Anyone with a reasonably capacious memory for Voynich trivia will probably recall Tim Mervyn’s name. He has appeared in various Voynich TV documentaries, and has been grinding away on his ‘K:D:P’ (Kelley:Dee:Pucci) theory for many years (this was briefly summarized in Kennedy & Churchill’s book).
He has now resurfaced with six reasonably substantial essays (though not yet fully published yet, I think) giving his version of his three protagonists’ stories, as well as how he believes that these separate strands came together to yield the twisted and tangled shape of the Voynich Manuscript. In short, he thinks that it was Kelley:Dee:Pucci who created it, but that rather than being a hoax (e.g. via Gordon Rugg’s CompSci-inspired Cardan grilles), it’s actually a real cipher (albeit a rather complicated one).
I have to say that one hugely annoying thing about the way he presents his arguments is that he spends a whole lot of time specifically rubbishing Rene Zandbergen, for reasons that are neither accurate nor fair. Mervyn seems to believe (a) that Rene is hugely dogmatic about a 15th century dating (he really isn’t), and (b) that the only evidence Rene could possibly rely on to support such a dogmatic dating is the radiocarbon dating (it isn’t).
In fact, Mervyn’s arguments against a 15th century origin for the Voynich Manuscript are particularly superficial (he comes across as thinking that everything after D’Imperio is essentially nonsense), while his external arguments (e.g. against people proposing such obviously-crazy non-16th-century dating) are of the “well-they-would-say-that-wouldn’t-they” variety. This unfortunately weakens and cheapens what he’s trying to do, whereas I think he’s got quite an interesting story to tell, one which will take me a fair while to properly deal with here. For what it’s worth, I think he should have put more effort into bullet-proofing his own arguments rather than airily dismissing everyone else’s.
Still, I’m really excited about what Mervyn is doing, though for a reason he might not have expected. Without going all TL;DR on you, I have long argued that almost all John Dee literature tends to fall into exactly one of only two very precisely defined camps:
* “John Dee the magus, astrologer, angel summoner and esoteric magician”
* “Dr John Dee, the independent scholar and wannabe Elizabethan courtier”
Yet for me, though, there’s a third side of Dee that has almost no literature at all:
* John Dee, the would-be Court cryptographer
For example, many sections of Dee & Kelley’s angel séance texts boil down, in my opinion, to nothing more complex than accounts of experimental cryptography, a reading which fits both main camps extremely badly. And yet nobody has stepped forward to write about this at all, which I think is a large lacuna in the literature landscape.
So to my eyes, then, even if Mervyn’s six essays fail to give a satisfying account of the Voynich Manuscript (which I have to say from my first read-through looks broadly to be the case, though there is much of specific 16th century interest there all the same), they may well prove to be the first modern examples of the cryptographic Dee literature I’ve been waiting for for such a terribly long time.
…or are there more Dee-as-cryptographer books out there? My old friend and virtual sparring partner Glen Claston was himself very much taken with Dee’s cryptography, but never published anything (to my knowledge): so please let me know via the comments sections here if you know of any papers, articles or even book sections that cover this. Thanks!
Sorry to be first again, but it has to do with time zones. Dinner here is breakfast there. 🙂
I must say that given the savage flaming I’ve seen in *other* Voynich forums, and the rather insidious denigration by “damning with faint praise” in which others specialise, it’s nice to hear that someonone’s back-stabbing is full frontal (as it were).
But more to the point – I’ve been trying to get a clear account of Leonell Strong’s claimed decryption, since Glen Claston thought so highly of it, and have had no luck so far. Why is it never given time and space on the major sites? Was it really so bad?
All I can find is his initial paper, where he seems to think he cannot yet reveal the precious secret.
Oh, and there’s yet another Dee (though this would appear to be utterly irrelevant to the Vms’ history), and that is Dee the advocate of maritime and geographic knowledge. I expect, Nick, that you’ve already seen, if not read Dee’s Rare Memorials…
It’s a bit like Joyce’s Ulysses.. one never quite manages to read the whole.
PS I expect you’ve already seen this, but perhaps others haven’t.
http://www.light-of-truth.com/DeeLesson.htm
Diane: Leonell Strong’s claimed decryption was just plain wrong, for a whole set of unfixable reasons. The huge amount of work Glen Claston put in to try to understand, reconstruct and indeed resurrect it was (in my opinion) nothing short of a tragic waste of his talent. So yes, it really was so bad. 🙁
I categorize Dee the navigator and geographer in the independent scholar and wannabe courtier category, because courting the Queen with his independent scholarship (genealogical, geographic, etc) was what ended up being a large focus of his life (and of the modern-day literature).
