Even though the Internet would appear to be full of Voynich theories, Tardis-like there’s always room for just a few more: so here are some recent ones for you to feast upon. Today’s mission, should you choose to accept it, is simply to try to categorise them: satirical, apparently deranged, serious, April Foolery, brilliant, channeled, etc.
- Well-known Internet palaeographer (and Australian donkey-owning grandmother) Dianne Tillotson has a theory that the VMs was written by one Leonard of Quim.
- Online Shakespearean theorist Franz Gnaedinger has raised Richard SantaColoma’s theory to dizzying new heights: he believes the VMs “was written and drawn by Francis Bacon in 1622, as a private sequel to the highly successful Nova Atlantis, written in a pseudo-Polynesian idiom allowing page-filling automatic writing, and drawn in a deliberate retro-style honoring Francis Bacon’s ancestor Roger Bacon. The text is gibberish but makes allusions.“
- Sergey K suggests (by email) a new chronology for the Voynich Manuscripts, based on some dates apparently marked in blue paint in the SW rosette: “1441 dates of the making of the Voynich MS. 1574 JOHN DEE has bought the Voynich MS. 1597 (in this place my monitor very dirty) August. The Year and month when Edward Kelley has finished the painter (colouring) of the book and run out from the prison.“
- Chy Po, who has been studying the VMs for many decades, believes that “The sketches are Red Herrings & have nothing to do with the text, however they tell a tale of their own cautioning people not to be misled“, while the text is in “a Secret almost extinct language, perhaps impossible to crack as it is a variation of a One Time Pad.” However, “the name of this language is known to very few who guard it jealously, but even is was made public it would be of no help without those exact pages of the Pad which obviously cannot exist still. I have strong suspicions that it is a copy of an handwritten book called “v**z H******g’ very few copies of which exist to be passed on to the next worthy disciple, if no one is deemed to be worthy then that particular copy is destroyed.“
Here, the satirical is clearly (1) [Leonard of Quim is an Ankh-Morpork character], the April Foolery is (3) [thanks for that, Sergey], while (2) bravely outdoes his virtual mentor Rich SantaColoma by a whole order of magnitude. As for Chy Po, perhaps the answer to the VMs, when it eventually arrives, will indeed fit this kind of “concealed secret language” template, who knows? But as to whether the book in question is called “vuoz Habsburg” (or whatever), you’ll have to work out for yourself.
Really, who would be me? Some days, I have to admit that not even I would be me.
Hi Nick. You write:
I would personally change that to “diverged drastically from Richard SantaColoma’s theory”. Mr. Gnaedinger was intrigued by various elements of my theories, but then went into an entirely different direction with them. Some of the players remain the same, but in different roles completely. Whether or not his ideas constitute “dizzying new heights”, or “abysmal new lows”, would be subjective. Of course since we are both about 180+ years past sheepacide, it’s probably a moot point how much or how little we differ in our ideas… but nonetheless, there is no similarity between our ideas at all. Rich.
Hi Nick! Franz Gnaediger is a regular denizen of sci.lang. ISTR he discussed the VMs there, and you can see his many other interesting ideas there if you wish, as well as on the rest of his site. 😉
Rich: raised, lowered, advanced, regressed – ultimately it’s all evolution from what you originally proposed, and I didn’t really mean to imply any kind of value judgment beyond that.
Dennis: Franz Gnaedinger does indeed have too many interesting ideas for this small terabyte margin to satisfactorily contain. 🙂
The top line in blue paint in the picture above rather clearly says RZ to me… 😉
Well Rene, that’s because you can’t see the difference between “RZ” and “RSC”… but I forgive you.
While Nick seems to be having a rest – take a look at this copy I made from a late 15th century herbal (MS 336 f.11) in the Wellcome Library –
[IMG]http://i262.photobucket.com/albums/ii112/tony59b/scan0002.jpg[/IMG]
What do you see?
It’s the cornerstone of my latest half baked theory which can be found here –
http://www.aerobushentertainment.com/crypto/index.php
Incidentally – when you’ve finished laughing – I came across another MS that passed through Voynich’s hands – MS 623 in the Wellcome Library – bound in thick wooden blocks, inside of which is written –
‘PATEARIUS (Johannes)
Practica brevis de cura egnitudium
TABULAE remedicorum Salunitanas
[Early 14th century}’
In the bottom corner is ‘Voynich 19/10/10 (the middle 10 has been altered from or to 11)
& the princely sum of ‘£38’ is in there as well!
