Comments on: Steve Ekwall’s Folding Key…

By: Deepthinks

Deepthinks — Sat, 28 Jan 2012 06:10:52 +0000

nickpelling> I can see your suggestion of similarity to astrolabes, the eliptical side is not a good match though.
http://www.mhs.ox.ac.uk/astrolabe/exhibition/images/45127_closeup.jpg

Here a few more similarity details for comparison to the VM:

This picture contains a familiar image from the VM with the 8 pointed flower/star in circle.
http://nasrani.net/wp-content/uploads/2008/03/syriac.JPG

Tibetan Numbers.
http://www.nalanda-university.com/buddhist-ayurveda-encylopedia/tibet_language_tibetan_num.gif

This picture shows Tibetan Uchen, Ume and their transliterations.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/d0/%D0%A3%D0%BC%D0%B5-%D1%82%D0%B1%D1%8222.png/300px-%D0%A3%D0%BC%D0%B5-%D1%82%D0%B1%D1%8222.png

Ayurveda drawings of medicinal plants.
http://www.artandayurveda.com/1/images/280_0_2046932_36847.jpg
http://s4.hubimg.com/u/281515_f260.jpg
http://www.kailashcentre.org/tl_files/images/thankas_smaller/tibet116.jpg

An Arabic botanical book from the 15th century.
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-DTM0Cfw8HyM/TatDMxPiREI/AAAAAAAABVM/9EIrP_3g8lc/s320/1911%252C+Champane.jpg

The Portuguese began making their presence known in India in the 1400′s with Jesuits attempting to influence christian growth in the country. There is the link for Rudolf II and India through Charles V and Isabella of Portugal.

By: nickpelling

nickpelling — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 09:02:03 +0000

Deepthinks: please don’t let me stop you from looking for a match with Tibetan or similar scripts – it’s just that if the Voynich Manuscript is as quintessentially medieval European as I think, the chances of there being a causal (rather than coincidental) link is dwindlingly small. As for numbers… plenty of people have searched for numbers in the Voynich, all in vain: yet the text is – I think – likely to be full of numbers.

The page you mention (f57v) is something I have analyzed and written about many times: the 17-long repeating sequence is, in my opinion, most likely to be an 18-long sequence where the first two symbols have been joined together, and probably depicts an astrolabe, a nocturnal, or a similar 15th century device. See my post here:
http://www.ciphermysteries.com/2010/07/01/astrolabes-nocturnals-and-voynich-manuscript-page-f57v

By: Deepthinks

Deepthinks — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 08:46:04 +0000

“(=nickpelling) we now have access to so many scripts that it would surely be next to impossible to construct an alphabet that doesn’t in some way remind erudite onlookers of numerous other ones. However, some of the usage patterns (aiir, aiiv, etc, and even ’4o’) are quintessentially medieval European (roughly 14th century), so it seems highly unlikely to me that we would need to look any further afield than that.”

I don’t disagree with the points that a Medieval European author created this book. I am not good a ciphers and statistics and leave the associations to representations which pertain to hidden content to those experts.
Have anyone found any logograms that represent numbers?
Understanding the authors reason for choosing the images and logograms will lead to the process of creation. Have you seen hand written Tibetan v. typographic Tibetan?
Did you know that Tibetan is written left to right?
Have you seen Tibetan logogram numbers?
Please see: http://www.ancientscripts.com/modi.html
Areas of search for similar logograms should include India, Vietnam, Thailand, Tibet and their logogram relations to Brahmi scripts.

“(=nickpelling) I’ve studied the Voynich Manuscript’s image content for some years too: but for all its strangeness, parallels (often striking ones) to individual drawings can be found in existing documents. The more productive questions are less to do with individual details and more to do with system – why are things arranged in the way that they are? It’s a fascinating challenge to get interested in, but try not to fixate on details!”

Here are a few details:
Please see image 1006187
http://beinecke.library.yale.edu/dl_crosscollex/SetsSearchExecXC.asp?srchtype=ITEM&curpage=6
Numbering the rings from inside to outside, 1-4, ring 1 contains a lot of numbers. Ring 3 also contains a lot of numbers. Ring 2 contains words with some numbers. Ring 4 contains mostly words.
Determining which logogram systems numbers match best will require a much deeper research than the cursory review I have given it.