Ah well…. everyone is entitled to his or her opinion.
Almost all discussions related with the Voynich MS that I have seen tend to be differences of opinion. Now the C-14 dating, which isn’t “mine” by any stretch of the imagination, is something quite more solid than just an opinion. One can just argue about its error margins, and there’s nothing wrong with erring on the safe side.
I fully agree with Nick (and thanks for the thumbs up), that there’s a lot more in favour of the 15th C (and lots against the 16th C), for the creation date of the MS.
Nothing quite as solid as the C-14 dating, I would say.
And nothing that I would call “mine”.
I recognize there is no full-text to read yet, just an advance announcement?
What’s the problem with the carbon dating? I think there is no doubt about the lower margin of the date of the VMS creation? If there is not, then is all the mess about that the VMS may have been written on old vellum? Why, it may have been. But why Kelley & Dee are considered “best fits”? Would not some other learned men be good candidates, Paracelsus, for example?
If the “big story” approach can ever be considered useful in the Voynich research, I strongly believe that there are well enough dramatis personae in 15th century to take part, so recruiting mid-16th century candidates is not that necessary. Maybe one day I will publish those considerations for amusement, although I dislike the way of fiction in science.
Interesting, your take on it. I read a lot of the revisionist history beginning with the work done by E.G.R Taylor in the mid-twentieth century and I understood that since Dee served (if I recall correctly) as Elizabeth’s tutor, and was formally appointed to the court – as well as being in a position to urge fairly effectively the establishment of a British navy, that opinions of his position and accomplishments were higher than they once were. But perhaps the revisions have been revised. I admit that I haven’t kept up with the history of sixteenth-century England. Not my field.
I’d still like the opportunity to read Strong, or Claston’s reconstruction. I respect your opinion, but always like to see the primary source too. If they’re to be had.
Anton Alipov: to give Tim Mervyn his dues, he does have an interesting take on Kelley:Dee:Pucci (which I will be discussing here before long), albeit one that sits uncomfortably with the broad set of 15th century dating evidence when applied to the Voynich.
Diane: I’ll see what I can dredge up re Strong from my dusty archives…
Thanks, Nick.
(PS. What’s the secret to whether or not a person’s personal website address appears at the bottom of their post?)
Diane: website address, dunno, sorry. I’ll have a look this evening.
How much of the Voynich is meaningful text? Is it 100% , 75% or 50%? What would it take to make it look like Gordon Rugg’s gibberish .
Nick, Please don’t trouble; I was vaguely curious but have no intention of using your site as advertisement for mine. 🙂
Dear Nick, Diane, Rene Z, & any other Bacon or Dee followers:
Until we can get around the issue of which or both were con artists — and just how confused was D’Imperio’s production of selected items from the manuscript which is now item 408 in the Boenicke Library — we will continue to ignore the efforts of persons who are translating manuscript B-408, rather than ‘decoding’ the so-called “Voynich” manuscript.
I applaud your efforts at decoding — yet I’m somewhat disappointed that no one finds validity in the translations I’ve offered over the past two years.
The base language of B-408 is Latin (Spanish) which has been re-translated into Nahuatl. No code. No gibberish. B-408 was initially a diary, which also became a notebook for future manuscript production.
Compare the contents of B-408 with the contents of the Florentine Codex (at least the botanical items and the recipes section, and the ‘astronomical’ features). Check for the discussion of worms (caterpillars) and the butterflies. Check the “yerbas” in the Florentine Codex against the botanical items in B-408. My favorites are the tomatillo, the yucca, for its soapy root, prickly-pear cactus for its nopales or ‘tunas’.
The “Voynich” is entirely meaningful if it is viewed first as a diary, then as an interviewer’s notebook. The interviewer had two native students who translated his notebook entries into their language when they were writing and illustrating the “Florentine Codex”.
So, when the Inquisition confiscated all of the monk’s notebooks and manuscripts (and did not return them to their owner) the “Voynich” portion ended up in a Papal storeroom near Frascati. The twelve-volume manuscript (Florentine Codex) ended up in a library in Europe (France?).
The entire “Florentine Codex” can be read online, illustrations and all.