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Hello Tony,
well drawn! It is possible to see a small version of the page through the Wellcome library image gallery and search:
http://images.wellcome.ac.uk/
Rene
By the way, here’s the same plant in the famous ‘Manfredus’ herbal preserved in Paris. It dates from the first half of the 14th C and originates from S. Italy:
http://visualiseur.bnf.fr/Visualiseur?Destination=Mandragore&O=08008418&E=1&I=114302&M=imageseule
Rene
Would you agree with my assumption that the root on VM f.2 must have been copied from MS 336 f.11 or that both were copied from the same image in some other herbal?
What did you type in to find it on the Wellcome images page – I can’t find it there.
Tony
Also a middle 15th c. herbal without illustrations titled Platearius (Matthaeus) MS625 has an alphabet down the right hand margin just like VM f.1 – this appears on every page and it’s purpose in conjunction with a number inserted between the alphabets is to form an index for ‘recipes’ appearing on the last pages.
Tony: there is no question in my mind that the VMs was created by someone consciously aware of (and probably even fully conversant with) medieval European herbals. And yes, it would seem to be almost certain that f2v is depicting nenufar[o] / the water lily. However, I’m really not sure that this gives you sufficient, ummm, ‘stemmatic leverage’ to connect the VMs to MS 336 (or to some mutual predecessor).
It might make a little more sense to find out what nenufar was actually used for: Galen thought it was a “cool” herb, so used it to counteract fevers. If you’re at the BL soon-ish, “nenufar” is also mentioned in a Lynn Thorndike article I have not seen: “Some minor medical works of the Florentine Renaissance”, Isis, Vol. 9, No. 1 (Feb., 1927), pp. 29-43. The JSTOR page is here: http://www.jstor.org/pss/224170 There may well be something of interest there, Thorndike is normally good value for money. 🙂 Nenufar also apparently appears in Arnaldus de Villa Nova’s (1499) Tractatus de virtutibus herbarum, etc.
Incidentally, the British Museum also sells a range of historically-inspired perfumes (The Scents of Time, “As Seen On Dragons Den”), one of which is called “Nenufar”. But I suspect this may owe more to the Ancient Egyptians’ floral palette than to anything from the Quattrocento. Just so you know!
Tony, the search term on the Mandragora search page is ‘nuphar’. It will turn up quite large number of illustrations of this plant, mostly from copies of the ‘Livres des simples (medecines)’. This herbal tradition is one of two branches that originate from the South Italian ‘Tractatus de Herbis’, of which the Manfredus I quoted is one of the earliest.
You will see some variety in the way the root is drawn. I would also hesitate to link the Voynich MS to WMS 336, though there are some more pictorial similarities, especially in the roots.
If you have a chance to browse a facsimile of Egerton MS 747, do go for it. The Wellcome is likely to have a copy. It is the oldest surviving copy of the ‘Tractatus de Herbis’ tradition, the Manfredus being the second oldest. This was the main herbal tradition that flourished when the VMs was written, and the alchemical herbals are very closely associated with it.
Oops, I answered the wrong question there.
On the Wellcome search page you should enter ‘WMS336’ as search term.
Nick
I do not believe the VM is in cipher or a lost language – as you say its author was aware of medieval herbals and has drawn on these for his fanciful illustrations – I think he probably drew upon the text as well and manipulated it in some simple, fanciful fashion which is why it looks like a language containing ‘notae communes’ etc. –
There are many images from other herbals which are very similar (particularly the roots) – but this Nenufar image looks the best for comparison ‘the ayes have it!’ for me – I think only by comparing the text accompanying a plant with the text he copied it from will we be able to see what he did. So if anyone can point out any other images of Nenufar (or Illioris/illiboris/illiodris the one with 2 faces in the root) with accompanying text it may help.
I have read many wild theories surrounding the VM (I even saw someone on video once doing a bit of origami looking for a solution!) but as much as some may wish it to be a comprehensive encyclopedia of all lost knowledge I see no evidence of it – merely someone copying bits from here & there.
As for what Nenufar was actually used for – one of its applications was as a cure for alopecia!!
Rene
I’ve seen Egerton 747 and the ‘herbal family tree’ given in ‘The Illustrated Herbal’ and another work on herbals in Italian who’s name eludes me at the moment – the first only gives MS’s up to 1300, the latter goes up to 1500 but only gives 15 MS’s for the 15th century – The Wellcome Library alone has over 30 herbals (a few of a very poor standard, one even managed to draw a plant upside down!), there must be many more in other libraries – it is amongst these lesser known ones that the answer may lie.
Quote – “This was the main herbal tradition that flourished when the VMs was written” –
I thought we still didn’t know when the VM was written – only when the vellum was made?
