From: reeds@research.att.com
Message-Id: <199602262229.OAA12522@rand.org>
Received: from rice by ns; Mon Feb 26 17:26:35 EST 1996
Date: Mon, 26 Feb 96 17:26 EST
To: <@proxy.research.att.com:voynich@rand.org>
Subject: Voynich stuff (long)
[..]
There are 7 stars in a group, the label says 8OARO, the singleton
star has label 8SOE 8A9 (or maybe there is no space) and the
umbilicus joining the 7 star group to the hub is OAESCOE, according
to Petersen. The star in the middle of Pisces is OPOEAE, it seems.
(This in Currier.)
Jim Reeds
Date: Tue, 27 Feb 96 11:50:33 EWT
From: Rene Zandbergen <RZANDBER@VMPROFS.ESOC.ESA.DE>
Subject: Re: Voynich stuff (long) (This is not long)
To: Voynich list <voynich@RAND.ORG>
In reply to Adams Douglas:
Aldebaran is indeed the logical near bright star. It is certain that
both the Pleiades and Aldebaran were clearly visible from Central
Europe during the middle ages. Aldebaran being the brightest star of
Taurus, it might well be represented in the VMs some place or other.
Of course, it might not be called Aldebaran (see also D'Imperio).
Your note probably was sent before you could read Jim's. There is
already a fully-consistent page numbering or counting scheme. In fact
there are two and they are fully consistent with each other. Let's
use these. They are:
1) Folio numbering, the preferred 'name' of each 'page'. The one
with the Pleiades is f68v3 (according to D'Imperio, did not check)
By the way: f68v3 also contains the purported Andromeda nebula.
Any of the astronomers with a copy of this page care to comment?
(Does it also contain the satellite galaxies? :-) :-) )
2) Page numbering, after father Petersen. f68v3 is page 128
All details are in file 'foliation' at rand.org and in Jim's Web
pages.
Cheers, Rene
From: reeds@research.att.com[SMTP:reeds@research.att.com]
Sent: Sunday, December 10, 1995 16:10 PM
To: "@proxy.research.att.com":voynich@rand.org
Subject: Voynich observations
I just spent a couple of hours with my friend Sergio Toresella, an
expert on manuscript herbals visiting this country from Italy.
He has been making a tour of American libraries and while at the
Beinecke spent a little time with the VMS. He knows about my interest,
and about our group. Here is a sketch of some of his comments
about the VMS:
The VMS is, with certainty, authentic; not a fake. It was manufactured
in the period 1450-1460. It was in France for a while: the month names
on the zodiac diagrams are in French in a French handwriting. The book
itself comes from Italy; the mysterious writing is done in a round
humanistic style found only in Italy in the second half of the 1400's.
There are similarities between the organization of the VMS (including
the balneological section!) and that of other Italian herbals of the 1400s.
(He has a lot more to say on this account.) The author of the VMS was a
madman, obsessed by sex.
He plans to write up his observations in a paper, possibly with help from
me.
Jim Reeds
From: reeds@research.att.com
Message-Id: <199512110337.TAA06152@rand.org>
Received: from rice by ns; Sun Dec 10 22:33:42 EST 1995
Date: Sun, 10 Dec 95 22:33 EST
To: "@proxy.research.att.com":voynich@rand.org
Subject: Voynich observations
Chuck Lee asks for the logic behind Toresella's conclusion that the VMS
was
> written by a madman, obsessed by sex.
Clearly this is not based on his expert knowledge of manuscript herbals,
but instead on his common sense. He mentioned similarities with exhibits
he has seen in the Lombroso collection in Turin of the obsessive artistic
and literary products of the schizophrenic, which characteristically
display the outward form of communication or representation, often of
some complex private system, but which on closer analysis show meaningless
content, scribbled detail, repetitious drivel, what have you. I think this
is the same conclusion expressed in Henry Casson's post earlier today.
And it was shared by Martin Joos, a distinguished linguist and cryptanalyst
member of the First Study Group.