As I read it, Mr. Mervyn has no problem with the C14 results, or anyone who trusts them. His problem (and it is one of mine) is with the erroneous conclusion often cited, that vellum/parchment cannot have been used very long after creation. There are enough historical instances to show that the time of use, after vellum preparation, cannot and should not be used as any sort of “fact” standing in the way of possible later use by the Voynich author/illustrator(s).
Whether or not one feels there are features of the Voynich which lock it down to the 15th century is another matter, separate from the old, blank, vellum issue.
Richard: anyone who imagines Rene has a fixed, intransigent, dogmatic position about the dating plainly hasn’t met him or even bothered to ask his opinion – and in this instance, my understanding is that Rene is far more aware of the (genuinely nuanced and interesting) interplay between all the different types of dating evidence than Mervyn believes.
And yes, the suggestion that the vellum was used soon after its manufacture is not yet proven or disproven, contrary to a number of erroneous reports. But even though the radiocarbon dating is usually placed somewhat apart from all the other evidences, that is when it is at its weakest and least useful. Experienced radiocarbon dating experts almost always say that it is a technique that needs to be used in conjunction with other types of evidence.
Consider this: Proseletizers, in medievel times anyway, would have brought their writing materials with them. Only, and if, when they ran out of material to write upon, would they seek other suitable material: pounded tree bark (the coelem layer-inner bark) of the mulberry trees or wild strangler-fig trees), silkworm cocoons (from which the butterfly had eaten its way out); finally, skins from whatever animal may have been indigenous to the ‘conquered’ territory. (I’m not sure if the jaguar and/or ocelot skins would have been favored.)
Nick: I only meant to clarify the position of Mervyn, because I was afraid the impression from the review, and above comments, was that he was objecting to an acceptance of the C14 dating. He was not at all. In fact I know of no one who does not think the C14 highly accurate.
Rather, his point was about repetition of the mistaken assumption that ink must have been applied to the Voynich pages soon after the calficide. I don’t personally think Mervyn should have named anyone, that was not necessary… many people still hold onto this error. It is the concept of “fresh vellum use” being used as a dating tool that is wrong, whoever it is who repeats it. And if Rene does not, as you suggest, I accept that. Rene?
There are many of these entrenched ideas, which have little basis on fact… which when explored in any depth, evaporate. It is a disservice to new researchers to lay down these mythologies as facts, or implied facts, what have you, as they will not have firm ground to work from.
Nick,
Please don’t be too hard on Richard; it’s very difficult to learn Rene’s opinions directly, since he offers none of his original research (as such) online, and one cannot ask questions or engage in discussions on his website as one can, for example, on yours.
Speaking of which, may I ask your current views on that ‘Averlino’ hypothesis you wrote about some years ago? Has any more recent work led to a more nuanced view of any of it?
Richard: I suspect you may be mistaken about this, because I did not notice where Mervyn makes any such point about that particular mistaken assumption. Indeed, he seems quite unaware of any nuances or subtleties of the various Voynich dating arguments: I’m sure that you yourself appreciate them, even if you typically choose to present them all as specious or somehow tainted by personal agenda.
Diane: alas, I mined the Averlino literature quite thoroughly back in 2005-6, and have only learned a few minor details of interest since then (for instance, that he had written his own elegant herbal in the vulgar tongue, which was a pleasant surprise).
Hi Nick: What I was referring to in the paper were those same points it seemed you were responding to in your review, and Rene seemed to be responding to, in his comments. In short, from Essay One, in which Mervyn calls it an “extremist position”, that is, “Which is that it is impossible for stocks of old unused vellum to have survived much
beyond the period within which it was produced.”
Then, in Essay Three, he restates the same concern a bit differently, as an “absolutist position, the claim that, “No stocks of old vellum were ever available much beyond the presumed end date of its manufacture.”
On this point, I do agree with the author completely. There is no foundation to ever make these claims.
Yes I agree with you that other considerations may cause one to be either closer to, or further away from, the C14 dates… but the habits of old blank vellum usage should not be a factor in determining this, since we know old blank vellum may have been, and has been, used very long after manufacture.
It that was what you meant. As for Mervyn accepting the C14 dates, that is implied by his essays as a whole, although I am not sure he specifically says so. In these comments, however, the two were mixed up… as I read it… that someone it was being implied that Mervyn,m in not accepting “fresh vellum usage” as a truism, was also rejecting the C14 dates of that vellum. He was not.
