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From: Z-Mail (4.0.1 13Jan97)
Date: Mon Jan  1 13:07:29 2001
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From jim@mail.rand.org  Thu Jun  1 15:05:49 2000
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Date: Thu, 1 Jun 2000 16:02:10 -0300 (EST)
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From: Jorge Stolfi <stolfi@ic.unicamp.br>
To: voynich@rand.org
Subject: Re: The letters <p> and <f>, again
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[Oops, I had sent this reply to Rene only instead of the whole list. Sorry...]

    > [Karl Kluge:] D'Imperio points to f57r where there is a repeated
    > sequence of characters, except in one sequence V occurs for B.
    > On that basis, she suggests that perhaps B = V (and therefore,
    > possibly F = P) (i.e., p = f and k = t rather than p = t and f =
    > k).

Yes, you will find a formatted copy of that sequence in 
http://www.dcc.unicamp.br/~stolfi/voynich/Notes/034/Note-034.html
Here it is :

      | 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17
    - + -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --
    1 | o  l  j  r  v  x  k  m  f  &L t  r  &H &G y  &I &Y
    2 | o  l  d  r  v  x  k  m  f  &L t  r  &H &G y  c  &Y
    3 | o  l  d  r  v  x  k  m  p  &L t  r  &H &G y  c  &Y
    4 | o  l  d  r  v  x  k  m  p  &L t  r  &H &G y  c  &Y 
    - + -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --

See that page for the meaning of &L, &H, &G, &I, &Y.
Here it is converted to Currier (except for the weirdos):

      | 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17
    - + -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --
    1 | O  E  7  R  v  x  F  J  V  &L P  R  &H &G 9  &I &Y
    2 | O  E  8  R  v  x  F  J  V  &L P  R  &H &G 9  c  &Y
    3 | O  E  8  R  v  x  F  J  B  &L P  R  &H &G 9  c  &Y
    4 | O  E  8  R  v  x  F  J  B  &L P  R  &H &G 9  c  &Y 
    - + -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --


Indeed the occurrence of <f> and <p> in homologous positions (column
09) could mean that they are equivalent. But, in that case, then we
should also conclude that <r> = <s> --- which is not impossible, but
very unlikely. On the other hand, the consistent use of <k> on column
07 and <t> on column 12 should also be taken as proof that these two
letters are distinct.

However, position 09 may be a special one. If the period boundaries
are indeed between positions 17 and 01 -- as suggested by the break at
10:30 and the <dairar> label -- then position 09 is precisely the
center of the period. Or, if the &L weirdo (which looks a lot like the
number "17" in old German digits) marks one end of the period, then
the other end would be either column 11 or column 09. Note also that
we have <f> in two consecutive periods, and <p> in the other two. 
So perhaps <f> and <p> are indeed distinct, and the switch is
a meaningful part of the pattern.

In any case the, letters on that ring (and some of those on other
rings, too) seem to be symbols -- "keys" of some sort -- rather than
letters with phonetic value. So their possible equivalence *as keys*
may not have much relevance for other text. E.g. the English letters
"A" and "a" are phonetically equivalent, but are distinct symbols in
math. Conversely "u" and "v" are phonetically distinct, but 
can be interchanged in Latin words or Roman numerals.

Besides, the handwriting on this page seems to be uglier than average;
the two <f>s in particular look quite different from each other, and
several of the symbols don't occur anywhere else. So perhaps *all* 17
symbols were meant to be weirdos, distinct from ordeinary letters; and
what we see is the result of an ignorant scribe interpreting some of
those weirdos as variants of the ordinary letters which he had
previously learned to copy.

    > [Rene:] Stolfi's table shows that one can usually exchange <k>
    > for <t> (or v.v.) and come up with a valid Voynich word.
    
Note that the table did not list complete words, but only word
fragments.

Indeed, swapping <k> for <t> in a whole word generally produces
another valid word.  Ditto for swapping <p> with <f>.  *But these
swaps change the word frequencies substantially*, and there 
doesn't seem to be a clear pattern.   

So I would rather believe that <k> and <t> are "phonetically" similar,
but semantically distinct (like "t" and "d" in Spanish or Italian,
say), and that the vocabulary is so "dense" that almost any
phonetically valid string is a common word.

    > This is also true for the pair <f> and <p>. At the same time, it
    > shows that you cannot exchange {<k> or <t>} for {<f> or <p>}
    > (although there may be exceptions).

True, but the point is that the most obvious differences betwen <k/t>
and <p/f> seem to disappear if we replace *some* of the <p>/<f> by
<pe>/<fe>, some <cfh>/<cph> by <cphe>/<cfhe>, and omit the ligatures
in some of the <ch> that follow those letters.

    > The appearance of <f> and <p> at top lines of paragraphs only
    > (virtually), should remind us of the gallows in the letter shown
    > in Capelli, where these are purely ornamental additions to
    > existing letters at the top and bottom lines only.
    
Surely <k> and <t> are not ornamental; their distribution is too 
consistent for that.

    > Do we get valid Voynich words if the f's and p's are simply
    > removed?
    
Good question.

Here is a tentative answer. Below are the words with <p>/<f> gallows,
where both variants together have at least 5 occurrences in the book,
for which omitting the gallows produces a word with less than 5
occurrences. (The first line says that the words <qotchdy>, <qokchdy>
<qopchdy> and <qofchdy> occur 19, 44, 15, and 1 times, respectively, 
while <qochdy> does not occur at all.)

         gallows letter
      ---------------------
        t   k    p   f    -  rest of word
      --- ---  --- ---  ---  -------------
       19  44   15   1    0  qo-chdy
       21  38   30   8    2  qo-chedy
       21  16   16   5    1  o-chdy
      123 137    8   3    2  o-al
       61  65    9   1    2  qo-chy
       75 138    9   1    2  chc-hy


And here are those where the <p> and <f> variants occur 
at least 5 times, and the gallows-less variant occurs
more than 10 times:

         gallows letter
      ---------------------
        t   k    p   f    -  rest of word
      --- ---  --- ---  ---  -------------
      128 120   10   3   13  o-ar
      142 202   13   4   23  o-aiin
       10   7    4   2   15  y-chey
        3   0   12   0   31  -chedar
        9  10    4   2   24  qo-
        1   5    4   4   35  ol-chedy
       73 252    4   1   23  qo-aiin
        0   1    7   0   35  -olchedy
        0   0    7   1   44  -olaiin
       12   3    8   0   44  c-haiin
        3   0    6   1   41  -chodaiin
      110  40   11   6  148  c-hy
       15  20   10   4  136  -chdy
        6   4    6   2   83  -cheody
        5   6    3   2   63  -cho
        8   3    6   1   86  -chody
       29  20   33  10  496  -chedy
       15   1    3   2   68  c-har
        6   6   12   1  165  -cheol
        0  13    6   2  117  l-chedy
       19  20   12   2  199  -chor
        3   4    5   0   92  -cheor
       23  28    3   4  148  -chy
        6   6    4   4  167  -cheey
       57  22   16   3  384  c-hol
       47  36   22   3  518  -ol
       20  20   10   2  334  -chey
       47  10    6   0  199  c-hor
       14  20    9   3  384  -chol
       53  29    6   4  334  c-hey
       41  47    5   4  336  -ar
       20  21    7   1  335  -or
       42  62    7   0  431  -aiin
       23  61    5   0  334  che-y
        9   5    3   2  423  -shedy
       14   4    5   0  496  c-hedy
    

It seems that the <p> and <f> gallows are deletable when they
occur at the beginning of the word (with or without 
platform. On the other hand, the instances that cannot be 
deleted are generally receded by <o> or <qo>.

For comparison, let's look at the <t>/<k> gallows too. Below are the
words with <t>/<k> gallows, with combined counts >= 10, for which
omitting the gallows produces an invalid word. (The first line says
that the words <qotey> and <qokey> occur 23 and 106 times,
respectively, while <qopey>, <qofey>, and <qoey> do not occur at all.)

         gallows letter
      ---------------------
        t   k    p   f    -  rest of word
      --- ---  --- ---  ---  -------------
       23 106    0   0    0  qo-ey
       56  62    0   0    0  o-ey
       36  60    0   0    0  o-eol
       43  45    0   0    0  -edy
       24  54    0   0    0  y-eey
       19  44   15   1    0  qo-chdy
       30  24    0   0    0  o-eody
       24  24    0   0    0  y-eedy
        6  39    0   0    0  l-eedy
        1  40    0   0    0  l-eey
       21  20    0   0    0  y-edy
        1  38    0   0    0  ol-eey
        7  32    4   2    0  chc-hey
        9  30    0   0    0  qo-eody
       16  23    0   0    0  -eol
       12  26    1   0    0  qo-am
        5  28    0   0    0  l-edy
        4  26    0   0    0  ol-edy
        9  18    0   0    0  o-eeol
        5  21    0   0    0  -eody
       10  16    1   0    0  o-aly
       11  14    0   0    0  o-eeody
       12  13    0   0    0  o-ody
       12  12    1   0    0  y-al
        5  17    0   0    0  qo-aly
        9  13    1   0    0  y-eody
       13   9    3   1    0  qo-chor
        8  11    0   0    0  o-eal
       12   7    0   0    0  o-edar
        3  15    0   0    0  qo-eed
        9   9    0   0    0  qo-ody
        5  12    0   0    0  y-eol
        8   8    0   0    0  y-eeody
        9   7    0   0    0  o-o
        6   9    2   4    0  -
        6   9    4   0    0  chc-hedy
        8   7    0   0    0  y-ain
        2  12    0   0    0  qo-echy
        4  10    2   0    0  cheoc-hy
        7   7    0   0    0  cho-ey
       10   4    0   0    0  y-am
        4   9    0   0    0  o-shy
        5   8    0   0    0  qo-eo
        1  11    0   0    0  y-eeol
        4   8    0   0    0  -eeody
        4   8    0   0    0  -eor
        6   6    1   0    0  o-oldy
        1  10    0   0    0  ol-ey
        3   8    0   0    0  qo-ed
        3   8    0   0    0  qo-edar
        4   7    1   0    0  o-aldy
        5   6    0   0    0  y-eeey
        6   5    0   0    0  choc-hey
        8   3    0   0    0  o-eed
        3   7    0   0    0  -eo
        4   6    0   0    0  chy-y
        4   6    0   0    0  qo-chd
        4   6    0   0    0  y-eor
        5   5    4   0    0  o-ary

Given that about half of the word occurrences have no gallows, the
fact that words like <qoey> don't occur seems quite significant. There
are a dozen more common <t>/<k> words where deleting the gallows
produces a valid but very rare word.

On the other hand, here are some common <t>/<k> words where the
gallows apparently can be omitted:

                        gallows letter
      -------------------------------  
        t   k    p   f    -  rest of word
      --- ---  --- ---  ---  -------------
       40 300    0   0   14  qo-eey
       82 137    4   0   10  qo-y
       72 301    0   0   18  qo-eedy
      128 120   10   3   13  o-ar
       55 132    1   0   10  qo-ar
      142 202   13   4   23  o-aiin
       73 252    4   1   23  qo-aiin
       34  34    3   1   12  cho-y
        1  45    1   0   13  l-aiin
        1  28    0   0   12  ol-ain
        1  17    0   0   13  l-y
        2  11    0   1   11  ol-ar
       10   7    4   2   15  y-chey
       12   5    1   1   15  y-chor
      110  40   11   6  148  c-hy
        6   6    3   0   12  y-chol
        9  10    4   2   24  qo-
        1  31    0   1   44  ol-aiin
        1  10    0   0   17  ch-ain
       11  33    0   0   73  -ain
        1  11    1   0   25  she-
        2  18    1   1   44  ch-aiin
        6  13    2   0   47  ch-al
        1  19    0   1   55  ol-y
       12   3    8   0   44  c-haiin
       23  28    3   4  148  -chy
        8   6    2   0   42  -ody
       16   5    1   0   63  c-ho
       12  12    2   0   72  -air
       17  22    2   0  135  -y
       47  10    6   0  199  c-hor
       18   4    2   0   86  c-hody
       41  47    5   4  336  -ar
       15  20   10   4  136  -chdy
       12   5    2   1   69  o-
        5   7    2   1   50  che-ar
       23  61    5   0  334  che-y
       53  29    6   4  334  c-hey
       15   1    3   2   68  c-har
       42  62    7   0  431  -aiin
        3  12    1   0   68  ch-ar
        6   4    2   0   47  c-hal
       57  22   16   3  384  c-hol
        7   9    0   0   83  -am
       19  20   12   2  199  -chor
       12  16    1   0  148  ch-y
       21  28    2   0  262  -al
        5   6    3   2   63  -cho
        8   2    3   0   58  -odaiin
       47  36   22   3  518  -ol
        7  34    0   0  268  she-y
       14  11    1   1  167  c-heey
        8  13    0   1  143  shee-y
        3  11    0   1   98  sh-y
        6   4    3   0   72  -cheo
        3  21    0   1  167  chee-y
        6   5    3   1   83  c-heody
        8   3    6   1   86  -chody
        6   4    6   2   83  -cheody
       20  21    7   1  335  -or
       20  20   10   2  334  -chey
        0  13    6   2  117  l-chedy
        4   6    1   1   98  -shy
        5   7    0   0  121  -sho
       10   6    2   2  165  c-heol
        3  13    0   0  167  ch-eey
       29  20   33  10  496  -chedy
       14  20    9   3  384  -chol
        6   5    0   1  136  c-hdy
        6   6   12   1  165  -cheol
        6   6    4   4  167  -cheey
        5   6    0   0  167  che-ey
        1   9    0   0  158  qo-l
        6   4    4   0  180  -shol
        8   6    2   0  268  -shey
       14   4    5   0  496  c-hedy
        9   5    3   2  423  -shedy

It seems that the cases of "essential" <t>/<k> gallows are generally those
words with <o>, <qo>, or <y> prefixes; and words where the gallows 
has a platform, or is followed by "e"s.  The "removable" <t>/<k> gallows 
also seem to include a large fraction of initial cases. (I believe that
John Grove has already noticed that.)

Of course, the fact that a given letter can be removed 
from many words does not mean that it is superflous. (Consider 
final "s" or "y" in English, or 

    > Or are they ornate variations of other letters?

On the whole, considering their distribution whithin paragraphs,
I would say that they are ornate versions of *something* --- probably
combinations of letters.

    > On a more frivolous note, having recently been to Prague I find
    > it irresistable not to learn a bit more about the Czech language.
    > (I can already say: "do not enter or leave the train, the doors
    > are about to close") :-)

Let me see, I bet it it sounds something like 
"U concete prosm u vstup a nstup ..."  8-)

    > To the point. Czech has a number of orthographic rules which remind
    > me a bit of some of the observations made by Stolfi (no 'e' after
    > 'f' or 'p').

Unfortunately many other languages have these rules, too.
(Even... you know which one. 8-)

All the best,

--stolfi


From jim@mail.rand.org  Thu Jun  1 15:05:19 2000
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Date: Thu, 1 Jun 2000 16:04:14 -0300 (EST)
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From: Jorge Stolfi <stolfi@ic.unicamp.br>
To: voynich@rand.org
Subject: Re: The letters <p> and <f>, again
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[Oops, another one which should have been sent to the whole list.] 

    > [stolfi:] So I would rather believe that <k> and <t> are
    > "phonetically" similar, but semantically distinct (like "t" and
    > "d" in Spanish or Italian, say), and that the vocabulary is so
    > "dense" that almost any phonetically valid string is a common
    > word.

    > [Rene:] Well, this observation would make perfect sense if the
    > VMs were a rather phonetic rendering of some language. In that
    > case 'oteey' and 'okeey' are the same but only pronounced
    > differently.

That may be, but it is not what I meant. I was thinking of sounds that
are "equivalent" in the sense that swapping one for the other usually
produces valid *but distinct* words, like p/b in English (pet/bet,
pill/bill, pun/bun, pay/bay, etc.).

English is not a good model because its quirky spelling rules break
the expects phonetic symmetries: so "ph" and "th" are common while
"bh" or "dh" are nonexistent, etc.. That's why I mentioned t/d in
Spanish or Italian.

    > [Rene:] p/f are like k/t in the way their shapes distinguish
    > themselves from all the other letters (except q - Currier 4). At
    > the same time k/t behave normally while p/f don't. What did the
    > person(s) who made this up have in mind?

My current best guess is that p/f are almost, but not quite,
fancier forms of k/t.  Some instances of p/f may stand for 
k/t combined with other letters; some may be somthing else
entirely (e.g. paragraph markers, as you say --- those may
be John's "detachable gallows".)

    > What it all means in Voynichese is an open question. I would not
    > expect that letters that can be removed are superfluous. But this
    > is not a typical feature for any language I know (except for
    > some obvious cases at word endings as above).

Isn't this a characteristic feature of Semitic languages --
namely, vowels throughout the word are replaced *or omitted* 
to form inflections and derivatives.

    > [stolfi:] Let me see, I bet it it sounds something like
    > "U concete prosm u vstup a nstup ..."  8-)

    > [Rene:] Close! If this is from memory, I am impressed.
    
Well, no big deal --- I suppose it shows that I got lost in the metro
more often than you did. 8-)

Actually I *did* intend to memorize the recording. If I had stayed
another couple of days, I would have got the second half too...
    
    > The initial 'u' is actually attached to the word concete.
    > This word is the verb 'stop', where the initial 'u' is attached as
    > a regular verb mode modifier (but don't ask me how regular). Other
    > such prefixes exist (na-, ne-). Intrigues me...

I think I see why...

    > The bit that struck me most about Czech (but I know too little)
    > is that the consonants can be split up into 'hard' and 'soft' ones,
    > and this has some semi-regular consequences for orthograhy.
    
Well, if Voynichese is Czech, its "ortography" must be quite unlike
the standard one. Perhaps you mean that the soft/hard split affects
adjacent *sounds* and inflections?
    
All the best,

--stolfi

PS.  I have finally scanned some of the pictures I took at Prague:
http://www.dcc.unicamp.br/~stolfi/voynich/00-05-prague-trip/

PPS. Rene, I noticed that your Geocities URL is now owned
by someone else.  Shall we assume that you have permanently 
relocated to sunny Niue? 

From reeds Thu Jun  1 16:18:59 2000
From: reeds@fry.research.att.com (Jim Reeds)
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Date: Thu, 1 Jun 2000 16:18:59 -0400
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Subject: vms traffic Jan-May 2000
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I have placed the VMS traffic from Jan through May 2000 in
the usual place, reachable by 

  http://www.research.att.com/~reeds/voynich/vmail.html

The compressed file is about one third of a megabyte.

-- 
Jim Reeds, AT&T Labs - Research
Shannon Laboratory, Room C229, Building 103
180 Park Avenue, Florham Park, NJ 07932-0971, USA

reeds@research.att.com, phone: +1 973 360 8414, fax: +1 973 360 8178

From jim@mail.rand.org  Fri Jun  2 08:00:53 2000
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Reply-To: "John Grove" <John@morewood.net>
From: "John Grove" <4groves@sprint.ca>
To: "Voynich List" <voynich@rand.org>
Subject: k/t/p/f & sequence
Date: Fri, 2 Jun 2000 08:02:05 -0400
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I'm not sure if I've ever mentioned this before, but I thought it was
interesting (although, I'm not sure it's useful):

On f57v sequence, the 'k' is seven characters from the left of the sequence,
while 't' is seven characters from the right of the sequence. With the
additional coincidence that the 'f/p' characters fall as the 9th character
from left or right.

John.

From jim@mail.rand.org  Wed Jun  7 16:51:54 2000
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Message-ID: <393EB645.67C08D82@voynich.nu>
Date: Wed, 07 Jun 2000 22:53:25 +0200
From: Zandbergen@t-online.de (Rene Zandbergen)
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Dear all,

since Stolfi did not mean to send that recent mail to me instead
of the whole list, I might as well forward  my reply at the same
time.

Cheers, Rene

----------- As of here -------------------------------------

Your last mail was not via the list, correct? The one before
seems also not to have been but I didn't notice then, so I 
replied via the list, which is probably not according to netiquette.

> That may be, but it is not what I meant. I was thinking of sounds that
> are "equivalent" in the sense that swapping one for the other usually
> produces valid *but distinct* words, like p/b in English (pet/bet,
> pill/bill, pun/bun, pay/bay, etc.).

I see.

> Isn't this a characteristic feature of Semitic languages --
> namely, vowels throughout the word are replaced *or omitted*
> to form inflections and derivatives.

With Voynichese I am always having a feeling in the back of my
mind that it is vowelless, so I tend to associate Voynich 
letters with consonants. In fact, the only detachable one which is
a vowel in Eva is 'e' (for what little that may mean).
The reason for this feeling of 'no vowels', is that even if
Sukhotin's algorithm calls a, o and y vowels, it does it with
much lower confidence levels than in normal languages (somewhere
in the old mailign archives). This was also evident in some
plots I once did, looking at character entropies
left and right of given individual characters.
See: www.voynich.nu/latin.gif and (ditto)/currier.gif

>     > "U concete prosm u vstup a nstup ..."  8-)

> Actually I *did* intend to memorize the recording. If I had stayed
> another couple of days, I would have got the second half too...

uconCete prosim vystup a nastup, dveRe zaviraji.

Where dveRe is plural but means 'door' (sing.). 
Capitalised letters have the haCek (which litteraly means 'small
hook').
Another 'funny' word is parek ('small pair') which means
Frankfurter sausage. Indeed a 'small' pair, because you only
get one, not two :-) (that would have made it a Wiener)

> Well, if Voynichese is Czech, its "ortography" must be quite unlike
> the standard one. Perhaps you mean that the soft/hard split affects
> adjacent *sounds* and inflections?

Right now, I wouldn't go further than to consider the possibility
that the VMs writer designed the language with some Czech
patterns in mind. But that's on a pretty small foundation.

> PS.  I have finally scanned some of the pictures I took at Prague:
> http://www.dcc.unicamp.br/~stolfi/voynich/00-05-prague-trip/

Nice! It was a nice trip. Note that I also have a picture of
the fish restaurant where Hajek's house used to be. If you want
I can scan it too.
I've also got a few things on Hajek which I'll send to the list.

> PPS. Rene, I noticed that your Geocities URL is now owned
> by someone else.  Shall we assume that you have permanently
> relocated to sunny Niue?

Yes, with backup at www.geocities.com/voynichms

Cheers, Rene

From jim@mail.rand.org  Wed Jun  7 17:13:42 2000
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Message-ID: <393EBB73.49B09732@voynich.nu>
Date: Wed, 07 Jun 2000 23:15:31 +0200
From: Zandbergen@t-online.de (Rene Zandbergen)
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Dear all,

since I promised that I'd write something about Hajek, I might as 
well comply. Here's a quote of myself from another piece of mail.
It is admittedly very sketchy. It doesn't help that all good
publications about him seem to be in Czech.

It is worth mentioning that the Czech historian Zdenek Horsky
suggested Brumbaugh that he should consider Hajek when looking
for the history of the VMs. (Part of the below is in fact from
Horsky.) The same suggestion was made to Stolfi and myself
by Lubos Antonin when we were in Prague.

Cheers, 
         Rene

-------------

[...] That man, Thaddeus
Hajek, is really a totally relevant character for us. It is
unthinkable that he has not at one time seen the VMs, and,
after Dee/Kelly,  he is my next suspect for selling it to Rudolph.

His father, Simon Hajek, was a collector of old books. Dee and Kelly
lived in Simon Hajek's house while in Prague (hosted by Thaddeus
because I think that his father had died by then). Thaddeus studied in
Italy. His specialties were botany and astronomy (he was also the
first astronomy professor at Charles University).
Thaddeus was a trustee of Rudolph and was present at his coronation.
He also was Rudolph's private physician.
Later, he became the 'screener' of all alchemists applying for
Rudolph's patronage. He died at about the time when Jacobus
appeared.

From jim@mail.rand.org  Thu Jun  8 12:18:36 2000
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Date: Thu, 08 Jun 2000 18:15:48 +0200
From: "Rafal T. Prinke" <rafalp@amu.edu.pl>
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Rene Zandbergen wrote:

> It is worth mentioning that the Czech historian Zdenek Horsky
> suggested Brumbaugh that he should consider Hajek when looking
> for the history of the VMs. (Part of the below is in fact from
> Horsky.) The same suggestion was made to Stolfi and myself
> by Lubos Antonin when we were in Prague.

As a newcomer to this list, may I "buy my way in" with some more
information on Hajek. It comes from _Ottuv slovnik naucny_
vol. 10 (Prague 1896) - which is still the best reference on
all things Czech (last time in Prague I saw advertisments about
its fcsimile reprint). There is also a nice Web page on him at:

    http://www.eldar.cz/archeoas/stripky/mathem/aza.html

This site also has similar articles on other mathematicians
from Charles University of the time(all in Czech).

Tades Hjek z Hjku [Thaddaeus Hagecius ab Hayek, Th. Nemicus]
born 1 Oct 1525 in Prague, died 1 Sep 1600 in Prague,
son of Simon Hajek (died 1551) from an old Prague family.
Nobilitated in 1554 by Ferdinand I, knighted in 1571
by Maximilian I, later made knight of the HRE by Rudolf II. 
Had 3 wives, 3 sons and 1 daughter.

1548-49 studied medicin and astronomy in Viena
1550 received BA in Prague and 1551 MA "in artibus"
1554 studied medicine in Bologna and went to Milan the same
     year to listen to lectures of Girolamo Cardano but
     soon returned to Prague
1555 professor of mathematics at Prague University
1566-1570 served as army doctor in Austria and Hungary 
     (war with Turkey)

His voluminous writings in Latin were mostly concerned
with astronomy and many regarded him as the greatest
astronomer of his time. Hajek corresponded with many
scientists throughout Europe and was responsible for
bringing Tycho Brache and later Kepler to Prague
(his correspondence with Brache is published).

I believe that his contacts with Dee may have been
the result of their common interest in Euclid and
geometry. In 1557 Hajek published _Oratio de laudibus 
geometriae scripta et recitata in academia Pragensi 
sub initium lectionis Euclideae XII. Februarii die 
(a m. Th. Nemico Haykone ab Hayek) anno MDLVII_.
He also triangulated the area around Prague and
co-authored a map of it (1563, now lost).

Throughout his life he also published numerous
astrological prognostics in Czech and that is
why he was until recently viewed as an "occultist"
rather than a great scientist (which was also
the case with Dee and others).

Another interesting work of his was _Aphorismi 
Metoposcopici_ (1561) dealing with divination
and diagnosis by interpreting moles on one's body.

Of special interest in the context of VMs is
his translation of the herbal by Andrew Mathiol
(I am not sure of the original name), with
illustrations of plants.

In 1564 he received the Emperor's priviledge stating
that no astrological prognostication can be
printed in Prague before Hajek sees it.

Finally - and interestingly for VMs - there is a short
statement in _Ottuv slovnik naucny_ that "besides his work,
Hajek eagerly collected manuscripts, especially those
by Copernicus".

One of the craters of the Moon is named after him in
recognition of his astronomical discoveries.

In 1584, when Dee and Kelley arrived in Prague, Tadeas Hajek
was already almost 60 - a great age at that time - and
of European fame.

It is certainly doubtful he would have produced VMs
himself - but he may have picked it up as a collector.
Stronger arguments are needed, however, as just the facts
that he was a famous astronomer and astrologer, and
that he translated a herbal is too slim foundation
to build on.

Best regards,

Rafal

From jim@mail.rand.org  Thu Jun  8 19:49:30 2000
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Message-ID: <39403192.1CC1F222@voynich.nu>
Date: Fri, 09 Jun 2000 01:51:46 +0200
From: Zandbergen@t-online.de (Rene Zandbergen)
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Many thanks to Rafal for his interesting (at least to me)
contribution.

> [...] Hajek corresponded with many
> scientists throughout Europe and was responsible for
> bringing Tycho Brache and later Kepler to Prague
> (his correspondence with Brache is published).

My heroes :-)
Hajek was a close friend of Tycho. In fact I think
they first met at the coronation ceremony of Rudolf II.
But Tycho was not always happy with Hajek. Tycho's great
nemesis, the supposed charlatan Reymers a.k.a. 'Ursus' was 
made court matematician by Hajek much to Tycho's chagrin.
 
> Of special interest in the context of VMs is
> his translation of the herbal by Andrew Mathiol
> (I am not sure of the original name), with
> illustrations of plants.

Pier Andrea Mattioli. We have to beware of a red herring
here. Mattioli has been brought in connection with the 
VMs because someone read his name in a marginal note
on f17r of the VMs, but this cannot be corroborated.
I must admit that I am a bit confused about the Mattioli/
Hajek connnection. To my understanding, the herbal in 
question is essentially Dioscorides', but it deserves
special interest since it was written not in Latin but
in the vernacular (in this case Czech). Now whether 
Hajek or Mattioli was responsible for the Czech version
in unclear to me. I have also seen a reference to Hajek
as a student of Mattioli...
 
> Finally - and interestingly for VMs - there is a short
> statement in _Ottuv slovnik naucny_ that "besides his work,
> Hajek eagerly collected manuscripts, especially those
> by Copernicus".
> 
> One of the craters of the Moon is named after him in
> recognition of his astronomical discoveries.

I like it! Other lunar craters are Kircher and Marci.
I think there's also an asteroid called Marci (not too
sure though). And a crater on Venus is called Voynich.

> In 1584, when Dee and Kelley arrived in Prague, Tadeas Hajek
> was already almost 60 - a great age at that time - and
> of European fame.
> 
> It is certainly doubtful he would have produced VMs
> himself - but he may have picked it up as a collector.
> Stronger arguments are needed, however, as just the facts
> that he was a famous astronomer and astrologer, and
> that he translated a herbal is too slim foundation
> to build on.

There is no doubt that Hajek was a bonafide scientist.
However, in his position at Rudolf's court he inevitably
was in contact with the best scientists and the most
shameless charlatans and everything in between. His 
personal interests overlap to a large extent with the
subject matter of the VMs.
Taking these two things together, I think it is reasonable
to assume that if the VMs was at Rudolf's court prior to
1600 he *must* have seen it. And he may have mentioned it
in his writings...
If the VMs only appeared in Prague after 1600, then a 
lot of theories have to be revised.

Rafal, I assume that you're Polish and can therefore read
Czech. Have you seen the three books by Ivan Svitak about
Dee, Kelly and Westonia?  

Best regards,
         Rene

From reeds Fri Jun  9 11:39:03 2000
From: reeds@fry.research.att.com (Jim Reeds)
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Date: Fri, 9 Jun 2000 11:39:03 -0400
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In the past few days I have had a number of emails from Frances
Wilbur (born Frances Puckett) about her experiences working at
Arlington Hall, Virginia, for the US Army cryptanalysis service,
1942-1946. She was a member of the "Voynich Manuscript Research
Group" organized by William F. Friedman, the group called the
"First Study Group" by Mary D'Imperio. She must have one of the
world's longest-lasting interests in the Voynich Manuscript. Her
name appears often in the surviving FSG minutes and on the
surviving FSG transcription documents.

She asked me to post these emails to the group at large.  They
pick up in mid conversation with Dennis <ixohoxi@micro-net.com>,
who had apparently asked about the American PURPLE cryptanalysis.
Any text in [square brackets] is my editorial explanation.
I deleted 2 sentences referring to personal matters.

[start of edited emails from Frances Wilbur]
[4 June 2000]

Of course we were at war by then. In March I turned 21, In June
1942 I  graduated from Beloit College. I had completed
Cryptanalysis III. I had ten  days at home before I reported to
the SIS in the Munitions Bldg. on  Constitution Ave. in DC. and I
spent those ten days in assembling a suitable  wardrobe for DC's
hot weather, getting my train ticket and reservations,  making sure
I had a place in a boarding house in DC, and tying up loose  ends.I
had no idea how long I would be gone.

    I am certain that Col. Friedman really was overseeing Col.
Rowlett's work  on the PURPLE code. Col. Rowlett was very nice to
me. I remember walking  down the hall on the third floor of C
building when Col. Rowlett stepped out  of the code room across the
hall and said,"Frances, come here a minute. I  want to show you
something." I followed him in to the code room where there  was a
big file drawer full of yellow radiograms. He pulled one out and
showed it to me. It was the ORIGINAL of the message that MacArthur
had sent  as he left. It read, But we are not, repeat not
defeated."

    Since we always had to repeat the negative in a code message to
be sure  it wasn't omitted in transmission, this impressed me a
lot. When that was  published in the newspapers, they left out the
"repeat not".

    I thanked Col. Rowlett and went on back to my office in B Bldg.
I  remember being shown the model of the PURPLE as it was first
reconstructed,  and it was not terribly impressive to look at, but
I did realize by that time  what a tremendous achievement it
represented. I think I was the youngest  person in the entire SIS
so I took a lot of ribbing but I didn't mind,. I'll  send this to
Jim Reed also. Frances

[Cryptanalysis III = correspondence course run by the Army, using
3d volume of "Military Cryptanalysis" by W. F. Friedman.

SIS = "Signals Inteligence Service", name of the US Army
codebreaking group at start of the war. First located in the
Munitions Building in Washington DC, then moved to campus of
Arlington Hall School in Virginia.

B building, C building = buildings at Arlington Hall.]

[My reply: the not-terribly-impressive-to-look-at PURPLE machine is
probably the same one in display at National Cryptologic Museum;
the description fits.]

[5 June 2000]

I am certain that is the model they showed me--a wooden box, etc.
Not what  one would call impressive.  There is another story in
my head which I wish somebody could confirm. One  of the Purple
messages told of changing all the keys on Purple around the
Pacific. The new keys or rotors were going to be shipped out on a
ship  marked as a HOSPITAL SHIP for security. We were between a
rock and a hard  place. We did NOT want the Japanese to know we
werre reading their messages.

 Finally it was decided to ask one of our subs to sink the
"Hospital Ship".  There was a huge fuss over that. The captain of
the sub was court-martialed  publicly, but they put him in the
witness program, was given another  identity, his family moved
away, etc.
    Do you know anything about that? Frances

[Answer: I know nothing about this.]

[Another letter about just division of credit for breaking PURPLE
between Friedman and Rowlett, and about Friedman's alleged
breakdown. I just checked my Kahn (p.389): WFF admitted to Walter
Reed 4 Jan 1941, discharged 24 March 1941, had to retire (with
permanent disability) from his lieutenant- colonelcy from the
Signal Corps reserve. This was before Frances arrived on the
scene; WFF apparently completely recovered by then.]


[5 June 2000]
 Hi Jim--I never heard a word about a nervous breakdown by our
boss. I find  it hard to believe. As the war was winding down
he wrote Mrs. Voynich for  permission to bring our photo team up to
New york in order to photocopy the  manuscript in the bank vault
where she stored it after her husband's death.  She granted
permission, so he took our team of photo experts to New York and
brought back the famous copies we went to work on. This was long
after the  purple had been broken. Does that sound like someone
having a breakdown??

    He himself met with each one of us to ask if we would be
interested in  that project. He contacted 22 of us, and then we
all met together in a big  room, and he gave us a brief talk on
what he hoped to do--assigning us in  pairs to work after hours to
decide how many characters there actually were  in the manuscript,
after which we would asign a letter or a number to each  one so
they could be punched out on IBM cards and then sorted in different
ways. My partner was Salome Betts whose former job was with the
New York  City Library. She was a little older than I was, but she
might possibly be  around somewhere. The library might have some
personnel records. Too bad we  didn't have computers back then!
 Frances

[I think the VMS photocopies now in the Friedman collection in the
Marshall library are a mixture of Petersen's (made in the 1930s,
but acquired by WFF in the 60's after Petersen's death) and of the
ones used by the FSG, made in 1944 as Wilbur described above.]

