Talk:Voynich manuscript

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telescope and microscope drawings

A few claim that the fact that some of the drawings appear to have required a microscope and others a telescope, long before either were invented, mandates the involvement of extraterrestrials. Others see these factors as further cause for suspicion regarding the manuscript's authenticity.

The telescope is from 1608, the microscope from 1609. When is the manuscript presumedly dated to be "long before" the invention.

Voynichese adds nothing to article

sometimes dubbed "Voynichese" I deleted this: since the manuscript hasn't been deciphered, this adds no information. I added some detail from the very carefully presented Voynich Ms site, however. I removed the link to the rector at Prague, who won't ever have his own entry at Wikipedia. "of Cronland" is part of his name. Wetman 22:59, 7 Feb 2004 (UTC)

rewrote, but it's still too long

I did a substantial rewrite of this page. There are still many gaps, and I will try to fill some of them over the next few weeks, as time permits. Please contribute!

BTW, the page is now rather long, perhaps too long. The text surely can be shortened (sorry, I can't help it...), but perhaps the longer sections could be split off? What would be the proper naming convention -- "history (Voynich Manuscript)"? "Voynich Manuscript history"? "history of the Voynich Manuscript"? Jorge Stolfi 05:54, 9 Mar 2004 (UTC)

I don't think the page is too long; it's an interesting subject.

Also, I restored the full version of the image as opposed to the framed image; the compression process did great violence to that black and white image, and now there's a much larger ToC that leaves whitespace on the page into which the image can fit. Smerdis of Tlön 15:03, 9 Mar 2004 (UTC)

John Dee secret agent of QEI & Necromincon connection (alleged)

Actually, I'm surprised that two aspects of this topic have been overlooked:

1. IIRC, the connection with John Dee implies that he obtained/created the manuscript while serving as a secret agent for Queen Elizabeth. (I'd add this informaiton, but I no longer have the book that suggests this possiblity, & I can't say much more about this possibility than what I've just written.)

2. Beginning with Colin Wilson, who mentions the Voynich Manuscript in his short story "The Return of the Lloigor", it has appeared in a number of Cthulhu Mythos stories as a possible copy of the Necronomicon. -- llywrch 19:47, 11 Mar 2004 (UTC)

several addtnl points to add

Here are some topics that should be added to the "Theories and Speculation/Contents and Purpose" section:

Astronomy. René Zandbergen's suggestions about the Zodiac diagrams being astronomical tables (ephemeris,star rises, etc.); Robert Firth's proposed identification of the classical planets.
Bogus illustrations. Theory that illustrations are only a decoy for sensitive text, e.g. Stojko's proposed decipherment.
Spa catalog. Example of the Puteolans, organ-shaped tubs as metaphors for relevant illness, Wenceslau's bath-bible, etc.
Anatomy. Biological section could be an anatomical treatise, disguised as a spa catalog.
Cathar suicide rituals (and also Elizabeth Batory?). (Should we mention Brumbaugh's cucumber juice etc. bit? ewww!...)
Shennong Bencao as the contents of the recipes section.

Any volunteers? Jorge Stolfi 05:46, 16 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Well, if someone were to flesh out those ideas a little more, we could the Theories about Contents and Purpose and break that off into a seperate article, which would reduce the size of this one and allow for a more detailed explanation of the others. --Mitsukai 01:43, 4 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Comments from sucessfull nomination at Featured article candidates

I and several others have worked on this one: it's been recently overhauled by Jorge Stolfi, and it strikes me that it's shaping up nicely. Smerdis of Tlön 17:01, 10 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Second. I just read it, it's interesting and well-written. Dpbsmith 13:20, 15 Mar 2004 (UTC)
Second, My only difficulty is a repeated avoidance of 'has yet found' in favor of 'couldn't find', as for example in the discussion of Eastern language possibilites. A grammatical issue, really. ww 18:35, 15 Mar 2004 (UTC)
I'll support this one. It kept me interested right up till the end. Gentgeen 09:49, 16 Mar 2004 (UTC)
Second, a great article. Quoth 04:31, 20 Mar 2004 (UTC)
Support, a great read. Fascinating. fabiform | talk 23:53, 20 Mar 2004 (UTC)
Support, an intrigueing article. --Smári McCarthy 15:32, 21 Mar 2004 (UTC)
Support enthusiastically. Fredrik 17:00, 21 Mar 2004 (UTC)
Support. Great article. Jacob1207 20:09, 21 Mar 2004 (UTC)
Support. Nice. jengod 00:17, Mar 25, 2004 (UTC)
Added to Featured articles. Gentgeen 00:52, 25 Mar 2004 (UTC)

end of moved comments

Wow! Thanks... Jorge Stolfi 02:16, 25 Mar 2004 (UTC)

'skryer' = odd spelling

This word skryer seems to be introduced as a kind of specialized term, but it looks like a variant spelling of "scryer" (or "scrier"), from the ordinary word "to scry" [1] (http://www.bartleby.com/61/56/S0175600.html). Is this the case, or is this an unrelated, deceptively similar term? —Muke Tever 20:46, 27 May 2004 (UTC)

I learned the word from John Dee's diaries; now I am no longer sure whether he spelled it "skryer", or whether it was my mistake. Anyway, thanks for the correction.
Jorge Stolfi 09:30, 31 May 2004 (UTC)

Dr. Jones!