As for claiming personal agendas are involved… of course they are, and this is often pointed out, by almost everyone, about everyone, not just me. This is normal in any investigation with two or more opinions, and something to be watched for in oneself and others. And this is why I strongly believe in an open discussion, in which a person can know all the facts, and all the opinions based on those facts, and then make up their own mind.
BTW, I don’t agree with everything in Tim Mervyn’s essays, and he knows that… as I wrote a very lengthy response to him, outlining what I thought plausible, and what not, and so on. We will all have very different opinions on this work. I absolutely look forward, as always, to your take on it… and appreciate the discussion. All the best, Rich.
As far as radio-carbon dating goes: The current Pope in Rome has limited the showing of the “Shroud (of Turin)” to only a few (celebratory) days a year. If I remember correctly, the various scientists who analyzed the carbon-dating of the Shroud were not able to come to an agreement (for lack of olive-tree pollen, which would surely have been near the crucifixion site).
;-^
Richard: the “extremist position” to which Mervyn refers is a ‘straw man’, in that by falsely ascribing it to Rene (and then tearing it down gleefully), Mervyn really demonstrates nothing at all (apart from somewhat poor judgment, perhaps).
Agenda-backed distortions (whether conscious, unconscious, deliberate or accidental) are always possible, sure: but to infer from this that the only safe way to proceed is to discard all non-absolute evidence would be to abandon just about every historical methodology ever devised. History rarely hands us smoking guns with fingerprints on, so all we can do is do the best we can with what we have.
Thanks Nick… I look forward to your full review, when you get to it. Later, Rich.
Hi Nick,
Benjamin Woolley in “The Queen’s Conjurer” gives a (brief) overview of Dee’s trajectory as a cryptographer, along with an account of how he was the first to bring Steganographia to England along with other such works of the time; he also points out the difficulties in further researching this angle to Dee (ie, lack of research material mainly).
In case Rene sees this: there seems to be a problem with his site. If you click his link to my blog, a warning notice comes up – something about insecure connection.
I’ve checked with wordpress etc. etc. but the site’s ok. It can be reached easily enough through G/gle, so the buglet seems to be on Rene’s own site – he might like to know that.
David: thanks very much for that, I’ll bring my copy of Woolley down from the loft and refresh my (obviously failing) memory. 🙂
Francesco Pucci was born too late.
Tim Mervyn is trying to get some play from is late uncle Peter Long’s letters . What did Peter Long do during the war?
I think Marcelo Montemurro is on the right track and Rene Zandbergen is the keeper of the good stuff. Have a shedy day.
Update on the issue at voynich nu/
Linking to my site via Rene directs you through a band-width thief in Chile, so the warning is well-given for Rene’s hotlink.
Best to arrive directly through your search engine – it’s perfectly sound.
Very brief comments:
1. My essays are available to anyone interested.
Mail me a request to [email protected]
They can be freely passed to any others under a Creative Commons Licence. I would urge all to read them before passing opinions. Anyone who wishes should feel free to post them on their web sites according to the terms of the CC licence.
2. I have the highest respect for Rene as I make clear in the essays. Any criticism is based on the ORF programme where, and I understand that this often done for reasons of raising concatenating evidence and, occasionally, raising controversies, the broadcaster, through Rene, seems to discard a number of potential candidates for authorship, including the juvenile Leonardo, in a period of only 25 or so years after the last date of the radiocarbon dating. Perhaps I have misinterpreted what Rene actually meant…
3. Rich SantaColoma is absolutely right with respect to the vellum dating point. I try to explore some possibilities about the various mechanisms by which old vellum may have made it from the fifteenth to the sixteenth century in the first essay.
4. I understand there are many and subtle arguments about the other dating evidence. I try to cover them. But, one example, the evidence discussed by Kennedy and Churchill of the alphabet and its relation to a “16th Century Humanist Hand”. Barbara Barrett in her Fortean Times piece essentially discards the evidence of Rodney Dennis, who clearly is/was a significant expert. My own rather modest request was to suggest that she should provide the name of genuine experts who disagree with Dennis’s position.
5. As I made clear on my original posting on the vms-list, I am very interested in all criticisms and critiques and would genuinely be interested in including them and incorporating all significant contributions into any final result. I can only reiterate, please read the essays before jumping to judgement.