[6 June 2000]

[Sentence deleted.]
I will be glad to share my reminiscences with the Voynich mailing
list. Can  you forward the appropriate messages to the list for
me? After this I will  send the list a copy. Or send you a copy
to send on to those people.  Somebody told me that Mrs.
Friedman, head of the Treasury Dept code unit,  might even have
been better at that business than WFF. I am trying to keep my
Voynich mail so it could be part of Somebody's memoirs Some day.
[Sentence deleted.] I will go offline and write you something else
at length  so I won't get logged off. Best, Frances

[7 June 2000]

 I heard but never saw that Friedman had a bad temper. I guess
someone might  have speculated that he was on the edge of flipping
out. This is only  rationalization on my part for that story about
a nervous breakdown.

    For the record: I was born in 1921 in Mankato, MN, graduated
from Beloit  College, WI in June, 1942, Phi Beta Kappa and Phi
Sigma Iota (French)  reported to the SIS at Munitions Bldg in DC
ten days after graduation. My  college boyfriend Richard Wilford,
returned home in 1945 after 3 years in  England, Africa, and Italy
and we were married ten days lateron March 23,  1945.. I continued
to work at Arlington Hall till March, 1946 when I  resigned because
I was pregnant. I was working with the Voynich group by  then, and
was very sorry I had to leave. The people I worked with in the
SIS were great.

    My bosses always listened to "Duffy's Tavern" on the radio and
we had a  lot of fun quoting their malapropisms. more later.
 Frances

[end]





-- 
Jim Reeds, AT&T Labs - Research
Shannon Laboratory, Room C229, Building 103
180 Park Avenue, Florham Park, NJ 07932-0971, USA

reeds@research.att.com, phone: +1 973 360 8414, fax: +1 973 360 8178

From jim@mail.rand.org  Fri Jun  9 15:25:41 2000
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Date: Fri, 9 Jun 2000 15:23:54 EDT
Subject: arlington hall campus
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The first thing the Signal Corps did when they leased, or bought, the 
beautiful campus of the exclusive Arlington Hall School for Girls was to put 
up a double chain-link fence all around it, topped with barbed wire.  Even 
that didn't spoil the beauty.  I remember standing outside the fence with the 
wife of one of the officers, and she said, "Oh, look!  They've caught two 
little trees! " Sure enough--there were two little maple trees growing 
between the two fences.  There were wrought-iron gates and a sweeping 
circular drive leading up to  the big brick building that had been the 
administration building.  That became HQ for the SIS.  Then some other 
temporary buildings were constructed beyond HQ, two-story with tar-paper 
roofs.  I believe Security Section was in B Building, and the foreign code 
systems were in C Bldg.  
    A huge cafeteria was installed in one of the buildings--we were several 
thousand employees by then, and they all had to be fed.  That is where I had 
my first taste of pecan pie.  more later  Frances

From jim@mail.rand.org  Fri Jun  9 16:04:27 2000
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Date: Fri, 9 Jun 2000 13:03:35 -0700 (PDT)
From: Dan Moonhawk Alford <dalford@haywire.csuhayward.edu>
To: voynich@rand.org
Subject: VMS History
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Frances,

Welcome to VMS! I'm a linguist, mostly an evesdropper on the list. I got
"infected" with curiosity about it from Terance McKenna, recently
deceased, when I did a couple of public-cable-tv shows featuring him. He
introduced me to a MS unlike any other -- a great mystery! -- with
illustrations of botanicals, many of which seemed to be not of this Earth,
couched in a language which might as well be not, having defied centuries
of probing by some of the finest minds available, including members of the
Intelligence services of the United States. Having lived in Native America
for 4 years, and been in close contact for 30, I love a Great Mystery!

As singer Billy Joel recently answered, when asked on Bravo's Actors
Workshop, "What turns you on?": "I'm getting to an age where COMPETENCE
really turns me on!" And competence, in this case, has to do with personal
experience. Your experiences with VMS belong, in the larger sense, to the
history of this magnificent, impenetrable great mystery!

warm regards, moonhawk

dalford@haywire.csuhayward.edu
http://www.sunflower.com/~dewatson/alford.htm

"I don't need a compass to tell me which way the wind shines!" 
                                                   -- Roy, Mystery Men



 


From jim@mail.rand.org  Fri Jun  9 17:15:57 2000
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Date: Fri, 09 Jun 2000 22:34:29 +0200
From: "Rafal T. Prinke" <rafalp@amu.edu.pl>
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References: <393EBB73.49B09732@voynich.nu> <393FC6B4.B1A58EA1@amu.edu.pl> <39403192.1CC1F222@voynich.nu>
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Rene Zandbergen wrote:

> Many thanks to Rafal for his interesting (at least to me)
> contribution.

Thank you.

> Pier Andrea Mattioli. We have to beware of a red herring
> here. Mattioli has been brought in connection with the
> VMs because someone read his name in a marginal note
> on f17r of the VMs, but this cannot be corroborated.
> I must admit that I am a bit confused about the Mattioli/
> Hajek connnection. To my understanding, the herbal in
> question is essentially Dioscorides', but it deserves
> special interest since it was written not in Latin but
> in the vernacular (in this case Czech). Now whether
> Hajek or Mattioli was responsible for the Czech version
> in unclear to me. I have also seen a reference to Hajek
> as a student of Mattioli...

Both the new Web page I quoted and _Ottuv slovnik naucny_
make it clear that Hajek translated Mattioli's herbal.
The latter reference gives the title as (diacritics stripped
for readability):

   _Herbar jinak bylinar velmi uzitecny a figurami 
    peknymi... ozdobeny_, u J. Melantrycha, Praha 1562

which can be translated as:

   _Herbal or herbal most useful and with beautiful 
    figures... adorned_, [printed] at J. Melantrych, Praha 1562

The first two words are - obviously - synonyms in Czech
but I find no synonym for herbal in English :-)

> Taking these two things together, I think it is reasonable
> to assume that if the VMs was at Rudolf's court prior to
> 1600 he *must* have seen it. And he may have mentioned it
> in his writings...
> If the VMs only appeared in Prague after 1600, then a
> lot of theories have to be revised.

On loooking again at _Ottuv slovnik naucny_, I noticed there
is an entry for Simon Hajek, the father of Tadeas, which
I had overlooked. He was born ca 1485 in Prague and died
there is 1551. In 1509 received BA at Prague university,
in 1515 was the headmaster of St. Michael school, and
in 1519 became burgher of Prague Old City.

What MAY be relevant, however, is that he wrote several
books on... linguistics (well... in the broad sense).
They were concerned with the grammar of the Czech language
and included:

    Tabula de proprietate participiorum et eorum 
        discrimine juxta genera et tempora (1547)

    Tabula congruitatis quarundam 
        locutionum Bohemicarum (1549)

At the end of his life he wrote the first handbook of 
the Czech language (unpublished, known from a description 
elsewhere). 

Now, the curious "lists" of very similar but slightly
different words in VMs *might* be lists of declined
and conjungated words. It is perhaps going too far
with wild hypotheses - but he may well have designed
a script which would represent Czech phenemes better
than the Latin alphabet.

> Rafal, I assume that you're Polish and can therefore read
> Czech. Have you seen the three books by Ivan Svitak about
> Dee, Kelly and Westonia?

Unfortunately not. When I became aware of them (ca 1995),
they were already unavailable and Svitak had been dead.
The ephemeral publishing house (which I think was his
own one-man company) had ceased to exist. 

I have, however, talked to people who read them and
they did not find them anything special. In fact Svitak
(a former marxist philosopher and propagandist) wrote
them in English in California (where he emigrated 
after 1968) and they were apparently published in some 
sort of underground publishing house. Curiously,
the Library of Congress does not know about that
"editio princeps" while it lists the Prague translations.
The latter, however, were published without references
which (seemingly) had been included in the English
version.

Anyway, I doubt there can be anything there which comes
from primary sources (as these were not available to
him in California) - so I would guess they just rehash
the factual material from other books in Czech.
The fact that references were removed for the Czech
version make me suspicious of their value. Nevertheless,
I would obviously like to see them and confirm or change
this opinion.

As you met Lubos Antonin in Prague, you may also have 
met Michal Pober - he is trying to trace the elusive
California editions of Svitak's books (but so far with
no success).

Best regards,

Rafal


From jim@mail.rand.org  Fri Jun  9 20:41:05 2000
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From: Jorge Stolfi <stolfi@ic.unicamp.br>
To: voynich@rand.org
Subject: Curious coincidence
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Hi,

Over the past few weeks I have been counting VMS beans of various
shapes and colors, extracted from the almost complete, not-so-bad,
majority-vote transcription in EVA.

I just noticed a curious coincidence:

  total *occurrences* of words (tokens) with
    
     0 gallows .... 17363  (49.4%)
     1 gallows .... 17443  (49.6%)
     2 gallows ....   323   (0.9%)
     3 gallows ....     3

These numbers look more suspicious than the elections in Peru. 8-)

Many (if not all) of the 2- and 3-gallows words are probably due to
omission of word spaces by the transcribers. Other data errors may
have injected a few percent of noise in these figures.

Still, the coincidence is intriguing. It seems safe to assume that a
"correct" Voynichese word can have at most one gallows; so we have
almost exact 50-50 split between 0-g and 1-g words.

Maybe this is merely an amazing linguistic coincidence. Perhaps the
presence of gallows indicates an independent binary phonetic 
attribute (say, voiced vs. unvoiced, high/low register, front/back); and
Voynichese happens to be an extremely efficient language, that makes
full use of that available bit.

Or could this be something else?  Three possibilities that I can 
think of:

  * Voynichese "words" are actually keys into a codebook-style cipher,
    encoded in a notation resembling Roman numerals (only more complicated);

  * Voynichese is a complex "randomizing" code  la Vigenre, 
    where the encrypted numeric text is further scrambled
    with a second, complicated encoding responsible for the peculiar
    word structure;
    
  * Voynichese "words" are generated, at least in part, by throwing
    dice; and the gallows belong to the random part.

In all these scenarios, the presence/absence of gallows would be a
low-order bit in the encoding. That would explain the precise 50-50
split ---- in spite of the fact that the VMS word frequencies are as
irregular as those of any natural language

Comments, anyone?

All the best,

--stolfi

PS. I hope to post a summary of my bean-counting over the 
weekend.

From jim@mail.rand.org  Fri Jun  9 20:50:39 2000
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	Fri, 9 Jun 2000 17:42:50 -0700
Date: Fri, 9 Jun 2000 17:42:50 -0700 (PDT)
To: Jacques Guy <jguy@alphalink.com.au>
Cc: voynich@rand.org
Subject: Re: glossolalia on the Net
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On Fri, 9 Jun 2000, Jacques Guy wrote:
[quoting a post from "Vicki" in alt.fan.bill-gates]
> Did Muslim father, dear American Indian father
> I appeal to you. as here gross darkness reignsa
> supreme in the minds of most of the peopel.

Although this is interesting, I'm not sure it qualifies as glossolalia. It
consists of identifiably English words and grammar, slightly distorted.  
I think it was composed by someone in something approximating a normal
state of consciousness, rather than the unconscious state associated with
"speaking in tongues".

Also, even if I found something on the Net that looked like glossolalia,
I'd be hesitant to use it as research material without solid evidence
that that's really what it was, because people sometimes like to post
computer-generated Markov chain output and similar stuff.

Matthew Skala, "the modern CEO's worst nightmare" (Macleans, 2000-04-10)
    My Internet doesn't include channels, commercials, or the V-chip.
       http://www.islandnet.com/~mskala/ mskala@ansuz.sooke.bc.ca

From jim@mail.rand.org  Fri Jun  9 21:04:35 2000
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Date: Fri, 09 Jun 2000 19:59:49 -0500
From: Dennis <ixohoxi@micro-net.com>
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    Thanks, Jim!!

> One  of the Purple
> messages told of changing all the keys on Purple around the
> Pacific. The new keys or rotors were going to be shipped out on a
> ship  marked as a HOSPITAL SHIP for security. We were between a
> rock and a hard  place. We did NOT want the Japanese to know we
> werre reading their messages.
>
>  Finally it was decided to ask one of our subs to sink the
> "Hospital Ship".  There was a huge fuss over that. The captain of
> the sub was court-martialed  publicly, but they put him in the
> witness program, was given another  identity, his family moved
> away, etc.

> [Answer: I know nothing about this.]

    In the Navy's official history of the US Navy submarine war in WWII,

    Morison, Samuel Eliot, *History of United States naval operations
in World War II* ( 1947),  D 773 M6.

it mentions that the US submarine *Queenfish* sank a lighted Japanese
hospital ship, for which the captain received a letter of reprimand.
Not surprisingly, there's no mention of the crypto angle.  Hermann
Wouk's novel *War and Remembrance* talks about this incident and says
that the hospital ship was actually carrying large quantities of war
stores, which were found in the water after the sinking. The novel gives
no sources for this.

Dennis


From jim@mail.rand.org  Fri Jun  9 21:40:06 2000
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Date: Fri, 09 Jun 2000 20:36:08 -0500
From: Dennis <ixohoxi@micro-net.com>
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Subject: Works of Vickie (WAS: Re: glossolalia on the Net)
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Jacques Guy wrote:

> on alt.fan.bill-gates to be precise.
> Tune in to alt.fan.bill-gates and look for
> posts by Vicki.
>
> Here is one, under the subject line:

    Here are the collected works of Vickie, with commentary by various
onlookers.

    As one fellow notes, this sounds more like
schizophrenia (eg. Frances Dec) than glossolalia.  So here we have
another corpus
of schizophrenic talk, somewhere on the simple - paranoid
schizophrenic spectrum.

Dennis

---------------------------------------------------------


>> Forum: alt.destroy.microsoft
 >> Thread: You ought to...

 Subject:   You ought to...
 Date:  06/09/2000
 Author: Jacques Guy <jguy@alphalink.com.au>


 tune in to alt.fan.bill-gates, and read the posts
 by a certain Vicki. I mustn't spoil it for you.
 Just do it, I promise you won't regret it.

-----------------------------------------------------
>> Forum: alt.fan.bill-gates
 >> Thread: And They Repented Not of Their Soceries
 Subject:  And They Repented Not of Their Soceries
 Date:  05/31/2000
 Author:  Vicki <purk@my-deja.com>

 Did yoiu think they would?

 Did Muslim father, dear American Indian father
 I appeal to you. as here gross darkness reignsa
 supreme in the minds of most of the peopel.

 the latest...for my thoughts.

 ice man found...cave man....out of body
 rosy cross dreams.....RIGHT!!!!!


 it says God will raise the spir-t of the Medes and the
 Persians.

 Nee you wonder why???????????????

 what pleseant dreams do they forcxe on your children"


-------------------------------------------------------------
>> Forum: alt.fan.bill-gates
 >> Thread: AND THEIR IS MORE...
    Re: And They Repented Not of Their Soceries

 Subject:  AND THEIR IS MORE...
    Re: And They Repented Not of Their Soceries
 Date: 05/31/2000
 Author: Vicki <purk@my-deja.com>

 Read with my corrections to those who cannot read between
 the lines,


 > Dear Muslim father, Dear American Indian father
 I appeal to you, to hear my words,
 as here gross darkness rules supreme in the minds
 of most of the people, mj\en who attack their
 daughters in the night, while the mother sleeps,
 mothers who leave their sons in toliests and dung upon
 the heap...here they call
 these ,men and sons brothers!


 Here I must reason and use logic with those
 who claim they are your brothers while telling me I can
 read Gods WORD while sitting against tress and
 going to the bathroom and even use the pages to wipe
 their unclean butts!
 Here I am expected to reason with men, who caLIM THEY CALL YOU
 BROTHERS!

 you decide...

 Here God must raise girls up from the womb to
 defend his honor and his namje as their are none to be found
 in the land feeled with gross darkness and the people!

 Here I must use a daughters hand to speak as they are filled
 with unclean hands, calling you brothers!

 Me, Vicki
 a daughter, whose Father has risen to defend her
 honor, where no men, no fathers, or brothers could
 be pound who was not afraid of the warth of men
 who are here today and but dust tommorrow.

 ---------------------------------------------------------------


 Subject:    MY SON
 Date: 05/31/2000
 Author:    Vicki <purk@my-deja.com>


 Can ytou imagine what it is they
 have tried to make me believe conceringin my son?

 Is my son, worth less than another?

 Is this mom, less than another mom?
 By what value do wwe use to weigh

 mothers and and sons....that you force
 a mother to cry out to God in HIS HEAVEN....
 then claim she is looking aout for number one...herself...
 when tiome and time she warned....it is my
 son......not me I fight and die4 for.

 reasoning with mothers and fathers who throw thewir
  sons away as trash to be taken away....

 then I am said...me, I will die to save my
 son from the flames of a hell I believe
 is to come.

 your son may not mean that much...but mine does.

 ponder that, sublime words I use this day.

---------------------------------------------------------------


 Subject:  A Mother and a Son
 Date: 05/31/2000
 Author: Vicki <purk@my-deja.com>


 In the space of 30 minutes I have been threaten with
 buddist monks and Van Dam who will
 enter my body as they leave theirs
 and break my spine.

 To destroy a woman pleading to God for her son.

 You look at the words spilled on haste, in anguish
 in no where to go but, the one whose name I defended.
 in
 tears and say...it is a female monkey escaped
 her handler, biting his hand.....


 men who see your sons as but monkeys,  become men.

 Jews, Muslims, men who love their daughters and theor sons
 who all color all ages, died to protect their children..

 you calcalate your words on women
 pleading begfore the God of whole earth...it is my son.
 YOU said their is a hell, a lake of fire,,,,,not me.
 you said enoch and elijah did not die....that
 it is appointed unto men once to die
 then the judgement.

 I appeal to you oh God....my son....men
 who over power mothers fighting to save her son...from within.
 and you think that he may somehow hear
 your prayers, over mine?

----------------------------------------------------------------


>> Forum: alt.fan.bill-gates
 >> Thread: MY SON

 Subject: Re: MY SON
 Date:  05/31/2000
 Author: David C. Wright <wright@autobahn.mb.ca>

 In group alt.fan.bill-gates, article <8h3hr7$gip$1@nnrp1.deja.com>,
 Vicki <purk@my-deja.com> wrote:

 ...

 >your son may not mean that much...but mine does.
 >
 >ponder that, sublime words I use this day.

 Vicki, have you ever heard that religious delusions are commonly
 experienced by schizophrenics?  Among these delusions may be
 influences of God, Jesus, Mary, Joseph, the Knights Templar (the
 Knights of the Temple of Jerusalem), the Rosucrucians (Rosy Cross,
 thought to be an offshoot of the Knights Templar because of their
 standard of a red cross), The Masons (thought to be an offshoot of
 the Rosicrucians and/or the Knights Templar).

 Your rants indicate quite strongly to me that you may be experiencing
 schizophrenia, and I strongly recommend that you subject yourself to
 an examination by a qualified psychiatrist.  I haven't heard rants
 like yours since I read "Focault's Pendulum" by Umberto Eco.  He, at
 least, has the excuse of being an author of fiction.

 You appear to be in danger of losing your son.  If this is so, I
 strongly suspect that this problem is a consequence of your apparrent
 mental disorder.  If you submit yourself for treatment for this
 disorder, then it is quite possible that, with treatment, you will be
 permitted to keep your son, and you can experience a reasonably full
 and satisfying life, while retaining custody of your son.  There are
 drugs available on prescription that can control schizophrenia.

 Of course, if you refuse to submit yourself for diagnosis and
 therapy, then it is entirely possible that your son will be taken
 from you, but, under the circumnstances, I don't think you are
 capable of determining if that is either good or bad.  It may
 actually be the best thing for your son.

 you see, while you seem to evaluate your son in terms of what powers
 he provides to you, the fact of the matter is that he should be
 evaluated in terms of what is best for him, not you.  If, as you
 think, you are a good mother, you would know this.

 Again, I strongly advise consulting with your physician about this
 problem. You can be helped, but you have to ask, first.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------




From jim@mail.rand.org  Fri Jun  9 22:36:02 2000
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Date: Fri, 09 Jun 2000 21:32:15 -0500
From: Dennis <ixohoxi@micro-net.com>
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    Here are the entropy results on the complete works of Vickie, along
with the results of selected other texts.  (She did not have x, z, and
q, so I added one instance
of each of these for better comparison with the other texts.)

                    #   File
Text                ch  Size   h0     h1     h2     h1-h2

Vickie              27   3106  4.755  4.027  3.087  0.940
Frances Dec         27  12967  4.755  4.182  3.428  0.755
KJ Bible - Genesis  27  32000  4.755  3.969  3.020  0.949
The Blue Hotel,
 Stephen Crane      27  32000  4.755  4.073  3.247  0.826


    Not terribly informative.  Her h1 is actually a little *less* than
normal
English, where Frances Dec's h1 is a little more, perhaps because she
doesn't use the long strings of adjectives that Dec does.
Of course, the sample size for her is rather small.

Dennis



From jim@mail.rand.org  Sat Jun 10 02:04:56 2000
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Date: Fri, 9 Jun 2000 23:02:58 -0700 (PDT)
From: "Mark \\ Skonar" <skonar@yahoo.com>
Subject: I apolagize...
To: voynich@rand.org
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When I joined this group I actually had an interest in
the VMS, after lurking for a long while I find that my
intrest has in fact subsided. Unfortuneatly I lost the
E-mail with the contact information for leaving the
group, sorry to clog things up here, but could somone
help me out with the information?

As an aside, good luck in your efforts.

- Skonar

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Photos -- now, 100 FREE prints!
http://photos.yahoo.com

From jim@mail.rand.org  Fri Jun  9 19:06:27 2000
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Date: Fri, 09 Jun 2000 23:07:55 -0700
From: Jacques Guy <jguy@alphalink.com.au>
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on alt.fan.bill-gates to be precise.
Tune in to alt.fan.bill-gates and look for
posts by Vicki.

Here is one, under the subject line:

And They Repented No of Their Soceries


Did yoiu think they would?

Did Muslim father, dear American Indian father
I appeal to you. as here gross darkness reignsa
supreme in the minds of most of the peopel.

the latest...for my thoughts.

ice man found...cave man....out of body
rosy cross dreams.....RIGHT!!!!!


it says God will raise the spir-t of the Medes and the
Persians.

Nee you wonder why???????????????

what pleseant dreams do they forcxe on your children"

From jim@mail.rand.org  Fri Jun  9 22:16:09 2000
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Date: Sat, 10 Jun 2000 10:17:17 -0400
From: Bruce Grant <bgrant@mail.msen.com>
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Maybe the gallows letters indicate the real word breaks. Maybe that's why lots
of paragraphs start with a gallows letter - everything up to the next gallows
letter could be a "real" word. (I'm not sure what a double gallows letter would
mean, or gallows letters inside others - maybe elided letters.)

To speculate further, the fact that lots of words end with the same few
characters may be because, as in Arabic, certain letters are not allowed to join
the following letter. What appear to be word gaps would just be do to the ramdom
choice of letters in the text.

This could also account for the high frequency (or so it seems) of very short
words, when two of these "final" letters come together..

Bruce Grant

Jorge Stolfi wrote:

> Hi,
>
> Over the past few weeks I have been counting VMS beans of various
> shapes and colors, extracted from the almost complete, not-so-bad,
> majority-vote transcription in EVA.
>
> I just noticed a curious coincidence:
>
>   total *occurrences* of words (tokens) with
>
>      0 gallows .... 17363  (49.4%)
>      1 gallows .... 17443  (49.6%)
>      2 gallows ....   323   (0.9%)
>      3 gallows ....     3
>
> These numbers look more suspicious than the elections in Peru. 8-)
>
> Many (if not all) of the 2- and 3-gallows words are probably due to
> omission of word spaces by the transcribers. Other data errors may
> have injected a few percent of noise in these figures.
>
> Still, the coincidence is intriguing. It seems safe to assume that a
> "correct" Voynichese word can have at most one gallows; so we have
> almost exact 50-50 split between 0-g and 1-g words.
>
> Maybe this is merely an amazing linguistic coincidence. Perhaps the
> presence of gallows indicates an independent binary phonetic
> attribute (say, voiced vs. unvoiced, high/low register, front/back); and
> Voynichese happens to be an extremely efficient language, that makes
> full use of that available bit.
>
> Or could this be something else?  Three possibilities that I can
> think of:
>
>   * Voynichese "words" are actually keys into a codebook-style cipher,
>     encoded in a notation resembling Roman numerals (only more complicated);
>
>   * Voynichese is a complex "randomizing" code  la Vigenre,
>     where the encrypted numeric text is further scrambled
>     with a second, complicated encoding responsible for the peculiar
>     word structure;
>
>   * Voynichese "words" are generated, at least in part, by throwing
>     dice; and the gallows belong to the random part.
>
> In all these scenarios, the presence/absence of gallows would be a
> low-order bit in the encoding. That would explain the precise 50-50
> split ---- in spite of the fact that the VMS word frequencies are as
> irregular as those of any natural language
>
> Comments, anyone?
>
> All the best,
>
> --stolfi
>
> PS. I hope to post a summary of my bean-counting over the
> weekend.

From jim@mail.rand.org  Sat Jun 10 15:08:24 2000
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    > [John Grove:] Coincidence, I think. For example, there are no
    > dkaiin or kdain words (I think) which should happen in a 50-50
    > context over the whole document.
    
But that is the point: the 50-50 split is remarkable precisely because
the distribution of words is *not at all* like that of random strings.
Indeed, by various measures (Rene, Gabriel, Mark...), the word
distribution shows strong variations at all scales --- section, page,
and paragraph. So it is remarkable that the distribution of the
"gallows bit" (which is one of the most striking features of
Voynichese words, both visually and statistically) averages
out so close to 50-50.

It may be just coincidence, as you say. But it is intriguing that the
"codebook" theory predicts this sort of thing. Namely, the
distribution of whole word-codes would be just as irregular and
variable as the distribution of words in the original language; but,
if the codebook itself is random, then the word codes in any text will
be equally split between odd and even, just like a string of ideal
coin tosses. In fact, the codebook doesn't need to be realy random,
merely independent from the text: even an alphabetized dictionary
should give a 50-50 odd/even split.

"Linguistic" explanations don't seem so promising. Most binary
linguistic attributes -- like voiced/unvoiced, front/back,
capital/lowercase, masc/fem, etc. -- can be directly mapped to
binary physiological or mental variables. Therefore the two choices of the
attribute will have different "costs" or meanings, and this 
condition usually implies different distributions.

For instance, a voiced consonant probably takes a trifle longer to
pronounce than an ubvoiced one; it probably consumes more or less lung
air, involves more or less muscles, etc. Add to that all sorts of
spelling and grammar biases that may favor one variant over the other.
Therefore, it is not surprising that voiced/unvoiced pairs have 
very skewed frequencies in typical languages. Some quick counts:

  Portuguese:
    166 p   332 t   61 f
     77 b   347 d   91 v

  Italian:
     94 p   157 t   31 f
     17 b    89 d   51 v

  English:    
     62	p   306 t   64 f
     65	b   126 d   33 v

(From short texts in the standard orthographies --- which, for It. and
Port., is essentially phonetic, at least with regard to these letters.)
   
    > Also, some of those two-g words are labels where they seem most
    > likely to be one word.
    
That is disputable --- why can't they be two-word labels?

    > Although, what you might have found is that the gallows
    > represents a shaddah (Is that the right word?) for showing that
    > one of the characters in the word is doubled. Okay, so I'm a
    > little obsessed with the idea! Also, how does one count a
    > split-g word? Is it one or two-g?
    
I am using the majority-vote reading, so it depends on the transcribers.
I excluded words containing "invalid" characters, including weirdos and
characters where there was no majority consensus. So some of those
split-gallows words were probably not counted. 

In any case, they are too rare to register (a couple dozen cases,
perhaps?)
    
    > Out of those 50% that do have one-g, what is the varying
    > position of the gallow - First, second, third character of a
    > two,three, four letter word...
    
Good question; see the counts below.

Zero gallows letters:

    709 0.04083 x
   2764 0.15919 xx
   4964 0.28590 xxx
   4483 0.25819 xxxx
   2995 0.17249 xxxxx
    929 0.05350 xxxxxx
    422 0.02430 xxxxxxx
     86 0.00495 xxxxxxxx
      9 0.00052 xxxxxxxxx
      2 0.00012 xxxxxxxxxx

One gallows letter:

     26 0.00149 @

    262 0.01502 @x
     36 0.00206 x@

   1010 0.05792 @xx
    767 0.04398 x@x
     87 0.00499 xx@

    934 0.05356 @xxx
   2402 0.13774 x@xx
    877 0.05029 xx@x
     19 0.00109 xxx@

    683 0.03917 @xxxx
   2232 0.12799 x@xxx
   2207 0.12656 xx@xx
    137 0.00786 xxx@x
      3 0.00017 xxxx@

    283 0.01623 @xxxxx
   1391 0.07976 x@xxxx
   2068 0.11858 xx@xxx
    155 0.00889 xxx@xx
     33 0.00189 xxxx@x
      2 0.00011 xxxxx@

    156 0.00895 @xxxxxx
    209 0.01198 x@xxxxx
    910 0.05218 xx@xxxx
    112 0.00642 xxx@xxx
     25 0.00143 xxxx@xx
      5 0.00029 xxxxx@x

     58 0.00333 @xxxxxxx
    107 0.00614 x@xxxxxx
     80 0.00459 xx@xxxxx
     39 0.00224 xxx@xxxx
     13 0.00075 xxxx@xxx
      2 0.00011 xxxxx@xx
      1 0.00006 xxxxxx@x

     15 0.00086 @xxxxxxxx
     36 0.00206 x@xxxxxxx
     32 0.00183 xx@xxxxxx
      8 0.00046 xxx@xxxxx
      3 0.00017 xxxx@xxxx
      2 0.00011 xxxxx@xxx

      1 0.00006 x@xxxxxxxx
      4 0.00023 xx@xxxxxxx
      1 0.00006 xxxxxx@xxx

      3 0.00017 xx@xxxxxxxx
      2 0.00011 xxx@xxxxxxx

      1 0.00006 xxxx@xxxxxxx

Two or more gallows letters:

     25 0.07669 @xx@x
     25 0.07669 @xx@xx
     25 0.07669 x@xx@xx
     18 0.05521 @x@xx
     18 0.05521 @xx@xxx
     18 0.05521 x@xx@x
     17 0.05215 x@x@xx
     16 0.04908 @x@x
     13 0.03988 @xxx@x
     11 0.03374 xx@xx@x
     10 0.03067 @x@xxx
      9 0.02761 x@x@x
      9 0.02761 x@xx@xxx
      7 0.02147 x@xxx@xx
      7 0.02147 xx@x@x
      6 0.01840 @x@xxxx
      6 0.01840 @xxx@xx
      6 0.01840 x@x@xxx
      6 0.01840 xx@x@xx
      5 0.01534 @xx@xxxx
      5 0.01534 @xxx@
      5 0.01534 xx@xx@xx
      5 0.01534 xx@xx@xxx
      4 0.01227 @xxx@xxx
      3 0.00920 @xxxx@xx
      3 0.00920 x@x@xxxx
      3 0.00920 x@xxx@x
      3 0.00920 x@xxxxx@x
      3 0.00920 xx@x@xxx
      2 0.00613 @xxxx@xxxx
      2 0.00613 x@@xxxx
      2 0.00613 x@xx@xxxx
      2 0.00613 xx@xxx@xx
      2 0.00613 xxx@xx@x
      1 0.00307 @@x
      1 0.00307 @x@xx@xx
      1 0.00307 @xx@
      1 0.00307 @xx@x@x
      1 0.00307 @xxx@xxxx
      1 0.00307 @xxx@xxxxx
      1 0.00307 @xxxx@x
      1 0.00307 @xxxxxx@xxx
      1 0.00307 x@@x
      1 0.00307 x@xx@
      1 0.00307 x@xx@xx@xx
      1 0.00307 x@xxx@xxx
      1 0.00307 x@xxx@xxxx
      1 0.00307 x@xxxx@
      1 0.00307 xx@@x
      1 0.00307 xx@x@
      1 0.00307 xx@xx@
      1 0.00307 xx@xxxx@
      1 0.00307 xxx@xx@
      1 0.00307 xxx@xx@xxxx
      1 0.00307 xxxx@x@xx
      1 0.00307 xxxx@xx@
      1 0.00307 xxxx@xx@xxx
      1 0.00307 xxxx@xx@xxxx
      1 0.00307 xxxxx@xx@


Here each "@" is a gallows (simple or platformed), and each "x" is one
non-gallows letter (counting "ch", "sh", and "ee" as a single letter).
The input is the whole VMS text, including circular and radial lines,
minus labels and key-like sequences.

I can easily redo the table it with different criteria, if you prefer.

However, I think that this is not the "right" question to ask. I am
convinced that the Voynichese "code" makes liberal use of compound
"letters", and/or optional pre- and post- letter modifiers --- like
the Roman number system, or typical spelling systems. So, if the
logical "position" of the gallows is an important parameter, almost
certainly it is *not* measured by counting EVA or Currier letters.

(I *must* finish that report...)
    
    > Come to think of it, are there any two character words with a
    > Gallows (ty, ky)?

Very few:

     12 0.00034 ot
      5 0.00014 ok
      4 0.00011 yk
      2 0.00006 op
      1 0.00003 lk
      1 0.00003 lt
      1 0.00003 of

     23 0.00065 ky
     17 0.00048 ty
      6 0.00017 ko
      2 0.00006 kl
      2 0.00006 py
      2 0.00006 to
      1 0.00003 ka
      1 0.00003 ke
      1 0.00003 tl

Again, the corpus is the text minus labels, and the fractions
are relative to the total token count (~34,000).

I bet that many (all?) of these short words are the result of
transcription errors --- "cho ky" for "choky", "ot al" for 
"otal", etc.

From jim@mail.rand.org  Sat Jun 10 18:25:45 2000
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To: "'stolfi@ic.unicamp.br'" <stolfi@ic.unicamp.br>,
        "voynich@rand.org" <voynich@rand.org>
Subject: RE: Curious coincidence
Date: Sat, 10 Jun 2000 16:24:08 -0600
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penetrating, Jorge. congratulations!!!  It is almost certainly not a coincidence, whatever the cause.
Don

On Friday, June 09, 2000 6:38 PM, Jorge Stolfi [SMTP:stolfi@ic.unicamp.br] wrote:
> 
> Hi,
> 
> Over the past few weeks I have been counting VMS beans of various
> shapes and colors, extracted from the almost complete, not-so-bad,
> majority-vote transcription in EVA.
> 
> I just noticed a curious coincidence:
> 
>   total *occurrences* of words (tokens) with
>     
>      0 gallows .... 17363  (49.4%)
>      1 gallows .... 17443  (49.6%)
>      2 gallows ....   323   (0.9%)
>      3 gallows ....     3
> 
> These numbers look more suspicious than the elections in Peru. 8-)
> 
> Many (if not all) of the 2- and 3-gallows words are probably due to
> omission of word spaces by the transcribers. Other data errors may
> have injected a few percent of noise in these figures.
> 
> Still, the coincidence is intriguing. It seems safe to assume that a
> "correct" Voynichese word can have at most one gallows; so we have
> almost exact 50-50 split between 0-g and 1-g words.
> 
> Maybe this is merely an amazing linguistic coincidence. Perhaps the
> presence of gallows indicates an independent binary phonetic 
> attribute (say, voiced vs. unvoiced, high/low register, front/back); and
> Voynichese happens to be an extremely efficient language, that makes
> full use of that available bit.
> 
> Or could this be something else?  Three possibilities that I can 
> think of:
> 
>   * Voynichese "words" are actually keys into a codebook-style cipher,
>     encoded in a notation resembling Roman numerals (only more complicated);
> 
>   * Voynichese is a complex "randomizing" code a la Vigenere, 
>     where the encrypted numeric text is further scrambled
>     with a second, complicated encoding responsible for the peculiar
>     word structure;
>     
>   * Voynichese "words" are generated, at least in part, by throwing
>     dice; and the gallows belong to the random part.
> 
> In all these scenarios, the presence/absence of gallows would be a
> low-order bit in the encoding. That would explain the precise 50-50
> split ---- in spite of the fact that the VMS word frequencies are as
> irregular as those of any natural language
> 
> Comments, anyone?
> 
> All the best,
> 
> --stolfi
> 
> PS. I hope to post a summary of my bean-counting over the 
> weekend.

