Rene Zandbergen recently stumbled upon a circular drawing in the Bibliotheque Nationale de France’s MS Coislin 338, and wondered whether it might be “a possible precedent for a Voynich astronomical illustration, where the original MS is Greek“, just as for two other Greek manuscripts (Codex Taurinensis C VII 15 and MS Vat Gr. 1291) he turned up and wrote about in other years. What he finds interesting is that “the Voynich MS astronomical illustrations are rather arcane, and do not deal at all with the astronomy of the times of Copernicus and after, but with the times much before that.”
To my eyes, though, comparing just one page of MS Coislin 338 with the thrice-great APOD picture isn’t the whole story. You see, a fair few years ago Voynich researcher John Grove proposed that the VMs’ Quire 9 had been misbound along an incorrect fold after the quire numbers had been added but before the folio numbers were added: and if you follow his argument through, you discover that without much doubt the VMs originally placed its 16-way “sun-face” page f68v1 immediately adjacent to its 12-way “moon-face” (APOD) page f67r1.
This elegant (but still fairly basic) codicological observation is why I find the APOD comments (for each of the three times the picture on the right has come up) lacking, because nearly all of them were made without grasping these two pages’ original context. OK, so far so “Curse of the Voynich” (pp.58-61, to be precise) – and I would add that it seems fairly unlikely to me that the two (very different) blue paints on these pages were added when they were in their original page order. But what is new for 2010 is that MS Coislin 338 also contains a 16-way circular diagram (fol. 121v) placed immediately adjacent to Rene’s 12-way circular diagram (fol. 122r). And the zigzag edging on the two right-hand 12-way drawings seems eerily familiar too…
So… you might reasonably ask what amazing secrets this section of MS Coislin 338 holds: but if you did, you’d perhaps be a little disappointed to find out that it simply contains a Greek commentary by Theon of Alexandria (Hypatia’s father, as historical proto-feminist conspiracy fans may already know) on Ptolemy’s Handy Tables. Intriguingly, this particular copy was made in the 15th century – but that may (for the moment) be just about as far as we can take this whole parallel.
The problem we face is that we simply don’t know whether such irritatingly good matches between documents are causal, correlative, or (given the large number of documents that have been trawled over the years for comparison) simply random. Really, it would take someone sitting down with a proper critical edition of Theon’s commentary around these pages to see what kind of data it describes, and then prolonged meditation on what we might think about the Voynich Manuscript’s possibly-linked pages as a result. But is anyone likely to do that? I’m not sure… but perhaps we’ll see!
They are standard.
The Voynich diagrams refer to two of the systems used for dividing the circuit of the horizon: the sixteenfold and the twelvefold.
A good, solid ref here is Taylor, E.G.R., The Haven Finding Art. The 1971 edition contains a very valuable essay by Joseph Needham, which is well worth a read.
The exterior loops are in works of western Christendom from the tenth century onwards, and are also typical of medieval Islam, where the circuit around Mecca is divided by reference to the ’40’ divisions of place and of time. Anyone wanting more refs, or pictures, do email me at:
[email protected]
PS I wouild urge anyone interested in the imagery of the Voynich to begin by reading the volume on Medieval Art (by Sekules) in the Oxford History of Art series, particularly the chapter in which she speaks of the way the divisions of heaven and earth, of learning and mapping etc. were correlated.
I think it may be chapter 5, or 7, but don’t have my copy with me.
The most striking part is of course the shape and orientation of the 12-pointed
star with the circular gap in the middle. Furthermore, Vat.Gr. 1291
also deals with Ptolemy’s handy tables.
For me these are now just interesting parallels, and we’d need to find
more for the ‘plot to thicken’. The Handy tables MSs should be able
to tell us what these figures in Coislin 338 are exactly about.
The 8- or 16-part symmetry suggests winds.
