A miscellany of nine-rosette links…
For the most part, constructing plausible explanations for the drawings in the Voynich Manuscript is a fairly straightforward exercise. Even its apparently-weird botany could well be subtly rational (for example, if plants on opposite pages swapped their roots over in the original binding, in a kind of visual anagram), as could the astronomy, the astrology, and the water / balneology quires (if all perhaps somewhat obfuscated). Yet this house of oh-so-sensible cards gets blown away by the hurricane of oddness that is the Voynich Manuscript’s nine-rosette page.
If you’re not intrigued by this, you really do have a heart of granite, because of all the VMs’ pages, this is arguably the most outright alien & Codex Seraphinianus-like. Given the strange rotating designs (machines?), truncated pipes, islands, and odd causeways, it’s hard to see (at first, second and third glances) how this could be anything but irrational. Yet even so, those who (like me) are convinced that the VMs is a ‘hyperrational’ artefact are forced to wonder what method there could be to this jumbled visual madness. So: what’s the deal with this page? How should we even begin to try to ’read’ it?
People have pondered these questions for years: for example, Robert Brumbaugh thought that the shape in the bottom left was a “clock” with “a short hour and long minute hand”. However, now that we have proper reproductions to work with, his claim seems somewhat spurious, for the simple reason that the two “hands” are almost exactly the same length. Mary D’Imperio (1977) also thought the resemblance “superficial”, noting instead that “an exactly similar triangular symbol with three balls strung on it occurs frequently amongst the star spells of Picatrix, and was used by alchemists to mean arsenic, orpiment, or potash (Gessman 1922, Tables IV, XXXIII, XXXXV)” (3.3.6, p.21).
Back in 2008, Joel Stevens suggested that the rosettes might represent a map, with the top-left and bottom-right rosettes (which have ‘sun’ images attached to them) representing East and West respectively, and with Brumbaugh’s “clock” at the bottom-left cunningly representing a compass in the form of the point of an arrow pointing towards Magnetic North. You know, I actually rather like Joel’s idea, because it at least explains why the two “hands” are the same length: and given that I suspect that there’s a hidden arrow on the “bee” page and that many of the water nymphs may be embellished diagrammatic arrows, one more hidden arrow would fit in pretty well with the author’s apparent construction style.
This same idea (but without Joel’s ‘hidden compass’ nuance) was proposed by John Grove on the VMs mailing list back in 2002. He also noted that many of “the words appear to be written as though the reader is walking clockwise around the map. The words inside the roadway (when there are some) also appear to be written this way (except the northeast rosette by the castle).” I’ve underlined many of the ’causeway labels’ in red above, because I think that John’s “clockwise-ness” is a non-obvious piece of evidence which any theory about this page would probably need to explain. And yes, there are indeed plenty of theories about this page!
In 2006, I proposed that the top-right castle (with its Ghibelline swallowtail merlons, ravellins, accentuated front gate, spirally text, circular canals, etc) was Milan; that the three towers just below it represented Pavia (specifically, the Carthusian Monastery there); and that the central rosette represented Venice (specifically, an obfuscated version of St Mark’s Basilica as seen from the top of the Campanile). Of course, even though this is (I think) remarkably specific, it still falls well short of a “smoking gun” scientific proof: so, it’s just an art history suggestion, to be safely ignored as you wish.
In 2009, Patrick Lockerby proposed that the central rosette might well be depicting Baghdad (which, along with Milan and Jerusalem, was one of the few medieval cities consistently depicted as being circular). Alternatively, one of his commenters also suggested that it might be Masijd Al-Haram in Mecca (but that’s another story).