5. as for xplor’s comments. My Uncle Peter Long worked at Bletchley Park during the war. AFAIK he worked on Japanese ciphers. He probably became interested in VMS
during the 1950s. He knew Tiltman and Currier. My own theory has little to do with his ideas, which as far as I understand them, (they are briefly discussed in Tiltman’s paper to the Baltimore Bibliophiles) has to do with assigning certain Voynich terminal forms to numbers…
Thanks Tim.
I actually haven’t read your essays, but I’ll ask you for a copy separately.
It is important to point out (to all, not primarily to you), that the radio-carbon dating result is a statistical result. It does not prove or disprove anything, but makes certain things more or less (im)probable.
So, Da Vinci or Averlino are (just) outside the 95% interval and one could still play with the figures and do something. It’s kind of marginal. For people like Dee, working over 100 years later, the probabilities are a *lot* worse. Here, there are also significant other dating problems, related to technique and style, in which I am not an authority, but I listen to those who are.
Suggesting, instead, that the parchment was unused for one or several centuries, and easily available for use after that, is something which is not impossible and cannot be ‘disproven’. However, its probability is so small that it plays no role whatsoever in discussions involving 95% probability.
I hesitate to disagree, but in fact radiocarbon dating *is* used to gain a narrow and fairly definite bracketed range of dates. If it didn’t, there’d be no point in using that destructive technique over others.
I’ve recently read, for example, a paper in which the radiocarbon dating for a manuscript of Chaucer’s was used to argue against the Manly-Rickert position about the work’s composition. The range under discussion was small. And as with any scientific test, from sampling soils to estimating wind-shear, it is not up to the reader (especially amateurs or people expert in another field) to decide on the amount of “wiggle-room”. That margin is normally the margin of error acknowledged and accounted for in the published results.
In other words, its up to the University of Arizona to account for any elasticity; not for us to see how far the results can be stretched.
hope this helps. 😀
Diane: ah, the difference a day makes. Or, in this case, the difference a century makes: wind back the radiocarbon clock to a hundred years before the Voynich’s radiocarbon range and you can start to make more reliable, tighter predictions about date. That’s the effect of pollution for you.
My opinion is that radiocarbon dating is absolutely not a technique whose results can be evaluated with great precision in the absence of other historical evidence: that would be a scientific tail wagging a historical dog.
*sheer* – we have sheepswool clouds here today (Cirrocumulus).
Oh Nick, absolutely. Any observation (in or out of a lab) is one factor among many. Failure to consider a wide enough range of data is one of the things about Voynich studies which constantly troubles me.
I’m going to have to address a couple of the more intransigent examples, too, but have been putting it off because there is hardly any idea about the manuscript to which some individual isn’t quite personally attached.
Which won’t be news.
D
Rene: You have mixed up two separate issues, in your last rebuttal, above by combining “acceptance of the C14 dating”, together with “understanding of old vellum use”. Any probability determined from the C14 tests cannot be used as an umbrella for the old blank vellum dismissal argument… that is, the 95% probability does not necessarily apply to old vellum use. In other words, stating that anyone who knows and points out that old vellum was often used for making all sorts of documents and books, is then also automatically is arguing against the accuracy of the C14, is incorrect. And then, we see the problems with mixing these unrelated concepts: in later comments, this error is picked up… in one, stating that the C14 results would have to be “stretched” to fit later theories.
Not at all. All later theories are perfectly consistent with both acceptance of C14 results, AND our present knowledge of old vellum use.
The existence of 15th century palimpsests would indicate the parchments were used close to the time of the radio carbon dating. There must not have been a lot of surplus.
Richard: if you want to take pot shots at Rene, can you please find some other forum for doing so? I thought you already had an entire mailing list set up for this specific purpose?
Personally, I don’t even remotely share your position or attitude towards the historical evidence, and so am finding this scratched-record reiteration of both quite boring, sorry. 🙁
xplor: the availability of vellum was surely very much a local affair, so I would expect that the existence of C15 palimpsests would indicate only local conditions, not some global supply-demand imbalance. Paper was starting to win the battle during the 15th century, for sure, but wasn’t yet what most people would have judged cheap: for example, diarists still needed to be reasonably well off to afford sufficient paper until at least the start of the 16th century in most places.
Is there any evidence that there might be an Ur-Voynich? In other words, is this a copy by an artist of an older work?
Nick,
I don’t want to bring your blog comments to a kind of forum, but as a point of fact: vellum production wasn’t a local affair as in the sense of being localised in a given town or village. There were networks for production and supply by parchminers and (later) stationers – which is why we find the Sultan of Tunis writing a letter to the king of Spain on paper that had been produced in Italy. The question of whether paper made by Christians was ritually acceptable was one submitted to judicial decision in Muslim north Africa.