Let he who illuminated this, illuminate me. mnemonic 05:55, 2004 Jun 20 (UTC)

redundant glyphs

The article in its present form states that some glyphs only appear at the beginning, middle, or end of a "word". Could it be that some letters in the VM script are written a certain way depending on location in a word, as in Arabic script? Maybe some analysis could reveal what written glyphs represent the same "letter"?

In many mediaeval scripts the "letters" look different depending on the position in the word (for example the letter "s" in the "gothic textura" script.

"sequences where the same common word appears three times in a row occur (as if an English text contained the string and and and)"

Or "very very very"?

Microscopes and telescopes

> an irregularly shaped object with four curved arms, ... on close inspection, > the central part of the "galaxy" looks rather like a pool of water.

I've come across a similar description for a "pheasant tail" comet with a reference to a Chinese silk with comet images used for divination.

what's ductus?

Could someone please explain what's a "ductus", as in the sentence

The ductus of the script flows smoothly, as if the scribe understood what he was writing when it was written; the manuscript does not give the impression that each character had to be calculated before being put on the page.

I didn't understand what this sentence meant or its significance. (BTW, overall, this article is great!)

Zashaw 00:30, 21 Jun 2004 (UTC)

I didn't know either. After a bit of hunting, I came across this explanation:

"The ductus of a letter is the order in which its constituent elements are drawn."

I used that to insert an explanation in to the text.--Danny Rathjens 02:33, 2004 Jun 21 (UTC)

"Ductus" is used generally in paleography to describe the appearance, flow, degree of cursiveness, and "fluency" of a script. If you're lettering an illuminated manuscript, your lettering will be much more careful than if you are copying out a text for personal use. Likewise, if you are calculating a secret code with a polyalphabetic cypher, and writing down groups like FHEFH TRYEN DHRPV and so forth, your script will be much less fluent than when writing in the clear in your native language. Smerdis of Tlön 16:16, 21 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Why abbreviated VMs?

I don't understand the connection between the name and the abbreviation used throughout the article. Shouldn't it simply be 'VM' rather than 'VMs'? I've always understood that adding an s at the end is to indicate plurality. e.g. "I always forget my PINs." to indicate more than one PIN. Isn't the 'Voynich Manuscript' singular?--Danny Rathjens 02:40, 2004 Jun 21 (UTC)

It is singular, but (I presume) it's based on "ms", a common abbreviation for manuscript: hence "VMs" for Voynich. It does look like a typo, though. — Matt 02:48, 21 Jun 2004 (UTC)

I can venture a guess, though I more or less think there's no need for abbreviation here and the ought to be spelled out. MS is the abbreviation for manuscript (but both letters should be capitalized, not only the M.) Properly, it should be VMS or Voynich MS: I think it'd be better just to find-and-replace VMs with Voynich manuscript. -- Nunh-huh 02:52, 21 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Actually, I believe ms for manuscript is properly not capitalized; depending, of course, on the society in which one asks. I rarely see it capitalized in publishing. Vms looks odd; VMs makes sense to me. -- Mariko

The Chicago Manual of Style uses "MS": others may or may not use "ms". It makes good sense to avoid "Ms" to avoid confusion with the female equivalent of "Mr". - Nunh-huh 18:50, 21 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Flemish account of Carthar rites?

I remember listening to a lecture on the manuscript where the speaker asserted that it was a Flemish monograph on the Cathari rites. The implication was that it was a very obscure dialect with its own pre-roman alphabet. When I find more information about this, and assuming it's even remotely credible, I'll add mention of it. Sure sounded reasonable at the time... - Clarknova 18:06, 1 Jul 2004 (UTC)

My memory suggests that Flemish has had two writing systems. One was in Roman times and pre-dated the Cathars by quite a bit. The other (modulo handwriting differences) was the usual Latin alphabet. Mere substitution of another alphabet is not effective in preventing cryptanalysis and has been known to the informed since ca 1000CE. See History of Cryptography. Use of a dialect of some known language -- however obscure -- should make little cryptanalytic difference as statistical cryptanalytic techniques (available since ca WWI) are not impeded (see Index of coincidence.

If the document was written post 1400 as believed from image style and such , than the survival of information about the Cathars is hard to credit, given the entire lack of direct information about them from any other known source. That Crusade was incredibly brutal and quite effective. Perhaps the information is not authentic if it is about the Cathars? In any case, this does not seem plausible to me. I think I would suggest taht you not get your hopes up too far. ww 19:15, 1 Jul 2004 (UTC)

about the new images

first:

1- for some reason I can't make the images smaller. can somebody help me here?