From jim@mail.rand.org  Sat Jun 10 22:50:53 2000
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From: Woody Brison <wwbrison@lds.net>
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Well, let's try this again.  I tried to post this and it 
never came thru.  Duh, wrong address...


Hi people.

I'm interested in the VMS because I'm working on a similar 
problem and hope from this list to get some insights.  I've 
put some notes online about my project, the Anthon Transcript, 
at 

  http://web.lds.net/pages/wwbrison/freq_ct.htm

This is a document that appears to be in some ancient language.
It's a pretty small sample, so I doubt it will soon be read; 
but perhaps further progress can be made towards just establishing 
what language it's in or if it's even a message in any language.

Woody Brison

From jim@mail.rand.org  Sun Jun 11 08:59:53 2000
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From: Brian Eric Farnell <bfarnell@gte.net>
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Again, I apologize for being an 'armchair warrior' with everyone
here so much more talented than I, but I think about the VMS
quite a bit and something occurred to me.  This is not a very
exciting prospect and I hope it's not true because it would not
be nearly as interesting as hoped, but I think it's worth
considering if it hasn't been already.
Respectfully,
Brian Farnell

With the talk of 'glossalia' I thought of some things I am
currently studying in my Speech Language Pathology classes. 
There is a diverse group of language disorders known as
'Aphasia'.  Characteristic to some is a symptom know as
'agraphia'.  Agraphia is difficulty in writing.  The writing may
be full of mistakes or malformed or may just be a problem
writing what the client wishes to write.  Agraphia may include
written variations of 'aggramatism', 'jargon' and 'neoligisms'. 
Agrammatism is just lack of grammar, not important here.  Jargon
is similar to children who will 'talk' using syllables
appropriate to the language they are learning with adult like
intonation and prosody, sounding like the target language but
having no meaning whatsoever.  This could mathematically seem
very similar to the target language, I assume, especially in an
adult whose language had developed fully before the onset of the
condition.  Neologism is just the production of a new word and
the use of it as a common word.  Aphasia is usually the result
of a stroke.  The same agraphia problems might be presented by
other causes to include senility and brain injury.  Has any
Speech Pathologist looked at these results?  I know it's a long
shot, it really is, but it might be worth getting an opinion. 
Basically, there are three things that make this plausible:

1)  IN MY OPINION, the resultant writing might mathematically
share very many characteristics with a real language

2)  It is very possible that a writer in this condition might
not monitor himself and so write volumes without ever realizing
it to be gibberish

3)  The writer might be otherwise fully functional, even
brilliant, people talking to him might have the greatest respect
for his intellectual capacity and be eager for a book by him,
even in an unknown 'code'

Things I would check if I could show the document and the math
to a Speech Language Pathologist:

1)  What is indicated by the spacing of the words around the
pictures?

2)  Could agraphic jargon mathematically resemble a real
language?  Where would it be similar, where would it deviate?

3)  Could the two different 'hands' and the difference in letter
frequency  in Voynich A and Voynich B be the result of the same
person on different days?  Some brain injuries result in changes
of personality sometimes permanent, sometimes fluctuating.

4)  Could the gallows characters represent some remnant in the
writer's mind of capitalization or illustrated letters?

Another question to ask yourselves and the SPL has to do with
what is NOT present in the VMS.  This I am not expert on the VMS
enough to know.  An example would be if you would expect the
presence of illustrated letters where there were none.  In some
of the primitive cryptography and analyses I did with the Navy,
often it was the lack of something expected rather than the
inclusion of something specific that gave clues.
Thank you very much for your attention,

Brian

From jim@mail.rand.org  Sun Jun 11 09:22:41 2000
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Another two characteristics of aphasias:
1)  Loss of certain types of words.  If verbs were lost for
instance, the lack of them and their conjugated endings would
result in a sharp change of letter serial correlation (LSC).
2)  Some forms of aphasia are very verbose, the client will
speak extremely long 'run-on' sentences with little meaning due
to lack of self-monitoring.  Is there anything in the VMS to
indicate this?

Something else to check is the consistency or inconsistency of
the handwriting.  I know it's difficult to count the number of
letters, but is the handwriting TOO consistent even given this,
to be the product of someone with agraphia?  Also, is it
possible that this is really a cipher, but one produced by
someone with agraphia so that we have enciphered jargon?

Respectfully,

Brian

From jim@mail.rand.org  Sun Jun 11 17:52:23 2000
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From: Jorge Stolfi <stolfi@ic.unicamp.br>
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Even curiouser:

               w/o gallows    with gallows
             +--------------+--------------+
w/o tables   | 8772 (25.2%) | 9016 (25.9%) |
             +--------------+--------------+
with tables  | 8591 (24.7%) | 8423 (24.2%) |
             +--------------+--------------+
     
These are counts of tokens (word instances) in the whole majority-vote
transcription; minus key sequences, labels, unreadable/contentious
tokens, and the 326 tokens with two or more gallows.

The "gallows" are the EVA letters [ktfp], including any platforms
("ct", "cth", "ith") and isolated "e" suffixes ("te", "cthe", etc.).

The "tables" are the letters "ch", "sh", "ee", and any isolated "e"s
that are not attached to a gallows letter.

Thus, for example,
  "cthedy" and "kedy" have gallows but no tables;
  "qoedy" and "qoeedy" have tables and no gallows,
  "ykeedy" and "ykeeedy" have both gallows and tables.

By itself, the evenness of the split between the four entries may not
be too impressive. However, if you recall my three layer paradigm, the
gallows (with platforms and "e" suffixes) make up the "core" layer,
while the tables make up the "mantle" layer that always surrounds the
core when both are present.

So the table gives the presence/absence of the core and mantle layers.
I find it quite surprising that these two attributes, whose definition
was motivated by unrelated evidence, turn out to be statistically
independent and uniformly distributed, to within the range of
statistical error.

I considered counting the gallows platforms and "e" suffixes as
tables, rather than gallows modifiers. However, that choice breaks the
balance in the right column, badly -- I get 33.3% tokens with gallows
and tables, 16.7% with gallows but without tables.
(Oops, that's exactly 2:1 ! Dammit, another curious coincidence...).

If gallows platforms are counted as tables, but "e" isn't, then the
split in the right column is 27.2% with tables, 22.9% without. 
If platforms are ignored but "e" is counted as a table, the split is
31.2% with tables, 18.8 without.

Now what?

All the best,

--stolfi

PS. Gee, those VMS herbs must be *really* strong stuff. I have only
looked at digital images of xeroxes of microfilms of 500-year-old
drawings of them, and I am already allucinating...

From jim@mail.rand.org  Sun Jun 11 17:52:23 2000
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From: Zandbergen@t-online.de (Rene Zandbergen)
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Stolfi wrote:

>   total *occurrences* of words (tokens) with
>      0 gallows .... 17363  (49.4%)
>      1 gallows .... 17443  (49.6%)
> [...] the coincidence is intriguing. It seems safe to assume that a
> "correct" Voynichese word can have at most one gallows; so we have
> almost exact 50-50 split between 0-g and 1-g words.
> 
> Maybe this is merely an amazing linguistic coincidence.

If there really is a 50% chance of having a gallows or not,
how close are the numbers allowed to be? A difference of 
80 seems almost too small. 

By the way, I presume that 'gallows' also include the pedestalled
ones....
Does your count include the labels (and other non-flowing text)?

I am reminded of an equally striking coincidence related to the
gallows. I once produced some character statistics of 25 Herbal-A
and 25 Herbal-B pages which are collocated in the MS. The nr.
of EVA-k and EVA-t was the same three times and for the fourth
count it was either twice or half that number. If only I could
find those counts again... I'll post them if I do.

> Or could this be something else?  Three possibilities that I can
> think of:
> 
>   * Voynichese "words" are actually keys into a codebook-style cipher,
>     encoded in a notation resembling Roman numerals (only more complicated);
>
>   * Voynichese is a complex "randomizing" code  la Vigenre,
>     where the encrypted numeric text is further scrambled
>     with a second, complicated encoding responsible for the peculiar
>     word structure;
> 
>   * Voynichese "words" are generated, at least in part, by throwing
>     dice; and the gallows belong to the random part.
> 
> In all these scenarios, the presence/absence of gallows would be a
> low-order bit in the encoding. That would explain the precise 50-50
> split ---- in spite of the fact that the VMS word frequencies are as
> irregular as those of any natural language

That is very difficult to imagine. The three options above don't really
explain why it should be 50/50 and not, say, 40/60, unless you go to
some kind of binary encoding, as you suggest also.
It would have to mean also, that each word is 'constructed'. Assuming
for the moment a word-by-word (or by syllable) translation of some 
source text, then whether or not a gallows appears depends on some
property of the original word.
A 50% chance could appear in many circumstances, e.g. depending on the
number of characters in the original word (odd/even), stress on odd
or even syllable, etc, etc. (This will not always lead to 50% chance
either). 

> Comments, anyone?

There could be more fundamental ways that cause this, e.g. if every word
with (or without) a gallows is a dummy word and the writer made
sure that there was one dummy word for each real word.
The gallows could be dummy letters themselves and the writer made sure
that....

In any case, this is a truly surprising statistic which requires a
closer
look. It feels like another crack that is just waiting for a wedge.

Well spotted,
         Rene

From jim@mail.rand.org  Sun Jun 11 18:45:12 2000
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From: Zandbergen@t-online.de (Rene Zandbergen)
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Rafal T. Prinke wrote:

> Both the new Web page I quoted and _Ottuv slovnik naucny_
> make it clear that Hajek translated Mattioli's herbal.

It makes sense now: 'And finally he published in Czech 
Mattioli's herbal...'. I can read Czech once the meaning
has been explained to me :-)

> On loooking again at _Ottuv slovnik naucny_, I noticed there
> is an entry for Simon Hajek, the father of Tadeas [...]

Z. Horsky also writes that Tadeas owed his alchemical 
knowledge to his father.

> > Have you seen the three books by Ivan Svitak about
> > Dee, Kelly and Westonia?
> 
> Unfortunately not. When I became aware of them (ca 1995),
> they were already unavailable and Svitak had been dead.
> The ephemeral publishing house (which I think was his
> own one-man company) had ceased to exist.
> 
> I have, however, talked to people who read them and
> they did not find them anything special. In fact Svitak
> (a former marxist philosopher and propagandist) wrote
> them in English in California (where he emigrated
> after 1968) and they were apparently published in some
> sort of underground publishing house. Curiously,
> the Library of Congress does not know about that
> "editio princeps" while it lists the Prague translations.
> The latter, however, were published without references
> which (seemingly) had been included in the English
> version.

I do have copies of the Czech versions, but can read only
every 20th word or so, which simply is not enough to make 
any sense out of them. When Stolfi and I were in Prague,
we were shown a Czech copy of the one about Dee. 

> Anyway, I doubt there can be anything there which comes
> from primary sources (as these were not available to
> him in California) - so I would guess they just rehash
> the factual material from other books in Czech.
> The fact that references were removed for the Czech
> version make me suspicious of their value. Nevertheless,
> I would obviously like to see them and confirm or change
> this opinion.

This is precisely what I would like to know as well. For one
thing, the Dee copy mentions (in 1994 if not earlier) that
Georg Baresch was the owner of the VMs prior to Marci. This
could mean one of two things:
- he did have access to some sources we don't know about
- he extrapolated this from the hints in Brumbaugh's book, to
  which he would have had access
I am strongly inclined to believe the latter, also because he
states that Dee was the seller of hte VMs to Rudolf, for which
again two similar options exist. Here we can be pretty sure that
he did not have hard evidence. 

For Kelly's death year one can read 1595 and 1597. Svitak sticks
to the latter but my understanding is that 1595 is the correct
one. This is another awkward point.
Finally, the cover of the book about Westonia has a portrait of
her. But in a catalogue including some paintings from Rudolf's
collections, the same portrait (a painting by Hans von Aachen)
is described as "a portrait of a girl (daughter of the artist?)
about 1612". Still, Westonia does seem to mention her step-father
(Kelly) in a more positive light than what he is usually held in,
and for her Svitak is the only source I know about. (In fact I had
not heard about her before we went to Prague).

> As you met Lubos Antonin in Prague, you may also have
> met Michal Pober - he is trying to trace the elusive
> California editions of Svitak's books (but so far with
> no success).

We did indeed! He showed us the place in Bethlehem square
where Hajek's house used to be (and where Dee and Kelly did
their skrying). When did you last communicate with him? I did
ask him about the Svitak books in February, after we came back
from Prague.

Cheers,

    Rene
    (just recovering from a rather exciting game of 
     football between his country and Hajek's, with a 
     flattering result for the former :-/ )

From jim@mail.rand.org  Sun Jun 11 19:09:28 2000
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    > [Rene:] If there really is a 50% chance of having a gallows or
    > not, how close are the numbers allowed to be? A difference of 80
    > seems almost too small.

Well, the variance of a 0-1 coin toss is 1/2, right? So the standard
deviation of the sum of N = 34806 independent coin tosses should be
sqrt(N/2) = 131. 

Thus 40 ( = 80/2) is a bit better than what we would expect,
but still not suspiciously too good, I would say.

(Beware that there *is* noise in my data, at the level of 100-200
tokens if not more. So even if the original text had a perfect 50-50
split, my counts would be only approximately equal.)

    > By the way, I presume that 'gallows' also include the pedestalled
    > ones....

It doesn't matter for this particular statistic, since in either
case the tabulated variable is the presence or absence of [ktpf].

    > Does your count include the labels (and other non-flowing text)?

It includes circular and "radial" text from the diagrams, but not
labels proper (such as the zodiac star labels), nor the key-like
sequences.

    > The three options above don't really explain why it should be
    > 50/50 and not, say, 40/60, unless you go to some kind of binary
    > encoding, as you suggest also.
    
It is not necessary to assume a full binary encoding. For, instance,
suppose the units-place decimal digits are encoded as

  0=nothing  1=k  2=e  3=ke  4=ch  5=kch  6=sh  7=tch  8=ee  9=tee
  
Encoding a string of largish numbers (e.g. entries from a codebook) with
this encoding would result in an even split between words with gallows
and words without. Again, it is *not* necessary that the codebook be
"random", as long as it is independent of the plaintext.
  
By the way, I recall a couple of letters in Kircher's correspondence
about his "universal language".  (I believe one of them was from 
Don Caramuel y Lobkowicz, Czech-born bishop/cardinal of Naples (?),
who was of course a close friend of our close friend Marci. 8-).

I got the impression that Kircher's language was some sort of codebook
scheme, where the word codes were written in roman numerals. Do you
happen to know something more about it?
    
    > It would have to mean also, that each word is 'constructed'. Assuming
    > for the moment a word-by-word (or by syllable) translation of some 
    > source text, then whether or not a gallows appears depends on some
    > property of the original word.
    > A 50% chance could appear in many circumstances, e.g. depending on the
    > number of characters in the original word (odd/even)
    
Ah yes, I didn't think of that. More genrally, a "pseudo-random"
encoding that is applied to each word individually (as opposed to the
whole text as a single string) could also explain the 50-50 split,
without messing up the Zipfian word frequencies and the peculiar word
structure.

    > stress on odd or even syllable, etc, etc. (This will not always
    > lead to 50% chance either).
    
Indeed.  So, if it's not a coincidence, we seem to be left with a
codebook scheme, word-by-word encription, or random noise...

All the best,

--stolfi

From jim@mail.rand.org  Sun Jun 11 19:25:47 2000
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    > I do have copies of the Czech versions, but can read only
    > every 20th word or so, which simply is not enough to make 
    > any sense out of them. When Stolfi and I were in Prague,
    > we were shown a Czech copy of the one about Dee. 

My Czech reading level is 5% lower than Rene's ;-),
but I did scan that book for recognizable names, while Ree was
hunting in the card catalog.  I got the impression that the 
relevant parts of the book were indeed based on sources
which we already knew. 

    > For one
    > thing, the Dee copy mentions (in 1994 if not earlier) that
    > Georg Baresch was the owner of the VMs prior to Marci. This
    > could mean one of two things:
    > - he did have access to some sources we don't know about
    > - he extrapolated this from the hints in Brumbaugh's book, to
    >   which he would have had access
    
My recolletion is that Brumbaugh's name occurs near the place where
Baresch's name is mentioned. Is that so?
    
All the best,

--stolfi

From jim@mail.rand.org  Mon Jun 12 05:29:49 2000
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From: "Gabriel Landini" <G.Landini@bham.ac.uk>
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On 11 Jun 2000, at 20:07, Jorge Stolfi wrote:
> Well, the variance of a 0-1 coin toss is 1/2, right? So the standard
> deviation of the sum of N = 34806 independent coin tosses should be
> sqrt(N/2) = 131. 
> 
> Thus 40 ( = 80/2) is a bit better than what we would expect,
> but still not suspiciously too good, I would say.

SD makes sense only if the distribution is normal... but coin tossing 
is not a gaussian process.
What is that calculation trying to explain?
Please do not take this as an impertinent comment. I just don't 
understand what is the relation.

Cheers,

Gabriel

From jim@mail.rand.org  Mon Jun 12 09:41:17 2000
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My first impression of the VMS, looking at the pictures on the
websites where I can't see the actual letters but just the 
general layout of the pages and a general impression of the 
writing, is that this might be a book composed by somebody who 
wants to set down some notes or ideas on some subject. Normally 
I would first guess it's about the plants in the illustrations, 
but those defying identification, if we don't want to think 
this was written by a Ford Prefect type of person, then I wonder 
if the illustrations are just doodles; the writer just drew 
plant shapes, strange plant inventions.  I have seen youngsters 
draw similar things by the hour -- strange animals, monsters, 
cars, aircraft, spaceships, motorcycles... decorating their 
class notes and things like that with things that look like 
real world items but don't exist, you can't find one.  If this 
is true of the VMS then there might not be any particular 
concentration of herbal terms in the text.

Could the writing be in some language which hasn't been 
considered yet -- have you people scanned the world's languages 
exhaustively?  And then there might be tricks added, such as 
writing Lao or some similarly obscure language, but in western 
style cursive, so that it doesn't look like any language on 
earth. 

If it's in a cypher, then it should be a simple cypher or else 
take an unreasonable amount of time to write.  I seem to remember 
that Leonardo da Vinci had a cypher that was hard to crack, but 
it was quick to make -- he just wrote in a mirror. Seemingly such 
cyphers are hard to crack because they employ a 'think outside 
the box' kind of trick.

I remember reading of some English government officer who did 
this, used a simple but obscure cipher, and wrote an extremely 
candid journal on everything the government was doing, he was a 
trusted official on the inside and got to see everything 
firsthand, I guess.  Then his journal was passed down among his 
heirs and wound up in some library, finally somebody found it 
like 300 years later, when the cypher had passed out of ken, 
so it offered quite a puzzle to decypher it and was only solved 
**when somebody recognized the cypher as being this fraternity's**. 
(The journal then yielded all kinds of insights for historians.) 
What an adventure!  I read this in Kahn's _Codebreakers_.  
Perhaps a review of what they tried while trying to solve the 
cypher might be insightful on the VMS problem?  But he doesn't 
go into a lot of detail; check his bibliography for leads.

In fact wish I had a cypher like that.  Reading about the VMS has 
reinforced that wish.  To be really great, the cypher would have 
to be available for anybody to encypher, with a different 
'password' it becomes a different code; but in today's modern 
world I suppose a computer assist is no big deal.  It would 
however in certain circumstances be wonderful to be able to 
write something in code, generated mentally with no appreciable 
slowdown in writing it.  Those circumstances would be exactly: 
when a computer + program is not available, ie. pre-1950, ie. 
the VMS was made under those conditions, this is a fact!

I once tried using ideograms for a cypher; just used whatever 
shape came to mind to write something down, like a box with 
two dots to represent 'looking in', a sun with rays to mean 
'warm', and stuff like that.  Then I filed it away; found it 
again several years later; and can't decypher a single symbol.


Oh, and I remember something from an iconics class many years 
ago: letters which are made beginning with a single vertical 
stroke, then adding things, like I, T, F, E, etc. were called 
by this professor "vexillaries".  It was theorized that written 
language alphabetic and ideographic symbols evolve toward the 
easier-to-make, and vexillaries fit that model, but it was just 
a theory.  

I did a small study or experiment on the subject, and showed 
that there is an effect like that (at least it got me an A in 
the class:)  I got about a dozen students to take this survey 
sort of thing, they were told that some letters were going to be 
added to English, and shown a set of about 15 squiggles, they 
were asked to pick which ones looked most pleasing, to rank them. 
Then they were asked to practice them all a bit, then pick a 
second time which ones they liked best.  In most cases the 
students changed their minds about what was good after actually 
trying to write them a few times, altho perversely they showed 
no preference for vexillaries either before OR after.  

Oh, there I went on a tangent again, sorry.  The point was, I 
was thinking that your 'gallows' were our 'vexillaries', is that 
right?  A search of the net for the word doesn't pull up any 
pages on iconics; just the Phillipine flag. Hell, I mean, heck, 
it doesn't even pull up the word iconics as the study of letter 
shapes.  This class was about 28 years ago, I guess the advent 
of Macs and Windows more or less took over the word 'icon'.

Has anybody tried just sitting down and making the same kind of 
writing that's seen on the VMS?  Sometimes the actual experience 
has things to teach that no amount of theorizing can do, as in 
that study I made...

However, one thing very significant at least to me has emerged 
from studying the output of this list for a few days: it would 
be terrific to have a private cypher in which to keep my journal 
like that Englishman whose name I don't remember.  The fact that 
I could wish for something like this shows that somebody else 
might have done it and the result was the VMS.  

To pursue this, I think maybe I would investigate some simple 
known cyphers, simpler than the Playfair for instance, and see 
what the statistics on letters and words look like under those 
codes.  I guess da Vinci's would show a normal distribution of 
letter frequencies, but exactly reversed sequence frequencies.
That at least I think is the direction I would take, were I 
going to pursue the VMS closely, which I'm not.

I offer these thoughts, at least they are low cost.

Wood

From jim@mail.rand.org  Mon Jun 12 09:52:48 2000
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Date: Mon, 12 Jun 2000 07:49:22 -0600
From: Woody Brison <wwbrison@lds.net>
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Subject: The Anthon Transcript [was: A similar problem perhaps]
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Hmmm, why is this so difficult?  Maybe if I learn to check 
the outgoing address on my posts... here's another repeat 
this time to the list

=============

This is great, to actually get some feedback...

I have 'debated' Mormonism with a lot of hostile people, so 
over the years I've developed a mindset about it that allows 
me to evaluate their criticisms objectively without being 
offended by their personal stances.  Your comments are very 
interesting and welcome.

And you are right, we don't know if the Anthon Transcript 
was made by Joseph Smith from the plates, or by some clever 
forger trying to discredit him, or some lunatic, or what, 
so even if I was defensive about the religion that wouldn't 
be legit here -- we don't know whether this is connected to 
the religion or not (and we may never know!)  Scientific 
detachment is called for.  You have no idea the fun we have
as Mormons trying to investigate our 'roots'; all sorts of 
nuts inject all sorts of pressures into any attempt to 
discuss anything on publicly accessible forums. 

Thanks for the pointer about Sequoia, I had forgotten that;
very appropo.  I will check.  My research needs a lot more 
familiarity with old alphabets.

Your comments on the fact that the characters get smaller 
as the lines go along are well appreciated.  I had noticed 
that but don't know what to think of it.  It's telling us 
something, but what?  That doesn't occur in the VMS, right?
I had a math professor in college that wrote on the 
blackboard like that. He would start big at the left and get 
smaller and smaller, but at the right he would run out of room 
in spite of his best efforts, and then he would turn the line 
of writing downward at the end, toward the lower right corner. 
I don't know too much about psychology, but he seemed a little
self-conscious in front of his classroom full of students; I 
thought that had something to do with it.  He was also very 
excited about his topic, almost oblivious to his class, the 
size of the blackboard, and everything else -- the spacing 
was just a very subordinate, half-noticed detail.

What about a model that supposes there were lines of text 
on the plates of a certain length, and Joseph Smith was 
trying to copy them onto the paper without breaking the 
line?  He was not highly educated, he was a farm boy, it 
would be a problem to him like hoeing a row of corn or 
something like that.  He'd start with a letter size about 
'yea big' and see how it went, as he got a ways down the row 
he'd see he wasn't going to make it and start reducing the 
letter size.

To check this idea we ought to measure the letter sizes 
and their spacing along the lines.  I will do that.  Good 
idea, thanks!  We should see the size getting smaller as 
we go downward, too, ie. the starting characters at the 
left of each line should decrease in size as we go down -- 
the writer should be getting smarter with each line.

Looking at the picture more closely, 
(http://web.lds.net/pages/wwbrison/freq_ct.htm)  I think 
this whole idea isn't right.  The first four lines don't 
show much variation in size of characters.  The first line 
does show some initial 'oversize' characters but 'corrects' 
this after 5 or 6 symbols; the rest of lines 1 thru 4 are 
of uniform size.  The last three lines look like a separate 
sitting, like someone wrote the first four, then after a 
day or week came back and decided to add three more lines. 
They are uniform size, all smaller.  Only a little variance 
here and there, most noticeable at the beginning of line 
6.  I will have to do the measurements.  I wonder if there 
were two different copyists? 

Gee, this is great!  I didn't expect to get this much help 
on the first try.

Joseph Smith was not crazy, but he did some crazy-looking 
things.  Travelled around quite a bit at great discomfort 
to promulgate his new religion, came into opposition with 
neighbors to the extent of having to move away several times,
built two large buildings at great expense at a time when 
his followers were penniless, settled them in a malaria 
swamp and by dint of mind-boggling effort turned it into 
a healthy place and a good sized city (Nauvoo), and so on.
Endured being arrested and sued something like 40 times,
never convicted.  If we assume he was crazy we could find 
many points of correspondence with that model.  But if we 
assume that he really had contact with God, then it all 
makes good sense according to that model too; better, I 
think...

I will try not to tangent like that too much here, this list 
is for discussing the VMS...  I wonder if there is anything 
from the Mormon mindset that could help decypher it?  A fair 
number of professors at BYU have been puzzling over a couple 
of ancient documents that Joseph Smith translated, and Mormons 
typically are very good with languages.  Mormon boys go on 
proselyting missions at age 19 for 2 years, and about half go 
to foreign missions and learn some new language if not several. 
Walk around Salt Lake City and take a straw poll, ask people 
what languages they know, and you'd be astonished at the 
results, if you didn't know about the missions thing but were 
familiar with Americans generally... 

OK, that's enough out of me.  I will try to relate this to the 
VMS in future, to try to sort of 'pay' for the help I'm getting 
with my project.

Woody


Brian Eric Farnell wrote:
> 
> Hey, those little characters that look like a computer mouse
> remind me of something I learned in Cub Scouts, maybe a Native
> American sign or something.  You might want to check the symbols
> against Native American alphabets, some had no written language
...

From reeds Mon Jun 12 09:54:52 2000
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Date: Mon, 12 Jun 2000 09:54:15 -0400
In-Reply-To: "Gabriel Landini" <G.Landini@bham.ac.uk>
        "Re: Curious coincidence" (Jun 12, 10:26)
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On Jun 12, 10:26, Gabriel Landini wrote:

... 
> SD makes sense only if the distribution is normal... but coin tossing 
> is not a gaussian process.
> What is that calculation trying to explain?
> Please do not take this as an impertinent comment. I just don't 
> understand what is the relation.

Gabriel is wrong about only gaussian random variables having
standard deviations.  Formulae involving standard deviations
of binomial (coin-toss-count) random variables are found in
all statistics & probability books.

But I share Gabriel's confusion about what the calculation is
trying to explain.  I took the given 2 by 2 count data,
(8772, 9016;  8591, 8423) and worked out two chi-squared test
statistics for it.  One was based on the null hypothesis that
all 4 counts had the same expectation (8700.5), which seems to
be what Stolfi and Rene are excited about, and the other is
the null hype that rows & columns are independent, that is,
the cell expectations are 
8874.577438     8913.422562
8488.422562     8525.577438

The first test has "3 degrees of freedom" and the second has "1
degree of freedom".  The test statistic values are 22.2572 and
4.8399, respectively.  The first is wildly significant and the
second is only silightly so: the 4 counts are obviously unequal,
and seem to look inhomogeneous.     




-- 
Jim Reeds, AT&T Labs - Research
Shannon Laboratory, Room C229, Building 103
180 Park Avenue, Florham Park, NJ 07932-0971, USA

reeds@research.att.com, phone: +1 973 360 8414, fax: +1 973 360 8178


From jim@mail.rand.org  Mon Jun 12 13:17:12 2000
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Date: Mon, 12 Jun 2000 17:47:00 +0200
From: "Rafal T. Prinke" <rafalp@amu.edu.pl>
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Rene Zandbergen wrote:

> I do have copies of the Czech versions, but can read only
> every 20th word or so, which simply is not enough to make 
> any sense out of them. When Stolfi and I were in Prague,
> we were shown a Czech copy of the one about Dee. 

Which ones do you have? There were 4 books by him - written
in California between 1980 and 1989:

Kouzelnk z Londna : John Dee v Cechch, 1584-1589 
[The wizard from London : John Dee in Bohemia, 1584-1589]
   [Prague] : ISIS, 1994. 152 p. : ill. ; 21 cm. Translated 
   from English. Series: Rudolfinsk trilogie ; dl 1
   [Rudolphine trilogy ; vol. 1]

Sir Edward Kelley : cesk rytr, 1555-1598 
[Sir Edward Kelley : the Bohemian knight, 1555-1598]
   [translated from English by Miroslav Subrt].
   [Prague] : Samisdat ISIS, 1994. 174 p. : ill. ; 21 cm.
   Series: Rudolfinsk trilogie ; sv. 1 [i.e. 2] 
   [Rudolphine trilogy ; vol. 1 [should be 2]]

Malostransk Sapfo : opozden recenze dla Elizabethy Johanny 
Westonov, 1582-1612 
[The Sappho of Mala Strana : belated review of the works
by Elizabetha Johanna Weston, 1582-1612]
    Praha : ISIS, 1994. 137 p. : ill. ; 21 cm.

Hledn kamene mudrcu : rehabilitace pana Edvarda Kelleye,
neoplatonickho hermetickho filozofa a rytre Ceskho krlovstv, 
kter zil v letech 1584-1598 v Praze 
[Searching for the philosopher's stone : rehabilitation of 
Sir Edward Kelley, neoplatonic hermetic philosopher and
knight of the Bohemian kingdom, who lived in Prague in the years
1584-1598]
    Praha : s.n., 1991. 222 p. : ill. ; 21 cm. Translated 
    from the English.

If you can scan a few critical pages and mail to me, I could
try to see what value those books have. Please make them
black-and-white GIF's to save bandwidth. I am quite sure,
however, that - while possibly quite sound - they are not
based on any primary research so all we can expect are
some new hypotheses. If they had anything not found in
earlier Czech/German/English publications, he would have
published them in a scholarly publishing house rather than
"Samizdat ISIS". Unorthodox marxists who had to emigrate
after 1968 were quite welcome back after 1989.

> This is precisely what I would like to know as well. For one
> thing, the Dee copy mentions (in 1994 if not earlier) that
> Georg Baresch was the owner of the VMs prior to Marci. This
> could mean one of two things:
> - he did have access to some sources we don't know about
> - he extrapolated this from the hints in Brumbaugh's book, to
>   which he would have had access
> I am strongly inclined to believe the latter, also because he
> states that Dee was the seller of hte VMs to Rudolf, for which
> again two similar options exist. Here we can be pretty sure that
> he did not have hard evidence.

Also, if he spelt the name "Georg Baresch" rather than "Jiri Bares",
it strongly suggests (at least to me) that he picked it from
some other publication. 

The "factoid" of Dee's ownership of VMs seems to be based on
the comparison of folio numbering with those in Dee's MSS.
While possible, this evidence is far from convincing.

> For Kelly's death year one can read 1595 and 1597. Svitak sticks
> to the latter but my understanding is that 1595 is the correct
> one. This is another awkward point.

The title of his book seems to say "1598" (unless the LOC entry
has a mistake). I tried to work it out some time ago and
concluded the later year (whatever it was) was correct.
The basis for the earlier year is the note in Dee's diary
which, I believe, may refer to Kelley's escape from the tower
and accident - which was serious but he survived.

> Finally, the cover of the book about Westonia has a portrait of
> her. But in a catalogue including some paintings from Rudolf's
> collections, the same portrait (a painting by Hans von Aachen)
> is described as "a portrait of a girl (daughter of the artist?)
> about 1612". Still, Westonia does seem to mention her step-father
> (Kelly) in a more positive light than what he is usually held in,
> and for her Svitak is the only source I know about. (In fact I had
> not heard about her before we went to Prague).

There are more sources - also in English (I would have to find my
e-notes on her) but mainly concerned with her poems. You may
like to compare the portrait you mention with her true effigy
on my Web page at:

   http://main.amu.edu.pl/~rafalp/HERM/SENDI/westonia.htm

> > As you met Lubos Antonin in Prague, you may also have
> > met Michal Pober - he is trying to trace the elusive
> > California editions of Svitak's books (but so far with
> > no success).
> 
> We did indeed! He showed us the place in Bethlehem square
> where Hajek's house used to be (and where Dee and Kelly did
> their skrying). When did you last communicate with him? I did
> ask him about the Svitak books in February, after we came back
> from Prague.

A few days ago - but on other matters. He certainly has not
located the English versions (if they exist at all) yet,
as I am sure he would have told me.

Finally, there is a Czech novel about Kelley:

     Vclav Kaplick, Zivot alchymistuv 
     Praha : Ceskoslovensk spisovatel, 1980. 
     237 p. : ill. ; 21 cm.

which I have seen quoted as a reference in no less than three
otherwise very scholarly articles. The authors claimed that
even though it is a novel, it was "based on sound research".
I have located the book and read it - but found nothing that
would indicate original research. The known facts seem OK
but there are lots of "literary facts" and dialogs which
obviously represent "licentia poetica".

Best regards,

Rafal

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From: Dan Moonhawk Alford <dalford@haywire.csuhayward.edu>
To: Woody Brison <wwbrison@lds.net>
Cc: voynich@rand.org
Subject: Re: The Anthon Transcript [was: A similar problem perhaps]
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I'm glad this was repeated to the list. As a part-Cherokee, I feel you're
on the right path re: the Cherokee Syllabary and the Anthon Transcript
(didn't know that was the keyword for it) of Joseph Smith.