Tony
Through my eyes, Voynichese looks the diametric opposite of “fanciful”, in that it is spare, logical and highly ordered – one might even say “stripped-down”. I don’t doubt that some aspects of it will prove to be based around simple steganographic manipulation (for example, “4o” might well turn out to be a stego’ed version of “lo”), but I think the stats point very much towards an actual cipher, regardless of whether or not we can read it. 🙂
But still, you know all this already, and you don’t need anyone’s permission to carry on just as you are, so… keep on trucking, I guess. 😉
Tony,
Minta Collins also does not really go into the 15th Century, and she makes the following statement:
“The number and variety of herbal manuscripts surviving from the 15th Century precludes detailed individual description. Toresella counted 193 surviving 15th century herbals, i.e. 67 more than the 136 enoumerated for the whole of the preceding nine centuries.”
I also believe that the Voynich artist must have seen examples of herbal manuscripts. The coincidence of him drawing elements which also appear in these, by chance, is simply too great. The Voynich plants really look like composites, where the individual elements are quite ‘normal’ but they just don’t belong together.
A very typical example is f15v. The four leaves point towards Herba Paris (also one of the alchemical herbs – No. 22) while the elements on the top of the flower are found with other plants (see e.g. Sloane 4016 f77v).
W.r.t. “writing of the VMs” I was lazy and left out the words “most probably”.
My pet theory of the year is the ‘ignorant scribe’ theory – that the MS was copied from a draft by someone who could actually not understand it. I’ve found a remarkable piece of evidence for this (not proof 😉 ) which I will soon present on my web site.
Rene: as you know, I’ve long suspected that the VMs was first enciphered on wax tablets and passed off to a scribe to write down, and I recently posted an estimate here of how often that (presumably very bored) scribe made copying mistakes. Any more evidence relating to this part of the process would hence be particularly interesting, looking forward to seeing it! 🙂
Rene
thanks for that –
for ‘ignorant scribe’ I would substitute ‘child’
Tony: people can be so ignorant scribeish, can’t they? 😉
I can’t believe that this is the work of a child. The penmanship is simply too expert. The writing is occasionally very tiny, and this requires a lot of training. This is not my opinion, but I got this straight from a Yale conservator.
Jorge Stolfi also proposed that the colouring (which is indeed very clumsy) could have been done by a child (or partly), but also here I have my doubts, because there are other MSS where the painting has been done rather clumsily. At least that has been written by two authors, referring to two of the alchemical herbals namely Paris BN Lat 17844 and Florence MS 106.
Both are exceedingly interesting MSS, by the way, especially the Forence MS. Once you have seen these, you are no longer impressed by supposed similarities of Asian plant drawings with the VMs, as was recently suggested in the mailing list…
The Florence MS is on parchment, which has the same size and quality as the Voynich MS. Essentially all other herbals are larger.
On this hint about the ‘ignorant scribe’ theory, I might as well summarise it here. It appears from the pharma section, with the exception of fol. 101 (r and v) which appears to be incomplete.
All ‘containers’ are labelled. The label is sometimes written inside, sometimes below or above. But what about fol. 88 (esp. 88r)? Here the containers are not labelled, it seems. At the same time, near the plant parts there is one label too many. The container label has been misplaced. I cannot imagine the page designer or original author making such a mistake. A scribe making a copy could have easily done this, though. Fol.100r needs another close look as well…
To what extent this shows that the scribe could not understand the text is a different question…
Here’s a nice sample page from BN Lat 17844, showing the sloppy painting. Note that it is a paper MS. The MS is from the 2nd half of the 15th C and from Northern Italy.
There are various annotations in Hebrew, the scribble in the upper left corner is a Hebrew folio number. The plant name is translated in Hebrew and there are Hebrew colour annotations as well.
http://visualiseur.bnf.fr/Visualiseur?Destination=Mandragore&O=08101768&E=50&I=123769&M=imageseule
Rene: nice find! The right-shifted label at the top left of f88r is indeed a subtle anomaly that would be consistent with the copyist’s being a different person from the author/encipherer. f100r does also (as you flagged) appear to be mislabelled, but the labelling pattern does rather break down around there, so we need to tread carefully.
Also, I just noticed that the “8” at the top left of the page facing f88r has its heavy down-stroke mirrored from the folio number on f88r, which suggests to me that it might be a contact transfer. Perhaps the foliator reinked his/her quill between the two eights, causing one to be dry and the other wet?
When you spoke to the Yale conservator, was he wearing a monocle? – “expert penmanship”! – more like the excellent eyesight of a child – consider also the minute detail in some of the drawings.