And secondly, while i don’t for a moment believe that our manuscript was made any later than c.1440, just as a point of fact, forgers of medieval documents routinely made use of end-papers, or the wide borders of musical sheets and so on to create fake documents. It is well known, but rarer these days because the world wars caused such loss of older works that what remains has been pretty carefully accounted for. I don’t think there is anything by way of internal evidence which would support Rich’s storyline for the MS, but that doesn’t mean he’s mistaken about membrane’s being used or re-used a long time afterwards.
D.
mark: yes, there are plenty of clues/cues/hints that – if you take them all together – suggest that there was one or more original documents of which this is a (presumably enciphered) copy. I covered a fair few of these in “The Curse of the Voynich”. 🙂
Diane: I didn’t mean ‘localized’ in the narrow sense of one-tannery-per-town, but rather used the word to connote the many thousands (tens of thousands?) of vellum producers that were scattered across the map, as opposed to a single source. And yes, there were networks for production and supply of vellum, as there were networks for production and supply of numerous useful goods. But these were often unsystematic, ad hoc, and seasonal: any individual route could be blocked for political, geographic, geological, religious, or whim-based reasons.
And yes, Rich is indeed right that vellum ‘could’ easily be (though rarely ‘was’) used years later. What I actually objected to was his using Cipher Mysteries comments as an makeshift forum to try to take sideswipes at Rene.
oh, I shouldn’t worry. Who hasn’t been sniped at? Offhand, I can only think of one person whose comments on my own work weren’t a ‘snipe’ and I’ve read plenty aimed at you – on your own blog, what’s more, and you’ve been good enough to post them.
No, it just shows that Rene is one of us chaps who gets a share now and then. 🙂
Hi Nick, Rene: What I wrote was clearly not intended as a “pot shot”, but a clarification of the issue Rene brought up. I’m sorry you saw it this way… but if it is impossible to to make corrections without anyone taking offense, then we are “dead in the water”. I think I was very polite and respectful about it, in any case. But:
It is important, I feel, not to confuse these two, separate issues: A person who realizes, rightly, that old vellum was often used to create documents long after creation of the parchment, and points this out, is not necessarily trying to undermine the C14 method or results. In fact I know of no one who is trying to stretch the C14 results to encompass later theories… at least, I have not come across any of them.
Rich.
Not sure where else to let everyone know that my site is clean – despite the alarming message given on Rene’s website.
So here’s the authoritative word, verbatim:
” The warning you’re seeing appears when the browser isn’t able to verify the identity of a secure (https) site. Your site doesn’t have a virus and is perfectly safe.. You mentioned that the link that led to the warning prefixes your site address with http, instead of https, which is likely the cause ..
Check out this support documentation from FireFox:
https// support mozilla org/en-US/kb/connection-untrusted-error-message
cheers!
Consider (once again) the likelihood of the “Voynich” manuscript (vellum) being written upon by a ‘pilgrim’ who brought along with him his personal supply of vellum. He kept a diary of his origins (Sahagun Spain) his education at Compostela, and his date of arrival at “New Spain”,He also made notes about the ship’s navigator’s timed celestial readings and mileages.
Not long after his arrival in New Spain, he taught at the University de la Santa Cruz de Santiago (Mexico City). At least two of his students began writing and illustrating his dictation of his paper manuscript/codex which eventually was seized by the Inquisition.
The “Voynich vellum” (B-408) was also confiscated by the Inquisition — and was not returned to its owner. The paper codex (now known as the “Florentine Codex”) ended up in French National Library/Archive.
Today, one is able to compare the rough-draft “B-408 offerings of the “Voynich” with the rest of the story found in the Florentine Codex.
Fascinating! I’m still trying to find a common ‘weed’ which served as salad greens and/or medicinal herb: the ‘dent de lion’. The reason I think it should appear somewhere in Fray Sahagun’s written works is because the town of Sahagun was within the province of “Leon”. (Ponce de Leon being another familiar Spanish name) The common dandelion was so familiar to European pathways and roads as to be un-noticeable as an edible flowering plant.
I’m hoping Boenicke will be corresponding with the folks at the Library/Museum in France (which holds the bi-lingual and fully illustrated “Florentine Codex”. The Codex can be read in its entirety online.