Comparisons of the various inscriptions in the two diagrams should be
of interest, but I have to admit I’ve been lazy there…
Thanks Diane, I hadn’t seen your comments when I wrote mine.
By the way, I fully agree with Nick’s considerations about the
different shades of blue used, and the possibility that colour was not
applied when the page was laid out open as shown above.
I have recently made a similar observation, which I am sending to Nick,
and which he again may decide what to do with.
Diane: the issue is not whether or not such diagrams were individually “standard” (which of course they were), but whether there exists a specific medieval literature family where 12-way and 16-way circular diagrams sit adjacent to each other, in the way that we see both in MS Coislin 338 and in the VMs.
Rene: thanks for sending the file off-line – though exactly as self-explanatory as you note, it would definitely be a good basis for an interesting blog post here…
Hyperlink fol. 121v requires a WordPress log-in/password and hyperlink fol. 122r doesn’t work at all 🙂
Ah, yes, the right-hand image of Coislin 338 deals with the 12 winds.
On p.169 of the following book:
http://books.google.com/books?id=v6pyq2HfitwC
there is also a familiar-looking image of the 12 wind directions.
Paul: hyperlinks fixed, thanks (d’oh!)
Rene: So… Pliny preferred an 8-way wind-rose in his Natural History:-
N – Septentrio / Aparctias
NE – Aquilio / Boreas
E – Subsolanus / Apheliotes
SE – Volturnus / Eurus
S – Auster / Notus
SW – Africus / Libs
W – Favonius / Zephyrus
NW – Corus / Argestes
…whereas Isidore’s 12-way wind-rose ‘rota’ (usually oriented with East [Subsolanus] at the top) comprises…
– Circius / Thrascias
N – Septentrio / Aparctias
– Aquilo / Boreas
– Vulturnus / Carcias
E – Subsolanus / Apheliotes
– Eurus / [Eurus]
– Euroauster / Euronotus
S – Auster / Notus
– [Austroafricus / Libonotus]
– Africus / Lips
W – Favonius / Zephyrus
– Corus / Agrestes
With this in mind, you can see that “subsolanus” [East] is aligned with “augustus” just to the left of the top of the rota on p.169, followed by “eurus” just to the right of the top of the rota.
Nick – older maps tend to be oriented to the south, or the east.
Rene – the Ptolemaic corpus is relevant, of course, and includes charts derived from his gographic text; they are particularly interesting because they revert to the minimal style of the Roman route maps rather than using the chart as a plan for the whole encyclopaedic corpus of learning – the usual method when books were still prohibitively expensive and all learning was memory-based.
I think one could fairly describe the appearance of the Voynich map as minimalist.
Sorry – just a quick note of one useful secondary source re comparative calendars in classical times. This is particularly relevant since it refers particularly to the situation of the trader sailing to the eastern sea.
Frederico de Romanis, ‘Romankharattha and Taprobane: relations between Rome and Sri Lanka in the first century ad.’ in F. de Romanis and A. Tchernia (eds.), Crossings: Early Mediterranean Contacts with India, New Delhi: Manohar, 1977
see esp. 163-185 passim and translation of Pliny’s remarks on the need to use the lunar months of Egypt (the ‘fan’ calendar style) as basis for calculating sailing times in the east sea.
Note that de Romanis calls the Egyptian calendar a ‘revolving’ calendar, which is not the usual term. It is better called a sidereal, or lunar calendar.
If anyone finds this book difficult to obtain, I’ll post the actual quotes later.
I am troubled by the assumptions which underlie a lot of this research; chiefly by the assumption that we will find the origin for its content as well as for its materials in the corpus of western European works. It is noticeable that the closest parallels are to works which reproduce content from the pre-Christian era and/or which were gained from lands further to the east.
Theon, like Ptolemy was a Graeco-Egyptian and like so many diagrams of this sort, those in the Vms are derived from the older, eastern world and not from western Europe, which simply re-discovered and copied that material. In the same way, the Vms imagery shows origins in the east but europeans were not the only people who maintained and employed classical works, as we know.