I would not call the painting in the VM clumsy by any means – admittedly it is not that of an artist – but I have seen far worse in other herbals.
I agree the misplaced labels show the child/scribe was not familiar with the subject.
Tony: I believe it was Jorge Stolfi who first suggested the involvement of a neat & tidy “light painter” and a sloppy-handed “heavy painter”. For example, the pale yellow roots and green leaves on f6r seems to have been painted by quite different people, using quite different paint ingredients (I’d suggest organic and inorganic respectively), and very possibly at different times and for quite different reasons.
Nick
Maybe he tried a different brush here – maybe the mix was too thick – maybe both
but I think he regretted letting his younger sibling have a go on this page!!
Tony: I’d say it was more likely to be a great-great-grandchild than a sibling. 🙂
Tony, to clarify, the excellent penmanship refers to the writing of the text with a quill pen on parchment. The McCrone expert fully agreed with the Yale expert and I am just an amateur but what they said makes full sense for me.
The Yale conservator was not a ‘he’ and there was no monocle 😀
The plant drawing outlines really aren’t too bad if you ask me. What makes the plants look bad is the sloppy colouring (painting).
Rene, no clarification needed – contact lenses then?
Dear Nick,
sorry to butt in here, but seems the appropriate topic matter to jump in on.
I am feeling most neglected that you have not torn apart my theory yet. I trust you are one of the most unbiased people looking at the VM and as such actually value your feedback – good or bad. Any areas you consider may be worth me pursuing further if I decide to continue would also be appreciated. Don’t worry about upsetting me, it has been an achievement for me to get as far as I have and produce the website, being right or wrong is secondary to the ride.
P. Han,
(Bunny)
Bunny: sorry for the delay, I’ve had a whole load of irritating web infrastructure issues that have been absorbing my time over the last few days, the post on your theory is part of the backlog I’ll be working through immediately once everything is straight again…
thanks Nick, looking for feedback constructive or otherwise.
Debating whether any of it is worth persuing further or not, ATM retired from further research.
Sometimes I drop into London on a weekend (to persue my main interest – ancient history), so if you ever want to meet up and look at future ideas I could persue in relation to the VM, I am up for that. If my work is all junk, it would still be nice to chat in real life with a VM fan!
Thanks for the reply Nick, I look forward to meeting lots of other Voynicians (is that the correct term?) in the summer.
Is it possible that the scribe was expert, but ignorant of the language he was copying?
I’m no expert but of all that I have read and it has been quite a lot P. Han’s theory is the most intriguing and plausible. Why are you not continuing????
I know the carbon dating is much earlier than 17th century, but the carbon dating CAN be wrong or for some reason the person that wrote the manuscript
used an old vellum. I do that I’m writing on a 40 year old book I just inherited… my reasoning, why let it go to waste, or maybe the author wanted people to believe it was old to not be in trouble and went to great lenghts to secure old vellum… KEEP GOING P. HAN
Looking for previous notice of Wellcome MS 336 in relation to the Vms, I noticed this post, and Rene’s reference to a Florentine MS 106.
I thought I might mention another manuscript, also in Florence, with a similar description:
Biblioteca Riccardiana, Florence, MS. Lat. 106.
It’s a copy of Archimedes’ works. Used in determining where Piero della Francesca gained the information in his Treatise on perspective.
An article comparing the two was written in 2005:
James R. Banker, ‘A Manuscript of the Works of Archimedes in the Hand of Piero della Francesca’, The Burlington Magazine , Vol. 147, No. 1224, Drawings, Prints, Manuscripts, Letters (Mar., 2005), pp. 165-169.
Cheers
Nick,
You once said: “Through my eyes, Voynichese looks the diametric opposite of “fanciful”, in that it is spare, logical and highly ordered – one might even say “stripped-down”.
Absolutely right. Or better: I couldn’t agree more.
But this idea that folio 2v represents a water-lily is an excellent example of the totally-maddening inability of most Voynicheros to actually *see* let alone accurately describe or evaluate the imagery.
The sort of conversation I have (or had, now that I’m not trying to explain the thing in a mailing list) went like this:
Mailing list person: “Folio 2v is a waterlily. Waterlilies are in medieval Latin herbals.”
Me: It can’t be a water-lily. It has a calyx and protruding, feathery stigma!
Mailing list person “you can see pictures of the waterlily in medieval herbals. Its called Nufar”
Me: I know. But this can’t be a water-lily. Unless you know one which has a calyx and a single protruding stigma.
Mailing list person to rest of the group: Pay no attention to her – just out to seem different.
Me: But really – why would it show a calyx and protruding stigma is it was meant for a water-lily.