See my webpage for some of this. Briefly, the original written language
was brought on golden tablets from a tribe that joined the
Tsalagi/Cherokee "from the north" long ago; before Sequoyah, only those of
the heritage of the people from the north were allowed to become literate
in it, but Sequoyah, being the last living member of the Scribe Clan, the
others having been massacred by the invaders, opened up literacy to the
Tsalagi-proper. Joseph Smith was snoopin' around the Tsalagi for a while,
and then he disappeared -- coincidentally, so did the golden tablets;
coincidentally, he founded a new religion on some gold tablets with some
kind of writing on them which was hard to decipher; coincidentally, some
say that the writing describes a primal history of the Americas -- which
I'm sure must have been the academic specialty of the Angel Moroni! ;-)

I got most or all of the above from Traveling Bird's *Tell Them That They
Lie,* which I found in my CSU Hayward library in the Cherokee section,
written by descendants of Sequoyah, who insist he 'created' nothing, just
passed along ancient writing to the Tsalagi "masses" before it was too
late; all the rest was self-serving missionary and linguistics puffery,
according to them.

warm regards, moonhawk

dalford@haywire.csuhayward.edu
http://www.sunflower.com/~dewatson/alford.htm

"I don't need a compass to tell me which way the wind shines!" 
                                                   -- Roy, Mystery Men



On Mon, 12 Jun 2000, Woody Brison wrote:

> Hmmm, why is this so difficult?  Maybe if I learn to check 
> the outgoing address on my posts... here's another repeat 
> this time to the list
> 
> =============
> 
> This is great, to actually get some feedback...
> 
> I have 'debated' Mormonism with a lot of hostile people, so 
> over the years I've developed a mindset about it that allows 
> me to evaluate their criticisms objectively without being 
> offended by their personal stances.  Your comments are very 
> interesting and welcome.
> 
> And you are right, we don't know if the Anthon Transcript 
> was made by Joseph Smith from the plates, or by some clever 
> forger trying to discredit him, or some lunatic, or what, 
> so even if I was defensive about the religion that wouldn't 
> be legit here -- we don't know whether this is connected to 
> the religion or not (and we may never know!)  Scientific 
> detachment is called for.  You have no idea the fun we have
> as Mormons trying to investigate our 'roots'; all sorts of 
> nuts inject all sorts of pressures into any attempt to 
> discuss anything on publicly accessible forums. 
> 
> Thanks for the pointer about Sequoia, I had forgotten that;
> very appropo.  I will check.  My research needs a lot more 
> familiarity with old alphabets.
> 
> Your comments on the fact that the characters get smaller 
> as the lines go along are well appreciated.  I had noticed 
> that but don't know what to think of it.  It's telling us 
> something, but what?  That doesn't occur in the VMS, right?
> I had a math professor in college that wrote on the 
> blackboard like that. He would start big at the left and get 
> smaller and smaller, but at the right he would run out of room 
> in spite of his best efforts, and then he would turn the line 
> of writing downward at the end, toward the lower right corner. 
> I don't know too much about psychology, but he seemed a little
> self-conscious in front of his classroom full of students; I 
> thought that had something to do with it.  He was also very 
> excited about his topic, almost oblivious to his class, the 
> size of the blackboard, and everything else -- the spacing 
> was just a very subordinate, half-noticed detail.
> 
> What about a model that supposes there were lines of text 
> on the plates of a certain length, and Joseph Smith was 
> trying to copy them onto the paper without breaking the 
> line?  He was not highly educated, he was a farm boy, it 
> would be a problem to him like hoeing a row of corn or 
> something like that.  He'd start with a letter size about 
> 'yea big' and see how it went, as he got a ways down the row 
> he'd see he wasn't going to make it and start reducing the 
> letter size.
> 
> To check this idea we ought to measure the letter sizes 
> and their spacing along the lines.  I will do that.  Good 
> idea, thanks!  We should see the size getting smaller as 
> we go downward, too, ie. the starting characters at the 
> left of each line should decrease in size as we go down -- 
> the writer should be getting smarter with each line.
> 
> Looking at the picture more closely, 
> (http://web.lds.net/pages/wwbrison/freq_ct.htm)  I think 
> this whole idea isn't right.  The first four lines don't 
> show much variation in size of characters.  The first line 
> does show some initial 'oversize' characters but 'corrects' 
> this after 5 or 6 symbols; the rest of lines 1 thru 4 are 
> of uniform size.  The last three lines look like a separate 
> sitting, like someone wrote the first four, then after a 
> day or week came back and decided to add three more lines. 
> They are uniform size, all smaller.  Only a little variance 
> here and there, most noticeable at the beginning of line 
> 6.  I will have to do the measurements.  I wonder if there 
> were two different copyists? 
> 
> Gee, this is great!  I didn't expect to get this much help 
> on the first try.
> 
> Joseph Smith was not crazy, but he did some crazy-looking 
> things.  Travelled around quite a bit at great discomfort 
> to promulgate his new religion, came into opposition with 
> neighbors to the extent of having to move away several times,
> built two large buildings at great expense at a time when 
> his followers were penniless, settled them in a malaria 
> swamp and by dint of mind-boggling effort turned it into 
> a healthy place and a good sized city (Nauvoo), and so on.
> Endured being arrested and sued something like 40 times,
> never convicted.  If we assume he was crazy we could find 
> many points of correspondence with that model.  But if we 
> assume that he really had contact with God, then it all 
> makes good sense according to that model too; better, I 
> think...
> 
> I will try not to tangent like that too much here, this list 
> is for discussing the VMS...  I wonder if there is anything 
> from the Mormon mindset that could help decypher it?  A fair 
> number of professors at BYU have been puzzling over a couple 
> of ancient documents that Joseph Smith translated, and Mormons 
> typically are very good with languages.  Mormon boys go on 
> proselyting missions at age 19 for 2 years, and about half go 
> to foreign missions and learn some new language if not several. 
> Walk around Salt Lake City and take a straw poll, ask people 
> what languages they know, and you'd be astonished at the 
> results, if you didn't know about the missions thing but were 
> familiar with Americans generally... 
> 
> OK, that's enough out of me.  I will try to relate this to the 
> VMS in future, to try to sort of 'pay' for the help I'm getting 
> with my project.
> 
> Woody
> 
> 
> Brian Eric Farnell wrote:
> > 
> > Hey, those little characters that look like a computer mouse
> > remind me of something I learned in Cub Scouts, maybe a Native
> > American sign or something.  You might want to check the symbols
> > against Native American alphabets, some had no written language
> ...
> 

From jim@mail.rand.org  Mon Jun 12 15:04:58 2000
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From: Jorge Stolfi <stolfi@ic.unicamp.br>
To: voynich@rand.org
Subject: Re: Curious coincidence
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    > [Stolfi:] Well, the variance of a 0-1 coin toss is 1/2, right? 
    
Wrong! It's 1/4, you dumbo!

    > [Gabriel:] SD makes sense only if the distribution is normal...
    > but coin tossing is not a gaussian process.
    
The variance (and standard deviation) are defined for any distribution.
(Ok, sometimes the formula yields +oo, but not in this case.)

If two variables are independent, the variance of their sum is the sum
of their variances.  So the sum of N idependent variables with 
the same variance V has variance N*V.  This too holds for any distribution.

There is a formula (Chebyshev's) that gives an X% confidence interval
for any distribution, given its mean and variance. Unfortunately,
those intervals get quite broad as X approaches 100%.  However, the sum
of a large enough number of independent variables with the same
distribution will be indistinguishable from a Gaussian --- for which 
one can compute much tighter confidence intervals, even for X near 100%.
(That is one of the many reasons why statisticians are fond of Gaussians 8-)
    
    > What is that calculation trying to explain?

A proposed explanation for the almost 50-50 split was that the
"gallows bit" of each word was an independent, uniform 0-1 random
variable. The count of words with gallows would then be the sum
of N such variables, whose expected value is N/2.

But, of course, the sum is itself a random variable, so we cannot
expect the count to be exactly N/2. Rene wondered whether the observed
count was *too* close to N/2 for being the result of adding N coin
tosses. That would weaken the random-bit theory by making alternative
explanations more likely --- e.g., that the number of gallows was
intentionally adjusted for a 50/50 split, or that the gallows were
generated by a (partially?) deterministic rule that ensured the even
split.

My SD calculation was meant to show that the observed deviation from N/2
(~40 tokens) is roughly in the ballpark of the deviation predicted for
the sum of N = 34806 independent random bits. The (correct this time, I hope)
variance of the latter is (1/4)N, so the standard deviation is
sqrt(34806/4) = 93. So the observed deviation from equality is in fact 
on the small side, but not *too* small.

    > [Jim Reeds:] But I share Gabriel's confusion about what the
    > calculation is trying to explain. I took the given 2 by 2 count
    > data, (8772, 9016; 8591, 8423) and worked out two chi-squared
    > test statistics for it. ... the 4 counts are obviously unequal,
    > and seem to look inhomogeneous.

Thanks for the analysis; but now it is my turn to be confused.  

I gather that the goal of the chi-square test is to answer the
question: "Can we explain the discrepancies we see between those
counts as the result of sampling error, or can we confidently say that
the expected value of count X is greater than that of Y?"

Indeed, the 2x2 table entries show sizable deviations from the uniform
4-way split. This is true especially between top and bottom, and more
so on the right column.

I don't question your claim that the deviations are statistically
significant. This only means that the "table letters" bit *as computed*
definitely has a small bias towards 0 (and, I presume, also a small
negative correlation with the gallows bit). But, in my view, this
bias doesn't mean that the the numbers are "uninteresting".

For one thing, we know that the data is noisy, and that the errors are
*not* fairly distributed. While it is hard to mistake a gallows for
anything else, it is easy to misread a "ch" or "sh" for other
character combinations. Moreover, it is conceivable that words that
contain tables are harder to read, and therefore are more likely to be
rejected for not reaching majority agreement. Finally, I may be using
a slightly incorrect definition of "table letter". (You may recall the
puzzling absence of "e" after "p" and "f", and my conjecture about
hooked arms on those letters.) All these errors are likely to produce
a systematic downward bias in the "table letter" count.

So I think that the chi-square tests don't quite answer the question
of whether the gallows/table splits are "surprisingly even" or not.

To give an analogy: suppose we tabulate the crosses of two pea plants
according to pink/white flowers, smooth/wrinkled seed ;-); and we
get numbers like my 2x2 table, with a small *but statistically
significant* deviation from equality.  

Should we say "They are just different numbers, so what"? Or are we
still entitled to speculate about an underlying *symmetrical* random
choice process, plus slight external disturbances?

All the best,

--stolfi

From jim@mail.rand.org  Mon Jun 12 17:09:48 2000
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Subject: Re: Curious coincidence
Date: Mon, 12 Jun 2000 15:59:09 -0400
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The math is interesting as presented, however I feel you've left out a
rather overwhelming statistic that will throw the even split way off
balance... I believe the labels are extremely heavy in favour of using
Gallows. Just a quick glance at a zodiac page shows a significantly higher
number of words with Gallows than without.

John.

From reeds Mon Jun 12 16:46:26 2000
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        "Re: Curious coincidence" (Jun 12, 16:04)
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Stolfi, I am struck by the almost exact 50-50% split into 0g and 1g
words. Would it be possible to divide the text into a few large
portions ("A" vs "B", say, or "Bio" vs "Non bio" or "front" vs
"back) and see if the pheonomenom holds in the pieces, as well?

-- 
Jim Reeds, AT&T Labs - Research
Shannon Laboratory, Room C229, Building 103
180 Park Avenue, Florham Park, NJ 07932-0971, USA

reeds@research.att.com, phone: +1 973 360 8414, fax: +1 973 360 8178


From mskala@ansuz.sooke.bc.ca  Mon Jun 12 17:23:05 2000
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Subject: Re: Curious coincidence
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On Mon, 12 Jun 2000, Jim Reeds wrote:
> Stolfi, I am struck by the almost exact 50-50% split into 0g and 1g
> words. Would it be possible to divide the text into a few large
> portions ("A" vs "B", say, or "Bio" vs "Non bio" or "front" vs
> "back) and see if the pheonomenom holds in the pieces, as well?

I haven't been very systematic about it yet, but I did write a script to
go through the manuscript line-by-line and, after each line, print the
difference between the number of 1g and 0g words encountered up to that
point.  I displayed it as a character-based plot so I could see general
trends.  That experiment suggested that the phenomenon does *not* hold in
smaller sections - there were short gallows-rich chunks at the start and
end, and a longer gallows-poor chunk in the middle.

I'd like to, but haven't yet, split the VMS into the standard "sections"
and run counts within each.

Matthew Skala, "the modern CEO's worst nightmare" (Macleans, 2000-04-10)
    My Internet doesn't include channels, commercials, or the V-chip.
       http://www.islandnet.com/~mskala/ mskala@ansuz.sooke.bc.ca

From jim@mail.rand.org  Mon Jun 12 21:21:12 2000
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From: Jorge Stolfi <stolfi@ic.unicamp.br>
To: voynich@rand.org
Subject: Re: Curious coincidence
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    > [Jim Reeds:] Stolfi, I am struck by the almost exact 50-50%
    > split into 0g and 1g words. Would it be possible to divide the
    > text into a few large portions ("A" vs "B", say, or "Bio" vs
    > "Non bio" or "front" vs "back) and see if the pheonomenom holds
    > in the pieces, as well?
    
Er, um, I just did it, and the results are a bit disappointing:    

                                              |||| ||||
                                              VVVV VVVV
                                              
  + ----- + ------------------------------- + -------------------------- +
  |       |              counts             |        fractions           |
  + ----- + ----- + ----------------------- + ------------------- + ---- + 
  |       |       |    gallows in word      |    gallows in word  |      |
  | sec   |   tot |     0     1     2     ? |    0    1    2    ? |   SD |
  + ----- + ----- + ----- ----- ----- ----- + ---- ---- ---- ---- + ---- +
  | str.2 | 10768 |  4610  5402    98   658 | .428 .502 .009 .061 | .005 |
  | hea.1 |  6866 |  3565  3087    73   140 | .519 .450 .011 .020 | .006 |
  | bio.1 |  6828 |  3343  3185    30   269 | .490 .466 .004 .039 | .006 |
  | heb.1 |  2901 |  1284  1504    39    74 | .443 .518 .013 .026 | .009 |
  | cos.2 |  1491 |   690   655    19   127 | .463 .439 .013 .085 | .013 |
  | pha.2 |  1426 |   703   600     9   114 | .493 .421 .006 .080 | .013 |
  | zod.1 |  1010 |   351   338    12   308 | .348 .335 .012 .305 | .016 |
  | pha.1 |   926 |   527   327     4    68 | .569 .353 .004 .073 | .016 |
  | cos.3 |   884 |   397   319     1   167 | .449 .361 .001 .189 | .017 |
  | hea.2 |   868 |   425   389    12    42 | .490 .448 .014 .048 | .017 |
  | str.1 |   755 |   322   348     3    82 | .426 .461 .004 .109 | .018 |
  | heb.2 |   557 |   212   296     2    47 | .381 .531 .004 .084 | .021 |
  | unk.6 |   489 |   186   240     6    57 | .380 .491 .012 .117 | .023 |
  | unk.7 |   387 |   150   205     2    30 | .388 .530 .005 .078 | .025 |
  | unk.5 |   342 |   148   159     2    33 | .433 .465 .006 .096 | .027 |
  | unk.4 |   302 |   135   157     4     6 | .447 .520 .013 .020 | .029 |
  | unk.1 |   213 |   106    95     1    11 | .498 .446 .005 .052 | .034 |
  | cos.1 |   185 |   119    49     .    17 | .643 .265 .    .092 | .037 |
  | unk.2 |   140 |    74    57     5     4 | .529 .407 .036 .029 | .042 |
  | unk.3 |    47 |    16    27     1     3 | .340 .574 .021 .064 | .073 |
  + ----- + ----- + ----- ----- ----- ----- + ---- ---- ---- ---- + ---- +
  | txt.n | 37385 | 17363 17439   323  2257 | .464 .466 .009 .060 | .003 |
  + ----- + ----- + ----- ----- ----- ----- + ---- ---- ---- ---- + ---- +
  | lab.n |  1154 |   386   590    29   149 | .334 .511 .025 .129 | .015 |
  + ----- + ----- + ----- ----- ----- ----- + ---- ---- ---- ---- + ---- +

The "?" column counts tokens that were rejected because they contained weirdos,
unreadable characters, or characters without a majority reading.

Each line is basically a section, except that the herbal pages were first
split according to language, and then some sections (including herbal) were
split into contiguous blocks. See the page list below.

The line "txt.n" is the concatenation of all the sections. The line "lab.n"
is the list of all labels (which were not included in any of the preceding
lines).

The "SD" column is the standard deviation of the sampling error for the
fractions, sqrt(1/(4*N)).

The splits for individual sections are not too far from 50-50, which may
still be a hint of something. However, it is obvious that the differences 
are now statistically significant. 

I must admit the almost-even split for the total counts now looks more like
a meaningless coincidence.

All the best, I guess... 8-(

--stolfi

----------------------------------------------------------------------
Pages in each section:

  bio.1
    f75r f75v f76r f76v f77r f77v f78r f78v f79r f79v
    f80r f80v f81r f81v f82r f82v f83r f83v f84r f84v

  cos.1
    f57v

  cos.2
    f67r1 f67r2 f67v2 f67v1 f68r1 f68r2 f68r3 f68v3
    f68v2 f68v1 f69r f69v f70r1 f70r2

  cos.3
    f85r2 f86v4 f85v2 f86v3

  hea.1
    f1v f2r f2v f3r f3v f4r f4v f5r f5v f6r f6v f7r
    f7v f8r f8v f9r f9v f10r f10v f11r f11v f13r
    f13v f14r f14v f15r f15v f16r f16v f17r f17v
    f18r f18v f19r f19v f20r f20v f21r f21v f22r
    f22v f23r f23v f24r f24v f25r f25v f27r f27v
    f28r f28v f29r f29v f30r f30v f32r f32v f35r
    f35v f36r f36v f37r f37v f38r f38v f42r f42v
    f44r f44v f45r f45v f47r f47v f49r f51r f51v
    f52r f52v f53r f53v f54r f54v f56r f56v

  hea.2
    f87r f87v f90r1 f90r2 f90v2 f90v1 f93r f93v
    f96r f96v

  heb.1
    f26r f26v f31r f31v f33r f33v f34r f34v f39r
    f39v f40r f40v f41r f41v f43r f43v f46r f46v
    f48r f48v f50r f50v f55r f55v f57r f66v

  heb.2
    f94r f94v f95r1 f95r2 f95v2 f95v1

  pha.1
    f88r f88v f89r1 f89r2 f89v2 f89v1

  pha.2
    f99r f99v f100r f100v f101r1 f101v2 f102r1 f102r2
    f102v2 f102v1

  str.1
    f58r f58v

  str.2
    f103r f103v f104r f104v f105r f105v f106r f106v
    f107r f107v f108r f108v f111r f111v f112r f112v
    f113r f113v f114r f114v f115r f115v f116r

  unk.1
    f1r

  unk.2
    f49v

  unk.3
    f65r f65v

  unk.4
    f66r

  unk.5
    f85r1

  unk.6
    f86v6

  unk.7
    f86v5

  unk.8
    f116v

  zod.1
    f70v2 f70v1 f71r f71v f72r1 f72r2 f72r3 f72v3
    f72v2 f72v1 f73r f73v


    
    > 
    > -- 
    > Jim Reeds, AT&T Labs - Research
    > Shannon Laboratory, Room C229, Building 103
    > 180 Park Avenue, Florham Park, NJ 07932-0971, USA
    > 
    > reeds@research.att.com, phone: +1 973 360 8414, fax: +1 973 360 8178
    > 
    > 

From jim@mail.rand.org  Mon Jun 12 21:32:48 2000
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From: Jorge Stolfi <stolfi@ic.unicamp.br>
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Subject: Re: Curious coincidence
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Ahem, would you care for more intriguing coincidences?

>From the table in my previous message:
                                              
  + ----- + ----- + 
  | sec   |  toks |
  + ----- + ----- +
  | str.2 | 10768 |
  | hea.1 |  6866 |
  | bio.1 |  6828 |
  | heb.1 |  2901 |
  | cos.2 |  1491 |
  | pha.2 |  1426 |
  | zod.1 |  1010 |
  | pha.1 |   926 |
  | cos.3 |   884 |
  | hea.2 |   868 |
  | str.1 |   755 |
  | heb.2 |   557 |
  | unk.6 |   489 |
  | unk.7 |   387 |
  | unk.5 |   342 |
  | unk.4 |   302 |
  | unk.1 |   213 |
  | cos.1 |   185 |
  | unk.2 |   140 |
  | unk.3 |    47 |
  + ----- + ----- +
  | txt.n | 37385 |
  + ----- + ----- +
  | lab.n |  1154 |
  + ----- + ----- +

Note the near-coincidence between the number of tokens in these
sections:

  | hea.1 |  6866 |  (herbal-A up to f56v)
  | bio.1 |  6828 |  (biological)

  | cos.2 |  1491 |  (astro/cosmo from f67r1 to f70r2)
  | pha.2 |  1426 |  (pharma from f99r to f102v1)

Wat did you say, you are not impressed? 

Yeah, I was afraid you wouldn't... 

Sigh.  All the best, 

--stolfi

From jim@mail.rand.org  Tue Jun 13 02:19:43 2000
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From: Jorge Stolfi <stolfi@ic.unicamp.br>
To: voynich@rand.org
Subject: Gallows bit sequences
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    > [Bradley E. Schaefer:] I was just wondering if you could create
    > a series for each word identifying whether it has gallows and
    > tables? Are they Poissonly distributed? Do they always come in
    > foursomes? Are there significant deviations from 25% probability
    > over shorter scales than the whole MS? Is there any periodicity?
    > Do words of one type avoid or prefer words of different types?
    > In all, is there any further structure that might provide a key
    > to a code-book scheme?

I can answer the first question with "voil":

  http://www.dcc.unicamp.br/~stolfi/voynich/Notes/059/stats/bio.1.ast
  http://www.dcc.unicamp.br/~stolfi/voynich/Notes/059/stats/hea.1.ast
  ...
  http://www.dcc.unicamp.br/~stolfi/voynich/Notes/059/stats/txt.n.ast
  http://www.dcc.unicamp.br/~stolfi/voynich/Notes/059/stats/lab.n.ast

The section names are the same I used in my previous message.
"txt.n" is the whole text minus labels, "lab.n" is all the labels.

In these files, each character, line, and paragraph corresponds to one
word, line, and paragraph of the VMS, respectively. The character is
"?" for bad words, or a digit N for a word with N gallows.

The corresponding words, one per line, are 

  http://www.dcc.unicamp.br/~stolfi/voynich/Notes/059/word-seqs/bio.1.ast
  http://www.dcc.unicamp.br/~stolfi/voynich/Notes/059/word-seqs/hea.1.ast
  ...                                                 
  http://www.dcc.unicamp.br/~stolfi/voynich/Notes/059/word-seqs/txt.n.ast
  http://www.dcc.unicamp.br/~stolfi/voynich/Notes/059/word-seqs/lab.n.ast

Here a blank line means VMS end-of-line ("-"), two blank lines
means VMS end-of-paragraph ("=").

I would rather not do the "tables" sequences right now; I am still
trying to decide what exactly is a table and what isn't. (e.g., should
I count the gallows platforms?)

As for the other answers, maybe another day...

All the best,

--stolfi

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Folks,

Please allow me one chance to restore my reputation after the "equal
split" blooper. Do have a look at the gallows bit sequences that I
just prepared on Bradley's request (see my previous message).

  http://www.dcc.unicamp.br/~stolfi/voynich/Notes/059/stats/bio.1.ast
  http://www.dcc.unicamp.br/~stolfi/voynich/Notes/059/stats/hea.1.ast
  ...
  http://www.dcc.unicamp.br/~stolfi/voynich/Notes/059/stats/txt.n.ast
  http://www.dcc.unicamp.br/~stolfi/voynich/Notes/059/stats/lab.n.ast

I dare think that you will find *them* quite interesting.

All the best,

--stolfi

From jim@mail.rand.org  Tue Jun 13 02:32:55 2000
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Oops, I wrote: 

    > The corresponding words, one per line, are 

The file names were wrong, here they are:

  http://www.dcc.unicamp.br/~stolfi/voynich/Notes/059/word-seqs/bio.1.wds
  http://www.dcc.unicamp.br/~stolfi/voynich/Notes/059/word-seqs/hea.1.wds
  ...                                                 
  http://www.dcc.unicamp.br/~stolfi/voynich/Notes/059/word-seqs/txt.n.wds
  http://www.dcc.unicamp.br/~stolfi/voynich/Notes/059/word-seqs/lab.n.wds

--stolfi

From jim@mail.rand.org  Tue Jun 13 02:39:19 2000
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Jorge Stolfi wrote:
> Please allow me one chance to restore my reputation after the "equal
> split" blooper. Do have a look at the gallows bit sequences that I
> just prepared on Bradley's request (see my previous message).

Hmm -- those do indeed look interesting.  Without having done any
computation, it looks like there'll be more long runs of gallows
and non-gallows than a coin-flipping model would suggest, and
that they're more likely in the first line of a "paragraph" than
in the last.

-- 
	Jim Gillogly
	Highday, 24 Forelithe S.R. 2000, 06:35
	12.19.7.5.4, 4 Kan 7 Zotz, Fifth Lord of Night

From jim@mail.rand.org  Tue Jun 13 04:22:38 2000
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From: "Gabriel Landini" <G.Landini@bham.ac.uk>
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On 12 Jun 2000, at 16:04, Jorge Stolfi wrote:

>     > [Gabriel:] SD makes sense only if the distribution is normal...
>     > but coin tossing is not a gaussian process.
> 
> There is a formula (Chebyshev's) that gives an X% confidence interval
> for any distribution, given its mean and variance. 

Jim very kindly explained this in a private message. Yes, I was very 
wrong. Sorry about that.

Cheers,

Gabriel


From jim@mail.rand.org  Tue Jun 13 08:05:30 2000
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Date: Tue, 13 Jun 2000 14:08:40 +0200
From: Zandbergen@t-online.de (Rene Zandbergen)
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References: <393EBB73.49B09732@voynich.nu> <393FC6B4.B1A58EA1@amu.edu.pl> <39403192.1CC1F222@voynich.nu> <394154D5.E458D820@amu.edu.pl> <394416F6.A9832647@voynich.nu> <394505F4.FBC13C9E@amu.edu.pl>
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Prompted by Stolfi, I went back to Svitak's book about Dee
and finally found (after previous failed attempts) the part
where he writes about the VMs: Zahadna kniha - the enigmatic
book.

In fact, there is a Dee quote in the header of this chapter
which I can only partly follow, but which seems intriguing.
If Rafal could translate it, then it would be interesting to
find out from where it originates. The copy quality is not 
great so there may be one or two i/l confusions. I'm trying
to indicate hac'ecks with apostrophes:

  Snaz'il jsem, se objevit s'ifru rukopisiu, materialu, ktere
  mi E.K. pr'inesi, jak si pr'al. Nalezi je v Huet's Cross,
  s knihou o kouzlech a alchimii, ke ktere ho pr'ivedlo
  duchovni stvor'eni.

My impression is that Svitak is equating the book of St. Dunstan
(or whatever Kelly found in Wales) with the VMs. Also,
he seems to use the name Huet's Cross for this location.
The above really looks like a specific reference of Dee to his
attempts of deciphering the VMs, brought by Kelly, but perhaps
the word s'ifru above is misleading me.

Rafal wrote:

> Which ones do you have? There were 4 books by him - written
> in California between 1980 and 1989:
> 
> Kouzelnk z Londna : John Dee v Cechch, 1584-1589
> Sir Edward Kelley : cesk rytr, 1555-1598
> Malostransk Sapfo : opozden recenze dla Elizabethy Johanny

Yes, these three, which were presented by Svitak as a 'Bohemian
trilogy'.

> If you can scan a few critical pages and mail to me, I could
> try to see what value those books have. Please make them
> black-and-white GIF's to save bandwidth.

Will do.

> Also, if he spelt the name "Georg Baresch" rather than "Jiri Bares",
> it strongly suggests (at least to me) that he picked it from
> some other publication.

... ve vlastnictvi Georgia Barschia.

He uses the non-Czech spelling of Raphael Missovski's name (like
I just did) but the proper equivalent of Voynich (Voynic').
He mentions Newbold and Kent (which should leave us no doubt
about one of his main sources) and also Strong. He does also
mention Brumbaugh (the only source for Baresch' name as far as
I am aware) as Stolfi correctly remembered.

> The "factoid" of Dee's ownership of VMs seems to be based on
> the comparison of folio numbering with those in Dee's MSS.

Of course, this is very much advertised in the Newbold/Kent
book as being the truth.
 
> > For Kelly's death year one can read 1595 and 1597.
> The title of his book seems to say "1598" 

You could be right. Michal Pober, in Prague, suggested that 
1595 should be correct. I think it is fair to say that it is
still contested :-).

> There are more sources - also in English (I would have to find my
> e-notes on her) but mainly concerned with her poems. You may
> like to compare the portrait you mention with her true effigy
> on my Web page at:
> 
>    http://main.amu.edu.pl/~rafalp/HERM/SENDI/westonia.htm

I no longer trust the picture used by Svitak, but if the above
is from Pelzel (>100 years later), how can we be sure it is her
true likeness? (No criticism, just curious....)

Cheers, Rene

From jim@mail.rand.org  Tue Jun 13 09:14:10 2000
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Snaz'il jsem, se objevit s'ifru rukopisiu, materialu, ktere
  mi E.K. pr'inesi, jak si pr'al. Nalezi je v Huet's Cross,
  s knihou o kouzlech a alchimii, ke ktere ho pr'ivedlo
  duchovni stvor'eni.

hi there! these lines translate as this:
I suffered to break the code of the manuscript, the material E.K. brought 
and asked me to decipher. He found these (pages) in Huet's Cross alongside a 
book about magic and alchemy to which he was led by a spiritual being.

As i am a czech native i can at least help you translate materials in my 
native tongue even though i may not be able to offer any further insights.i 
did flip through svitak's books,but they seemed full of marxist tangents and 
b.s. which turned me off despite my interest in dee and kelley.

good luck   milan
________________________________________________________________________
Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com

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From: Mark Parry <MParry@mertec.co.uk>
To: voynich@rand.org
Subject: RE: About Thaddeus Hajek
Date: Tue, 13 Jun 2000 14:29:44 +0100
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> Snaz'il jsem, se objevit s'ifru rukopisiu, materialu, ktere
>   mi E.K. pr'inesi, jak si pr'al. Nalezi je v Huet's Cross,
>   s knihou o kouzlech a alchimii, ke ktere ho pr'ivedlo
>   duchovni stvor'eni.
> 
> hi there! these lines translate as this:
> I suffered to break the code of the manuscript, the material E.K. brought 
> and asked me to decipher. He found these (pages) in Huet's Cross alongside
> a 
> book about magic and alchemy to which he was led by a spiritual being.
	[Mark Parry]  This is referenced in the Charlotte Fell Smith Book
	http://www.johndee.org/charlotte/Chapter7/7p2.html
	Mark
>  
> 

From jim@mail.rand.org  Tue Jun 13 09:38:40 2000
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From: "Gabriel Landini" <G.Landini@bham.ac.uk>
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On 13 Jun 2000, at 14:29, Mark Parry wrote:
>  [Mark Parry]  This is referenced in the Charlotte Fell Smith Book
>  http://www.johndee.org/charlotte/Chapter7/7p2.html


Mark,
I guess this is the "treasure" ms that you took to the Teddington 
meeting? But this was cracked, wasn't it?

Cheers,

Gabriel





From jim@mail.rand.org  Tue Jun 13 10:03:49 2000
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From: "golem matrix" <golematic@hotmail.com>
To: G.Landini@bham.ac.uk, voynich@rand.org
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are any of you familiar with gustav meyrink's book "the angel of the west 
window"? it is a book of fiction about john dee,but obviously meyrink was 
deeply familiar with the facts he fictionalized. it is also full of wacked 
out mysticism typical of turn-of-the-century central europe. i am curious 
about the sources meyrink used for his dee/kelley storyline in the book.
thanks   m.

________________________________________________________________________
Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com

From reeds Tue Jun 13 10:03:18 2000
From: reeds@fry.research.att.com (Jim Reeds)
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Date: Tue, 13 Jun 2000 10:03:18 -0400
In-Reply-To: "golem matrix" <golematic@hotmail.com>
        "Re: About Thaddeus Hajek" (Jun 13,  6:13)
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On Jun 13,  6:13, golem matrix wrote:

> Subject: Re: About Thaddeus Hajek
> Snaz'il jsem, se objevit s'ifru rukopisiu, materialu, ktere
>   mi E.K. pr'inesi, jak si pr'al. Nalezi je v Huet's Cross,
>   s knihou o kouzlech a alchimii, ke ktere ho pr'ivedlo
>   duchovni stvor'eni.
> 
> hi there! these lines translate as this:
> I suffered to break the code of the manuscript, the material E.K. brought 
> and asked me to decipher. He found these (pages) in Huet's Cross alongside a 
> book about magic and alchemy to which he was led by a spiritual being.

This rang a bell.  On p.323 of vol 2 of Whitby's thesis is
a transcription of MS Sloane 3188, fol. 88, dated Thursday
11 April 1583.  Dee takes time out from his spiritual exercises
to relax with a bit of cryptanalysis: "After my coming home
from the court, abowt 4 of the clock after none, and after my
being in my study a while, it cam into my hed to assay to deciphre
the cifer which befor is spoken of as was browght me by E K,
as he was willed to do. And at the first I was half out of hope:
but yet making many assayes, and gessing at it (at the length)
to be latine, I found this to be the true Alfabet. God giving
me the perceyverance..." and in a marginal note "They were fownd
at Huets Cross as the spiritual creature affirmed when he led
them to the finding of this Monime[n]t & a boke of Magik &
Alchimie..."  Whitby discusses this on vol. 1, pp.511-513.
The book is the book of St Dunstan.






-- 
Jim Reeds, AT&T Labs - Research
Shannon Laboratory, Room C229, Building 103
180 Park Avenue, Florham Park, NJ 07932-0971, USA

reeds@research.att.com, phone: +1 973 360 8414, fax: +1 973 360 8178

From jim@mail.rand.org  Tue Jun 13 10:11:16 2000
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From: "Gabriel Landini" <G.Landini@bham.ac.uk>
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On 13 Jun 2000, at 7:03, golem matrix wrote:

> are any of you familiar with gustav meyrink's book "the angel of the
> west window"?

Nope, but I read The Golem -- and (long ago) I played keyboards in 
a band of the same name :-)

BTW, Mark replied to my question (I hope he does not mind me 
copying to the rest of the gang):
---
Mark wrote:
It is indeed Gabriel, the code was cracked by Dee but I have never 
found reference to the treasure being looked for or found. However 
I've always be hooked up on Huteos Cross and have not read the 
Huets Cross reference in Smith or indeed in Caulder (as I have just 
found) http://www.johndee.org/calder/html/Calder9.html This places 
Huets Cross in Nothwick Gloucestershire a giant leap forward for 
me even if of no interest to Voynich.
-----

Hmm... I think I'll go treasure hunting this week end :-)

Cheers,

Gabriel

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From: Jorge Stolfi <stolfi@ic.unicamp.br>
To: voynich@rand.org
Subject: Re: Gallows bit sequences
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    > [Jim Gillogly:] Without having done any computation, it looks
    > like there'll be more long runs of gallows and non-gallows than
    > a coin-flipping model would suggest, and that they're more
    > likely in the first line of a "paragraph" than

Indeed. How could we explain them?

Perhaps we are seeing the result of some automaton-like code (like
those Dee tables that Jim Reeds wrote about recently.)  I will leave 
this line of speculation to the experts; let me instead suggest a 
linguistic explanation.

As far as I know, Turkish words usually consist of a stem (usually 1-3
syllables) followed a string of suffixes (usually 1 syllable each).
Turkish has a rich set of suffixes, which often translate as separate
words in Indo-European languages.