2- I am ot sure about the copyright issue here. I simply downloaded those images from another web site. But still this things is centuries old! the discussionabout copyright takes place in the

Wikipedia:Reference_desk#copyright_of_a_object_in_a_image_x_copyright_of_the_image_of_an_object

--Zero00 00:19, 9 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Kelley, Enochian, Cardan grille

The "hoax" section says that Kelley "apparently" used a Cardan grille in his construction of Enochian. Any evidence for this? It would seem odd given the nature of Enochian. P.Riis 06:40, 18 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Just an additional note: I asked this question (in a bit more detail) on Talk:Edward Kelley--the same assertion is made there. I think it's a conflation of two different things Graham Rugg has asserted. P. Riis 02:33, 12 Oct 2004 (UTC)

OK, I'm removing the reference to the use of a Cardan grille in Enochian. P. Riis 18:38, 16 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Micrography

Fairly sure I've seen a theory that the script is in fact composed of tiny markings visible under magnification and forming a second level of script. Think that theory was debunked on the basis that the second script was in fact an artifact resulting from cracking of the aging velum. Add this with a Wikipedia link to micrography?

Rohonczi Codex is looking much like the VMS (opinion by Mart Vabar)

Rohonczi Codex was found in Hungary some decades before the VMS, afaik. It is written on paper from mid-XVI th c. (so, the VMS could be older than it). It has his own Wikipedia entry, too. In many ways it is similar to the VMS ... but there are not (yet?) of crypto folklore around it. IMHO, this similarity is more than superficial.

I hope it is not against Wiki netiquette, if I give quite a lot of links to the illumina of this treasure (to compare them with VMS, which could be looked at the website of Beinecke of course ... and if it is against the netiquette here, please just delete this part):

i agree. - listen to codex rochonchi - http://www.intellact.com/72.wav - the melody is embended in. There are also translated pages.

Manuscript or manuscript?

The page has been renamed from "Voynich Manuscript" to "Voynich manuscript". Since that is the name of this specific manuscript, not of a general class of manuscripts, I would think that the more correct form is the capitalized one, as in "White Mountain", "Domesday Book", etc. I vote to undo the move... Jorge Stolfi 04:36, 9 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I agree. "Voynich Manuscript" is a proper noun. PRIIS 20:35, 13 Nov 2004 (UTC)

What's the most common style used in the literature on the VM? — Matt 00:02, 28 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Seems to be fairly evenly split. Scientific American, inexplicably, uses V. m. There's actually a subtle semantic distinction, whether "manuscript" is being used as a common noun or as part of a proper noun. Seems to me that here it's being used here as part of a proper noun (as, for example "Mississippi River"--even the most hardcore "down stylist" would never write "Mississippi river"). PRIIS 04:33, 28 Nov 2004 (UTC)

"Sphynx" Quote

Baresch apparently was just as puzzled as we are today about this "Sphynx" that had been 
"taking up space uselessly in his library" for many years.

Where is this quote from?--Iustinus 09:28, 27 Nov 2004 (UTC)

It's from a letter from Baresch to Athanasius Kircher, transcribed here (http://www.geocities.com/voynichms/letters.html). PRIIS 03:44, 28 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Thanks! That's exactly what I wanted. --68.79.55.15 04:22, 28 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Letters with Positional Variants

Also, the distribution of letters within the word is rather peculiar: some characters only occur 
at the beginning of a word, some only at the end, and some always in the middle section – 
an arrangement found in Arabic, but not in the Roman, Greek or Cyrillic alphabets.

Mostly true, but don't forget about s vs ∫ in the Roman alphabet (of the time). Greek at the time had many more, of which one alternation is still in use: σ vs ς. --Iustinus

Amazing, I found a link about "Kokturk runes", which demonstrates the different use of glyphs in the words beginning and end.

You see, if the VMS is written in some kind of Tataric, Turcic dialect, then the "Kokturk" (or "old Turcic", used in large areas of Eurasia) runes are among the top three candidates for "mystery glyphs" (or letters, which are probably not descending from Italian "humanist hand"). Mart Vabar

Dear Mart thanks for some interesting posts. However, this page is for discussing the article, not the place to share new research about the VMs. I'd recommend that you participate in the Voynich MS mailing list (http://www.voynich.net/) if you'd like to discuss your own research-- it's very active, and there are people there who have been studying the manuscript for years, and you're sure to get useful feedback on your ideas. PRiis 04:05, 4 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Rudolph II

The earliest confirmed owner of the manuscript was a certain Georg Baresch, an obscure alchemist who lived in Prague in the early 17th century.

What about the Holy Roman Emperor Rudolph II? See e.g. [2] (http://www.necfiles.org/voynich.htm) --Susurrus 12:46, 1 Feb 2005 (UTC)

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