Regards,

Deepthinks

By: nickpelling

nickpelling — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 13:55:43 +0000

Deepthinks: we now have access to so many scripts that it would surely be next to impossible to construct an alphabet that doesn’t in some way remind erudite onlookers of numerous other ones. However, some of the usage patterns (aiir, aiiv, etc, and even ’4o’) are quintessentially medieval European (roughly 14th century), so it seems highly unlikely to me that we would need to look any further afield than that. I’ve studied the Voynich Manuscript’s image content for some years too: but for all its strangeness, parallels (often striking ones) to individual drawings can be found in existing documents. The more productive questions are less to do with individual details and more to do with system – why are things arranged in the way that they are? It’s a fascinating challenge to get interested in, but try not to fixate on details!

By: Deepthinks

Deepthinks — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 12:18:15 +0000

I’ve only been looking at this mystery for a day or so, very interesting. My first thoughts; Do these letters have any similarities to any other languages (ancient or modern)? Do the images contain any content similar to other cultures (ancient or modern)? Was the author a native speaker or not? Was the author trying to recreate or rediscover an ancient language?
I think the images content will provide the most revealing information to narrowing this mystery down.
Unfortunately for me there was some issue trying to view the Yale MS-408 images from their site. I could only view the first 6 out of 11 groups of images.
Tibet, IMO, is a highly probable source for the written language. The text appears to be a mixture of ancient and more modern Tibetan script, corrected in a European idea of Latin construction in form. Example, In Tibetan script a line is drawn across the top of letters, in the Latin languages a line is drawn under the letters, the script being corrected towards the European idea. Some of the letters appear to be rotated or mirrored Tibetan script. Search for ‘images’ using terms “ancient tibetan letters” to see what I dug up.
Of course a mystery like this won’t be solved in 24 hours, .
Regards,
Deepthinks

By: Diane

Diane — Sat, 03 Dec 2011 23:41:10 +0000

Fell over yr vid on YTube today – I’m so behind everyone else – and since of course my focus is now on the Indian ocean trade routes, it occurs to me that one might add sound values to such a grid by reference to the conventional 3×3 grid of the planetary deities. Conventional in India, that is.
I have a picture of one. The sun is in the centre.. no, it would take too long. I’ll put something on my blog.

By: nickpelling

nickpelling — Tue, 26 May 2009 14:34:15 +0000

Hi Christopher,

I’m sure you’ll like the rest of the book, too!

Cheers, ….Nick Pelling….

By: Christopher Hagedorn

Christopher Hagedorn — Tue, 26 May 2009 14:30:44 +0000

Wow, I just read p.215 (I feel like a cheater for starting at the end of the book!) and I must say that seeing that pattern which somewhat reads [2|3|4] at the top sent some shivers down MY spine as well.

Thanks for the great explanation,

Christopher.

By: nickpelling

nickpelling — Tue, 26 May 2009 11:47:30 +0000

Hi Christopher,

My suspicion is that even though the Voynich cipher system contains a number of static elements (such as EVA qo, dy, ain, aiin, probably am, etc) that are constant across all states, most of the rest of it changes according to the state of the associated ciphering device – whether that’s a cipher wheel, an Ekwall “folding key”, or whatever.

To my eyes, then, the cipher “statefulness” in the VMs appears to be intended not to mathematically flatten the overall distribution, but rather to confound the statistics within that distribution. Imagine, for example, a simple cipher where you sequentially rotated the five vowels within a sentence, but kept all the consonants intact: “somathang luki this”. Now, this on its own is trivial: but if you put a few small cipher components like that together to create a composite cipher system, that really would be hard to crack.

What Steve Ekwall is claiming is that each of the eight states contains a 3×3 grid (though the central square is empty): and so only eight cipher letters dynamically change according to the state, while the rest remain constant. Cryptographically, this is an extraordinarily sophisticated match for what we see in the Voynich Manuscript’s language. And so I ask again: how on earth did Steve make that step?

Chapter 12 of my book (specifically p.215) suggests how the 3×3 grid might be mapped onto letter pairs: or, s, ar / om, m , am / ol, l, al. I suspect that these dynamically permute the most common consonants, while e / ee / eee / ch / sh statically represent the vowels, and with rarer consonants represented by air, aiir, am, etc.

Cheers, ….Nick Pelling….

By: Christopher Hagedorn

Christopher Hagedorn — Tue, 26 May 2009 11:06:40 +0000

I have watched the videos a couple of times, but I still cannot see how the folding key does anything but assign an arbitrary number from 1 to 8 to each gallows character. I do know how cryptographic cipher key states work, but I can’t see how the order he puts them in has any meaning.

And I must say that I agree with Emily in that, no matter how weird this key is, it’s still more likely than alien DNA-audiotransformation!