Diane: I don’t see this as paradoxical at all, for the simple reason that the Renaissance was precisely the time that saw adulation of long-forgotten Classical motifs and modes of expressions to any significant degree for the first time in centuries. For me, the Voynich Manuscript is in no useful sense a medieval artefact: its construction was quintessentially Renaissance, even if many of the ideas used in it are much older. But that’s the nature of ideas! 🙂
Good lord – I’d not just forgotten this conversation; even reading it doesn’t ring a bell now.
Due apologies to Rene, Nick et.al… All I can plead is the fact that this was an aeon ago as far as things Voynich is concerned – for me.
I was actually going to ask whether it was my disputing the zodiac-as-zodiac, or having the temerity to differ from Rene’s views, or simply that we love zodiacs per se… but since I said I didn’t believe those folios had been meant for a zodiac, it’s autumn in mid-summer for my blog at present.
(If I’m not being too metaphorical here).
Anyway – back to add the necessary notes.
Pingback: La Comida y la Astrología Lunar Antigua « Espaço Astrológico
I think Ive just found the guy who wrote the Voynich manuscript
http://blog.damowords.co.uk/?p=2096
I still hold that the sort of drawings which appear in late medieval European technical texts follow, rather than precede the model we see in diagrams of the Vms. Nick, I think, will never accept that ms Beinecke 408 is not the fruit of medieval western Christian culture, but to my eyes and in every detail which I investigated, such an opinion does not hold and can not ever, therefore, explain where and by whom the content was first enunciated or by whom carried to form its section in our fifteenth century copy. For a copy of older and non-European works it certainly is in my opinion.
By this I don’t mean that it is a classical Greek or Latin work retained and kept in the west, but a work heavily influenced by non-Greek and non-Latin peoples.
In my opinion.
Pingback: f67r1 – discussion of winds from Marco Ponzi | Stephen Bax
I could not find a blog post about f68v3, so I posted here instead. f68v3 is the page which some have claimed is a drawing of our galaxy; a claim without further evidence I am inclined to treat with some scepticism.
My interest, unsurprisingly to those who know me, is in the T/O map, albeit upside down. I was re-examining the text and when I look at it on voynichese.com the transcription looked clearly off. For the top right quarter of the circle the transcription on Voynichese.com is “opch…” and yet it clearly appears to be “opee…” as the top bar of the bench is missing.
I have been comparing it with the bottom left quarter circle on the T/O map in the top right hand corner of the rosettes folio.
If both of these T/O maps are really T/O maps, then that quarter on each T/O map corresponds to “Europa” in both cases. Now if my viewing is correct they both appear to start EVA-opee but on the rosettes T/O the word may be truncated or abbreviated, such as “Eur”.
This is an instance where one would like even higher resolution scans as they would help one settle whether the spellings are the same of not. Then when I searched on voynichese.com there were no words starting with EVA-opee (note the rosettes page is not included on voynichese.com and from what I can tell elsewhere the top right T/O map has not been transcribed.)
So how frequent are words starting EVA-opee in the Voynich? Well according to Voynichese.com there aren’t any, but can I trust Voynichese.com or rather the transcription it is based on?
I have mulled over these two T/O maps for a while. T/O maps like these always represent the earth split into “Africa”, “Europa” and “Asia”. I think EVA-asal corresponds with “Asia”. On the T/O map on f68v3 the bottom half, has a series of words, if this is indeed a T/O map the standard correspondence, from T/O maps that I have seen, would be a list of places within Asia.
Now I haven’t seen any examples of T/O maps that did not correspond to Africa-Europa-Asia. There are example where each segment contains a drawing and I believe those illustrations still represent those 3 locations, if someone can provide an example where they are not based on textual description rather than whether one thinks the drawings look like the locations or not.