Sometimes the string of suffixes can be quite long. A recent thread
in sci.lang discussed the "Guinness record" Turkish word 

 Cekoslovakyalilastiramadiklarimizdanmiymissiniz

which, if I recall correctly, means "are you one of those whom we were
unable to Chekoslovakize?".

Moreover, Turkish has this peculiar rule of "vowel harmony". The
vowels are divided into two symmetric classes, "front" and "back".
Generally speaking, in every Turkish stem, all vowels have the same
class; every suffix has a "front" and "back" version; and one may
only use suffixes that belong to same vowel class as the stem.

So, suppose that Voynichese is Turkish, each VMS "word" is actually a
Turkish stem or a suffix, and the gallows letters are vowel markers
for the front/back quality. This theory could explain the long runs of
0's and 1's in the "gallows bit" strings.

Perhaps the same case could be made for Hungarian, which I believe has
similar rules for suffixing and vowel harmony (isn't it remotely
related to Turkish?). Then there are other Turkic languages in Asia
(Uzbek, Chechen, ... ?)

If I am not mistaken, in the 1400's Turkish was commonly written in the
Arabic script. That script is not as well suited to Turkish as it is
to Arabic (which is one of the reasons why the country switched to the
Roman alphabet early this century). So the VMS author would have had a
good excuse for inventing a new alphabet, rather than using the
standard one --- especially if he/she was a "cultural transplant"
(a Turk in Europe, or an European in Turkey).

By the way, I gather that, until quite recently, public baths were
quite popular in Turkey (for both sexes), at least as much as in
classical Rome.

One obvious check for this theory is to see whether the ratio of front
and back words in Turkish is close enough to the gallows/no-gallows
ratio of Voynichese.

Anyone knows the Turkish names for the planets? Or the main star in Pisces?
Or how one would say "left kidney" and "right kidney"?  ;-)

    > [John Grove:] I believe the labels are extremely heavy in favour
    > of using Gallows. Just a quick glance at a zodiac page shows a
    > significantly higher number of words with Gallows than without.

This is not that relevant now... but indeed, the ratio is about 3:2
for labels. However labels are few compared to the text, so they have
little effect on the overall ratio.

The token counts for all sections are

              gallows in word
        -----------------------------
            ?     0     1     2     3 |   tot    SD
        ----- ----- ----- ----- ----- | ----- -----
text     2257 17363 17439   323     3 | 37385    96
labels    149   386   590    29     0 |  1154    16
        ----- ----- ----- ----- ----- | ----- -----
both     2406 17749 18029   352     3   38539    98
            - 49.1% 49.9%  1.0%  0.0%

(The percentages are over the good words only.)

All the best,

--stolfi

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From: "John Grove" <4groves@sprint.ca>
To: "Voynich List" <voynich@rand.org>
Subject: Fw: Gallows bit sequences
Date: Tue, 13 Jun 2000 12:26:50 -0400
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Jorge accidentally sent this to my address alone vice the entire list:

----- Original Message -----
From: Jorge Stolfi <stolfi@ic.unicamp.br>
To: John Grove <John@morewood.net>
Sent: Tuesday, June 13, 2000 11:39 AM
Subject: Re: Gallows bit sequences


>
>     > [Jim Gillogly:] Without having done any computation, it looks
>     > like there'll be more long runs of gallows and non-gallows than
>     > a coin-flipping model would suggest, and that they're more
>     > likely in the first line of a "paragraph" than
>
> Indeed. How could we explain them?
>
> Perhaps we are seeing the result of some automaton-like code (like
> those Dee tables that Jim Reeds wrote about recently.)  I will leave
> this line of speculation to the experts; let me instead suggest a
> linguistic explanation.
>
> As far as I know, Turkish words usually consist of a stem (usually 1-3
> syllables) followed a string of suffixes (usually 1 syllable each).
> Turkish has a rich set of suffixes, which often translate as separate
> words in Indo-European languages.
>
> Sometimes the string of suffixes can be quite long. A recent thread
> in sci.lang discussed the "Guinness record" Turkish word
>
>  Cekoslovakyalilastiramadiklarimizdanmiymissiniz
>
> which, if I recall correctly, means "are you one of those whom we were
> unable to Chekoslovakize?".
>
> Moreover, Turkish has this peculiar rule of "vowel harmony". The
> vowels are divided into two symmetric classes, "front" and "back".
> Generally speaking, in every Turkish stem, all vowels have the same
> class; every suffix has a "front" and "back" version; and one may
> only use suffixes that belong to same vowel class as the stem.
>
> So, suppose that Voynichese is Turkish, each VMS "word" is actually a
> Turkish stem or a suffix, and the gallows letters are vowel markers
> for the front/back quality. This theory could explain the long runs of
> 0's and 1's in the "gallows bit" strings.
>
> Perhaps the same case could be made for Hungarian, which I believe has
> similar rules for suffixing and vowel harmony (isn't it remotely
> related to Turkish?). Then there are other Turkic languages in Asia
> (Uzbek, Chechen, ... ?)
>
> If I am not mistaken, in the 1400's Turkish was commonly written in the
> Arabic script. That script is not as well suited to Turkish as it is
> to Arabic (which is one of the reasons why the country switched to the
> Roman alphabet early this century). So the VMS author would have had a
> good excuse for inventing a new alphabet, rather than using the
> standard one --- especially if he/she was a "cultural transplant"
> (a Turk in Europe, or an European in Turkey).
>
> By the way, I gather that, until quite recently, public baths were
> quite popular in Turkey (for both sexes), at least as much as in
> classical Rome.
>
> One obvious check for this theory is to see whether the ratio of front
> and back words in Turkish is close enough to the gallows/no-gallows
> ratio of Voynichese.
>
> Anyone knows the Turkish names for the planets? Or the main star in
Pisces?
> Or how one would say "left kidney" and "right kidney"?  ;-)
>
>     > [John Grove:] I believe the labels are extremely heavy in favour
>     > of using Gallows. Just a quick glance at a zodiac page shows a
>     > significantly higher number of words with Gallows than without.
>
> This is not that relevant now... but indeed, the ratio is about 3:2
> for labels. However labels are few compared to the text, so they have
> little effect on the overall ratio.
>
> The token counts for all sections are
>
>               gallows in word
>         -----------------------------
>             ?     0     1     2     3 |   tot    SD
>         ----- ----- ----- ----- ----- | ----- -----
> text     2257 17363 17439   323     3 | 37385    96
> labels    149   386   590    29     0 |  1154    16
>         ----- ----- ----- ----- ----- | ----- -----
> both     2406 17749 18029   352     3   38539    98
>             - 49.1% 49.9%  1.0%  0.0%
>
> (The percentages are over the good words only.)
>
> All the best,
>
> --stolfi
>

From jim@mail.rand.org  Tue Jun 13 12:35:58 2000
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Date: Tue, 13 Jun 2000 18:39:31 +0200
From: Zandbergen@t-online.de (Rene Zandbergen)
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Golem matrix wrote:

> are any of you familiar with gustav meyrink's book "the angel of the west
> window"? it is a book of fiction about john dee,but obviously meyrink was
> deeply familiar with the facts he fictionalized. it is also full of wacked
> out mysticism typical of turn-of-the-century central europe. i am curious
> about the sources meyrink used for his dee/kelley storyline in the book.
> thanks

I must admit that I have deliberately avoided Meyrink since I would not
be able to distinguish fact from fiction. It appears that the Svitak 
books may have similar traps, although at least any political propaganda
should be easier to detect...

Cheers, Rene

From jim@mail.rand.org  Tue Jun 13 15:26:43 2000
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Date: Tue, 13 Jun 2000 11:22:19 -0700 (PDT)
From: Clay Holden <cholden@netcom.com>
To: voynich@rand.org
Subject: Re: About Thaddeus Hajek
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On Tue, 13 Jun 2000, Rene Zandbergen wrote:

> Golem matrix wrote:
> 
> > are any of you familiar with gustav meyrink's book "the angel of the west
> > window"? it is a book of fiction about john dee,but obviously meyrink was
> > deeply familiar with the facts he fictionalized. it is also full of wacked
> > out mysticism typical of turn-of-the-century central europe. i am curious
> > about the sources meyrink used for his dee/kelley storyline in the book.
> > thanks
> 
> I must admit that I have deliberately avoided Meyrink since I would not
> be able to distinguish fact from fiction. It appears that the Svitak 
> books may have similar traps, although at least any political propaganda
> should be easier to detect...
> 
> Cheers, Rene

Actually, it's not very hard to distinguish Meyrink's fact from
fiction. In fact, he appears to have had only familiarity with some of the
"True and Faithful Relation" material, and showed no particular interest
in nor respect for the known facts.

I have only read it in English translation, but it is a genuinely bad
piece of writing in my opinion. The characters - particularly that of
Dee - bear little resemblance to the individuals they are supposed to
represent, and the story itself is just plain silly.

There also appears to be some doubt that Meyrink actually wrote the thing
himself. It certainly bears little of the style of the author of "The
Golem".


>From what I have read, Svitak appears to have used Meyrink's book as if it
was an authoritative source for historical facts, rather than a piece of
pulp fiction.

Clay

From jim@mail.rand.org  Tue Jun 13 21:28:53 2000
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Date: Tue, 13 Jun 2000 15:21:51 -1000
From: Brian Eric Farnell <bfarnell@gte.net>
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I'm very interested in your thoughts on this data about the
constructs of tonal languages as it might relate to the VMS. 
The only tonal language I know is Mandarin, but it has some very
unusal features that I think it may share with other tonal
languages because of their nature.  I use Mandarin Chinese as an
example throughout, not because I am sold on VMS being Mandarin
but because that is the area I have knowledge of.

I've been re-reading all of these e-mails about the gallows
characters and it reminded me of a tonal language.  If you
assumed that the writer was transliterating a language like
Chinese many of the characteristics would match.  The Turkish
model suggested is interesting, but wouldn't the addition of a
'vowel bit' like that tend to be unlikely given the already
short length of Voynich words (assuming the tokens are words)? 
It would seem logical that a bit like the gallows characters
would have to add substantially to the sound value of the
token.  The Turkish model is good in that with the max of one
gallows per token, that would indicate (to me) that there was
only one syllable in each token unless (as in your Turkish
model) the gallows referred to some bit that would be the same
for all syllables of a word.  In methods of Romanization of
Chinese syllables (it's hard to differentiate between a word and
a syllable in Chinese) all have 0 or 1 tone marks and are very
short despite the inclusion of vowels.  The inclusion of the
tone mark makes this possible by effectively making one syllable
into X number of distinct syllables given X number of tones in
the language.

You mentioned long stretches with gallows or no gallows:  There
are several possible explanations for this in a transliteration
of a tonal language.  Among people writing in PinYin (a Chinese
Romanization method) the tones are often left out except where
they are needed to avoid confusion with other possible words
spelled the same way.  Speech is somewhat similar to this. 
Tones will be clearly pronounced at the beginning of a new topic
and then become less obvious.  Within the topic, sentences
usually follow this same pattern as well.  Basically, the 'tone
bit' is extremely important when something new is presented, but
becomes less and less important as context is built.  Also
certain words or phrases are usually spoken with very clear or
even exagerated tones.  Examples of this are specialized terms,
classical expressions and words where there are numerous
homophones.  Students of Chinese have a great deal of trouble
hearing these tones in most words, but when the syllables are
clearly spoken as in the above examples they are very obvious. 
For someone who learned a tonal language just by speaking with
no written or formal training, their transcription wouldn't
necessarily have tone marks with every syllable.  They might
only be consciously aware of the tones of words that had been
emphasized.  Even native Chinese speakers have to make a
conscious effort to think of the tone when they are writing in
this Romanization method.

Another thing about Mandarin is reminiscent of your 'aiin'
problem.  I'm going to assume that this relates to all tonal
languages and is either caused by or causes the use of tones. 
Mandarin is extremely 'sound poor'.  There are a very small
number of possible syllables compared to other languages
(something like 225 if you neglect tones).  The addition of
tones is the only thing that makes it possible to communicate in
a language like Mandarin, and even then it's not uncommon to see
people drawing a character in the air or on their palm to make
themselves understood.  Anyway, point is that every syllable in
Mandarin has three choices, it can end in a vowel, an 'n' or an
'ng'.  Only some of the vowel sounds can begin a syllable and
those aren't nearly as common as words that begin with
consonants.  Some words begin with 'n' and there are none that
begin with 'ng'.  Cantonese has a few more possibilities.  Does
this sort of extreme phonotactic limitation remind you of the 
aiin problem?  

As to the spaces between tokens:  In the PinYin Romanization
methods, where two syllables form a word they are often written
with a space between them anyway to avoid confusion.  That is
why I write PinYin with two capital letters, it's my own
variation that lets me know those two syllables are one word but
lets me distinguish the syllables so I can tell the difference
between XiAn (said Shee-On) and Xian (Shin)and words like that. 
Chinese people write them with the space with the exception of
little grammatical syllables that sometimes get attached, but
these syllables don't have tones that are pronounced in these
instances.  The space between syllables of the same word are an
artifact of the use of characters instead of an alphabet in
Chinese.  Someone who learned Chinese as a second language even
without learning characters would probably do the same because
of the understanding of the syllables as whole units of meaning
amongst themselves and the way that words are sometimes split
across the length of a sentence.  There really is a blurry line
between what is a syllable and what is a word.

I would assume that most Westerners who learned a character
based language like Chinese didn't learn characters, so would
have to devise a system to transliterate.  I am not aware of any
old systems of Chinese transliteration, that seems to be a
modern thing.  I am very interested in your thoughts on this.  
Regards,
Brian

From jim@mail.rand.org  Wed Jun 14 01:17:09 2000
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From: Brian Eric Farnell <bfarnell@gte.net>
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See if this makes any sense, it ties the gallows characters
occurrences or lack thereof with the tables characters as well
as their physical proximity:

You would assume if the writer had created his own transcription
alphabet that he would have the freedom to create a character
for whatever vowel sound he needed, but in a Mandarin
transliteration there would be some places where it would be
logical to use two letters to represent a vowel sound far
example, these are the vowel sounds in Mandarin as they are
represented in PinYin:
a, ao
e, ei
i, ia, iu, iao
o, ou
u, ui, ua, ue, uo
u umlaut which is just e and u put together

All of these could be represented by one letter each, BUT, the
combinations that begin with i or u are special in that they add
an English 'y' or 'w' sound to the vowel compound as an accident
of phonating their basic sound in combination with other
vowels.  Anyone whose pronunciation was corrected while saying
one of these 'i' or 'u' compounds would become aware that the y
or w was in fact just a slurring of the i and u vowel sounds. 
It would be logical to him to keep all compounds beginning with
an 'i' or a 'u' as at least two letters, possibly representing
the compound in a special way like a tables character.  That
would seem to be consistent of the split of tokens with tables
or without.  It indicates that it is an important aspect, but
not necessary to make a word, if tables characters represented
this type of vowel blend, then it would indeed be very common
but not necessary. Since it's logical to mark tones around the
vowel, then on the model of the gallows as tone marks, you would
expect to find gallows and tables together where they both
occurred in the same token.  I know that now I am really
stretching here, with nothing more than a hunch but the model is
very consistent with the numbers you are generating.  Also for
whatever it's worth, in Mandarin at least, those 'i' and 'u'
combos don't occur at the beginning of words, they must be
preceded by an initial consonant (at least I can't think of
any).  This is not definitive because the 'i' compounds do show
up in a way, but the sound of the 'i' is so different that it is
written is a different letter in modern Romanization methods
when it occurs as an initial and is treated as a consonant
instead of a vowel.  This is probably a natural result of their
phonation being difficult without an initial and/or the possible
confusion of those sounds trying to bond with the final of the
last word which is a huge no-no in a sound poor language,
syllables are not blurred together like we do.  I would assume
sounds in other languages analogous to those i and u compounds
would probably follow the same phonotactic rules.  Any thoughts?
Regards,
Brian



Jacques Guy wrote:
> 
> Brian Eric Farnell wrote:
> >
> > I'm very interested in your thoughts on this data about the
> > constructs of tonal languages as it might relate to the VMS.
> 
> We're back into Jorge Stolfi's hypothesis.
> 
> > Anyway, point is that every syllable in
> > Mandarin has three choices, it can end in a vowel, an 'n' or an
> > 'ng'.
> 
> And in some dialects, final 'n' and 'ng' are no longer
> distinguished. And Shanghaiese has even lost final
> 'n' and 'ng'
> 
> >  Does
> > this sort of extreme phonotactic limitation remind you of the
> > aiin problem?
> 
> As if we needed being reminded *sigh*
> 
> Gallows as tones? Could be. And then you have tone
> sandhi to make things worse.
> 
> We've come around full circle again it seems.

From jim@mail.rand.org  Wed Jun 14 04:02:28 2000
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From: Brian Eric Farnell <bfarnell@gte.net>
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Subject: tonal rhythms
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The English language naturally falls roughly into iambic
pentameter, probably some innate sense of aesthetics.  Tonal
languages should do the same with their tones.  I know tonal
patterns are very important with Chinese poetry and there are
rules about certain tones that change when preceded by others in
everyday speech, though these are not always reflected when
written, it depends on the writer.  What I was wondering was, if
you removed every character but the gallows characters, do you
end up with any outstanding Letter Serial Correlation patterns? 
Obviously it's going to be high with such a small character set,
but maybe some patterns emerge that would distinguish the
gallows characters as something like a tone marker or a similar
sort of bit.  It probably wouldn't show as much of a pattern if
they were related to something akin to the Russian 'soft sign'. 
I assume this because vowel sounds, tones and stresses tend to
make up a large part of the natural rhythm of a language. 
Certain emerging patterns patterns might fingerprint a specific
tonal language, even a much changed one I believe would still
hold the natural rhythm of the language.  Although in contrast
to that, I believe classical Chinese had only 3 tones plus a
neutral where Mandarin now has four, but the one that was added
is the big loser in the tone change rules so the language still
probably comes out similarly.  
Regards,
Brian

From jim@mail.rand.org  Wed Jun 14 04:48:38 2000
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From: Jorge Stolfi <stolfi@ic.unicamp.br>
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Folks,

I have posted on my WWW site a first report of the bean-counting
I have been doing for the past month or so. Please check

  http://www.dcc.unicamp.br/~stolfi/voynich/00-06-07-word-grammar/
  
It is still a bit rough in places. I should have revised it more
carefully, but I don't know whether I will have the time. (The
40-day-long University strike that allowed me to have all that fun
probably going to end tomorrow; which means I will have to teach
normal plus make-up classes for the next month or so.)

All the best,

--stolfi

From jim@mail.rand.org  Tue Jun 13 22:55:02 2000
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Subject: Re: Gallows bit as a tone marker?
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Brian Eric Farnell wrote:
> 
> I'm very interested in your thoughts on this data about the
> constructs of tonal languages as it might relate to the VMS.

We're back into Jorge Stolfi's hypothesis.

> Anyway, point is that every syllable in
> Mandarin has three choices, it can end in a vowel, an 'n' or an
> 'ng'.

And in some dialects, final 'n' and 'ng' are no longer 
distinguished. And Shanghaiese has even lost final
'n' and 'ng'


>  Does
> this sort of extreme phonotactic limitation remind you of the
> aiin problem?


As if we needed being reminded *sigh*

Gallows as tones? Could be. And then you have tone
sandhi to make things worse.

We've come around full circle again it seems.

From jim@mail.rand.org  Wed Jun 14 00:04:13 2000
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Jim Gillogly has been playing hookey, that's why. 

Here is proof:

http://www.4thestate.co.uk/cipherchallenge/

An interesting book by the way, that Code Book, but
not a word about... you know what!

From jim@mail.rand.org  Wed Jun 14 09:02:08 2000
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Date: Wed, 14 Jun 2000 14:45:21 +0200
From: "Rafal T. Prinke" <rafalp@amu.edu.pl>
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References: <393EBB73.49B09732@voynich.nu> <393FC6B4.B1A58EA1@amu.edu.pl> <39403192.1CC1F222@voynich.nu> <394154D5.E458D820@amu.edu.pl> <394416F6.A9832647@voynich.nu> <394505F4.FBC13C9E@amu.edu.pl> <39462448.2FBEF2E@voynich.nu>
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Rene Zandbergen wrote:

> If Rafal could translate it, then it would be interesting to
> find out from where it originates. 

Milan has done it better than I would (my understanding of
Czech relies only on its similarity to Polish which sometimes
may lead astray). And Jim Reeds has found the original
text from Dee's MSS, while Mark Parry reported the quotation
is from Charlotte Fell-Smith. It is, therefore, clear
that Svitak used "free quotation" by Fell-Smith rather than
the original text.

Anyway, if his books have any value for Dee/Kelley (and it
now seems - in the light of what Milan said - that they
do not), that value would have to be supported by Czech
sources rather than well known publications in English.
Working in California he could hardly have access to
Prague archives, so I suspect he had the book by 
Jaroslav Svatek, _Obrazy z kulturnych dejin..._ with
him and that is where the information not found in English
publications comes from. 

> > Also, if he spelt the name "Georg Baresch" rather than "Jiri Bares",
> > it strongly suggests (at least to me) that he picked it from
> > some other publication.
> 
> ... ve vlastnictvi Georgia Barschia.

I have checked some Czech <g> reference works but found no trace of
this Baresch - the surname Bares ("s" with "hacek") seems quite
common and there was also a noble family of that name but no
Georg/Jiri is mentioned.

> He uses the non-Czech spelling of Raphael Missovski's name (like
> I just did) 

Yes - he is either spelt with "s-hacek" or (in some of his Latin 
publications) with "sch" - and always with final "y".

> but the proper equivalent of Voynich (Voynic').

Is it? I have always wondered about his surname. One of the
Web pages says he was "Polish born" but I could not find
any details. The spelling is certainly anglicized - and in
Polish would be Wojnicz (there is now about 1000 persons
of that name living in Poland).

> He mentions Newbold and Kent (which should leave us no doubt
> about one of his main sources) and also Strong. He does also
> mention Brumbaugh (the only source for Baresch' name as far as
> I am aware) as Stolfi correctly remembered.

He certainly was a good researcher - but more of the library
than archives type, I guess. 

> > The "factoid" of Dee's ownership of VMs seems to be based on
> > the comparison of folio numbering with those in Dee's MSS.
> 
> Of course, this is very much advertised in the Newbold/Kent
> book as being the truth.

I believe rather strongly that it was not so. Perhaps I will
write a separate message explaining why.

> > > For Kelly's death year one can read 1595 and 1597.
> > The title of his book seems to say "1598"
> 
> You could be right. Michal Pober, in Prague, suggested that
> 1595 should be correct. I think it is fair to say that it is
> still contested :-).

I discussed it with him some years ago and it was then when
I decided on my point of view. There are basically two
sources for it: Dee's note and Svatek's book mentioned above
(not Svitak's!). The latter is a sound work based on
primary documents but - alas! - with no proper references.
He just lists the archival collections he used but does
not point to sources of particular pieces of information.

> >    http://main.amu.edu.pl/~rafalp/HERM/SENDI/westonia.htm
> 
> I no longer trust the picture used by Svitak, but if the above
> is from Pelzel (>100 years later), how can we be sure it is her
> true likeness? (No criticism, just curious....)

We can never be sure :-) But this engraving of Westonia
certainly looks like a 17th c. copper-plate and is signed
by the artist who can probably be identified. Moreover,
the original comes from the museum in Most where she lived
and was reproduced by eminent scholars - interested in
her poetry rather than the magical connections. I can see
no possible source of "reasonable doubt" here.

Best regards,

Rafal


From jim@mail.rand.org  Wed Jun 14 09:01:32 2000
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Date: Wed, 14 Jun 2000 14:59:14 +0200
From: "Rafal T. Prinke" <rafalp@amu.edu.pl>
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I apologize for asking about things that must be general
knowledge of the list:

1. Most VMs Web pages have a link to Michael Roe's site at:
      http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/users/mrr/voynich/index.html
   which is described as very good. I have been trying to
   reach it for about half a year (at least from February)
   without success. His site is there - but no trace of 
   VMs pages. Have they been moved elsewhere?

2. There was a discussion of possible publication of VMs
   on CD-ROM at the end of 1999. As later messages are
   not in the archives yet, I wonder if any conclusions
   were reached or steps towards it undertaken?

Best regards,

Rafal

From jim@mail.rand.org  Wed Jun 14 10:44:12 2000
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Date: Wed, 14 Jun 2000 09:40:53 -0500
From: Dennis <ixohoxi@micro-net.com>
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Subject: Kelley's Step-Daughter (WAS: About Thaddeus Hajek)
References: <393EBB73.49B09732@voynich.nu> <393FC6B4.B1A58EA1@amu.edu.pl> <39403192.1CC1F222@voynich.nu> <394154D5.E458D820@amu.edu.pl> <394416F6.A9832647@voynich.nu> <394505F4.FBC13C9E@amu.edu.pl>
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"Rafal T. Prinke" wrote:

> Finally, the cover of the book about Westonia has a portrait of
> her.

>  You may
> like to compare the portrait you mention with her true effigy
> on my Web page at:
>
>    http://main.amu.edu.pl/~rafalp/HERM/SENDI/westonia.htm

        Hmmmmm...   I missed the earlier discussion.  Is this a daughter
that Kelley had with Dee's wife?  <smirk -- just kidding!>

Dennis


From jim@mail.rand.org  Wed Jun 14 10:59:37 2000
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Date: Wed, 14 Jun 2000 09:55:45 -0500
From: Dennis <ixohoxi@micro-net.com>
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To: "Rafal T. Prinke" <rafalp@amu.edu.pl>
Cc: rene@voynich.nu, voynich@rand.org
Subject: Re: About Thaddeus Hajek
References: <393EBB73.49B09732@voynich.nu> <393FC6B4.B1A58EA1@amu.edu.pl> <39403192.1CC1F222@voynich.nu> <394154D5.E458D820@amu.edu.pl> <394416F6.A9832647@voynich.nu> <394505F4.FBC13C9E@amu.edu.pl> <39462448.2FBEF2E@voynich.nu> <39477E61.BFB7F94A@amu.edu.pl>
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"Rafal T. Prinke" wrote:

> Rene Zandbergen wrote:

> > but the proper equivalent of Voynich (Voynic').
>
> Is it? I have always wondered about his surname. One of the
> Web pages says he was "Polish born" but I could not find
> any details. The spelling is certainly anglicized - and in
> Polish would be Wojnicz (there is now about 1000 persons
> of that name living in Poland).

    Interesting.  There's also a small city called Wojnicz in Poland.

Dennis


From jim@mail.rand.org  Wed Jun 14 17:53:40 2000
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Date: Wed, 14 Jun 2000 23:56:38 +0200
From: Zandbergen@t-online.de (Rene Zandbergen)
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Subject: Czech references (was Re: About Thaddeus Hajek)
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Rafal T. Prinke wrote:

> [...] Jim Reeds has found the original text from Dee's MSS, while Mark
> Parry reported the quotation is from Charlotte Fell-Smith. It is,
> therefore, clear that Svitak used "free quotation" by Fell-Smith rather
> than the original text.

Indeed. Also, there appear to be two things:
1) Pages of cipher MS
2) A book about magic and alchemy.
The latter is the book of St. Dunstan, the former, if I understand
correctly,
are the so-called treasure maps, which Dee just sat down to decipher.
Neither of the two are related with the VMs, and Svitak seems to be
'guilty' of a double confusion. 

> [...] I suspect he had the book by
> Jaroslav Svatek, _Obrazy z kulturnych dejin..._ with
> him and that is where the information not found in English
> publications comes from.

Has this been translated into English? There is a reference to
the above (actually Josef Svatek, or is that the same?) in: 
  Voynich, a preliminary sketch of the history of the Roger
  Bacon cipher MS, 1921.
Voynich writes:
  Swatek, the Bohemian historian, records, and the American
  chemist, Henry Carrington Bolton, repeats after him, that
  during his various visits to Prague (1584-1588), Dee talked
  with emperor Rudolph for hours about the secrets and
  inventions of Roger Bacon.
The reference for Bolton is: The Follies of Science, Milwaukee,
1904.
Elsewhere, I have read that Dee only ever had one interview with
Rudolf.

Another source which was recommended by Lubos Antonin is the
historian (and friend of Marci) Bohuslav Balbin. Apparently he has
written a long anecdotal work in Latin, which has been
translated into Czech only in a very abridged manner. That is 
apparently a standard school book of Czech history, but the original
is very little read and may contain some 'trouvailles'.

> > He uses the non-Czech spelling of Raphael Missovski's name (like
> > I just did)
> 
> Yes - he is either spelt with "s-hacek" or (in some of his Latin
> publications) with "sch" - and always with final "y".

Actually, he used a 'w', but in any case, the proper name would have
been
Mnis'ovsky (cf. Otto, although he is listed under Missowsky).

> > but the proper equivalent of Voynich (Voynic').
> 
> Is it? I have always wondered about his surname. One of the
> Web pages says he was "Polish born" but I could not find
> any details. The spelling is certainly anglicized - and in
> Polish would be Wojnicz (there is now about 1000 persons
> of that name living in Poland).

Somewhere out there on the web I once saw a list of noble Russian
names and Voynich is among them.

> > > The "factoid" of Dee's ownership of VMs seems to be based on
> > > the comparison of folio numbering with those in Dee's MSS.
> >
> > Of course, this is very much advertised in the Newbold/Kent
> > book as being the truth.
> 
> I believe rather strongly that it was not so. Perhaps I will
> write a separate message explaining why.

Looking forward!

> > I no longer trust the picture used by Svitak, but if the above
> > is from Pelzel (>100 years later), how can we be sure it is her
> > true likeness? (No criticism, just curious....)
> 
> We can never be sure :-) But this engraving of Westonia
> certainly looks like a 17th c. copper-plate and is signed
> by the artist who can probably be identified. Moreover,
> the original comes from the museum in Most where she lived
> and was reproduced by eminent scholars - interested in
> her poetry rather than the magical connections. I can see
> no possible source of "reasonable doubt" here.

I agree.
Do you have easy access to a copy of Pelzel? Should you
be able to obtain copies of the portraits of Horcicky and
Missowsky, they would look so nice at my web pages.... (hint, hint).
Only if it is not too much hassle of course.

Best regards,
        Rene

From jim@mail.rand.org  Thu Jun 15 13:05:44 2000
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Date: Thu, 15 Jun 2000 18:56:34 +0200
From: "Rafal T. Prinke" <rafalp@amu.edu.pl>
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Rene Zandbergen wrote:

> > [...] I suspect he had the book by
> > Jaroslav Svatek, _Obrazy z kulturnych dejin..._ with
> > him and that is where the information not found in English
> > publications comes from.
> 
> Has this been translated into English? There is a reference to
> the above (actually Josef Svatek, or is that the same?) in:

Oops... yes, obviosly that is the same. I had just J. Svatek
at hand and perhaps thought about Hasek :-) I do not think
it was translated into English. There was a German version
published in Prague, however, at about the same time.
This is the one I have but it seems to be abridged
(or earlier version) as some facts people quote from
the Czech version cannot be found in this one (unless
it is "creative quoting"). No! - I have found it:
the German edition was 1879 and the Czech one 1891.
So the latter was considerably updated.

>   Voynich, a preliminary sketch of the history of the Roger
>   Bacon cipher MS, 1921.
> Voynich writes:
>   Swatek, the Bohemian historian, records, and the American
>   chemist, Henry Carrington Bolton, repeats after him, that
>   during his various visits to Prague (1584-1588), Dee talked
>   with emperor Rudolph for hours about the secrets and
>   inventions of Roger Bacon.
> The reference for Bolton is: The Follies of Science, Milwaukee,
> 1904.

Svatek was not a historian but a journalist (which explains
why there are no proper references in his books). Bolton's
opinion is, obviously, irrelevant.

> Elsewhere, I have read that Dee only ever had one interview with
> Rudolf.

That is correct (as far as I can see from available sources).
On 3 Sep 1584 Dee had "a large hour audience of his Majesty"
(AT&FR p. 230-231), before which he had sent Rudolph a letter
and a copy of _Monas Hieroglyphica_ (which had been dedicated
to his father Maximilian II). Later he wrote letters to Rudolph
which were either intercepted by his enemies or the Emperor 
did not bother to reply. He was clearly unimpressed by Dee's
inspired talk. Later, when he was allowed to stay in Bohemia
(after being expelled first) but only within the estates of
Rozmberk, it seems from his diaries that (unlike Kelley)
he obeyed this restriction. So - it is highly unlikely
he sold VMs to Rudolph, and especially that it happened
in the summer of 1586 when they were expelled and mistreated
by the Emperor.

> Another source which was recommended by Lubos Antonin is the
> historian (and friend of Marci) Bohuslav Balbin. Apparently he has
> written a long anecdotal work in Latin, which has been
> translated into Czech only in a very abridged manner. That is
> apparently a standard school book of Czech history, but the original
> is very little read and may contain some 'trouvailles'.

Yes - and there are certainly tons of other works, memoirs etc.
that may contain important information. But to go through
them not living in Prague (not to mention language barriers)
is rather difficult (to put it mildly).

> Actually, he used a 'w', but in any case, the proper name would have
> been
> Mnis'ovsky (cf. Otto, although he is listed under Missowsky).

There was no standard orthography then (of course) so his name was
probably spelt differently in various places. 

> > I believe rather strongly that it was not so. Perhaps I will
> > write a separate message explaining why.
> 
> Looking forward!

I started writing about it but it is getting out of control so
perhaps I will make it a Web page. One of the arguments is
the one above - Dee did not "talk with emperor Rudolph for 
hours about the secrets and inventions of Roger Bacon".
Or at least there is no evidence for this - and much evidence
against it.

> Do you have easy access to a copy of Pelzel? Should you
> be able to obtain copies of the portraits of Horcicky and
> Missowsky, they would look so nice at my web pages.... (hint, hint).
> Only if it is not too much hassle of course.

I had thought about it, too. Will check if it is available
at the libraries here... BTW: I have nice 19th c. engravings 
based on Casaubon of Dee and Kelley, and one of Olbracht 
Laski on my Web pages - if anyone is interested.

Best regards,

Rafal


From jim@mail.rand.org  Fri Jun 16 04:31:57 2000
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From: "Gabriel Landini" <G.Landini@bham.ac.uk>
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> On 3 Sep 1584 Dee had "a large hour audience of his Majesty"
[...]
> So - it is highly unlikely
> he sold VMs to Rudolph, and especially that it happened
> in the summer of 1586 when they were expelled and mistreated
> by the Emperor.

Is there any connection with the account of the 630 ducats in Dee's 
diaries in 1586? Was is before being expelled, or what?

Gabriel


From jim@mail.rand.org  Fri Jun 16 12:06:01 2000
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From: Zandbergen@t-online.de (Rene Zandbergen)
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Gabriel wrote:

> Is there any connection with the account of the 630 ducats in Dee's
> diaries in 1586? Was is before being expelled, or what?

Can this diary quote be traced?

I do remember mention of a gold bracelet and / or jewellery worth
a few hundred ducats, which Kelly brought from Prague (IIRC) but
I later learned that many of Kelly's trips to Prague (while they
were in exile) were to Rosenberg's castle, not Rudolf's.

Cheers, Rene

From jim@mail.rand.org  Fri Jun 16 18:30:39 2000
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Date: Sat, 17 Jun 2000 00:28:40 +0200
From: "Rafal T. Prinke" <rafalp@amu.edu.pl>
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Gabriel Landini wrote:
 
> > So - it is highly unlikely
> > he sold VMs to Rudolph, and especially that it happened
> > in the summer of 1586 when they were expelled and mistreated
> > by the Emperor.
> 
> Is there any connection with the account of the 630 ducats in Dee's
> diaries in 1586? Was is before being expelled, or what?