🙂
The Hanseatic League delivered salted hides all along their trade routes. It would be a good idea to check the DNA and find out if the Voynich is made of goat, sheep or cow.
Gentlemen & Ladies:
I thought the original efforts of ‘decoding’ the mysterious handwritten script was the point of Nick’s presentation of the so-called “Voynich” manuscript.
So — if it has been proven not to be a code but rather a bilingual language, and all of its aspects (except provenance) have been explained and/or identified — why the ruckus?
Ever since the crucifixion of Jesus Christ, and the supposed resurrection of His shroud, and conflicting opinions and age-dating, there is still contrarian argumentation. The Pope apparently got fed up with the hysteria, and now only displays The Shroud on certain days of the year.
Seems to me that eventually that will be the maneuver which Boenicke will have to do with Boenicke manuscript 408 (aka informally as the “Voynich” manuscript),
Too bad Boenicke can’t/won’t get together with the current possessors of the “Florentine Manuscript” and compare the dialogues and illustrations of these two famous handwritten documents.
😉
bdid1dr,
If you could point me to an interlinear version, translating the Voynich text word for word, I would happily cease working on it.
Has the translation been published yet?
Diane: I have offered my translations of the Nahuatl/Spanish portion of B-408’s dialogues for scabiosa caucasica, yucca, dianthus, crocus, radichio, cilantro, aconite, arugula, lotus nelumbo, mandrake fruit juice portrayed in folios 82 through 86, mulberry, mushroom, oil palm, psyllium, salvia sclerae, squash and lufa sponge, turban ranunculus,. In addition to these translations, I have offered citations for most of the above items. I have also explained the folio which discusses raddichio and cilantro had mixed up the coloring of the two specimen leaves.
If by ‘interlinear’ you mean between the lines of Nahuatl hand writing (the “mysterious code”) and the Spanish Latin terminology, and finally my translation into English, I don’t think I have the strength to attempt a further translation into Greek, or Turk, or Dutch. Sorry. Oh yes, a brief excursion into Ancyranum Augustus Monumentum (nihil obstat?) which led me to Clusius and Ambassador Busbeq. Busbeq being the ‘courier’ who brought the “Voynich” manuscript, along with two hundred other scrolls, from Suleiman to the Austrian Emperor.
😉
So -just in posts to Nick’s blog?
Yes, just in Nick’s blog — except for a short visit with Rich SantaColoma on Elmar Vogt’s rather dismissive website. Am I remembering that you made a brief visit, also, at that time?
How about once bitten — twice shy? Works for me.
Big smile
🙂
Bdid1dr,
Until you give us a complete explanation of your theory it will remain as baffling as your rambling posts. And I don’t mean small snippets in posts, it will require proper documentation to fully evaluate.
bdid1dr
Speaking of “dismissive sites” – I sometimes muse over whether Voynich studies is just too tired to take in new information, or whether cipher-breakers are linear thinkers by nature, or whether perhaps the invention of ‘Google circles’ has created football-team atmosphere, where the good is taken from outside the circle, but nothing good from within it is shared outside. Or perhaps whether the introduction of media into the ‘Voynich world’ and the development of the “great wiki” sites shut down genuine discovery because – after all – one can hardly present a single standard history (wrong or not) while still admitting tht there is new, and/or contrary evidence still being turned up.
It was different to c.2000 or so.
To D. Vaughn:
I present no theories with my comments. I translate every word of the dialogues “mysterious cipher”, even the tedious qoqeedy or caes sequences which often are indicating degrees of effectiveness or value (very, very, very interesting, valuable, …..)
I document my sources. I don’t theorize. I refer folks to many of the most interesting documentary reading material and current findings of more recent authors, college professors, and researchers (such as Leon-Portilla, Fernandez-Armesto, Bernal Diaz, Charles Mann, William Gates, Fermin Herrera, Caroline Finkel, Edward Seymour Forster, Mike Dash, Donald P. McCrory, Melvina McKendrick, Maria Antonia Garces…….and several medieval map-makers.. I don’t stop with just the offerings of various museums or universities. Maps/Atlases fascinate me; so I have several bound issues of maps AND a globe manufactured in the 1930s (Replogle).
beady-eyed wonder-er 🙂
The Catalan Map, in particular (Cresques Abraham) is full of fascinating discussion with each portrayal of the inhabitants and rulers of each domain being illustrated.