So I think there is a case for these T/O maps to be internal and external block paradigms. However higher resolution scans would help here to better figure out the penstrokes. It is has made be slightly concerned about the general reliability of the Voynich transcriptions. Have a look at the T/O maps and tell me what you think the correct transcriptions are.
(I assume nobody knows of higher resolution scans in this instance.)
The EVA-o or EVA-e is combined with EVA-P, so it isn’t really “oP” on the bottom-quarter of the T-O. I’m not sure what it is.
It’s possible it’s a half-bench on the left side (half benches are not uncommon).
Or it might be something unique (there are quite a few unique glyphs and tokens in the VMS. so the possibility should not be discounted).
.
I agree that it’s not a bench (EVA-ch) after the EVA-p. I don’t see any sign of a bench (it is because of errors like this that I made my own transcripts).
It is possible that is it EVA-es rather than EVA-ee. If you look closely it almost looks like a light, faded tail on the second EVA-e shape (can’t be sure, might be EVA-e but might not). Look how the top leans upward on the second one.
The last letter is somewhat faded also. It looks like EVA-y with a short tail (short-tailed versions exist), but the ink was watery and needed to be shaken (the darker particles tend to settle in the ink jar and the text gets lighter and lighter if the jar has been sitting for a while).
I find it difficult to relate text that is unclear like this to other parts of the manuscript. Most of the time, there is a fairly clear separation between EVA-o and EVA-P when they are next to each other, but that is not the case here. It looks like a combination-glyph or a half-bench, or something odd that we may not be able to interpret until we have more context.
If you look down and slightly to the left of the T-O in the narrow band of text, you will seen an example of EVA-P with a half-bench. It’s more clearly separated and written than whatever is in the T-O, but it demonstrates that half-benches exist.
JKP: It is hard to tell. The current scans are pretty high resolution, but the reality is that in some cases it wouldn’t do any harm whatsoever to have higher resolution scans, so as to come to the best answer when it comes to these kinds of transcriptions. To me it looks like we might have two instances of EVA-opee… where in the rosettes case the EVA-o runs into the EVA-p and they are not one weird character, but merely 2 normal characters, however some might argue that I have a bias.
As an aside on the f68v3 I think after the EVA-opee we have a letter “a” not “o”, so this does not seem a good transcription and it makes no difference to my argument if it is an “a” or an “o”.
JKP: Another question of interest to me is how common or rare are EVA-opee ? If they are very rare and these two words do start EVA-opee then it could be of significance. According to voynichese.com they are very very rare, but after our discussion I think it is fair to say that I am not confident that I can trust the transcripts that Voynichese.com uses. I think when that was transcribed the transcriber probably went more with what he/she expected the character to be I.e. a bench rather than going what he/she could see with his/her own eyes.
JKP: I know what you mean about the other half-bench glyph on the circular ring; I don’t know how to interpret that. However there is a striking difference with the shape in the T/O as that is clearly joined at the bottom, but the half-bench glyph is clearly not joined at the bottom, which makes them quite different shapes. This means to me that it is either an EVA-oP or a weirdo; without further evidence I guess it depends on what you think fits best.
I am not holding my breath for higher resolution scans, I fear we will have to make the best with what we have got for the time being.
Mark, I think that last letter is a “short-9” (EVA-y) not “a”.
I have numerous reasons for believing this.
For one thing, I have created 4 transcripts, which means I have looked at every glyph in the VMS many many times and have become accustomed to how much variation existed in each letter. I also had astrong acquaintanceship with scripts before I knew about the VMS.
In the VMS, the “a” usually has a straight stem, not curved like the one in the T-O and there are quite a large number of EVA-y with short tails (not the same shape as EVA-a).
Also, position comes into it. You have to look at the textual patterns. This might be an exception, it might not, I have marked many tokens as questionable, but it’s more likely to be EVA-y than EVA-a.