No - it was right after it, when Rozmberk had them return to
Bohemia from Kassel and settle down in Trebon. So the 630
certainly were not from Rudolf.

Best regards,

Rafal

From jim@mail.rand.org  Fri Jun 16 19:35:48 2000
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Rene Zandbergen wrote:

> Can this diary quote be traced?
> 
> I do remember mention of a gold bracelet and / or jewellery worth
> a few hundred ducats, which Kelly brought from Prague (IIRC) but
> I later learned that many of Kelly's trips to Prague (while they
> were in exile) were to Rosenberg's castle, not Rudolf's.

In Halliwell under 1587:

Jan. 18th, rediit E. K. a Praga. E. K. browght with him from the 
Lord Rosenberg to my wyfe a chayne and juell estemed at 300 duckettes; 
200 the juell stones, and 100 the gold. Jan. 21st, E. K. again to
Prage and so to Poland ward.

Best regards,

Rafal

From jim@mail.rand.org  Fri Jun 16 20:33:33 2000
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Rafal wrote:

> Rene Zandbergen wrote:
> 
> > Can this diary quote be traced?
> > 
> > I do remember mention of a gold bracelet and / or jewellery worth
> > a few hundred ducats, which Kelly brought from Prague (IIRC) but
> > I later learned that many of Kelly's trips to Prague (while they
> > were in exile) were to Rosenberg's castle, not Rudolf's.
> 
> In Halliwell under 1587:
> 
> Jan. 18th, rediit E. K. a Praga. E. K. browght with him from the 
> Lord Rosenberg to my wyfe a chayne and juell estemed at 300 duckettes; 
> 200 the juell stones, and 100 the gold. Jan. 21st, E. K. again to
> Prage and so to Poland ward.

According to my notes, the diary passage Brumbaugh suggests as linked to 
the payment mentioned in the Marci letter is in Oct. of 1586. Something
about Dee in Trebona having 630 ducats.

Karl

From jim@mail.rand.org  Sat Jun 17 12:33:48 2000
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From: "Gabriel Landini" <G.Landini@bham.ac.uk>
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On 16 Jun 2000, at 20:33, Karl Kluge wrote:
> Rafal wrote:
> > In Halliwell under 1587:
> > Lord Rosenberg to my wyfe a chayne and juell estemed at 300 duckettes; 
> > 200 the juell stones, and 100 the gold. Jan. 21st, E. K. again to

> According to my notes, the diary passage Brumbaugh suggests as linked to 
> the payment mentioned in the Marci letter is in Oct. of 1586. Something
> about Dee in Trebona having 630 ducats.

Yes, that is the one I am talking about.

Gabriel

From jim@mail.rand.org  Sat Jun 17 19:41:08 2000
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Following up on the "vowel harmony" guess, here are some glimpses of
Turkish grammar (from an elementary textbook I borrowed from my
almost-linguist son).

Consonants:

   unvoiced                               
                                          
     t                                    
     p                                    
     f                                    
     k                                    
     s (as in "sit")                      
     S (s-cedilla; as "sh" in "shoe")     
      (c-cedilla; as "ch" in "church")   
     
   voiced                     

     d                       
     b                       
     v                       
     g  (as in "go")         
     z                       
     j  (as "s" in "measure")
     c  (as "j" in "jump")   
     
   other
   
     h (as in "head")
     l 
     m
     n
     r (as in "rock") 
     y (as in "yellow")
     G (g-hachek, some sort of y/w glide)

Vowels:

  front vowels                   back vowels 
  
    e (as in "fed")                a (as "u" in "sun")                          
    i (as in "bit")                I (second sound in "nation")
     (as "eu" in French "peu")    o (as in "falsetto")                         
     (as in German "ber")        u (as in "pull")                             

  (The sound descriptions are as taken from the book, don't complain to me...)

Vowel harmony:

  The vowels used in the suffixes are determined by the last vowel of
  the modified word, according to the following table:

    Last vowel   "V4"-harmonic  "V2"-harmonic  "V24"-harmonic
    
        e              i             e            i
        i              i             e            i
                                   e            i
                                   e            i
                       
        a              I             a            I
        I              I             a            I
        o              u             a            I
        u              u             a            I
  
  Some suffixes use the appropriate "V2" harmonic vowel, some use the
  "V4" harmonic. Some suffixes may have two vowels, V4 and/or V2.
  Generally speaking, the first suffix harmonizes with the last vowel
  of the stem; and each additional suffix harmonizes with the last
  vowel of the preceding suffix.
  
  (Certain suffixes may be thought of as composites of a V2-suffix and a
  V4-suffix, the latter harmonizing with the formar. In that case, the
  V4 is related indirectly to the word's last vowel according to the
  "V24" column.)
  
  In any case, harmonics have the same front/back quality as
  the stem vowel.

Consonant changes:

  A "t" at the beginning of a suffix will usually mutate into "d" when
  the suffix is appended to a word that ends with vowel or voiced
  consonant. Similarly, a "t" at the end of a word will usually mutate
  to "d" when the word gets modified by a suffix that starts with a
  vowel.
  
  The same voiced/unvoiced alternation rules apply to the consonant
  pair "" (pronounced as "ch" in "church") and "c" (pronounced as "j"
  in "jump"); and to the pair "p" and "b" (both pronounced as in
  English).
  
  Turkish generally avoids vowel-vowel sequences; thus, a suffix that
  nominally begins with a vowel will gain an extra "buffer" consonant
  ("y", "n", "s", depending on the suffix), or lose the vowel,
  when it is attached to a word that already ends with vowel.
  
  There are a few other changes that are confined to specific suffixes
  and/or specific stems.  For example, a "k" at the end of a polysyllabic
  stem often mutates to "G" (hacheck-g, pronounced as some sort of y/w glide).
  
The verb "to be":

  The verb "to be" is indicated by suffixes:

   Present 

      1st person sing      -(y)V4m
      2nd person sing      -sV4n
      3rd person sing(*)   -tV4r | -dV4n

      1st person plur      -(y)V4z
      2nd person plur      -sV4nV4z
      3rd person plur(*)   -tV4rlV2z | -dV4rlV2z

        (*) For the 3rd person cases, the verb suffix is often omitted.

    Past

      1st person sing      -tV4m    | -dV4m
      2nd person sing      -tV4n    | -dV4n
      3rd person sing      -tV4     | -dV4

      1st person plur      -tV4k    | -dV4k
      2nd person plur      -tV4nV4z | -dV4nV4z
      3rd person plur      -tV4lV2r | -dV4lV2r

  I.e.

    "We are X"  =  Xiz,  Xz,  XIz,  Xuz,
                   Xyiz, Xyz, XyIz, Xyuz

  depending on X's last vowel, and on whether X ends with a 
  vowel or not.
    
    talebe = student   talebeyiz   =  we are students
    gen = young       geniz      =  we are young
  
  Similarly

    "I was X "      =  Xtim, Xtm, XtIm, Xtum,
                       Xdim, Xdm, XdIm, Xdum

    "They were X "  =  Xtiler, Xtler, XtIlar, Xtular,
                       Xdiler, Xdler, XdIlar, Xdular

  depending on the last vowel of X, and on whether it ends
  with a voiced sound or not:
  
Plural:

  The plural of nouns is indicated by the suffix -lV2r
  
    ev = house      evler  = houses
    fil = elephant  filler = elephants
    top = ball      toplar = balls
    pul = stamp     pullar = stamps
    
Articles:

  There no definite article.  The indefinite article
  is "bir" = "a, one"; but it is not mandatory.

Object/subject distinction:

  There is no special mark for the subject.
  A direct object is marked with the suffix  -(y)V4
  only if it is definite:
  
    gece = the night(SUBJ), a night     geceyi  = the night(OBJ)
    ev = the house(SUBJ), a house       evi     = the house(OBJ)
    evler = the houses(SUBJ), houses    evleri  = the houses(OBJ)
  
Dative, locative, ablative:

  The cases usually expressed in English with prepositions "to",
  "at/in", "from" are indicated by the following suffixes
  
     dative:   -(y)V2      
     locative: -tV2  | -dV2    
     ablative: -tV2n | -dV2n   
     
  So:
  
    ev       = house              aGa         = tree
    eve      = to the house       aGaa        = to the tree 
    evte     = at/in the house    aGata       = at/in the tree
    evten    = from the house     aGatan      = from the tree
    evlere   = to the houses      aGalara     = to the trees
    evlerde  = at/in the houses   aGalarda    = at/in the trees
    evlerden = from the houses    aGalardan   = from the trees
     
Posessive:

  The English phrase "X's Y" can be written in Turkish in 
  several ways:
  
     X  Y-(s)V4              if X is singular indefinite
     X  Y-lV2rV24            if X is plural indefinite
     
     X-(n)V4n  Y-(s)V4       if X is singular definite
     X-(n)V4n  Y-lV2rV24     if X is plural definite
     
  So, from "ocuk" = "child" and "bahe" = "garden", we get
    
    ocuk bahesi   = child-garden (= kindergarten)
    ocuk baheleri = children-garden OR child-gardens OR ...
        
    ocuGun bahesi      = garden of the child
    ocuGun baheleri    = gardens of the child
    ocuklarIn baheleri = gardens of the children
    
  Other suffixes are used to indicate "my", "your", "ours":
  
    X-(V4)m    "my X"
    X-(V4)n    "your X"  (for sing. "you")

    X-(V4)mV4z "our X"
    X-(V4)nV4z "your X"  (for plural "you")
    
  So from "bahe" one gets "bahem" = "my garden", "bahemez" = "our garden",
  "bahelerenez" = "your gardens", etc.
  
Verbs:

  Well, I am throwing the towel here. 8-) Verbs are conjugated by
  adding suffixes, of course. Besides time and person, the suffixes
  may indicate conditional aspect, passive voice, causation,
  reflexivity, attending circumstance, degree of confidence by the
  speaker, etc. etc.

Caveats:

  This sumamry is over-hyper-simplified, and may contains all sorts
  of errors.

  This is *modern* Turkish, of course. I have no idea how much todays
  language differs from that spoken/written in the 15th
  century.
  
  Note that Turks used the Arabic alphabet until the 1920's or so.

For whatever it is worth...

All the best,

--stolfi

From jim@mail.rand.org  Sun Jun 18 03:41:46 2000
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From: Zandbergen@t-online.de (Rene Zandbergen)
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Jorge Stolfi wrote:

> Following up on the "vowel harmony" guess, here are some glimpses of
> Turkish grammar (from an elementary textbook I borrowed from my
> almost-linguist son).

[...]

>   There no definite article. 

If Voynichese is a language that has articles, they are attached
to the words (as in Arabic), unless Voynichese is a highly verbose
encrytion of a language. Czech doesn't use articles (at least in
the official language), so by gross extrapolation I'm assuming
that this is true for more (most/all?) Slavionic languages of
the late middle ages. Most Romance and Germanic languages do
use articles (except of course Latin).

>   This sumamry is over-hyper-simplified, and may contains all sorts
>   of errors.

But, it is also worth mentioning that Turkish is one of the most
regular languages in the world. There are hardly any exceptions
to the grammatical rules, if at all (!) (This actually is the only
bit I knew about Turkish until this post came around :-) )

>   Note that Turks used the Arabic alphabet until the 1920's or so.

I can see how Turkish written in an Arabic script might share
a number of statistical oddities with Voynichese. My guess
from the above is that Turkish would have a tendency to form
long words. These would be split up by the orthographic breaks
caused by the script.

An unanswerable question is, of course, whether one should expect
that if someone 'invented' a new script for (in this case)
Turkish, he would stick to the same orthographic breaks.
I would say that the answer is yes if the VMs writer couldn't
actually understand the input text he was copying/converting.

What is missing in this model (Voynichese as a result of 
Turkish written in an Arabic script) is the tendency of 
Voynichese words to follow strict patterns.
For this I can see one other explanation: Voynichese as a
result of numbers written in the Arabic script.

For a moment I thought that the recent discussion about the
50% probability of having a gallows character in a word was
a confirmation of this, but it doesn't really fit.
Stolfi suggested that the gallows could be part
of 'low-bit' information (which of course is not the same as
saying that Voynichese is a binary code!). 
I'm still lacking a good explanation for the occurrence of
the character sequence 'ed' (in Eva) which only starts 
appearing little by little in the astro section, to become
regular in the B language part. This could be a 'high-bit'
piece of information (e.g. numbers over 1000).

But this would be a very unusual scheme,  since this low-bit
and high-bit information is not really found at the extremes
of the words.....

Cheers, Rene

From jim@mail.rand.org  Sun Jun 18 12:16:53 2000
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From: "Rafal T. Prinke" <rafalp@amu.edu.pl>
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Here are the signs of the Zodiac in Turkish (modern), starting 
with Aries:

     Ko Boga Ikizler Yenge Aslan Baak

     Terazi Akrep Yay Oglak Kova Balik

Some diacritics may be corrapted in e-mail...

Best regards,

Rafal


From jim@mail.rand.org  Sun Jun 18 12:16:49 2000
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Rene Zandbergen wrote:

> Czech doesn't use articles (at least in
> the official language), so by gross extrapolation I'm assuming
> that this is true for more (most/all?) Slavionic languages of
> the late middle ages. 

Yes, that is true - at least about Czech, Slovak, Ukrainian, 
Belorusian, Russian and Polish.

Best regards,

Rafal

From jim@mail.rand.org  Sun Jun 18 11:41:09 2000
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I doubt the following will add much to the discussion, but it would not
harm, so here it is.  When I tried to apply some simple tricks to VMS
one thing I did was to compare the frequency of letters in Vms
separately for alleged consonants and vowels (how I guessed which was
cons and which vow, using LSC, was described in my article on my web)
with those in a number of languages. I obtained only gibberish with one
exception. When I applied that trick to Czech, I got one word which
seemed to be meaningful.  It means either "flower" or "ticket" depending
on the alternative interperation of one of the letters.  Regarding
articles, Russian, Ukrainian, Polish and Belorussian have no articles
(and do well without them).  Hebrew has only the definite article (which
is just one letter which is always written together with the word,
although pronounced as a syllable) but no indefinite one. Its use is not
exactly the same way as English "the," but more or less similar.
Regarding Turkish, while I don't speak it, many years ago I studied some
Uzbek which is very close to Turkish. Its grammar is very simple and it
was very easy to learn (at least on some rudimentary level) as compared
with any other language I ever tried. It has no articles. Mark

Rene Zandbergen wrote:
> 
> Jorge Stolfi wrote:
> 
> > Following up on the "vowel harmony" guess, here are some glimpses of
> > Turkish grammar (from an elementary textbook I borrowed from my
> > almost-linguist son).
> 
> [...]
> 
> >   There no definite article.
> 
> If Voynichese is a language that has articles, they are attached
> to the words (as in Arabic), unless Voynichese is a highly verbose
> encrytion of a language. Czech doesn't use articles (at least in
> the official language), so by gross extrapolation I'm assuming
> that this is true for more (most/all?) Slavionic languages of
> the late middle ages. Most Romance and Germanic languages do
> use articles (except of course Latin).
> 
> >   This sumamry is over-hyper-simplified, and may contains all sorts
> >   of errors.
> 
> But, it is also worth mentioning that Turkish is one of the most
> regular languages in the world. There are hardly any exceptions
> to the grammatical rules, if at all (!) (This actually is the only
> bit I knew about Turkish until this post came around :-) )
> 
> >   Note that Turks used the Arabic alphabet until the 1920's or so.
> 
> I can see how Turkish written in an Arabic script might share
> a number of statistical oddities with Voynichese. My guess
> from the above is that Turkish would have a tendency to form
> long words. These would be split up by the orthographic breaks
> caused by the script.
> 
> An unanswerable question is, of course, whether one should expect
> that if someone 'invented' a new script for (in this case)
> Turkish, he would stick to the same orthographic breaks.
> I would say that the answer is yes if the VMs writer couldn't
> actually understand the input text he was copying/converting.
> 
> What is missing in this model (Voynichese as a result of
> Turkish written in an Arabic script) is the tendency of
> Voynichese words to follow strict patterns.
> For this I can see one other explanation: Voynichese as a
> result of numbers written in the Arabic script.
> 
> For a moment I thought that the recent discussion about the
> 50% probability of having a gallows character in a word was
> a confirmation of this, but it doesn't really fit.
> Stolfi suggested that the gallows could be part
> of 'low-bit' information (which of course is not the same as
> saying that Voynichese is a binary code!).
> I'm still lacking a good explanation for the occurrence of
> the character sequence 'ed' (in Eva) which only starts
> appearing little by little in the astro section, to become
> regular in the B language part. This could be a 'high-bit'
> piece of information (e.g. numbers over 1000).
> 
> But this would be a very unusual scheme,  since this low-bit
> and high-bit information is not really found at the extremes
> of the words.....
> 
> Cheers, Rene

From jim@mail.rand.org  Mon Jun 19 06:18:18 2000
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Date: Sun, 18 Jun 2000 10:20:19 -0700
From: Jacques Guy <jguy@alphalink.com.au>
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Brian Eric Farnell wrote:
[snip]

> Thoughts?

Alas, Brian, even in languages that have pronouns
usage can make them very, very scarce. I have been
reading Sebastian Englert's grammar of the Easter
Island language, and fishing for examples in his
dictionary. The use of personal pronouns is avoided.
You find the same in Breton, and Pierre Jakez Helias
explains it in his books on Breton culture: you 
should avoid addressing people directly. If you
want to ask "where are you going?" the proper way
of doing it is "where is one going?" And, in fact,
I remember how I used to adapt my French, unconsciously,
to my Breton relatives' way of expressing themselves:
I would use "on" instead of "tu" or "vous". 

Here is a concrete example out of 
Englert's Rapanui dictionary, where he reproduces
the recipe for roasted chicken intestines. You
do this, you do that (never a "you"), and finally:
"he kai" which is, literally, "to eat," understood
are "you" and "it" (or "them"): "you eat it." 

Some languages have no pronouns. Japanese for instance.
Others have only two: me (or we), and anyone else.
(This last weirdo is from Papua-New  Guinea, as you
might have guessed). 

Once again, we are babes in the Voynich woods, lost.

From jim@mail.rand.org  Sun Jun 18 16:47:32 2000
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From: Brian Eric Farnell <bfarnell@gte.net>
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Another set of words (besides articles) that are typically very
short are pronouns.  Pronouns affect verb conjugation and
(sometimes) change with case.  If the gallows characters
represented a pronoun/case marker you could dispense with verb
conjugations and noun declensions by inserting the marker into
the word.  This would shorten your average word length and
account for the fact that gallows characters are often alike
when placed next to each other.  A language that had a
relatively regular word order might require the pronoun/case
marker to be included (in an abbreviated cipher version) in
instances where you had a compound subject or object, to keep
you from thinking that one was a subject and the following was
an object or several other instances where it might be
confusing.  The gallows characters might be a 'bit' that encodes
the pronoun and/or case.  This might also account for the heavy
use of gallows at the beginning of lines, as well as the seeming
lack of articles.  Thoughts?
Regards,
Brian

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From: Jorge Stolfi <stolfi@ic.unicamp.br>
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Subject: Re: About Turkish
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    > [Rene:] If Voynichese is a language that has articles, they are attached
    > to the words (as in Arabic), unless Voynichese is a highly verbose
    > encrytion of a language. Czech doesn't use articles (at least in
    > the official language), so by gross extrapolation I'm assuming
    > that this is true for more (most/all?) Slavionic languages of
    > the late middle ages. Most Romance and Germanic languages do
    > use articles (except of course Latin).

IIRC, Romanian also is exceptional in that the articles are suffixed
to the noun.

    > But, it is also worth mentioning that Turkish is one of the most
    > regular languages in the world. There are hardly any exceptions
    > to the grammatical rules, if at all (!)

Hm... wasn't the author of the claim a Turk, perchance? 8-)
(But I have seen it stated elsewhere, I suppose it is true...)

    > I can see how Turkish written in an Arabic script might share
    > a number of statistical oddities with Voynichese.
    
Perhaps, but that is not what I was thinking of.  See below.

BTW, here are the numbers and months in Turkish:

      1 = bir     10 = on      100 = yz     
      2 = iki     20 = yirmi   200 = iki yz 
      3 =       30 = otuz  
      4 = drt    40 = kIrk  
      5 = beS     50 = elli  
      6 = altI    60 = altmIS
      7 = yedi    70 = yetmiS
      8 = sekiz   80 = seksen
      9 = dokuz   90 = doksan

     11 = on bir
     12 = on iki
        = ...
    999 = dokuz yz doksan dokuz

    The fraction X/Y is expressed as "Y-IN X"
    where "-IN" is the locative suffix -{t|d}V2:
    
      2/3    = "ute iki" ("in 3, 2")
      15/100 = "yuzde on beS" ("in 100, 15")
    
    The ordinal Nth  is formed with the suffix -(V4)ncV4:
    
      1st = birinci
      2nd = ikinci
      3rd = nc
      4th = drdnc
      ...
      11th = on birinci
      ...
      
    The distributive is formed with -(S)V2r:
    
      1 at a time = birer
      2 at a time = ikiSer
      3 at a time = er
      ...
      6 at a time = altISar
      ...
    
  Days of the week (usually followed by "gn" = "day-of")
   
     sunday    pazar      
     monday    pazartesi  
     tuesday   salI       
     wednesday arSamba   
     thursday  perSembe   
     friday    cuma       
     saturday  cumartesi  
   
  Month names (older names in parenthesis)
  
     january    ocak (ikinci knun, son knun)
     february   Subat
     march      mart
     april      nisan
     may        mayIs
     june       haziran
     july       temmuz
     august     aGustos
     september  eyll
     october    ekim (birinci teSrin, ilk teSrin)
     november   kasIm (ikinci teSrin, son teSrin)
     december   aralIk (birinci knun, ilk knun)


    > My guess from the above is that Turkish would have a tendency to
    > form long words.
    
Yes.  This is moderately true of modern Turkish, and I 
have seen hints that it was much more so for classical Turkish.

I should try to get hold of a sample, and do some syllable
counting.  

    > These would be split up by the orthographic breaks
    > caused by the script.  ...
    > 

Turkish seems to have a fairly well-defined notion of word,
namely a stem and its suffixes (which are fairly distinct 
sets).  So I see three natural spacing rules for it:

   (0) no spaces
   
   (1) spaces between words
   
   (2) spaces between elements (stems and suffixes)
   
The modern script uses rule (1). I don't know which rule
was used with the Arabic script (nor even whether
the question makes sense at all).

    > An unanswerable question is, of course, whether one should expect
    > that if someone 'invented' a new script for (in this case)
    > Turkish, he would stick to the same orthographic breaks.
    > I would say that the answer is yes if the VMs writer couldn't
    > actually understand the input text he was copying/converting.

I believe that the length and structure of the VMS words 
pretty much rules out (1) and is consistent with (2).
Moreover, (2) but not (1) seems to offer an explanation 
for the long runs in the gallows-bit sequence.

    > What is missing in this model [...] is the tendency of 
    > Voynichese words to follow strict patterns.

It seems that almost all Turkish suffixes are single syllables;
which, according to the textbook, can have only the the following
structures

  V     e.g. "o" = "he/she/it"
  VC    e.g. "ak" = "white"
  CV    e.g. "ve" = and
  CVC   e.g. "daG" = mountain
  VCC   e.g. "st" = "top"
  CVCC  e.g. "gen" = "young"
  
Is it possible to match these patterns to the known Voynichese
word structure?  Duh...

Let me try... presumably the gallows are part of the vowel, but not
all of it; so we could guess that (core and mantle) = vowel, crust =
consonants. But this does not seem to work --- the crust letters are
almost always found after the core-mantle; while, on a quick scan,
Turkish suffixes seem to be mostly of the CV, CVC, or CVCC types.

Besides, Voynichese words seem too complicated, and there seem to be
too many of them. So if they are indeed Turkish syllables, the
correspondence is not that simple... 

    > For this I can see one other explanation: Voynichese as a
    > result of numbers written in the Arabic script.
    > 
    > For a moment I thought that the recent discussion about the
    > 50% probability of having a gallows character in a word was
    > a confirmation of this, but it doesn't really fit.
    > Stolfi suggested that the gallows could be part
    > of 'low-bit' information (which of course is not the same as
    > saying that Voynichese is a binary code!). 
    
Indeed, it was the 50-50 split that made me think of codebook cipher.
But I don't believe in that explanation any more; I can't see how a
codebook cipher can generate those long runs in the gallows-bit
sequence.  If Voynichese words are indeed numbers, the 
sequence must involve some non-trivial algorithm with memory.
    
    > I'm still lacking a good explanation for the occurrence of
    > the character sequence 'ed' (in Eva)
    
This topic deserves a sepearate message...

All the best,

--stolfi

From jim@mail.rand.org  Mon Jun 19 00:03:03 2000
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From: jporter@ricochet.net (Julie Porter)
Subject: Re: About Turkish
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>BTW, here are the numbers and months in Turkish:
>
>      1 = bir     10 = on      100 = yz
>      2 = iki     20 = yirmi   200 = iki yz
>      3 =       30 = otuz
>      4 = drt    40 = kIrk
>      5 = beS     50 = elli
>      6 = altI    60 = altmIS
>      7 = yedi    70 = yetmiS
>      8 = sekiz   80 = seksen
>      9 = dokuz   90 = doksan
>
>     11 = on bir
>     12 = on iki
>        = ...
This brings up a slighty off topic question. As members may recall, my main
interest is in clockwork toys. Turkey was the major importer of these
'objects de vertu'.
Many clocks and watches were incorporated with music and automata along
with precious and semi precious stones. The dials are often paintesd with
traingles and half moons for numbers. Some time ago I was asked how these
symbols were used to perform calculations. In other words, do they act like
roman numbers, or arabic numbers?
Part of the problem is that these items were produced in Swizerland, with
cases made in London (for the hallmark) I don't think the dial painters
(who were most likey swiss or engish) always got the copy correct. These
are the same dial makers who used IIII instead of IV.
The makings of the minutes (chapter ring) are of particular intrerest as
this should go from 0 to 59.

-julieP


From jim@mail.rand.org  Mon Jun 19 00:50:41 2000
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Since it seems to be a thing "in" to share the knowledge of Turkish
numerals, here are the same numerals in Uzbek (you see how similar to
Turkish)and almost the same (with a slight difference in pronounciation)
in Kazakh: 
1- bir
2-ikki
3-uch
4-tort
5-besh
6-shesh
7-? (I forgot)
8- Sakkuz
9- Tokkuz
10- Un
20- Yirmi etc. 

Why is it of importance for VMs list? 

Julie Porter wrote:
> 
> >BTW, here are the numbers and months in Turkish:
> >
> >      1 = bir     10 = on      100 = yz
> >      2 = iki     20 = yirmi   200 = iki yz
> >      3 =       30 = otuz
> >      4 = drt    40 = kIrk
> >      5 = beS     50 = elli
> >      6 = altI    60 = altmIS
> >      7 = yedi    70 = yetmiS
> >      8 = sekiz   80 = seksen
> >      9 = dokuz   90 = doksan
> >
> >     11 = on bir
> >     12 = on iki
> >        = ...
> This brings up a slighty off topic question. As members may recall, my main
> interest is in clockwork toys. Turkey was the major importer of these
> 'objects de vertu'.
> Many clocks and watches were incorporated with music and automata along
> with precious and semi precious stones. The dials are often paintesd with
> traingles and half moons for numbers. Some time ago I was asked how these
> symbols were used to perform calculations. In other words, do they act like
> roman numbers, or arabic numbers?
> Part of the problem is that these items were produced in Swizerland, with
> cases made in London (for the hallmark) I don't think the dial painters
> (who were most likey swiss or engish) always got the copy correct. These
> are the same dial makers who used IIII instead of IV.
> The makings of the minutes (chapter ring) are of particular intrerest as
> this should go from 0 to 59.
> 
> -julieP

From jim@mail.rand.org  Mon Jun 19 02:44:58 2000
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From: Dennis <ixohoxi@micro-net.com>
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"Rafal T. Prinke" wrote:

> Yes, that is true - at least about Czech, Slovak, Ukrainian,
> Belorusian, Russian and Polish.

    Katzner's *Languages of the World* says "Bulgarian also differs from
the other Slavic languages in that it makes use of articles, both
definite and indefinite , the former being suffixed to the noun."  He
also notes "Old Bulgarian, or Old Church Slavonic, as it has come to be
called, long served as the literary vehicle of all the Slavic
languages."  Did OCS use articles?  If it did, I suppose that some of
the other Slavic languages might have during the Middle Ages.

Dennis


From jim@mail.rand.org  Mon Jun 19 04:15:33 2000
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From: Dennis <ixohoxi@micro-net.com>
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    For no really definite reason, I was thinking about the idea that
the VMs was composed by someone suffering from some form of
schizophrenia, who invented an artificial language of his
own.

    Toresella thought this.  (His "alchemical herbals" don't really
resemble the VMs very
much, and he himself said that the VMs is in a class by itself among
them.)  Here is the relevant quote:


    "Personally I think that the person who drew and wrote this herbal
was profoundly impressed by the exhibition of some charlatan at the
market place and thought that he had discovered the secret of the
world; a secret to entrust to a language and a cryptic script such as
is often found in certain forms of insanity [47].

...

    "47.  The phenomenon of invented languages is very widespread and
represents a fundamental aspect of some mental pathologies.  For an
approach to the problem see: S. ARIETE, *Creativita`. La Sintesi
magica*, Roma 1986.  A. BAUSANI, *Le Lingue inventate. Linguaggi
artificiali -linguaggi segreti- linguaggi universali*, Roma, 1974.
And the recent B. BUONARROTI & P. ALBANI, *Aga Mage'ra Difura.
Dizionario delle lingue immaginarie*, Bologna 1994."


----------------------------

    The only one of the ref's I've been able to look at is Ariete.  He
discusses the very simple "languages" sometimes seen with simple
schizophrenics;  the examples he gives consist of only a few words.  Bob
Richmond has also mentioned the (based on a real-life example) novel *I
Never Promised You a Rose Garden*.  The "Yri" language used by the
protagonist, from what I've seen just from leafing through the book,
also only includes a few words.

    However, paranoid schizophrenics' thinks seem much more lucid and
they construct elaborate world views of their own.  Jacques and I have
given samples of paranoid schizophrenics' English-language writings, but
have found no examples of their inventing languages (unless James
Hampton qualifies; there is at least one psychiatric article on him, but
I haven't read it.)

    SO... ONE MORE TIME... has anyone read BAUSANI or BUONARROTI &
ALBANI, and if so, what do they say?

Dennis


PS - Since we are entering the print media, I think that Toresella's
footnote was our very first appearance in the print media.


    "46.  The best exposition of the research on the Voynich codex is
in M. E. D'Imperio, *The Voynich Manuscript.  An elegant enigma,
Laguna Hills (Ca.) 1976.  A good summary, also easily available in
Italy, may be found in D. Kahn, *The Codebreakers.*  There also exists
an Internet site dedicated to this issue on which about forty students
from all over the world communicate their discoveries.



From jim@mail.rand.org  Mon Jun 19 04:30:01 2000
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From: Miguel Carrasquer Vidal <mcv@wxs.nl>
To: Dennis <ixohoxi@micro-net.com>
Cc: VOYNICH-L <voynich@rand.org>
Subject: Re: About Turkish
Date: Mon, 19 Jun 2000 10:29:20 +0200
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Dennis <ixohoxi@micro-net.com> wrote:

>Did OCS use articles?  

No.

At an earlier stage, "Proto-Slavic", articles/pronouns were
suffixed to adjectives, leading to the Slavic opposition between
"definite adjectives" (used attributively) and "indefinite
adjectives" (used predicatively).


=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv@wxs.nl

From jim@mail.rand.org  Mon Jun 19 06:39:53 2000
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From: Brian Eric Farnell <bfarnell@gte.net>
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Still, in a language like German that does have pronouns and
articles and cases, a single character substitute for all of the
definite articles would express person and case well enough to
do away with quite a few endings (shortening average word
length) as well as taking out allot of short words
characteristically lacking in Voynich.  In a language that
declined and conjugated everything (like Russian) this would
make a big difference in language characteristics.  Look at this
German example where I will represent a character in the gallows
class with a capitol G:

Ich habe die kuchen.
G haGb kuGche.

Notice how the pronoun/subject followed by verb pattern creates
a Grove word at the beginning of the sentence as often happens
in Voynich.  My example really doesn't show much reduction in
word length, but my German is long forgotten, I'm sure you can
think of examples where it would in German and especially other
languages.
Regards,
Brian

Jacques Guy wrote:
> 
> Brian Eric Farnell wrote:
> [snip]
> 
> > Thoughts?
> 
> Alas, Brian, even in languages that have pronouns
> usage can make them very, very scarce. I have been
> reading Sebastian Englert's grammar of the Easter
> Island language, and fishing for examples in his
> dictionary. The use of personal pronouns is avoided.
> You find the same in Breton, and Pierre Jakez Helias
> explains it in his books on Breton culture: you
> should avoid addressing people directly. If you
> want to ask "where are you going?" the proper way
> of doing it is "where is one going?" And, in fact,
> I remember how I used to adapt my French, unconsciously,
> to my Breton relatives' way of expressing themselves:
> I would use "on" instead of "tu" or "vous".
> 
> Here is a concrete example out of
> Englert's Rapanui dictionary, where he reproduces
> the recipe for roasted chicken intestines. You
> do this, you do that (never a "you"), and finally:
> "he kai" which is, literally, "to eat," understood
> are "you" and "it" (or "them"): "you eat it."
> 
> Some languages have no pronouns. Japanese for instance.
> Others have only two: me (or we), and anyone else.
> (This last weirdo is from Papua-New  Guinea, as you
> might have guessed).
> 
> Once again, we are babes in the Voynich woods, lost.

From jim@mail.rand.org  Mon Jun 19 08:55:02 2000
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Date: Mon, 19 Jun 2000 12:54:07 +0000
From: Rene Zandbergen <rene@voynich.nu>
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Mark wrote:

> Since it seems to be a thing "in" to share the knowledge of Turkish
> numerals, here are the same numerals in Uzbek [...]

> Why is it of importance for VMs list? 

I can think of various reasons. 
Someone once wrote that the Voynich MS is not in Turkish (I can't
remember if it was D'Imperio or perhaps in one of the old SciAm
articles).
However, this statement came without supporting arguments, so we
disbelieve it. 

In addition, especially in the earlier days of the mailing list it has
been demonstrated many times that it is possible to produce a reasonable
argument for *any possible* origin of the Voynich MS. It will be easy
to find several scenarios which place a copy of an originally Turkish
MS at Rudolf's court around 1600 (with or without involvement of Dee).
My attempt would go through George of Trebizond, who was (in)famous
for his odd relationship with Constantinople.
The astro section of the MS would in that case originate from no
other than Ulugh Begh.

In short: the VMs *could* be of Turkish origin, or derive from a
Turkish source MS. It may not be the most likely option, but it
is worth (or rather: fun) to toy with the idea. And this leads
to other ideas and question. It's like a long-distance, slow-motion
kind of brainstorming.