B-408 is a combination of a travel diary, the author’s teaching efforts, and the efforts of two native scribes who translated his Latin/Espanol into Nahuatl. I refer you to the “Florentine Codex” if you would like to be able to fully translate the contents of Boenicke Manuscript 408 – aka:
Voynich. Voynich being the name of the person who went to Frascati/Rome in the 1920’s to buy some very old manuscripts from a derelict ‘library cum storage’ building.
Maybe Nick can tell you more about their Frascati conference.
Yes, I have visited every single folio of Boenicke’s marvelous folio-by-folio presentation of B-408’s contents — I just have had to limit my downloads to my home computer and printer. So, many of my translations are done by me first hand-writing the dialogue/commentary which appears in each folio. I then allow two more lines for first identifying each “Voynich” alpha-character for the sound/syllable it is presenting. I then translate the ‘Nahuatl/Spanish’ dialogue into English (for the benefit of Nick’s correspondents; many of whom speak Deutch/Dutch, German, Latin, Spanish, Portuguese, Turkish, Greek, Algerian, Cypriot, Afrikaans……
🙂
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Well having looked over the Florentine codex a number of years ago I did not see much by way of related imagery. Another point I thought was clear is that I referred to what you have put together as a theory rather than calling it a hypothesis as you do claim to have evidence. I am just not seeing the evidence, such as use of the script elsewhere which if the writers used it in the manner you describe should make it easy to find. My final point is simply a question. What makes your solution any different than any of the other solutions?
To D. Vaughn: Easy! I refer you to an on-line reading facilitator for manuscripts of any age, including the “Florentine Codex” which was written by Fray Sahagun and two of his students (in which we call, today, Mexico City)..
There you will find discussion for every illustration in both the so-called “Voynich” manuscript (which began as Sahagun’s diary and familial origins) and the Florentine Codex (which appeared, post-Inquisition in French National Library holdings– after being lodged in several bishops’ private manuscript holdings).
I gave up on Anderson and Dibble long ago. I also shut away D’Imperio’s entirely useless booklet. I can only ask you to compare Fray Sahagun’s “Psalmodia” and “Florentine Codex” with the handwriting and artwork of his assistants Badiano and De la Cruz (who each became well-known for their medical/herbal/botanical illustrated discussions)
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Bd
Could you give us translation of folio 19v: that is, of the picture, the text or both? If the text, would you mind making the translation interlinear, so that the linguists can work out correspondences between Voynich glyphs and those in the language you believe the text has been written in? I’m sure that would be a great help in understanding your take on the manuscript.
Thank you.
Ooops, Diane! I got diverted and overwhelmed by the enormous forest fire,78 thousand acres, which was finally put out/drenched just a half-mile from my home.
Since then (and I am still waiting) my land-line telephone service (AT&T) is not yet repaired. I am still dependent on the landline for renewing my medications. Fortunately we have satellite service for computer and internet service.
So, Diane and D. Vaughn: Can you, with Nick’s permission, post photographs of the item in question?
@D. Vaughn: Every item, which appears in the “Voynich” , which I have offered a translation, involved a three-step process:
First step was downloading from Boenicke an 8″ x 11″ photograph of the folio and its hand-written dialogues.
I then translated the first line (usually beginning with the large “P” script) which was the Nahuatl terminology for whatever specimen was to be discussed. Most of the discussion alluded to the pictorial element (fruit, insect, bird,snake, wildcat, tree, vegetables, flowers/herbs…..AND their practical uses.
Once I had identified the item being displayed, I was able to translate the Nahuatl terminology, and write the entire discussion (so-called Voynich ‘cipher/code) which actually was “Spanish/Latin”.
So far, I have translated 30 folios (not all are botanical). I have translated what I named “The Nine Rosettes”. I have also translated Ambassador Busbecq’s reference to “Res Divi Ancyranum Ankara (written on the last page of the so-called “Voynich” manuscript) when he was returning to Vienna with some 200 manuscripts. That last folio page has a sketch of either a fat-tail sheep or a goat.
I have discussed all of the above items at least three times, here, on Nick’s various discussions/blog pages. With my second attempt to display the translations inter-linear-wise, I gave up. Neither Nick, Rene, Sir Hubert, nor Diane indicated any interest in my translations, nor Busbecq’s return to Europe with some 200 very old manuscripts (besides the exotic animals which ended up in Rudolph II’s ‘back yard’ so to speak).
beady-eyed wonder-er (Whose mind is beginning to enter into “Alzheimer’s” territory.)