You need to take a good long look through the whole manuscript to see that there is a great variety of tail lengths on EVA-y (also the direction), and that EVA-a usually has a straighter stem (it’s the main difference between them).
There are also some EVA-a/EVA-o that are hard to distinguish (I mark them as questionable), but they don’t usually have the little bit of extra tail that a short-EVA-y has.
Also, if I have a choice between the first two glyphs being a messy oP or a messy eP, I’ll definitely go for messy eP. It does not look like typical oP. As I said, there are numerous half-benches in the VMS, including one only inches to the left of the T-O, and it looks more like a messy version of one of those than it does like oP. Or it might be an oP hybrid, in which case it’s something else and shouldn’t be compared directly to oP or eP.
JKP: Yes, it is deeply frustrating that there is no way to answer the question as to whether it is an eP or oP or a weirdo. If we could determine the order of the strokes then we might make some progress I.e. if it was an oP then it should be expected that the author drew an o and then ontop of it a P likewise for eP, but how to determine the drawing sequence of events is hard or impossible without better scans.
JKP: Having looked at it again it looks like an “o” shape as the penstroke is continuous from below around whereas if it was an e they would appear as two separate strokes However it looks like only the top of the P has been drawn as this doesn’t appear to run into the lower “o” shape, though the problem with this is it would make it a superweirdo, which is even less plausible. Maybe I should do a poll on Ninja, especially as I can upload images.
Also in addition it would be worth having a clearer answer as to the frequency or rarity of words starting EVA-opee. If they are very rare or rare and we have in both instances an EVA-opee then we have a striking coincidence or not a coincidence at all.
I guess the point I’m trying to make is not to argue whether your interpretation or my interpretation is right or wrong, but to emphasize that there is much more variation in the glyphs than one generally realizes by working from some of the more popular transcripts.
Every transcript is based on judgment calls and some of those judgment calls are questionable (like leaving out entire glyphs because there are four in a row—a pattern that apparently violates some people’s notions of how VMS glyphs can be combined). It may be necessary to consult several transcripts to get a better sense of how people are interpreting individual glyphs (or to make your own so that you have the experience of looking at every glyph).
Also, if you go down to the detail level while analyzing similarities in tokens in different parts of the manuscript, it might be better to start with ones that are clearly written rather than the questionable ones until you are more familiar with Voynich glyphs.
They’re really not as straightforward as several of the transcripts make them appear. Some of the variations go beyond what one might expect with hand-variation alone. There are numerous places where the scribe has used only half of a glyph and also places where the scribe appears to have invented a specific combination that is not frequent in other parts of the manuscript. There are also places where glyphs appear to be intentionally stretched in the horizontal direction.
JKP: I think we are talking at cross purposes. I also think it is an EVA-y as the last letter on the “Europa”/”Eur” word on the rosettes folio. I was referring to the 5th glyph which is at the end of oPee on the “Europa” word on f68v3 That is transcribed on voynichese.com as an “o” whereas to me it looks like an “a”. This is a side point, which I mentioned just to further illustrate my concerns about the transcription.
JKP: Yes, it’s a nuisance as it is always hard to distinguish between natural human pen variation and natural human error on behalf of the author and deliberate differences. One can either find oneself more like Newbold, reading the slightest detail as indicative of some intent on behalf of the author or alternatively treating distinct glyphs as being the same in some broad brush transcription; knowing where to draw the line is the hard bit.
I am not sure that in the case of the rosettes T/O map the text has been transcribed.
JKP: I am not sure whether the best place to start is by looking at other examples of Voynichese glyphs. It seems to me the best place to start is by doing one’s best to analyse the visual data that one has from the existing scan. Questions like how many distinct penstrokes we can count, What those penstrokes are, In which direction those penstrokes were drawn, In which order those penstrokes were drawn. It is true that seeing how the author has drawn other glyphs on other pages can give an indication i.e. how does the author normally draw an EVA-o and how an EVA-P
When drawing an EVA-o where does the author normally start and end? And likewise for EVA-P.