-- 
Cheers, Rene

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Subject: Re: About Turkish
References: <200006172339.UAA28582@coruja.dcc.unicamp.br> <394C7E12.916FCE99@voynich.nu> <394CBBF0.5FBDE685@amu.edu.pl> <394DC0AA.BC20D78B@micro-net.com>
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In response to Dennis' question, Slovo o Polku Igoreve (The Tale of
Igor's gang") was written about 1185-1187, in Old Slavic.  I revived now
in my memory some verses from that epic and there are no articles. Here
is the beginning of that poem (from my memory) which I transliterated
into Roman characters: "Ne liepo li ne byashet bratie nachati starymi
slovesy trudnykh povestej o pleku Igoreve, Igorya syna Svyatoslavlya. 
Nachati zhe toj povesti po bylyam sego vremeni a ne po izmyshleniyu
Boyanyu. Boyan bo veshchi ashche komu khotyashche pesn tvoriti to
rastekashetsa myslyu po drevu, serym volkom po zemli, shysym orlom po
oblaku...." etc. It translates as follows: "Wouldn't it be nice,
brothers, to start, in old fashioned words, (the) tale about Igor's
gang, about Igor, son of Svyatoslav. To start that tale according to
(the) real events of our time, rather than following Boyan's fantasy. 
When prophetic Boyan wished to create (a) song, he would let his
thoughts wander all over (the) forests, roam like (a) wolf over all
(the) lands, fly like (an) eagle in clouds."  No articles in the
original text. Its vocabulary and grammar is quite different, though,
from both modern Russian and Bulgarian. 

Dennis wrote:
> 
> "Rafal T. Prinke" wrote:
> 
> > Yes, that is true - at least about Czech, Slovak, Ukrainian,
> > Belorusian, Russian and Polish.
> 
>     Katzner's *Languages of the World* says "Bulgarian also differs from
> the other Slavic languages in that it makes use of articles, both
> definite and indefinite , the former being suffixed to the noun."  He
> also notes "Old Bulgarian, or Old Church Slavonic, as it has come to be
> called, long served as the literary vehicle of all the Slavic
> languages."  Did OCS use articles?  If it did, I suppose that some of
> the other Slavic languages might have during the Middle Ages.
> 
> Dennis

From jim@mail.rand.org  Mon Jun 19 16:20:58 2000
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Date: Mon, 19 Jun 2000 21:50:12 +0200
From: "Rafal T. Prinke" <rafalp@amu.edu.pl>
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Jacques Guy wrote:

> Alas, Brian, even in languages that have pronouns
> usage can make them very, very scarce.

That is the case with Polish and (I think) other
Slavic languages. Pronouns are only used when
person suffix to the verb is not enough 
(ie. the meaning might be ambiguous).
For example (Polish):

Kiedy przyszedl, zjedlismy obiad i znow wyszedl.
When [he] came, [we] had dinner and [he] again went out.

> You find the same in Breton, and Pierre Jakez Helias
> explains it in his books on Breton culture: you
> should avoid addressing people directly. If you
> want to ask "where are you going?" the proper way
> of doing it is "where is one going?" 

In Polish and Czech there is similar usage to
show respect. The former uses "mister/madam",
the latter - plural number (without pronoun).
But also informal usage (without special respect)
has no pronouns, eg.:

Where are you going?
Kam jdes?        (Czech)
Kam jdete?       (Czech with respect)
Dokad idziesz?   (Polish)
Dokad pan idzie? (Polish with respect)


Best regards,

Rafal

From jim@mail.rand.org  Mon Jun 19 16:35:00 2000
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Subject: why not Dee
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I have now put up a Web page with my thoughts on Dee's connection
(or rather lack of it) with VMS. Have a look at:

http://hum.amu.edu.pl/~rafalp/HERM/VMS/vms.htm

Comments welcome.

Best regards,

Rafal

From jim@mail.rand.org  Mon Jun 19 19:24:19 2000
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    > I have now put up a Web page with my thoughts on Dee's connection
    > (or rather lack of it) with VMS. Have a look at:

Great job!

The circumstantial evidence (Arthur's recollections, the 600 ducats,
etc) had already been discussed in this list, and found to be very
weak. Your new arguments only finished the job.

For the page numbers, on the other hand, Watson's alleged
identification still carried some authority, in spite of Ron Carter's
message (which apparently had been forgotten by the time I joined the
list). But your images speak for themselves. Even if Watson had other
samples of Dee's numerals, more similar to the VMS ones, it is hard to
believe that they would have matched the 8's stroke order we see in
the VMS.

By the way: from your images, I get the impression that Dee used to
hold the pen mostly horizontal, while the VMS foliator held it closer
to the vertical. This is most visible in the digit "4" --- Dee's has a
thick horizontal stroke and a thin vertical one, whereas the VMS "4"
has just the opposite.  (Either that, of Dee and the foliator used
quite different patterns of hand pressure while writing the "4".)

All the best,

--stolfi

From jim@mail.rand.org  Tue Jun 20 03:42:47 2000
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Date: Tue, 20 Jun 2000 07:41:30 +0000
From: Rene Zandbergen <rene@voynich.nu>
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Rafal wrote:

> > I have now put up a Web page with my thoughts on Dee's connection
> > (or rather lack of it) with VMS. Have a look at:

and Stolfi:

> The circumstantial evidence (Arthur's recollections, the 600 ducats,
> etc) had already been discussed in this list, and found to be very
> weak. Your new arguments only finished the job.

Indeed, a highly valuable contribution! I'm not sure if this puts the
nail in the coffin, since especially for Arthur Dee's statement
(IMHO the most intriguing of the three items) we can only apply
reason and speculate. There is little in terms of verifiable fact.
Here is the quote from Fell-Smith (Thomas Browne writing to Ashmole
in 1675 about what Arthur Dee had told him):

> [...] that Count Rosenberg played at quoits with silver quoits made by
> projection as before. That this transmutation was made by a powder they
> had, which was found in some old place, and a book lying by it containing
> nothing but heiroglyphicks; which book his father bestowed much time upon,
> but I could not hear that he could make it out. He said also that Kelly
> dealth not justly by his father, and that he went away with the greatest
> part of the powder, and was afterwards imprisoned by the Emperor in a
> castle, from whence attempting to escape down the wall, he fell and broke
> his leg, and was imprisoned again 

Now Fell-Smith will not be quoting verbatim, but the 'I' in 'I could not
hear that he could make it out' is Thomas Browne, not Arthur Dee.
In any case, according to the above, the book in hieroglyphics is
clearly
the book of St. Dunstan, according to the tradition of Kelly's discovery
of it. If this was in Welsh, (also following tradition) Arthur may well
have 
considered these to be hieroglyphics. And maybe Dee *could* read it 
(since Arthur is not making any statement about this).

> For the page numbers, on the other hand, Watson's alleged
> identification still carried some authority, in spite of Ron Carter's
> message (which apparently had been forgotten by the time I joined the
> list). 

This identification has always been treated with subdued skepticism on
the list, since it is so hard to believe, while on the other hand the
man is obviously an expert....

> But your images speak for themselves. Even if Watson had other
> samples of Dee's numerals, more similar to the VMS ones...

The MS on which the statement was based is clearly identified in
the Yale catalogue entry: 

> (we thank A. G. Watson for confirming this identification through a
> comparison of the Arabic numerals in the Beinecke manuscript with
> those of John Dee in Oxford, Bodleian Library Ashmole 1790, f. 9v,
> and Ashmole 487)

Right now I cannot access Rafal's page, so I cannot check if this is
what he used....

In any case, I do think that Rafal's page changes the balance of
the evidence w.r.t. the Dee ownership... But then I'm biased, in
the sense that I'm hoping that the seller was someone else (as this
may give us a new chance of tracing it further back in time).

Cheers, Rene

From jim@mail.rand.org  Tue Jun 20 03:55:37 2000
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>Since it seems to be a thing "in" to share the knowledge of Turkish
>numerals, here are the same numerals in Uzbek (you see how similar to
>Turkish)and almost the same (with a slight difference in pronounciation)
>in Kazakh:
>1- bir
>2-ikki
>3-uch
>4-tort
>5-besh
>6-shesh
>7-? (I forgot)
>8- Sakkuz
>9- Tokkuz
>10- Un
>20- Yirmi etc.
>
>Why is it of importance for VMs list?
In the past the list has entertained a wide variety of speculation. One
might ask Why is Dr Dee of import to the list? While I would dealrly like
to see evidence that Dee was involved. So far the evidence seems to be
against.

As for why I asked how Turkish numbers worked. I thought there were people
here who might help a diffrent problem, while at the same time adding a
little bit of info to the problem at hand. Here is an excellent case of
workers copying a script not in the native culture. Granted what is painted
onto clocks and watches does not look like the itaianate hand the Vmss is
scribbled in. I have hard enough time with French (and spelling my own
language) that I doubt I will be able to learn Turkish. I have hard enough
time with the language of statistics to follow all the discussion herein.

Personally I think the Vmss was written by the equivilent of Rozencrantz
and Gilderstern. Some really 'Bright' guys (or gals) who are having a bit
of fun to mess with the head of the caligraphy professor (or the sister
supeierior).The 'No one reads this stuff anyway' type attitude. Perhaps the
Vmss was written by a couple of 'sisters' who wanted to do the same thing
the 'boys' were doing. What if they did not have proper instruction?

I think I noted it before here. I totally spaces out on My college Physics
final. I covered the entire answer sheet with pictures of Isaac Newton and
Tyco Brahe. What would someone make of that?  I did manage to pass the
class as I was a TA for the Proff in a computer class. It was actually this
reason I took the advanced physics, without the calculus. I thought I could
crib off the computers. I can just see rozencrantz and guilderstern signing
up for Advanced Herbology. Over thier heads they conspire to make the
paper. I could have just as easally turned in a blank test, rather than an
illustrated one.

 I may not be able to take the derivitive of an interegal, but I know what
they are. I just found all the notation and formal 'nonsense' of the math
to be booring. Especially if I could solve the problem empirically whith
brute force. After all I had Bennett's book which has a chapter on the
Vmss. I have found that book a excellent crib when I have a diffucalt
signal processing problem to solve. Pretty good for a computer text going
into it's 30th year.

Sometimes the fundamentals do not change no matter how much we want them too.
A funny incedent, when I was at apple. My boss came in to ask me what I was
up to. I replied I was attempting to program postscript to take the
fourrier transform of an image. He replied that he had a PhD in signal
processing. and that I was probably working at a level beyond his theisis.
The diffrence here was that I was down in the trenches woring with it on a
daily baisis. He on the other hand hardly had the reason to use it. To me
it was a tool. No diffrent than a hammer.

In effect my notes when I work on such problems, are encrypted. I have
designed my own signal processing language (based on postscript) I tend to
think in terms of stacks and key value pairs. The only problem is that It
is hard to express myself to people with a basic knowlege of a diffrent
language. I do not know if I could consciencly define this language to
others.

What does any of this have to do with Voynich? I do not know. Sometimes
data, any data, can help solve a problem. There was an interesting artical
in Scentific American regarding the use of small amounts of random noise in
signal detection. I think this falls into the category of simulated
aAnealing. Now I do not know what simulated is. But I do spend many a
saturday from 1 to 4 annealing glass into copper at 1500 degrees F (sorry I
don't know the C I have heard the number 800 used) This in my attempt to
learn how these 'Objects de vertu' are put together.
Currently I am making a bird like Hans Anderson described in the
Nightengale (A true story by the way) While in Germany last year I arranged
for a manufacture of the mechanical parts for which I am making a case.
Hence I am not spending time with the Vmss ;-) What would a collector
hundreds of years in the future make of my piece. The mechanical parts were
made with tooling of the latter 19th century, which was in constant use up
until the 1960s and then put into storage. until about 10 years back.
Mostly used for repair, the current oweners (sons of a musem curator) still
manufacture these mecnaincal marvels to order. (There is an entierely
diffrent company in Swizerland, which have a completley diffrent set of
tooling (design) that dates back to the 18th century. The respective
companies are (Grieshbaum (MMM Gmbh), and Rouge)
What would someone in the future think of my Enamel work. It does not
belong to any 'School'. If it made it out into the market accidently I am
sure some 'expert' would say it was made before WWII as there are no
plastic parts. (Dealers hate these things, becouse they are labled 19th
century singing bird, Only to open into it and find plastic parts (oxidised
and brittle or guey) and a mid to late 50s date code) I digress (but then
so did Dr Dee) As I am not practiced in high temprature enamels my cases
have bubbles and inclusions, Since the copper is oxegen free, these are
samples of what ever the atmosphere in the kiln is. I am sure there are
telatail 21st century traces in these.

As for the painting itself, My designs are origional, unless I become known
as an artist and make a certain number of items these few enameled boxes
may be unique enough to defy classification. Would anyone bother to make
these tests? As an industry there are actually quite a few of these toys in
circulation. Yet most people might see one in thier lifetime. The value of
such items preclude them to bank vaults and safes. The written litrature to
private archives. Since the major definitive collection was stolen, most
archives are diffucault to get into. Current owners are paranid of
intellectual property theft. Images are hard to come by. Much of the
written information is suspect especially from the 50s. A well heeled lady
acompaning her husband to Paris, might buy one and bring it back. Since she
only sees one copy she makes a tail how this was once owned by Marie
Antoinette. (Marie, did own such toys, just not that particuar one)
I find the paralles to the Vmss facinating.

Returning to the subject at hand.
I noted when I mentioned that from a typgraphical standpoint, the rivers in
the text caused by the spaces and re-inking of the pen, seem to have
uinique structure. If I had more time I would love to do some analysis with
the positions of the pen strokes in the Vms. I got almost no feedback from
the list so I sort of let things drop.
Did anyone give this any thought?

-julieP


>
>Julie Porter wrote:
>>
>> >BTW, here are the numbers and months in Turkish:
>> >
>> >      1 = bir     10 = on      100 = yz
>> >      2 = iki     20 = yirmi   200 = iki yz
>> >      3 =       30 = otuz
>> >      4 = drt    40 = kIrk
>> >      5 = beS     50 = elli
>> >      6 = altI    60 = altmIS
>> >      7 = yedi    70 = yetmiS
>> >      8 = sekiz   80 = seksen
>> >      9 = dokuz   90 = doksan
>> >
>> >     11 = on bir
>> >     12 = on iki
>> >        = ...
>> This brings up a slighty off topic question. As members may recall, my main
>> interest is in clockwork toys. Turkey was the major importer of these
>> 'objects de vertu'.
>> Many clocks and watches were incorporated with music and automata along
>> with precious and semi precious stones. The dials are often paintesd with
>> traingles and half moons for numbers. Some time ago I was asked how these
>> symbols were used to perform calculations. In other words, do they act like
>> roman numbers, or arabic numbers?
>> Part of the problem is that these items were produced in Swizerland, with
>> cases made in London (for the hallmark) I don't think the dial painters
>> (who were most likey swiss or engish) always got the copy correct. These
>> are the same dial makers who used IIII instead of IV.
>> The makings of the minutes (chapter ring) are of particular intrerest as
>> this should go from 0 to 59.
>>
>> -julieP


From jim@mail.rand.org  Tue Jun 20 04:08:25 2000
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Message-ID: <394F264D.8C993718@voynich.nu>
Date: Tue, 20 Jun 2000 08:07:41 +0000
From: Rene Zandbergen <rene@voynich.nu>
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This is not the prettiest of portraits (my opinion of course):

http://otokar.troja.mff.cuni.cz/RelatGrp/SCAN/Moder01.jpg

To our left of Marci I see a human brain, which must relate
to Marci's discoveries on the subject of epilepsy.
To our right: now doesn't that look like a sunflower???

Cheers,Rene

From jim@mail.rand.org  Tue Jun 20 08:37:04 2000
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Subject: Re: About Turkish (what is the importance to the VMS)
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----- Original Message -----
From: Julie Porter <jporter@ricochet.net>
To: <voynich@rand.org>
Sent: Tuesday, June 20, 2000 4:02 AM
Subject: Re: About Turkish (what is the importance to the VMS)
Returning to the subject at hand.
I noted when I mentioned that from a typgraphical standpoint, the rivers in
the text caused by the spaces and re-inking of the pen, seem to have
uinique structure. If I had more time I would love to do some analysis with
the positions of the pen strokes in the Vms. I got almost no feedback from
the list so I sort of let things drop.
Did anyone give this any thought?

-julieP

Basically the nature of this form of communication is such that feedback is
generally not provided by readers unless they don't understand the point and
have to ask a question (this is usually the case for me), don't feel they
can contribute to the topic at hand, or don't feel that the information as
presented needs further clarification [whether or not they agree with the
information presented]. So, as for your study of the pen stroke and word
space patterns - this is a field that I certainly couldn't qualify to
comment on : However, I would love to see some analysis done in that area as
well. I think there are many 'experts' in quite a wide range of fields
hiding amongst the lurkers out there who might be drawn into the
conversation when an area that even remotely matches their specialties is
presented to the list.

John

From jim@mail.rand.org  Tue Jun 20 16:08:38 2000
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Date: Tue, 20 Jun 2000 12:59:56 -0700 (PDT)
To: Julie Porter <jporter@ricochet.net>
Cc: voynich@rand.org
Subject: Re: About Turkish (what is the importance to the VMS)
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On Tue, 20 Jun 2000, Julie Porter wrote:
> I noted when I mentioned that from a typgraphical standpoint, the rivers in
> the text caused by the spaces and re-inking of the pen, seem to have
> uinique structure. If I had more time I would love to do some analysis with
> the positions of the pen strokes in the Vms. I got almost no feedback from
> the list so I sort of let things drop.
> Did anyone give this any thought?

I'm not even going to ask why someone would do signal processing in
PostScript.  On the "rivers":  I haven't finished looking at the "gallows
bit sequences" work, but when I ran some similar tests myself I had the
subjective impression that the positions of the gallows characters might
be related to positions on the page.  It's well known that they occur
preferentially at the starts of lines, but it also seemed to me (I haven't
run a count yet) that they almost always occurred in the first word on 
a page, and were much less common at the start of the *second* line.  I
wonder what would happen if we just took a page, marked the physical
positions of the gallows characters, and looked at nothing else.  Would we
see some interesting patterns?

One of the standard "kiddie" encryption techniques is to write the letters
of a message in specified physical locations on a page, and then add
random garbage all around to conceal it.  That's decrypted by placing a
template over the page with cutouts in the places where the message was
supposed to be written.  I wonder if something like that could be involved
in the VMS.  It seems like the sort of concealment that might be invented
by someone in the time and place the book was written.  The flowing nature
of the writing could be explained by it being copied from an original by
someone who didn't understand the concealment, and the word patterns we've
observed could be explained by a human trying to invent randomness on the
fly.  This theory isn't terribly convincing, and unfortunately I haven't
(yet) thought of a way to test it, but the underlying concept may be worth
investigating: that the physical locations of characters on the page may
be important to their meaning.

Matthew Skala
mskala@ansuz.sooke.bc.ca                   I paid for it, I own it.
http://www.islandnet.com/~mskala/

From jim@mail.rand.org  Tue Jun 20 16:20:20 2000
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Date: Tue, 20 Jun 2000 22:17:23 +0200
From: "Rafal T. Prinke" <rafalp@amu.edu.pl>
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Rene Zandbergen wrote:

> To our left of Marci I see a human brain, which must relate
> to Marci's discoveries on the subject of epilepsy.
> To our right: now doesn't that look like a sunflower???

We can always see what we hope to see :-) Andrew Watsons sees
Dee's handwriting and you see a sunflower where there is none.
The symbol on the right refers to his discoveries in optics.
To quote from the descriptive page on the same site:

> Twenty years before
> Newton he thoroughly described rainbow colours, the spectral 
> dispersion of light beams passing through a prism, the
> diffraction of light on a wire, edge and lattice, colours of 
> thin bubbles. He found that monochromatic rays do not change their
> colour by repeated refraction. He also performed experiments in 
> mechanics related to pendulum. 


Best regards,

Rafal

From jim@mail.rand.org  Tue Jun 20 17:03:13 2000
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Date: Tue, 20 Jun 2000 15:57:31 -0500
From: Dennis <ixohoxi@micro-net.com>
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Subject: Re: About Turkish (what is the importance to the VMS)
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    BRAVO, Julie!!  I've had some of the same thoughts.

Julie Porter wrote:

> >Why is it of importance for VMs list?
> In the past the list has entertained a wide variety of speculation. One
> might ask Why is Dr Dee of import to the list? While I would dealrly like
> to see evidence that Dee was involved. So far the evidence seems to be
> against.

    I agree, although I just never have been interested in Dr. Dee and Mr. Kelley.

> Personally I think the Vmss was written by the equivilent of Rozencrantz
> and Gilderstern. Some really 'Bright' guys (or gals) who are having a bit
> of fun to mess with the head of the caligraphy professor (or the sister
> supeierior).The 'No one reads this stuff anyway' type attitude. Perhaps the
> Vmss was written by a couple of 'sisters' who wanted to do the same thing
> the 'boys' were doing. What if they did not have proper instruction?

    This is a bit much, I think, although that's not too far from what the Codex
Seraphinianus is!  -- but even Luigi Serafini didn't do it overnight.  Plenty of
people on this list have talked about having invented their own alphabet (I once
did) and becoming proficient in it (I never did).  People have done amazing things
in altered states of consciousness.  I could fill two bookshelves with books that
been 'channeled' (written unconsciously).  A major religion is based on one of
them (won't say which one -- don't want to have to go into hiding!).   There are
the unconsciously-produced languages, Helene Smith's 'Martian' and Kirk Allen's
[Rogert Lindner's patient] 'Olmayan' -- and, I personally believe, Edward Kelley's
'Enochian'.  Kirk Allen also entered a science-fiction-like 'alternative universe'
-- as past-life regressors do, and as the out-of-the-body adept Robert Monroe
did.  VMs pictures resemble much visionary art -- and some of that combines text.
EVEN WITH ALL THAT, though, I think that the complexity and combination of these
elements precludes the VMs's being a quick joke.

    Incidentally, I'm looking at the book about Helene Smith.  Not all her
drawings of 'Mars' were child-like.  There is a set of 'Martian' plant drawings
that are quite Voynich-like. I'll try to scan them and put them up.

> I think I noted it before here. I totally spaces out on My college Physics
> final. I covered the entire answer sheet with pictures of Isaac Newton and
> Tyco Brahe. What would someone make of that?  I did manage to pass the
> class as I was a TA for the Proff in a computer class. It was actually this
> reason I took the advanced physics, without the calculus. I thought I could
> crib off the computers. I can just see rozencrantz and guilderstern signing
> up for Advanced Herbology. Over thier heads they conspire to make the
> paper. I could have just as easally turned in a blank test, rather than an
> illustrated one.

    You're certainly gutsy!!  That's really cutting the Gordian knot.

>  I may not be able to take the derivitive of an interegal, but I know what
> they are. I just found all the notation and formal 'nonsense' of the math to be
> booring. Especially if I could solve the problem empirically whith brute force.

    We engineers have always done it that way.  We just use brute-force iterative
methods to solve complex math.  (Although we now have Mathematica to do that too,
although I've never used it.

> Sometimes the fundamentals do not change no matter how much we want them too.
> A funny incedent, when I was at apple. My boss came in to ask me what I was
> up to. I replied I was attempting to program postscript to take the
> fourrier transform of an image. He replied that he had a PhD in signal
> processing. and that I was probably working at a level beyond his theisis.
> The diffrence here was that I was down in the trenches woring with it on a
> daily baisis. He on the other hand hardly had the reason to use it. To me
> it was a tool. No diffrent than a hammer.

    So darn true.  Also, if I may say so myself...  I've never had courses in
mathematical statistics or information theory; before this list, the entropy I
knew best was that of classical thermodynamics.  I'm still learning on Bennett's
chapter on language.  Compare me to Jim R. and Jim G.  As a mathemician it makes
me an idiot, and as a crippie, about the lowest form of life on the planet.  And
yet...   I'm the one who finally solved the VMs entropy quandry!  Before that,
everyone was mostly asking, "How could a [low-entropy] Polynesian language have
wound up in medieval Europe.  As so often, a matter of asking the right question.

> In effect my notes when I work on such problems, are encrypted. I have
> designed my own signal processing language (based on postscript) I tend to
> think in terms of stacks and key value pairs. The only problem is that It
> is hard to express myself to people with a basic knowlege of a diffrent
> language. I do not know if I could consciencly define this language to
> others.

    The only recorded speech of the great thermodynamicist J. Willard Gibbs was,
simply, "Mathematics is a language."  And that isn't even one language, as you
just noted.  And... as Carl Sagan pointed in his chapter "Maxwell and the Nerds"
in "The Demon-Haunted World" (a book I'd recommend to anyone), the only full
expression of most scientific ideas is mathematical.  This is why science ceased
to be comprehensible to the general public a long time ago, and why the
fundamentalists can keep on making stupid claims about science that were disproven
a long time ago.

> What does any of this have to do with Voynich? I do not know. Sometimes
> data, any data, can help solve a problem. There was an interesting artical
> in Scentific American regarding the use of small amounts of random noise in
> signal detection. I think this falls into the category of simulated
> aAnealing. Now I do not know what simulated is.

    I used this a long time ago; as I recall, it's a mathematical optimization
technique.

    Mais je divague deja trop...

> Returning to the subject at hand.
> I noted when I mentioned that from a typgraphical standpoint, the rivers in
> the text caused by the spaces and re-inking of the pen, seem to have
> uinique structure. If I had more time I would love to do some analysis with
> the positions of the pen strokes in the Vms. I got almost no feedback from
> the list so I sort of let things drop.
> Did anyone give this any thought?

    One fellow has a web page on this subject, but I don't remember who.

Dennis


From jim@mail.rand.org  Tue Jun 20 18:20:35 2000
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Date: Wed, 21 Jun 2000 00:07:44 +0200
From: "Rafal T. Prinke" <rafalp@amu.edu.pl>
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Rene Zandbergen wrote:

> [...] according to the above, the book in hieroglyphics is clearly
> the book of St. Dunstan, according to the tradition of Kelly's discovery
> of it. If this was in Welsh, (also following tradition) Arthur may well 
> have considered these to be hieroglyphics. And maybe Dee *could* read it
> (since Arthur is not making any statement about this).

But wasn't Welsh using Latin alphabet? Dee had books in Greek and Hebrew
which would certainly appear more "curious" to a boy who is just
learning
to read. I think, however, that the key to this recollection of Arthur 
Dee (via Browne) is the usage of the word "hieroglyphics". I feel
(but am not sure) it would not be used for a script-like (VMS) alphabet.
It certainly better fits John Dee's description of another of his books:
"the boke called Angelicum Opus, all in pictures of the work from 
the beginning to the end" which was burnt along with other alchemical
books on Dec. 12th [1587] when Kelley overthrew a lamp. And indeed 
"his father bestowed much time upon" in order to make more "silver
quoits"
for little Arthur to play :-)

> The MS on which the statement was based is clearly identified in
> the Yale catalogue entry:
> 
> > (we thank A. G. Watson for confirming this identification through a
> > comparison of the Arabic numerals in the Beinecke manuscript with
> > those of John Dee in Oxford, Bodleian Library Ashmole 1790, f. 9v,
> > and Ashmole 487)
> 
> Right now I cannot access Rafal's page, so I cannot check if this is
> what he used....

I used the 1583 book catalog page reproduced in Yates's _Theatre of
the World_ which is British Library: Harley 1879. Those used by Watson
are: "Prefatio Latina in actionem" bound with Ashmole's papers on Dee
(and I always wondered why he indicated this particular page, which is
a verso page so presumably does not have foliation) and the 
_Ephemerides_ containing the diary edited by Halliwell.

I am sure Clay Holden (if he listens) could give more authoritative
judgement of Dee's 8's from his extensive study of Dee's MSS.

I could not find any reproduction of Kelley's handwritten numbers -
except one very poor sample with a 7 which looks much more like
VMS foliation 7's. If VMS is a "practical joke", then of all people
Kelley would be the one capable of producing it (assuming that 
all of his visions were fake - which is a matter of belief; but even
if we assume he really contacted angelic beings, they may have
communicated another language to him - there were two Enochian 
languages before, so why not the third?). 

Best regards,

Rafal

From jim@mail.rand.org  Tue Jun 20 18:08:36 2000
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From: Zandbergen@t-online.de (Rene Zandbergen)
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Rafal T. Prinke wrote:

> > [me:] To our right: now doesn't that look like a sunflower???
> 
> We can always see what we hope to see :-) Andrew Watsons sees
> Dee's handwriting and you see a sunflower where there is none.
> The symbol on the right refers to his discoveries in optics.
> To quote from the descriptive page on the same site:
> 
> > Twenty years before
> > Newton he thoroughly described rainbow colours, the spectral
> > dispersion of light beams passing through a prism, the
> > diffraction of light on a wire, edge and lattice, colours of
> > thin bubbles. He found that monochromatic rays do not change their
> > colour by repeated refraction. He also performed experiments in
> > mechanics related to pendulum.

Yes, I saw it later. The Sunflower is really the Sun, then there
are raindrops, and the rest could be rainbows. Still, I would
argue that the sun has the typical spiral pattern of sunflower
seeds. And this could potentially have been related to one
of Kircher's typical 'blunders' (or worse), in which Marci
was also somewhat involved. 
Kircher knew that Sunflowers always face the Sun, i.e. essentially
they rotate at an average rate of 15 deg / hour. His theory
was that sunflower seeds should do the same, and he therefore
set about to design a clock based on this supposed rotation
of sunflower seeds. The odd part is that he appears to have
had a working model which he showed to his guests...

On the refraction of light by a prism, Marci has been
reprimanded (posthumously) for not realising from the
experiments described above by Rafal, that white light
is really a combination of all (well, many) different
wavelengths. It still is Newton who is credited with
these explanations...

But this is a bit of a digression, and maybe opinion
of historians has changed about this.

Cheers, Rene

From jim@mail.rand.org  Tue Jun 20 18:47:24 2000
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From: Brian Eric Farnell <bfarnell@gte.net>
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Does anyone out there have any suggested web resources or books
on the math beiung used here either in general or applied to VMS
partucularly.  I've looked at some of the mathematical papers
and can get the gist of most of it, but some of the specifics go
by me, and not understanding how to calculate these things
myself I am unable to hypothesize about what variables be
altered to make some of the oddities less anomolous, or what
variables could be changed in normal results and still arrive at
a normal value.  My math background is limited to Calculus
(though I was always quite good with math), but I haven't used
it in ten years.  Thanks,
Brian

>     So darn true.  Also, if I may say so myself...  I've never had courses in
> mathematical statistics or information theory; before this list, the entropy I
> knew best was that of classical thermodynamics.  I'm still learning on Bennett's
> chapter on language.  Compare me to Jim R. and Jim G.  As a mathemician it makes
> me an idiot, and as a crippie, about the lowest form of life on the planet.  And
> yet...   I'm the one who finally solved the VMs entropy quandry!  Before that,
> everyone was mostly asking, "How could a [low-entropy] Polynesian language have
> wound up in medieval Europe.  As so often, a matter of asking the right question.
> 
> Dennis

From jim@mail.rand.org  Wed Jun 21 03:45:41 2000
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From: Rene Zandbergen <rene@voynich.nu>
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Rafal wrote, in response to:

> > (we thank A. G. Watson for confirming this identification through a
> > comparison of the Arabic numerals in the Beinecke manuscript with
> > those of John Dee in Oxford, Bodleian Library Ashmole 1790, f. 9v,
> > and Ashmole 487)

> [...] Those used by Watson
> are: "Prefatio Latina in actionem" bound with Ashmole's papers on Dee
> (and I always wondered why he indicated this particular page, which is
> a verso page so presumably does not have foliation) and the 
> _Ephemerides_ containing the diary edited by Halliwell.

> I am sure Clay Holden (if he listens) could give more authoritative
> judgement of Dee's 8's from his extensive study of Dee's MSS.

> I could not find any reproduction of Kelley's handwritten numbers -
> except one very poor sample with a 7 which looks much more like
> VMS foliation 7's. If VMS is a "practical joke", then of all people
> Kelley would be the one capable of producing it (assuming that 
> all of his visions were fake - which is a matter of belief; 

I guess it is excluded that Kelly would have made entries in Dee's
notebooks e.g. a table of numbers on fol. 9v (unlike the case with
Tycho,
where entries by Kepler may be found, also before the former's death).
I suspect that there must still be extant MS books written by Kelly...

On a side note:
The Svitak book about Kelly (Cesky rytir - sp?) has a supposed 
self-portrait of Kelly (if I understand the context correctly).
Another highly suspicious item... I'll scan these pages (which I
just realise I once promised to do).

There is good reason to believe that the pages in the VMs are not
in the right order. They almost certainly are not in the order
in which they were written, which is not the same thing of course.
In any case, there is a distinct possibility that whoever paginated
the MS could not read it (so even if Dee or Kelly wrote the page
numbers, it is not proof of a fake by them). 
Also, the quire signatures are consistent with the page numbers, but the
signatures are in a very different (older) style. I need to check
if any of the early herbal pages has a quire mark on a B-folio,
or if any of the late herbal-A pages has a quire mark. That would
complicate things....

Cheers, Rene

From jim@mail.rand.org  Wed Jun 21 03:46:19 2000
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Date: Wed, 21 Jun 2000 00:53:00 -0700
To: voynich@rand.org
From: jporter@ricochet.net (Julie Porter)
Subject: Re: About Turkish (what is the importance to the VMS)
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>----- Original Message -----
>From: Julie Porter <jporter@ricochet.net>
>To: <voynich@rand.org>
>Sent: Tuesday, June 20, 2000 4:02 AM
>Subject: Re: About Turkish (what is the importance to the VMS)
>Returning to the subject at hand.
>I noted when I mentioned that from a typgraphical standpoint, the rivers in
>the text caused by the spaces and re-inking of the pen, seem to have
>uinique structure. If I had more time I would love to do some analysis with
>the positions of the pen strokes in the Vms. I got almost no feedback from
>the list so I sort of let things drop.
>Did anyone give this any thought?
>
>-julieP
>
>Basically the nature of this form of communication is such that feedback is
>generally not provided by readers unless they don't understand the point and
>have to ask a question (this is usually the case for me), don't feel they
>can contribute to the topic at hand, or don't feel that the information as
>presented needs further clarification [whether or not they agree with the
>information presented]. So, as for your study of the pen stroke and word
>space patterns - this is a field that I certainly couldn't qualify to
>comment on : However, I would love to see some analysis done in that area as
>well. I think there are many 'experts' in quite a wide range of fields
>hiding amongst the lurkers out there who might be drawn into the
>conversation when an area that even remotely matches their specialties is
>presented to the list.
>
>John
Thank you that is well put. I have been on the list for a long time > 5
years, possibly 6. For some reason I just got carried away last night.
Usually when I propose something I am testing a hypotisis. No data is, well
no data.
-julieP


From jim@mail.rand.org  Wed Jun 21 03:56:46 2000
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Date: Wed, 21 Jun 2000 01:03:26 -0700
To: voynich@rand.org
From: jporter@ricochet.net (Julie Porter)
Subject: Re: About Turkish (what is the importance to the VMS)
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>On Tue, 20 Jun 2000, Julie Porter wrote:
>> I noted when I mentioned that from a typgraphical standpoint, the rivers in
>> the text caused by the spaces and re-inking of the pen, seem to have
>> uinique structure. If I had more time I would love to do some analysis with
>> the positions of the pen strokes in the Vms. I got almost no feedback from
>> the list so I sort of let things drop.
>> Did anyone give this any thought?
>
>I'm not even going to ask why someone would do signal processing in
>PostScript.
Well, back in '92 the PS printer was powered with a RISC chip AMD 22XXXX
something or other. It was quite a bit faster than the 68020 then in the
desktops. We used to joke the fastest computer Apple sold was the printer.
I think we were at 8MHZ when 4 was pretty fast. (might be misremembering
the magntude.) I think it was sold as the Laserwriter 610. We called it
Viper. I wrote the startup page for many of the LaserWriters made in the
90s. The last one the wide format had a demo page. I managed to do an Apple
and wove the names of myself and the team into the halftone. You needed a
10x loupe to see it.