Kind mailing list person: Because the artist was mad and couldn’t draw very well, you foolish attention seeking type person.
Me: could we just *look at the thing*. As you see…
Another mailing list person: Edith and Rene say its a water-lily and we have a whole, long list of medieval Latin herbals which show waterlilies. So it’s a water-lily, right? Unless (Hmmmfff ) you want to argue that it’s not a Latin medieval herbal (*sniggers*).
Me: I’m saying that if you look at the picture, it shows a plant which isn’t drawn anything like a waterlily.
Moderator: You are banned for being obstructionist. Now, friends, let’s get back to finding more examples of water-lily pictures in Latin herbals, shall we.
[repeat ad infinitum]
Diane: actually, I think there are three basic opinions re f2v…
(1) lots of medieval mss depicted water-lilies, and the botanical mistakes in this particular water-lily are only mistakes to a modern eye
(2) it isn’t actually a water-lily, and the whole attempt to identify Voynich plants is an utter waste of time
(3) it’s not a water lily, but I can’t tell you what it really is until I’ve self-published my 500-page Voynich theory on lulu.com
🙂
Well, I think of it this way.
The image is as it is. We can
(a) assume that it’s this or that and try to make the glass slipper fit the wrong foot.
(b) assume that if it doesn’t make sense to us, the problem is our own, not the manuscript’s and do what an Okker chap would call the bloody hard yards.
It’s pretty simple. If the thing is so perfectly drawn (as it is – absolutely briliant, even at the highest res. really lovely and competent lines to that flower), then go about he analysis using the same flow-chart that any botanist uses with a specimen, or any botanical drawing. If it turns up nothing, then it may be no more than a design for fabric, or embroidery or something. The real issue is that people have formed their conclusions (or ‘theories’) in the absence of evidence, but then refuse – or haven’t the skills – to register evidence when it’s in front of them, *especially* if it seems to run counter to the theory.
And yes, there is a plant that looks just like this, succulent leaves and all. And it’s not a new world plant, either.
So nyaaar. 😀
PS I see you mention a self-publishing company. Have they published anyone we know?
Diane: I haven’t the faintest idea, I picked lulu.com up just as a random example. Feel free to insert any other digital print-on-demand semi-vanity online publishing model company in its place, I really don’t mind. 😉
Oh, ok.
I wondered what had brought that to mind; thought one of the new theories – like Timm’s might have made it to print. Hope it will one day. Sounds like one for the collection.
Diane: Torsten Timm’s paper is already published online at arxiv dot org. A quick and very obvious Google search will bring it up.
Yes, I read it. I like things on the shelf, though, don’t you?
SirHubert, Naturally one should not confuse gossip with intelligence, no matter what the source. I am puzzled that you appear to think that citing an online reference for information gained from hard-copy sources is somehow to degrade that information per se. In this, you surprise me. I note that you have not ever criticised Nick for linking to information published online – is there some personal issue here? If so, do feel free to email me. The address is at my blog, online as we are now. (I do hope you don’t object to my quoting Nick’s work published here, rather than in his Curse? The online material is so much more recent.
Diane: all I was doing was pointing out that Torsten Timm has published his article online as a PDF, and because Nick’s site doesn’t always accept direct links I thought it might be helpful to say how to find it quickly. I’ve no idea whether he is planning to publish a hard copy form . Otherwise, I’m afraid you have completely lost me, sorry.
SirHubert.
Quite all right. Don’t give it another thought.
I have duly followed the trail begun from rene’s recent comment on Stephen Bax site – obviously this is where it ends, because the same comment about that Latin manuscript is included with the remarkable, and subsequently totally-ignored information that at some time not less than seven years ago, a Yale conservator (who shall we credit with this acute observation?) noticed, and even told Rene that the manuscript contains true micrography.
“The writing is occasionally very tiny, and this requires a lot of training. This is not my opinion, but I got this straight from a Yale conservator”.
And because no-one realised that “very(sic)” tiny writing is called micrography, and is the hallmark of trained Jewish scribes, I had to endure the usual disparaging noises when I brought the same to the attention of Voynicheros the year before last. What an incredible waste of my time. Thank Gd the Beinecke is now trying to have the manuscript treated for what it is “a genuine old manuscript with a history”.
I have opened up the post in which I show that elements in the manuscript’s imagery also point, just as unmistakeably, to regions south and east of Europe.
I shouldn’t have had to spend so much time carefully explaining the matter had the Yale conservator’s hint been recognised for what it was. I should like to credit that person for a first observation.
The post is called “Demonstrable lineage: pattern and micrography in MS Beinecke 408