I think it is a very tenable hypothesis. To evaluate it one would want
to know more about obsessive writing. I do not know how one would actually
prove it.
(Maybe "obsessed by naked women" would be more precise than "obsessed by
sex." The basis here is simply the very large number of unclothed female
figures. Although not at all unknown in 15th century art, unclothed female
figures were not common, certainly not in such profusion.)
I hesitate to spell out more detail without his permission. (My earlier
letter had his OK.) He returns to Italy in a few days; then we will trade
letters. Email does not work well for him yet; when it does I am sure he
will join this group and take care of defending his own conclusions.
Ciao!
Jim Reeds
Date: Mon, 8 Jan 1996 17:52:24 -0600 (CST)
From: "Clyde A. Winters" <cwinter@orion.it.luc.edu>
To: voynich@rand.org
Subject: Voynich List
Message-ID: <Pine.A32.3.91.960108174219.71521D-100000@orion.it.luc.edu>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII
Tamana Remarks: The Magyar language had an ancient Runic writing with 38
signs being identical with the Etruscan Runic writing in 43% and with
Phoenician in 47%!.This writing is also analogous to writing used in Africa
and India. This writing was exterminated by the Christian priests in XI. c.
Then there are 6000 Toponyms+Structures in the Carpathian Basin IDENTICAL
PAIR-STRUCTURES thereof can be seen in 152 countries-regions of five
continents (TA-MANA: in 25). Half of these 600 Toponyms+Structures
consisting 0f 3-4-5- name-elements are Magyar family names also! Then
remeember-in the Movie "Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) the
Magyar Pentatonic Melody+Structure-illustrated by Kodaly, Zoltan --was
used as a communication-vehicle between earthlings and the ETs!
Dr. Vamos-Toth Bator
1700 Makiki
Honolulu, HI. 96822
Date: Tue, 06 Feb 96 11:37:18 EWT
From: Rene Zandbergen <RZANDBER@VMPROFS.ESOC.ESA.DE>
Subject: About R.Firths notes on Vowels & Consonants
To: Voynich list <voynich@RAND.ORG>
Dear all,
(re)reading Robert Firth's notes prompted a lot of old and new
ideas, and I can definitely recommend rereading them.
Anyway, one thing that seems to take a relatively central place
is the vowel/consonant recognition, and the fact that although
it does work (cf. Jacques and Michael's work) it does not work
perfectly. Of course, what one calls pronounceable, someone else
might not. I would have a hard time with Polish, for example.
The first thought was: if there are too many vowels, they have
just been assigned wrong. The most frequent three characters
are all vowels, but this is true for english also (cf Note 17).
In Voynichese, however, these account for 39% of all text (28%
in English).
One could come up with various explanations:
1) The artificial language theory, whereby the text does not
have to be pronounceable. (cf. D'Imperio's examples)
2) Certain symbols can be both V or C: such as U/V in Latin,
I/J/Y in many languages U/W in Arabic
3) Shorthand: certain characters are consistently dropped.
It is clear that there is nothing simple about this.
I'd like to present a few features of my mother language (Dutch)
that may be interesting in this respect (probably already known
to the many linguists on this list) (and since I'm not a linguist
some of my terminology is wrong).
- Short and long vowels: long vowels are made by duplication of
short ones. a -> aa, e -> ee, i->ie (no typo), o->oo, u->uu
Unfortunately for those who are learning the Dutch spelling,
double vowels are never written at the end of a syllable,
except for 'ie' and sometimes 'ee' (also not true in old
spelling)
- Many diphthongs (sp?) exist:
au, ou (same sound), ei, ij (same sound), eu, oe, ui
In old spelling (and still in family names) these were more
exotic, e.g. uij or uy for ui, oi for oo, ae for aa, ue for uu
- And longer ones:
aai, oei, ooi, ieu(w), eeu(w) (the w always follows those combinations)
I probably forgot a few.