I think one has to ask if we have an EVA-oP then how did they end up being drawn so close together? What were the sequence of events as this then was clearly a small mistake and not deliberate?
Obviously I am being so focussed on this as it could have very important implications.
JKP: For example there are a variety of possible narratives. First the author was writing in a relatively small space for text, so that might have been a factor. One would assume the author drew the EVA-o first and the EVA-P afterwards, unless the author forgot to write the EVA-o and added it later. If the EVA-P was drawn 2nd then sure the author must have started at the top and drawn around and down mistakenly into the EVA-o. It could be that the author forgot to write the EVA-P and added it later.
Mark: I think you have to understand that the main point of the transcriptions isn’t to be perfect (because there are so many edge cases where different people would transcribe the same text in multiple ways), but to be good enough to allow others to try to make progress.
It’s therefore no surprise to me that you disagree with various hard-to-agree on sections.
Nick: I appreciate they, in particular the rosettes T/O, are hard to read. I don’t expect the transcriptions to be perfect. When you say: “to be good enough to allow others to try to make progress”, that is the problem as the resolution of the images and the imprecision of the author make it hard to determine what was written and that is important to making progress. If the two strings of glyphs are the same that is significant and if not also significant. Maybe with higher resolution scans one could come to a better answer, until then this question remains rather speculative frustratingly.
Mark: the situation we’re in wasn’t really foreseen or appreciated. Prior to having a transcription, it was believed that a transcription would surely enable us to make progress, that we would be bound to see behind at least some of the veils. That is, the transcriptions were intended to allow large-scale statistical analysis, even if many low-level details were necessarily questionable.
Nick: Point taken. Oh well, c’est la vie!
I have been reviewing Rich Santa Coloma’s post on the subject of the 2 T/O’s that Linda referred me to.
https://proto57.wordpress.com/2010/04/20/to-map-label-implications/
(I should add this is not an endorsement of anything else that Rich has had to say.)
Some of the points he makes tally with my own thinking others much less so. These are as follows:
1. If the oPee or oPch at the beginning of the words in “Europa” corner of the 2 T/O maps are the same, which still seems to me is highly likely though not conclusive having looked at them further, then one can conclude that abbreviations are used in some instances and it is likely that this is not uncommon due to the specific use of symbols associated with abbreviation. A very crude guessestimate of the probability that these 2 words would have the same unusual beginning is about 1/100 (More in depth calculations could certainly be done). This does raise the possibility that words could be introduced and written at full length then subsequently abbreviated.
2. Given that the word lengths on the f68v3 have more characters that “Africa” and “Europa” respectively and given that they both start with the same letter then this would seem to imply there is to some extent a verbose cipher in use as multiple glyphs can correspond to single letters. However if EVA-asla does indeed correspond to the word “Asia” that would seem to indicate that single glyphs can also map to individual letters possibly implying a verbose homophonic cipher. This identification of “Asia” might imply that the joined up EVA-al maps to the standard latin ending “ia”, where the spellings are disturbingly similar.
3. One problem with this that Rich also eludes to is that the “Africa” corner of the T/O map in one case seems to start EVA-oTa and the other EVA-oKa, so in the one instance we have EVA-t and the other EVA-k. Now it is possible that on the T/O map the EVA-k is actually an EVA-t with the top left part of it very faint, but as far as I know there isn’t any clear evidence to support that idea. Rich suggests EVA-t and EVA-k may be interchangeable, I am inclined to doubt this despite it being a convenient explanation.
4. I should add that the words we see in the “Asia” part of the f68v3 T/O map if they are a list of places in Asia, as I think most likely on the basis of seeing other T/O map, then I doubt there is any reasonable way to guess the order in which the places are listed. Therefore the scope for using these words as a block-paradigm in and of themselves seems very difficult, though I should add I haven’t looked into this in detail and maybe one can make progress.