Also in 2009, P. Han proposed a link between this page and Tycho Brahe’s “work and observatories”, with the interesting suggestion that the castle in the top-right rosette represents Kronborg Slot (which you may not know was the one appropriated by Shakespeare for Hamlet), with the centre of that rosette’s text spiral representing the island of Hven where Brahe famously had his ‘Uraniborg’ observatory. Kronborg Slot was extensively remodelled in 1585, burnt down in 1629 and then rebuilt: but I wonder whether it had swallowtail merlons when it was built in the 1420s? Han also suggests that other features on the page represent Hven in different ways (for example, the three towers marked ‘PAVIA?’ above); that the pipes and tall structures in the bottom-right rosette represent Tycho’s ‘sighting tubes’ (a kind of non-optical precursor to telescopes); that one or more of the mill-like spoked structures represent(s) Hven’s papermill’s waterwheel; and that the central rosette represents the buildings of Uraniborg (for which we have good visual reference material). Han’s central hypothesis (on which more another day!) is that the VMs visually encodes information about various supernovae: the suggestion here is that the ‘hands’ of Brumbaugh’s clock are in fact part of the ‘W-shape’ of Cassiopeia, which sits close in the sky to SN 1572. Admittedly, Han’s portolan-like ‘Markers’ section at the end of the page goes way past my idea of being accessible, but there’s no shortage of interesting ideas here.
Intriguingly, Han also points out the strong visual similarity between the central rosette’s ‘towers’ and the pharma section’s ‘jars’: D’Imperio also thought these resembled “six pharmaceutical ‘jars’”. I’d agree that the resemblance seems far too strong to be merely a coincidence, but what can it possibly mean?
Finally, (and also in 2009) Rich SantaColoma put together a speculative 3d tour of the nine-rosette page (including a 3d flythrough in YouTube), based on his opinion the VMs’ originator “was clearly representing 3D terrain and structures”. All very visually arresting: however, the main problem is that the nine-rosette page seems to incorporate information on a number of quite different levels (symbolic, structural, physical, abstract, notional, planned, referential, diagrammatic, etc), and reducing them all to 3d runs the risk of overlooking what may be a single straightforward clue that will help unlock the page’s mysteries.
All in all, I suspect that the nine-rosette page will continue to stimulate theories and debate for some time yet! Enjoy! 
May 29th, 2010 at 10:46 am
Nick – I’m going to credit Han and re-post my own observations on this point of towers as ‘jars’ – actually here, burners. Apologies to Nick for my ignorance of his priority.
May 29th, 2010 at 12:05 pm
Diane: actually, Mary D’Imperio pointed it out in 1977 (I’ve amended the page to reflect this), and it may already have been a Voynichian commonplace by then, it’s hard to be sure. As an aside, I started out just trying to cover a couple of theories, but the page just grew and grew… oh, well. =:-o
May 29th, 2010 at 2:24 pm
yes, well.. maybe I should credit her. The habit’s pretty well known, historically. Just not sure how long it has been known in Voynich studies.
May 29th, 2010 at 2:44 pm
What are the rune-like Hebrewy characters in the middle-top and middle-middle images? Can we have a much closer look please?
May 29th, 2010 at 3:55 pm
Paul: it’s all Voynichese, I’m afraid, just at funny angles. Nothing to get excited about!
May 29th, 2010 at 6:59 pm
A good collection of theories… and thanks for the mention of the 3D Rosettes. Related, I do have this post:
http://proto57.wordpress.com/2009/06/15/theres-no-place-like-utopia/
As you know (you commented there)… but since it fits with the theme of identity, I add it here. On that page I show and compare other Utopias and how they were illustrated… IMHO, very similarly to how the Rosettes is laid out, in many ways. For a speculative identity of the specific areas, from “that old theory of mine” (pre-Carbon): http://www.santa-coloma.net/voynich_drebbel/new_atlantis/rosettes_labels.jpg That map compares the parts of the Rosettes to places mentioned in The New Atlantis. Rich.
May 29th, 2010 at 7:32 pm
Nick – Stretching this out to it’s original square shape (quite a bit seems to have disappeared in the folds) – it looks to me as if it was constructed by drawing a diagonal from corner to corner then taking a 12 inch ruler across the 2 diagonals to mark of 6 inch centres for all the circles – would a European have used a metric ruler in the 15th century?