Now for some nice examples:
- A word with 7 consecutive vowels:
koeieuier (cow's udder)
- A word with 4 consecutive identical vowels:
zeeeend (sea-duck) (there should be a trema on the third e)
- A word with 8 consecutive consonants:
angstschreeuw (cry of fear)
- A sentence with the same word repeated 6 times:
"Als achter vliegen vliegen vliegen, vliegen vliegen vliegen
achterna" (something about flies flying behind flies.
Inevitably, a bit contrived)
- And it is possible to stack verbs (auxiliary or not) almost
without limit. I once saw an example with 8 or 9 consecutive
infinitives, only a bit contrived :-) It meant something like
I would have like to see you stay calm and sit reading while ...
I don't know how to write that properly in English :-)
So do I think the VMS in in Dutch? *NO*
What's more, I am not sure what Dutch was like in 1350-1450
To get back to the original theme: with 36 characters, there should
be enough space for lots of consonants. I do like the idea that
the gallows letters could be capitals (beginning of paragraphs),
in which case we lose about 6 of them. And it makes more difficult
the case where they occur in the middle of words (or is that only
after the 'definite article' 4o- ?)
Maybe they're numerals, where the cXXt are 1000 times XX?
Enough senseless speculation.
I'll keep other ideas related to some of the other Notes to
another mail.
Cheers, Rene Zandbergen
Date: Tue, 13 Feb 96 13:53:35 EWT
From: Rene Zandbergen <RZANDBER@VMPROFS.ESOC.ESA.DE>
Subject: About some of Gabriel's recent comments
To: Voynich list <voynich@RAND.ORG>
In reply to Gabriel's note:
I tend to agree about the mermaid (looking at the low-res B/W GIF
at rand.org). Whether she is eaten by a fish, or standing in some kind
of piping I cannot distinguish though. With a bit more imagination
I even see a face in what would be the tail of the fish. As if the
'fish' is like a shadow of the woman.
Does anybody know what colour the 'pool' is? If it meant to be water
(most likely) or blood?
When you mention 4OD- words, I guess you are using FSG notation,
i.e. 40F- in Currier. Mike Roe once posted an interesting 'word'
(in Currier):
+-O--+ +-R-+
O --+ +--+ +--+ +----+
! +-P-+ ! +-SO-+ +-E-+ !
4O --+--+ +--+ !
! +-F-+ ! +-C--+ !
SO --+ ! ! ! !
! +-CC-+ !
! ! ! +-9--+ !
+--+-SC-+--+ +---+-------
! | ! +-89-+ !
! +-S--+ !
! ! ! !
! +-Z--+ !
! | ! !
! +----+ !
! !
+ +-AE-+ !
! ! ! !
+ +-AJ-+ !
! ! ! !
+--+-AM-+-----------+
! !
+-AN-+
! !
+-AR-+
Two additions of mine: -AR- at the bottom, and -89- near the
end. The latter was probably left out deliberately by Mike
because it is the only switch that introduces a few non-existent
words (for initial SO-). I put it in
because it introduces a *LARGE* number of existing words, which are
only found on pages in language B.
Terminal -89 does occur in A as well, but usually as stand-alone
(spurious spaces?) or preceded by O (i.e. terminal -O89).
Another interesting bit is that the path through -SO- near the
top produces words that are in A pages only, with very few
exceptions (which could be typos or A/B cross-references or whatever).
BTW: another addition to the path above would be to omit the
two initial groups. Just about everything right of F/P is a
valid word as well.
I wonder how many % of the VMS is covered by the above 'word'.
I agree on the need for the highest possible accuracy in the
transcriptions. As soon as my Yale copy arrives (ordered finally) I
will try to contribute in this area as well. I am especially
interested in the recipes section, for which the current
transcriptions are still rather weak. From what I have, I have
seen some 'seasonal' behaviour in some statistics (following the
idea that each paragraph is valid for a day of the year).
I am sure all these interesting leads have been followed before!!
Cheers for now, Rene