ut appareat flumen uel arbor cum fructu, scribe in terra nomen angeli & nomen fructus, & uoca angelum carta aperta, & apparebit, Si uis ut non appareat, claude cartam.
[4] De annulo Martis. Fiat sacrificium de aue rapaci intra domum ad ignem, et scribe cum eiusdem sanguine in pelle eiusdem nomen angeli & carecteris. Et cum uolueris ut appareant milites armati uel castella uel lubricus ludus, uel ut vincas in prelio, fac caracterem & nomen angeli in terra & appari cartam & apparebit & faciet que preceperis, & cum clauditur carta recedet & cessabit.
[5] Totum fac ut de alijs, sacrificium fiat de uulpe uel de cato in loco deserto, scribe careterem et nomen angeli in fronte – vinces in omni placito. Tene cartam in manu.
[6] Fac sacrificium de gallo, karetter & nomen angeli scribe in pelle, intelligi, in quo inuoluas denarium, & qociens ipsum donaueris reuertetur.
[7] Fac sacrificium de columba alba viuente, carecterem & nomen angeli eius scribe in pelle leporis, quod si mulieri ostenderis sequentur te uelociter.
[8] Totum ut supra. [Damage to leaf has left a small section unreadable here.] Sacrificium de capra inter vepres, carecterem & nomen angeli scribe in percameno veteri. Cum uolueris inter duos odium mittere, eorum nomina in percameno, codem carecterem & nomen angeli in pelle capre, ut predicatur. Cum uolueris aliquem intoxicare, in eius potu intinge annulum Saturni: cum idem potauerit intoxicabitur.
[9] Nunc de generalibus mandatis restat docere. Annulus Solis in omni sacrificio habeatur, & annulus Febe, in quo nomen angeli ipsius; Febe tam in memoria habeatur quam in opera. & fiat sacrificium in circulo infundali, prius scriptus carecter, & in medio magister dicat: ‘Oya, sacrificium tue laudis suscipe’, proiciens carnes extra circulum. In qualibet autem operacione, nomen angeli inuocetur & annulus in digito habeatur. Carte uero mundissime reseruentur, nec in noctis tenebris aperiantur nisi operis necessario ingrauerit.
[10] Nunc de annulis. Annulus Solis ad equum & fiet de auro. Annulus Lune ex argento ad fluuium. Annulus Martis ex ere ad uictoriam in bello. Annulus Mercurij ex cupro ad scienciam. Annulus Iouis ex electro ad denarium. Annulus Veneris ex plumbo ad amorem. Annulus Saturni ex ferre ad odium. Annulus Capitis Draconis ex calibe ad toxicandum.
[11] Hox signum mirabile est experimentum magistri Messayaac de secretis spirituum planetis, secundum mencionem, & sumitur sic. Omitto nomina angelorum cum carecteribus suis (que incipiunt sic: Storax, Abamecta, Paymon, cum ceteris) propter certam causam hic scribenda.

It’s Not by Osbern Bokenham

Though it was once thought to have been written down by Augustinian poet-monk Osbern Bokenham, Lidaka dismisses this quickly. But as a nice point of history, Osbern Bokenham did once conceal his identity in the chapter initial letters (much as in the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili) as discussed here:

On 1st May 1456 he wrote Dialogue betwixt a secular asking and a Frere (friar) answering at the grave of Dame Joan of Acre. This is a very important source for the history of Clare Priory. This manuscript, which still exists, is written in both Latin and English, and richly decorated on parchment. Another of his works was called Mappula Anglicae, which covered the rhymed lives of English saints such as Cedde, Felix and Oswald.

It contained seventeen chapters, and was anonymous, except that Bokenham stated that, if taken in sequence, the first letter in each chapter spelt out the name of the author. It reads OSBERNUS BOKEN_HAM. Chapter 15 is missing.

[Yes, it does indeed look from that as though it was actually Chapter 14 that was missing, but let’s not quibble.]

It’s Actually by William Bokenham

Though the surname of the Liber de Angelis writer was clearly Bokenham, Lidaka points out that the author’s first name was William, and that he was copying various small treatises, not composing them. Moreover, given that two works dealing with urine (that most multispectral of medieval medical staples) by a William Bokenham are in Wellcome MS 408, and that in them he claimed to be “a doctor with a degree from Bologna” as well as “a monk at Norwich Holy Trinity (or St Giles)”, we would seem to have our copyist locked down quite solidly.

From internal evidence (the ‘Oya’ in paragraph #9), Lidaka suggests that the Liber de Angelis version being copied may well have been derived from an earlier French language version: and separately that the ultimate source of at least some of the tracts could perhaps be Arabic. In which case, it might be a good idea to get acquainted with David Pingree’s “The Diffusion of Arabic Magical Texts in Western Europe” (Ladaka’s note #14). [Jim Reeds is also mentioned in note #20, crypto-history fans.]

Personally, I’m also a little suspicious of the “karetter” in paragraph #6 as being a possible linguistic tell.

And Now We’ve Done All That…

…I’ll compare this with the Voynich Manuscript’s planets in a follow-on post, 1300 words is quite enough for the moment. 🙂