May 30th, 2010 at 11:49 am
Can I add a general comment, Nick? Do delete if you think it irrelevant.
A lot of the comments seem to me to be attempting to guess what an individual meant to express by the drawing. I think that this is perhaps not the angle of approach for a drawing set down in the early 15thC.
If you think of the drawings less as a means of personal expression, and more as an alternative, and formal, system of communication, then the stylistic features are as telling of their period and context as a variant form of handwriting is. I rather think that the person who first put the bits together to form the anthology had absolutely no conception of the idea of meaningless art: that is, art without meaning apart from its maker.
May 30th, 2010 at 12:00 pm
Diane: it’s certainly true that 90% of Voynich theories give a strong impression of back-projecting modern experiences of art and writing in regard to some key element of the argument, so placing it in entirely modern categories such as asemic writing would almost certainly be inappropriate. What is perhaps more relevant is Marc Bloch’s distinction between historical documents intended for general consumption and historical documents intended for a single person’s eyes only: as with the VMs, the latter category can yield a very distorted set of meanings if (wrongly) interpreted as if it were the former category. That is, I think the VMs has primarily private meaning, not public meaning: though it is, of course, hard to prove this definitively. =:-o
June 15th, 2010 at 3:12 pm
If no-one else has made the observation: the layout of the map is similar to formal maps of the world in the east which place Mount Meru at the centre of the world.
Hang on, I’ll look one up on the web..
ok Here’s a korean example
http://www.saudiaramcoworld.com/issue/200504/the.leek-green.sea.htm
Not exactly the same appearance, but similar scheme. A lot of Buddhist maps and diagrams take the same form.
PS This Mt Meru is an island, not the Kenyan mountain
June 16th, 2010 at 7:58 am
Hi,
Just to clarify what has been described as a “portolan” chart at the end of my rosettes section. A number of years ago I came across this impression of the markers of the circles on the rosettes folio, which though similar to those on other folios, due to the large number of examples and the spread of the rosette circles had the feel and impression of a mariners map with its many straight criss-crossing lines representing compass directions from various given points. However, although the rest of the rosettes folio I have interpreted in the “light of this particular theory” as described in relation to the life and work of Tycho actual places relevant to this the “portolan” chart is interpreted in relation to a star chart and not a mariners chart. As a star chart locating the position of SN 1572 it is in keeping with the type of work carried out by Tycho concerning the triangulation of the positions of various stars and also along the lines of the work of “Stephenson, F. R. & Clark, D. H” and not out of keeping with the subject matter suggested or the methodology, which if one accepts the possibility of the manuscript being a later creation using old materials is within the realms of possibility. The down side of the manuscript however is that it is as hard to prove a theory wrong as it is right, but it would be more useful to have evidence for something being wrong rather than opinion that it is “too out there”. I would welcome evidence that it could not be as suggested.
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/full/1977QJRAS..18..340S
P. Han
June 16th, 2010 at 8:45 am
P. Han: the problem with trying to review such a substantive (yet, dare I say it, somehow sprawling) theory as yours is that I end up needing to post substantive lemmas on individual aspects first, or else the review would end up 10000 words long. I’ll get there, though, please bear with me…
June 24th, 2010 at 4:11 am
I’ve put up a note on the battlements of the tower in Taormina, with a link to yr blog, Nick.
June 24th, 2010 at 6:02 am
As far as charts go – the same grid applies to astronomical and terrestrial positions. The ancient techniques of sidereal surveying remained part of the surveyor’s curriculum well into the 20th century.
July 15th, 2010 at 6:11 pm
Mmmmnnn. merlons.
http://www.vrmalta.com/malta-tour/source/malta-red-fort1-r.html
July 27th, 2010 at 4:22 pm
Purely an historical note: I’ve found the origins for the swallow-tail merlon, I think. They appear atop a building on a coin made for the first Selecid satrap in Persis.
We need a ‘Voynich trivia’ website!!