A few more possible correspondences from the rosettes page(I will elaborate later):
North – EVA-oTch
South – EVA-ddy
West – EVA-osy
East – EVA-odl
(It is possible this should be inverted. NorthSouth and WestEast swapped.)
I have other possible IDs, but they are even more speculative.
Now, as should be self-evident, this is speculative, some more speculative and some less speculative. If this is to some extent true then it is certainly significant. I am a firm believer in speculation when it comes to the Voynich as frankly without which we are very limited as there are much fewer certainties. It fact it seems to me that speculation is a normal part of the reasoning process. If someone thinks this is clearly all nonsense I would be intrigued as to how they can be so sure.
Mark: speculation tends to be accompanied by an army of assumptions, which the speculator is typically unaware of.
For example, speculation about Voynich labels / cribs is normally wrapped up in a thousand assumptions about language, most of which had been categorically proven false half a century ago.
And so it isn’t really speculations that annoy me but the assumptions around them.
In the case of the T-O maps… don’t get me started. Please.
Nick: I don’t think one can speculate without speculative assumptions. In fact we all do this whether in the case of your hypotheses or anyone else’s. I think we tend to say what if X is true then what are the likely implications of that. X is a speculative assumption. Now one would not speculate that X is true, if one thought it very unlikely, but one might do if one thought there was a reasonable chance. So as an if the text I associate with North, South etc. has a chance of being true, even if it was as little as 1/10 then it would be valid to examine the implications of it being true.
I think if we decide not to explore a hypothesis, because it might not be true we really hamper ourselves. As is clear I am not cautious about exploring theories even at the expense of attracting criticism. I think it is important to put ideas out there. If we only explore things that we can be certain of I don’t think we will make much more progress over the next 50 years. So I am strongly inclined to continue to speculate, though the truth is most people do it, but fewer admit to doing it.
I personally always appreciate people highlighting assumptions that they think I have made in a given instance as if someone has correctly identified a significant unstated assumption then it is something to be explored. What is the implication if the assumption is not true? What are arguments for and against the assumption being true? What is the rough probability of the assumption being true? Assumptions in turn can be examined as much as is reasonably necessary; I like doing this. In some instances the argument that something is speculative can be used to close down discussion and debate, which I don’t think is helpful. I like to explore the solution space.
Another possibility that I omitted to mention is that the text in the rosette “Africa” section of the T/O map may be a null words/string as it is a very common format, unlike in the “Europa” case, that we see amongst labels. On the basis of labels generally not on the rosettes page I have speculated that there may be a profusion of null words.
See the following link to a list map:
http://www.henry-davis.com/MAPS/EMwebpages/205HH.html
This is the kind of thing that I think we see at the bottom of the f68v3 T/O map. It is not rare to find this kind of list format. With places such Arabia, Mesopotamia etc. listed. However working out which were the most important locations that the author chose to list and in what order he/she chose to list them in is hard. I guess one could look at a large number of T/O list maps like this and compile a list of the most commonly included locations in Asia. It may be that locations tend to be listed in order of geographical position e.g. Top to Bottom i.e East to West. It may be that locations are ordered in importance. So it may be possible to produce a vague location list for comparison with the Voynich, but it may be too difficult.
I think one thing to notice is that in the “list” of words in the “Asia” portion of the f68v3 T/O map there is a large gap/space on the top line in the centre between the left and right text. Why have this space/gap? If this was normal sentence text then there would be no need for a space. This could imply that the 2 words on the left side are in the south of Asia and the 2 words in the right side are in the north of asia. There are larger and smaller spaces on the following 2 lines, though whether they are significant or not is hard to say. However it is possible that the positions of the words on the T/O map roughly correspond to the locations that fit the meaning of the word. If true this would be a useful clue to attempting to match up words with places, though this still sounds rather difficult.
One has to look at the whole elephant in order to understand which part is the tail and which part is the trunk.
If oP… shows up frequently in tokens and in tokens with context unrelated to maps, then it takes on a different significance than if one ONLY looks at it within maps.
But I am not talking about just EVA-oP obviously that is common, but I think it looks like the following to characters are the same. If one searches on voynichese.com for oPch as the start of a word it is pretty rare, if one searches for oPee it is non-existent. I understand that if one searches for words beginning EVA-o or EVA-oP they will be common. So when I suggest a very crude probability of 1/100 for this kind of eventuality I am talking about more than the first 2 glyphs.
Regarding the oP on the “Europe” part of the rosettes T/O map, I think what we have is not a superweirdo with a combined EVA-o and EVA-P shape. What I think has happened is the author drew the EVA-o then starting drawing the EVA-P from the top left position; to make one continuous shape one can either start at the bottom or top left. So I think the author started to draw the EVA-P and continued until he/she realised it was going to run into the EVA-o and actually stopped before that happened. Obviously this took milliseconds and was not calculated or planned out. This is the only explanation that seems to be to make sense. Drawing an EVA-cP partial gallows does not make given the way the EVA-c/EVA-o shape has been drawn.
As an aside, the commonly asserted idea that there are no corrections in the Voynich seems out of keeping with what I have observed (take the first glyph of the “Asia” section of f68v3). I think what has happened is that every instance of a correction has been defined as a new glyph or an imprecise drawing of an existing glyph, on that basis nothing can be a correction by definition.
The biggest problem or obstacle with my analysis is the difference between the EVA-k on the rosette “Africa” section of the T/O map and EVA-t on the f68v3 “Africa” section of the T/O map. On closer inspection there is no evidence that I can see whatsoever that the EVA-k is really an EVA-t with a faint loop, that is not to say it is impossible, but that there is no good reason to think so. It is worth noting though that on both sides of these characters there is an EVA-o, so we have EVA-oko versus EVA-oto. I don’t have an explanation for this that I am really happy with. There are possible explanations such as the “Africa” being a null in the rosettes T/O map given it being a very common spelling, the EVA-k transforming into a EVA-t means of the EVA-r glyph at the end or the unlikely possibility that the loop is faint on the EVA-k. I find it hard to believe Rich Santa Coloma’s suggestion that EVA-t and EVA-k might be the same as these are common glyphs and if they are identical it would further limit an already limited common glyph set and further compound a problem of repeated words. Despite this issue I see it as no reason to reject the overall analysis, but rather a problem to be solved.
I thought it worth clarifying that when I said that:
North – EVA-oTch
South – EVA-ddy
West – EVA-osy
East – EVA-odl
I would assume that these are abbreviations for North, South West and East.
So in the case that the language of the Voynich is English, which it almost certainly is not, then we might have something like:
“Nth” – EVA-oTch
“Sth” – EVA-ddy
“Wst” – EVA-osy
“Est” – EVA-odl
In latin we might have;
Septenrio – EVA-oTch
Meridio – EVA-ddy
Occidens – EVA-osy
Oriens – EVA-odl
Abbreviated to something like:
“sept” – EVA-oTch
“mer” – EVA-ddy
“occ” – EVA-osy
“ori” – EVA-odl
One observation I thought worth mentioning is that when studying the rosettes page I found 2 written locations that I thought were probably the same. However they were spelled differently in an intriguing way which was as follows:
EVA-daready
and
EVA-larealg
The similarities are more apparent visually as EVA-d is really EVA-l with a bottom loop. And EVA-g is really EVA-y with one big top loop.
Now these similarities could easily be a coincidence as I cannot be certain that they represent the same place and this is very speculative, but if true very interesting.
It would almost imply some kind of bizarre “homophonic conservation of loopedness”.
@Mark
Happy birthday to you
Dear Peter
Thank you so much for your kind message, I really appreciate it. I hope 2020 brings you happiness.