> On the "rivers":  I haven't finished looking at the "gallows
>bit sequences" work, but when I ran some similar tests myself I had the
>subjective impression that the positions of the gallows characters might
>be related to positions on the page.  It's well known that they occur
>preferentially at the starts of lines, but it also seemed to me (I haven't
>run a count yet) that they almost always occurred in the first word on
>a page, and were much less common at the start of the *second* line.  I
>wonder what would happen if we just took a page, marked the physical
>positions of the gallows characters, and looked at nothing else.  Would we
>see some interesting patterns?
>
>One of the standard "kiddie" encryption techniques is to write the letters
>of a message in specified physical locations on a page, and then add
>random garbage all around to conceal it.  That's decrypted by placing a
>template over the page with cutouts in the places where the message was
>supposed to be written.  I wonder if something like that could be involved
>in the VMS.  It seems like the sort of concealment that might be invented
>by someone in the time and place the book was written.  The flowing nature
>of the writing could be explained by it being copied from an original by
>someone who didn't understand the concealment, and the word patterns we've
>observed could be explained by a human trying to invent randomness on the
>fly.  This theory isn't terribly convincing, and unfortunately I haven't
>(yet) thought of a way to test it, but the underlying concept may be worth
>investigating: that the physical locations of characters on the page may
>be important to their meaning.
Conan Doyal used this in the Boar war. And I think in WWI. I can not
remember if Sherlock himself used it?

>
>Matthew Skala
>mskala@ansuz.sooke.bc.ca                   I paid for it, I own it.
>http://www.islandnet.com/~mskala/


From jim@mail.rand.org  Wed Jun 21 04:05:40 2000
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Date: Wed, 21 Jun 2000 01:12:17 -0700
To: voynich@rand.org
From: jporter@ricochet.net (Julie Porter)
Subject: Re: About Turkish (what is the importance to the VMS)
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>    BRAVO, Julie!!  I've had some of the same thoughts.
Here we go again ;-)
>
>Julie Porter wrote:
>
>> >Why is it of importance for VMs list?
>> In the past the list has entertained a wide variety of speculation. One
>> might ask Why is Dr Dee of import to the list? While I would dealrly like
>> to see evidence that Dee was involved. So far the evidence seems to be
>> against.
>
>    I agree, although I just never have been interested in Dr. Dee and Mr.
>Kelley.
It was not my choice. The man just will not go away. I was at a clock
meeting last month and there was a book on Elizabethean Alchemists. I
looked him up in the refrence. He was refrenced in the bios of about half a
dozen of them. (but not directly himself) I passed on the book, given the
cost.


>
>> Personally I think the Vmss was written by the equivilent of Rozencrantz
>> and Gilderstern. Some really 'Bright' guys (or gals) who are having a bit
>> of fun to mess with the head of the caligraphy professor (or the sister
>> supeierior).The 'No one reads this stuff anyway' type attitude. Perhaps the
>> Vmss was written by a couple of 'sisters' who wanted to do the same thing
>> the 'boys' were doing. What if they did not have proper instruction?
>
>    This is a bit much, I think, although that's not too far from what the
>Codex
>Seraphinianus is!  -- but even Luigi Serafini didn't do it overnight.
>Plenty of
>people on this list have talked about having invented their own alphabet
>(I once
>did) and becoming proficient in it (I never did).  People have done
>amazing things
>in altered states of consciousness.  I could fill two bookshelves with
>books that
>been 'channeled' (written unconsciously).  A major religion is based on one of
>them (won't say which one -- don't want to have to go into hiding!).
>There are
>the unconsciously-produced languages, Helene Smith's 'Martian' and Kirk Allen's
>[Rogert Lindner's patient] 'Olmayan' -- and, I personally believe, Edward
>Kelley's
>'Enochian'.  Kirk Allen also entered a science-fiction-like 'alternative
>universe'
>-- as past-life regressors do, and as the out-of-the-body adept Robert Monroe
>did.  VMs pictures resemble much visionary art -- and some of that
>combines text.
>EVEN WITH ALL THAT, though, I think that the complexity and combination of
>these
>elements precludes the VMs's being a quick joke.
Have not looked at Seraphinianus. I always though that that was more of a
'Marketing thing.'


>
>    Incidentally, I'm looking at the book about Helene Smith.  Not all her
>drawings of 'Mars' were child-like.  There is a set of 'Martian' plant drawings
>that are quite Voynich-like. I'll try to scan them and put them up.
>
>> I think I noted it before here. I totally spaces out on My college Physics
>> final. I covered the entire answer sheet with pictures of Isaac Newton and
>> Tyco Brahe. What would someone make of that?  I did manage to pass the
>> class as I was a TA for the Proff in a computer class. It was actually this
>> reason I took the advanced physics, without the calculus. I thought I could
>> crib off the computers. I can just see rozencrantz and guilderstern signing
>> up for Advanced Herbology. Over thier heads they conspire to make the
>> paper. I could have just as easally turned in a blank test, rather than an
>> illustrated one.
>
>    You're certainly gutsy!!  That's really cutting the Gordian knot.
What else was I to do.


>
>>  I may not be able to take the derivitive of an interegal, but I know what
>> they are. I just found all the notation and formal 'nonsense' of the
>>math to be
>> booring. Especially if I could solve the problem empirically whith brute
>>force.
>
>    We engineers have always done it that way.  We just use brute-force
>iterative
>methods to solve complex math.  (Although we now have Mathematica to do
>that too,
>although I've never used it.
>
>> Sometimes the fundamentals do not change no matter how much we want them too.
>> A funny incedent, when I was at apple. My boss came in to ask me what I was
>> up to. I replied I was attempting to program postscript to take the
>> fourrier transform of an image. He replied that he had a PhD in signal
>> processing. and that I was probably working at a level beyond his theisis.
>> The diffrence here was that I was down in the trenches woring with it on a
>> daily baisis. He on the other hand hardly had the reason to use it. To me
>> it was a tool. No diffrent than a hammer.
>
>    So darn true.  Also, if I may say so myself...  I've never had courses in
>mathematical statistics or information theory; before this list, the entropy I
>knew best was that of classical thermodynamics.  I'm still learning on
>Bennett's
>chapter on language.  Compare me to Jim R. and Jim G.  As a mathemician it
>makes
>me an idiot, and as a crippie, about the lowest form of life on the
>planet.  And
>yet...   I'm the one who finally solved the VMs entropy quandry!  Before that,
>everyone was mostly asking, "How could a [low-entropy] Polynesian language have
>wound up in medieval Europe.  As so often, a matter of asking the right
>question.
>
>> In effect my notes when I work on such problems, are encrypted. I have
>> designed my own signal processing language (based on postscript) I tend to
>> think in terms of stacks and key value pairs. The only problem is that It
>> is hard to express myself to people with a basic knowlege of a diffrent
>> language. I do not know if I could consciencly define this language to
>> others.
>
>    The only recorded speech of the great thermodynamicist J. Willard
>Gibbs was,
>simply, "Mathematics is a language."  And that isn't even one language, as you
>just noted.  And... as Carl Sagan pointed in his chapter "Maxwell and the
>Nerds"
>in "The Demon-Haunted World" (a book I'd recommend to anyone), the only full
>expression of most scientific ideas is mathematical.  This is why science
>ceased
>to be comprehensible to the general public a long time ago, and why the
>fundamentalists can keep on making stupid claims about science that were
>disproven
>a long time ago.
My definitiam Matamatics == the natural language of the male mind. Latin ==
the natural language of the [western] Female mind.
I got told this was not PC. I still think it holds.


>
>> What does any of this have to do with Voynich? I do not know. Sometimes
>> data, any data, can help solve a problem. There was an interesting artical
>> in Scentific American regarding the use of small amounts of random noise in
>> signal detection. I think this falls into the category of simulated
>> aAnealing. Now I do not know what simulated is.
>
>    I used this a long time ago; as I recall, it's a mathematical optimization
>technique.
>
>    Mais je divague deja trop...
>
>> Returning to the subject at hand.
>> I noted when I mentioned that from a typgraphical standpoint, the rivers in
>> the text caused by the spaces and re-inking of the pen, seem to have
>> uinique structure. If I had more time I would love to do some analysis with
>> the positions of the pen strokes in the Vms. I got almost no feedback from
>> the list so I sort of let things drop.
>> Did anyone give this any thought?
>
>    One fellow has a web page on this subject, but I don't remember who.
>
>Dennis


From jim@mail.rand.org  Wed Jun 21 04:34:25 2000
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Date: Tue, 20 Jun 2000 22:31:49 -1000
From: Brian Eric Farnell <bfarnell@gte.net>
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To: Voynich List <voynich@rand.org>, rafalp@amu.edu.pl
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	I found a very Voynich like character in a semi pop occult book
in Border's Bookstore, the reference is at the bottom.  It was
in an entry for Johannes Trithemius.  I'm sure Rafal is familiar
with him, and a lot of things in there suggested to me that he
(or one of his students) might be a good candidate for the
writer (though he died in 1516). More on that later, I am very
busy right now. 
	The character:  The text mentions that Trithemius used
steganographic characters, in the margin they had a small
picture marked "steganographic characters such as those used by
Trithemius"  they had no reference as to whether the writer was
Trithemius or someone else or where the picture came from. 
Anyway, what struck me was a lower case English 'o' with a line
going from it almost connecting to a lower case English 'c', the
bridge was fairly long so that they could fit above it a large
'v' like character with both of the lines fairly wavy (like a
flame) and the left being significantly shorter than the right. 
It looked very similar to EVA Sh (sorry, I can't find my Currier
reference page).  I looked everywhere for a similar character on
the web, what I found was the alchemical symbol for arsenic,
which is like two lower case 'o's connected.  The V above might
indicate it's in solution as there was also a 'v' like character
(on the same web page) with little circles at the three points
meaning 'elixa vitae'.  Maybe they combined symbols like this? 
You could expect a lot of variance.  I wouldn't make a big deal
about that Arsenic sygil being the same thing as I saw in the
book except that in the picture, the word next to the
Voynich-like/Arsenic-like character was 'Arsenicum'.  Has this
been found before?  Im sure Trithemius' book on encoding and
decoding magical writings has been brought up before, but if
anyone wants to look at it, there is an on-line version of
'Steganographia' at: http://www.avesta.org/esoteric.htm 
Unfortunately, translating 'Arsenicum' to 'Arsenic' is about the
extent of my Latin.  Regards,

Brian

Alchemy: An Illustrated A to Z 
Diana Fernando 
Hardcover - 192 pages (August 1998) 
Blandford; ISBN: 0713726687

From jim@mail.rand.org  Wed Jun 21 09:08:31 2000
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From: "Gabriel Landini" <G.Landini@bham.ac.uk>
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Date: Wed, 21 Jun 2000 14:06:19 +0100
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Looking at Jim R's bibliography I noted a relatively new item:

Williams, Robert L. "A Note on the Voynich Manuscript.'' 
Cryptologia, 23 (October, 1999), pp. 305-309. [Author thinks the 
initial letter distribution is like that of Greek, but speculates the text 
is meaningless.] 

Has anybody seen this (Jim)? Is there anything interesting?
Cheers,

Gabriel

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References: <394F202A.3330761E@voynich.nu>
Date: Wed, 21 Jun 2000 07:15:34 -0700
To: voynich@rand.org
From: Clay Holden <cholden@netcom.com>
Subject: Re: Why not Dee
Cc: "Rafal T. Prinke" <rafalp@amu.edu.pl>
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Rafal T. Prinke wrote:

>I am sure Clay Holden (if he listens) could give more authoritative
>judgement of Dee's 8's from his extensive study of Dee's MSS.

I'll try to scan some representative samples of Dee's numbering
(particularly his "8"s) from several of his MSS. I have copies of and post
them on my web-site this coming weekend. I also have microfilm print-out of
the Voynich, so I'll scan some representative samples of "8"s and other
foliation from it as well. This should qualify as "fair use" by any
reasonable understanding of the term, yes?

Unfortunately I don't have a copy of either Ashmole MS.1790 or 1587.
However, I *did* finally obtain a copy of Roberts and Watson's edition of
Dee's Library Catalogue (today, finally, ten years after it was
published!), so I will refer to it as well for examples which I do not have
in my microfilm collection.

>I could not find any reproduction of Kelley's handwritten numbers -
>except one very poor sample with a 7 which looks much more like
>VMS foliation 7's.

I also have Sloane MS. 3189 ("Liber Loagaeth") which is in Kelley's hand,
so I will also scan some of his foliation.

The whole issue of being able to identify a MS. by something as basic as
foliation numbers seems a bit of a stretch to me. At best, it should be
useful in determining the approximate date of said foliation.

Best wishes,

Clay

From jim@mail.rand.org  Wed Jun 21 13:56:12 2000
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Date: Wed, 21 Jun 2000 19:54:14 +0200
To: voynich@rand.org
From: Dr Claudio Antonini <antonini@icon.co.za>
Subject: Gregorian University
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Dear All,

I've had a few email communications with Ms. Eleonora Barbieri, who works
at the Faculty of Social Sciences at the Gregorian University, and asked
her if how we could find information related to our purposes (the Voynich
Ms.). She was very kind to talk to people at the Jesuit's archives and said
that they are willing to help. I still have to get the specific email. In
the meantime, is it possible to prepare some specific questions for them?

Yours,

Claudio





From jim@mail.rand.org  Wed Jun 21 19:01:55 2000
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Date: Thu, 22 Jun 2000 00:23:56 +0200
From: "Rafal T. Prinke" <rafalp@amu.edu.pl>
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Rene Zandbergen wrote:

> On a side note:
> The Svitak book about Kelly (Cesky rytir - sp?) has a supposed
> self-portrait of Kelly (if I understand the context correctly).
> Another highly suspicious item... I'll scan these pages (which I
> just realise I once promised to do).

Wow! That would be interesting - if true.

I have seen Pelcel's book (_Abbildungen..._) today. It is in
4 vols. and contains short biographies of learned Bohemians
and Moravians together with engraved portraits. I now see
I was wrong about dating the engraving of Westonia to the 17th c.
Other engravings are signed by the same artist so they were
produced for this publication. However Pelcel identifies
from what original portraits these were made - and he says
he has Westonia's portrait himself (perhaps that is why he
included her - the only female in all vols.).

Best regards,

Rafal


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From: Jorge Stolfi <stolfi@ic.unicamp.br>
To: voynich@rand.org
Subject: Turkish in Arabic sample
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I found an image of a Turkish manuscript in a booklet from
the Czech Natl Library.   The legend says only 
"Ptolemaic System - A Turkish Manuscript" (no date).

http://www.dcc.unicamp.br/~stolfi/temp/turkish-ms.jpg  (880 KB)

I wonder if I can ask a favor to our Arabic readers? 
Please look at the image and tell us whether the language
is Arabic or Turkish.  If the latter, could we please have the
transliteration of a couple of lines?

Thanks a lot,

--stolfi

From jim@mail.rand.org  Wed Jun 21 19:01:56 2000
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Date: Thu, 22 Jun 2000 00:51:29 +0200
From: "Rafal T. Prinke" <rafalp@amu.edu.pl>
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Clay Holden wrote:

> I'll try to scan some representative samples of Dee's numbering
> (particularly his "8"s) from several of his MSS. I have copies of and post
> them on my web-site this coming weekend. I also have microfilm print-out of
> the Voynich, so I'll scan some representative samples of "8"s and other
> foliation from it as well.

That would be superb! Thanks, Clay. 

> I also have Sloane MS. 3189 ("Liber Loagaeth") which is in Kelley's hand,
> so I will also scan some of his foliation.

Maybe also some numbers from the text itself? We cannot be sure if
it wasn't foliated by Dee after Kelley had made the clean copy 
of it.

> The whole issue of being able to identify a MS. by something as basic as
> foliation numbers seems a bit of a stretch to me. At best, it should be
> useful in determining the approximate date of said foliation.

That's right. But it can disprove the identification if Dee formed
his 8's consistently in the same way - different from the VMS foliator.
If it is not so, and they were sometimes similar (or identically
formed), it still does not prove it was really Dee.

I tend to think that the unjustified Dee connection really obscures 
the real picture. As Julie Porter said: "The man just will not 
go away." If he disappears, then perhaps hundreds of others will
show up: physicians, philologists, artists, people from Rudolf's
court, students and professors from Charles University and
Jesuit colleges, etc. 

Best regards,

Rafal


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Date: Thu, 22 Jun 2000 00:55:56 +0200
From: "Rafal T. Prinke" <rafalp@amu.edu.pl>
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To: Brian Eric Farnell <bfarnell@gte.net>
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Subject: Re: Found: One tables-like character
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Brian Eric Farnell wrote:

>         I found a very Voynich like character in a semi pop occult book
> in Border's Bookstore, the reference is at the bottom.  It was
> in an entry for Johannes Trithemius.  I'm sure Rafal is familiar
> with him, and a lot of things in there suggested to me that he
> (or one of his students) might be a good candidate for the
> writer (though he died in 1516). More on that later, I am very
> busy right now.

It seems that the symbol you described is indeed one for arsenic.
There was a book by Fred Gettings - _A Dictionary of Sigils_
(RKP: London 1981) with thousands of symbols used in alchemy
and magic. I have looked through them and some do look
similar to some VMS characters - but it is probably accidental
similarity.

Best regards,

Rafal

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From: Karl Kluge <kckluge@eecs.umich.edu>
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I agree that the evidence for Dee being connected to the Voynich Mss. is
tenuous. A couple points to add to the discussion:

1) The mystery of the "630 gold doucats." Brumbaugh says, "My friend,
S. W. Dunwell, discovered an entry in Dee's _Diary_ for 1586 that Dee,
then without funds and living in Trebona, had received '630 gold doucats.'"
There is no endnote giving a specific citation. I just got back from the
graduate library here at U of M, looking through

 Author: Dee, John, 1527-1608.
 Title:  The private diary of Dr. John Dee, and the catalogue of his library 
         of manuscripts, from the original manuscripts in the Ashmolean Museum
         at Oxford, and Trinity College Library, Cambridge.
 Published: London, Printed for the Camden Society by J. B. Nichols & son, 1842

The entries for 1586 cover roughly a single page of text, and I could find no
trace of an entry mentioning "630 gold doucats." There is an entry for Oct. 18
saying, "E.K. recessit a Trebona versus Pragam curru delatus; mansit hic per 
tres hebdomadas." Perhaps Kelly acted as the go-between if a transaction with
Rudolph did take place. 

The English entries for 1587 mentioning ducats use the spellings "duckettes,"
"duckats," and "duckatts," but no use that I could see of "doucats" as a
spelling. The memorandum quoted on Rafel's page in is Latin and does not
include the phrase "630 gold doucats." Is this in the Diary Mss and for some
reason was omitted from the published edition?

2) The Thomas Browne quote, "That this transmutation was made by a powder they
had, which was found in some old place, and a book lying by it containing
nothing but heiroglyphicks; which book his father bestowed much time upon, but
I could not hear that he could make it out." It is clear that *something* has
been conflated with the Book of St. Dunstan here, but the identity of the
"book...containing nothing but heiroglyphics; which book [Dee] bestowed much
time upon" remains unclear. Rafel says on his web page:

   before. That this   The statement that the book contained "nothing but"
   transmutation was   hieroglyphics cannot refer to VMS for one more reason.
   made by a powder    To a 7-9 years old boy VMS would surely be more
   they had, which     interesting for its colourful pictures and -- obviously
   was found in some   -- naked women than rather dull strings of letter-like
   old place, and a    characters.
   book lying by it
   containing          Can the inconsistency in Browne's letter be explained?
   nothing but         It is actually quite easy. John Dee himself mentions in
   heiroglyphicks;     his diary the book containing nothing but hieroglyphics
   which book his      -- not a cypher, however, but alchemical images, which
   father bestowed     are more consistent with Arthur Dee's relation. The book
   much time upon,     was Angelicum Opus -- "all in pictures of the work from
   but I could not     the beginning to the end" [4]. The young Arthur
   hear that he        remembered the book of pictures (which must have
   could make it       appealed to his imagination) and his father's and
   out. He said also   Kelley's conversations about an alchemical book found
   that Kelley         "in an old place" together with the powder they used for
   dealth not justly   transmutations. After half a century, when he talked
   by his father,      about it with Browne, those two books became one -- or
   and that he went    after another 30 years Browne confused the two.

One thing that always annoys me is the extent to which people tend to think of
the Biological B folios when thinking of the Mss. While this is likely due to
the frequency with which they are used to illustrate the Mss in articles, they
are hardly representative. Also, while it's been a while since I was a 7-9
year old boy, I'm not sure that age group is particularly taken by images of
naked women (especially someone in a culture where artistic depictions of bare
chested women were by no means uncommon, and therefore less taboo and
forbidden, and therefore less pruriently interesting).

Plus, it seems somewhat odd to reject the identification of the "book...
containing nothing but heiroglyphicks" with the Voynich on the grounds that
a 7-9 year old would find it more interesting for its pictures and then
argue for an identification of it with a book containing nothing but pictures
and no text at all.

In short, while I agree that we can't see this as a clear reference to the
Voynich, neither am I willing to accept that it's not a plausible 
identification.

3) The hundred ducat "Arabik boke" and the impressiveness of a 600 ducat
price. Based on the discussion with Il on April 18, 1583, this "Arabik boke"
would appear to be the Book of Soyga.  Given Dee's strong interest in the
contents of that book (and it's comparative scarcity -- only two surviving
mss), that to some extent calibrates the value of magical mss at the time. A
magical text worth six times the value of the Book of Soyga would be nothing
to sneeze at.

4) Other candidates to have brought it to the court of Rudolph: how about
Tycho Brahe, whose books were bought after his death in 1601 by the Emperor?
Or if we favor an Italian origin for the mss, how about Jacopo di Strada of
Mantua (d. 1585 in Prague), whose collection (along with that of Max. II) was
the nucleus of Rudolph's Kunstkammer?

Karl

From jim@mail.rand.org  Wed Jun 21 19:19:36 2000
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From: Jorge Stolfi <stolfi@ic.unicamp.br>
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I don't recall whether this was already posted to the list:
there is a site at the National Library of the Czech Republic
with several on-line images of manuscripts and old books,
which may not be easily accessed from their main pages: 

  http://digit.nkp.cz:1111/sreport/sreport.html

I myself have only now started to look at the list.
Here is a couple of random entries that may be of interest 
to us:

  Bohuslava Balbna
  Historia Collegii S.J.Pragensis ad S. Clementem annorum 1555 -1610, 1618, 1620
  The history of the College of the Jesuit Order at St. Kliments in Prague.
  Basic source to the historz of the Jesuit Order in Czech Lands.
  http://digit.nkp.cz:1111/cgi-bin/c1250.bat/mnscr/I_a.1/descr.htm
  
  Shelf number: XVII.E.77
  Rosarium philosophorum
  Jaro Griemiller z Tebska
  Illuminations: a cycle of images showing 12 steps of preparation of
  the philosophers' stone with a legend: 30r: 37v: 48r: 55r: 60r: 66v:
  73v: 80v: 88r: 93r: 100v: 114v: individual alchemistic symbols and
  processes mentioned in the text: 2v: 14v: 19v: 25v: 42r: 58v: 75v:
  105r: 107r: 177r: 183v-184r:
  http://digit.nkp.cz:1111/cgi-bin/c1250.bat/mnscr/xvii_e.77/En_uk/descr.htm
  
Hope it helps...

--stolfi

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Date: Wed, 21 Jun 2000 13:20:09 -1000
From: Brian Eric Farnell <bfarnell@gte.net>
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To: Adam McLean <alchemy@dial.pipex.com>, Voynich List <voynich@rand.org>
Subject: Re: Found: One tables-like character
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< Please do not rely on
> the Diana Fernando book. She is a really well motivated person and
> has done a nice job or redrawing some alchemical engravings but
> her lack of scholarly methodology lets her down. That is my kind
> way of putting it !

Yes, I made the point that it was a semi pop occult book, there
is definitely an occult corollary to Sturgeon's Law (on Science
Fiction) "99% of everything is crap."  

> Some of the illustrations in her book are misleading to those
> who have not studied the subject in depth. 

However, the thing I saw wasn't in any list of standard symbols
I have ever seen and it was a photograph of a page, not am
illustration.  

> These are standard alchemical characters familiar in the 16th and
> 17th centuries. They have nothing directly to do with Trithemius,
> and are not "Steganographic" but straighforward conventional (at
> least to the alchemists of the time) signs. 

I am well aware of the long existence of alchemical symbols,
however this symbol looks far closer to Voynich than it does to
the old symbol for Arsenic, yet it has the word Arsenicum next
to it.  If it had been a drawing I would have dismissed it.  If
you put the three symbols side by side, it looks like a natural
evolution, with Voynich being far closer to this character in
the photograph than the character is to the 'standard' alchemy
symbol for arsenic.  Hmm, as I said, I don't put much faith in
the book as a scholarly piece of work, but does that mean the
photograph is faked?  If you showed me the same photograph with
the caption, "Taken from the Olaus Wormus edition of The
Necronomicon" I'd still want to know where the photograph came
from.  Regards,
Brian

Adam McLean wrote:
> 
> At 22:31 20/06/00 -1000, you wrote:
> >       I found a very Voynich like character in a semi pop occult book
> >in Border's Bookstore, the reference is at the bottom.  It was
> >in an entry for Johannes Trithemius.  I'm sure Rafal is familiar
> >with him, and a lot of things in there suggested to me that he
> >(or one of his students) might be a good candidate for the
> >writer (though he died in 1516). More on that later, I am very
> >busy right now.
> >       The character:  The text mentions that Trithemius used
> >steganographic characters, in the margin they had a small
> >picture marked "steganographic characters such as those used by
> >Trithemius"  they had no reference as to whether the writer was
> >Trithemius or someone else or where the picture came from.
> 
> Dear Brian,
> 
> These are standard alchemical characters familiar in the 16th and
> 17th centuries. They have nothing directly to do with Trithemius,
> and are not "Steganographic" but straighforward conventional (at
> least to the alchemists of the time) signs. Please do not rely on
> the Diana Fernando book. She is a really well motivated person and
> has done a nice job or redrawing some alchemical engravings but
> her lack of scholarly methodology lets her down. That is my kind
> way of putting it !
> 
> Some of the illustrations in her book are misleading to those
> who have not studied the subject in depth. An example is on p63
> where a portrait of Newton is shown on an alchemical book of
> Philalethes. Last year someone wrote to me thinking this was
> real. Also note the book by Dee on page 110 - another fabrication
> which serves to amuse but also confuses those who have not
> studied the subject in any depth.
> 
> Beware such glossy popular works - they are full of errors and
> the distortions of secondary and tertiary research.
> 
> Adam McLean
> ----------------------
> alchemy@dial.pipex.com
> Web site:  http://www.levity.com/alchemy/home.html
> Alchemy Web bookstore:  http://www.alchemy.dial.pipex.com

From jim@mail.rand.org  Wed Jun 21 18:47:47 2000
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Date: Wed, 21 Jun 2000 23:44:23 +0000
To: voynich@rand.org
From: Adam McLean <alchemy@dial.pipex.com>
Subject: Re: Found: One tables-like character
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At 22:31 20/06/00 -1000, you wrote:
>	I found a very Voynich like character in a semi pop occult book
>in Border's Bookstore, the reference is at the bottom.  It was
>in an entry for Johannes Trithemius.  I'm sure Rafal is familiar
>with him, and a lot of things in there suggested to me that he
>(or one of his students) might be a good candidate for the
>writer (though he died in 1516). More on that later, I am very
>busy right now. 
>	The character:  The text mentions that Trithemius used
>steganographic characters, in the margin they had a small
>picture marked "steganographic characters such as those used by
>Trithemius"  they had no reference as to whether the writer was
>Trithemius or someone else or where the picture came from. 


Dear Brian,

These are standard alchemical characters familiar in the 16th and 
17th centuries. They have nothing directly to do with Trithemius,
and are not "Steganographic" but straighforward conventional (at
least to the alchemists of the time) signs. Please do not rely on
the Diana Fernando book. She is a really well motivated person and 
has done a nice job or redrawing some alchemical engravings but
her lack of scholarly methodology lets her down. That is my kind 
way of putting it !

Some of the illustrations in her book are misleading to those
who have not studied the subject in depth. An example is on p63 
where a portrait of Newton is shown on an alchemical book of
Philalethes. Last year someone wrote to me thinking this was 
real. Also note the book by Dee on page 110 - another fabrication
which serves to amuse but also confuses those who have not 
studied the subject in any depth.

Beware such glossy popular works - they are full of errors and
the distortions of secondary and tertiary research.

Adam McLean
----------------------
alchemy@dial.pipex.com
Web site:  http://www.levity.com/alchemy/home.html
Alchemy Web bookstore:  http://www.alchemy.dial.pipex.com

From reeds Wed Jun 21 19:49:56 2000
From: reeds@fry.research.att.com (Jim Reeds)
Message-Id: <1000621194956.ZM6312773@fry.research.att.com>
Date: Wed, 21 Jun 2000 19:49:56 -0400
In-Reply-To: "Gabriel Landini" <G.Landini@bham.ac.uk>
        "William's paper" (Jun 21, 14:06)
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On Jun 21, 14:06, Gabriel Landini asked:


> Looking at Jim R's bibliography I noted a relatively new item:
> 
> Williams, Robert L. "A Note on the Voynich Manuscript.'' 
> Cryptologia, 23 (October, 1999), pp. 305-309. [Author thinks the 
> initial letter distribution is like that of Greek, but speculates the text 
> is meaningless.] 
> 
> Has anybody seen this (Jim)? Is there anything interesting?

I've seen it, and I think my summary is accurate and complete.
That is to say, not at all interesting.

Good luck on your talk, Gabriel!



-- 
Jim Reeds, AT&T Labs - Research
Shannon Laboratory, Room C229, Building 103
180 Park Avenue, Florham Park, NJ 07932-0971, USA

reeds@research.att.com, phone: +1 973 360 8414, fax: +1 973 360 8178

From jim@mail.rand.org  Wed Jun 21 20:06:32 2000
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Date: Thu, 22 Jun 2000 02:04:44 +0200
From: "Rafal T. Prinke" <rafalp@amu.edu.pl>
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To: Karl Kluge <kckluge@eecs.umich.edu>
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Karl Kluge wrote:

> There is no endnote giving a specific citation. I just got back from the
> graduate library here at U of M, looking through

>  Title:  The private diary of Dr. John Dee, and the catalogue of his library

> The entries for 1586 cover roughly a single page of text, and I could find no
> trace of an entry mentioning "630 gold doucats." 

Oops! I am sorry - I have omitted the reference. It is in Casaubon's
edition
of _True and Faithful relation_ on p. 447-448.

> The memorandum quoted on Rafel's page in is Latin and does not
> include the phrase "630 gold doucats." 

It does include it: "630 Ducatos illi exhibuimus coram Deo".

> 2) The Thomas Browne quote

> Plus, it seems somewhat odd to reject the identification of the "book...
> containing nothing but heiroglyphicks" with the Voynich on the grounds that
> a 7-9 year old would find it more interesting for its pictures and then
> argue for an identification of it with a book containing nothing but pictures
> and no text at all.

Maybe you are right about the nudes. Still, I think that there are
many more arguments against the identification (the time elapsed).
But the key point is whether a 17th c. Englishman would call 
unknown letter-like script "hieroglyphics" (perhaps a check in
the big Oxford Dictionary would elucidate it?). also, how could 
a 7-9 years old tell the difference between VMS script and 
Greek or Hebrew?

> In short, while I agree that we can't see this as a clear reference to the
> Voynich, neither am I willing to accept that it's not a plausible
> identification.

Another argument that I have just thought of: suppose the MS that 
Arthur remembered was indeed VMS. Then why Dee and Kelley don't
ask Angels for help with its decipherment? If Dee spent so much
time on it, he would certainly make more attempts at getting help.

> 3) The hundred ducat "Arabik boke" and the impressiveness of a 600 ducat
> price. Based on the discussion with Il on April 18, 1583, this "Arabik boke"
> would appear to be the Book of Soyga.  Given Dee's strong interest in the
> contents of that book (and it's comparative scarcity -- only two surviving
> mss), that to some extent calibrates the value of magical mss at the time. A
> magical text worth six times the value of the Book of Soyga would be nothing
> to sneeze at.

But at the same time a printed (!) herbal published in Cracow had
the price of 100 ducats - so the prices were very relative. 
My point was that 600 was not that much for Dee and that he really
did not like to part with his books.

> 4) Other candidates to have brought it to the court of Rudolph: how about
> Tycho Brahe, whose books were bought after his death in 1601 by the Emperor?
> Or if we favor an Italian origin for the mss, how about Jacopo di Strada of
> Mantua (d. 1585 in Prague), whose collection (along with that of Max. II) was
> the nucleus of Rudolph's Kunstkammer?

Of course - there are many other candidates. And on the other hand 
- we only have Rafael Misovsky's word (and even that is second-hand)
for the fact that VMS was in Rudolf's collection. I do not mean to
say it wasn't (after all, I should trust a name-sake <g>), but 
really certain history of VMS starts with the elusive Georg Baresch.

Best regards,

Rafal

From jim@mail.rand.org  Wed Jun 21 21:56:33 2000
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Date: Wed, 21 Jun 2000 20:23:39 -0500
From: Dennis <ixohoxi@micro-net.com>
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Julie Porter wrote:

> >One of the standard "kiddie" encryption techniques is to write the letters
> >of a message in specified physical locations on a page, and then add
> >random garbage all around to conceal it.  That's decrypted by placing a
> >template over the page with cutouts in the places where the message was
> >supposed to be written.  I wonder if something like that could be involved
> >in the VMS.  It seems like the sort of concealment that might be invented
> >by someone in the time and place the book was written.  The flowing nature
> >of the writing could be explained by it being copied from an original by
> >someone who didn't understand the concealment, and the word patterns we've
> >observed could be explained by a human trying to invent randomness on the
> >fly.  This theory isn't terribly convincing, and unfortunately I haven't
> >(yet) thought of a way to test it, but the underlying concept may be worth
> >investigating: that the physical locations of characters on the page may
> >be important to their meaning.
> Conan Doyal used this in the Boar war. And I think in WWI. I can not
> remember if Sherlock himself used it?

    This is a "grille cipher".  There's also a "turning grille" cipher where a
quarter of the message is written, then the grille is turned 90 deg. etc.  This is
in HF Gaines' book.   It's a "regular transposition" cipher, and as such not very
secure, not a lot better than simple substitution.  I remember breaking some of
these as a teenager.  I don't know how old it is.

    As for the VMs...  One would see a single-letter frequency count like normal
language, like the VMs, but there would be very few repeated digraphs, trigraphs,
etc., quite unlike the VMs.

Dennis


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Rafal writes:

> Karl Kluge wrote:
> 
> > The entries for 1586 cover roughly a single page of text, and I could 
> > find no trace of an entry mentioning "630 gold doucats." 
> 
> Oops! I am sorry - I have omitted the reference. It is in Casaubon's
> edition of _True and Faithful relation_ on p. 447-448.
> 
> > The memorandum quoted on Rafel's page in is Latin and does not
> > include the phrase "630 gold doucats." 
> 
> It does include it: "630 Ducatos illi exhibuimus coram Deo".

This *may* be what Brumbaugh was refering to, but it seems odd that he or his
source would confuse what is normally called Dee's "diary" with the _True
and Faithful Relation_, would spell "ducats" as "doucats" in translating
the phrase from Latin to English, and would put a translated phrase in
quotation marks without so indicating, making it appear to be a direct quote.

> Another argument that I have just thought of: suppose the MS that 
> Arthur remembered was indeed VMS. Then why Dee and Kelley don't
> ask Angels for help with its decipherment? 

I agree that this is a good point.

> But at the same time a printed (!) herbal published in Cracow had
> the price of 100 ducats - so the prices were very relative. 
> My point was that 600 was not that much for Dee and that he really
> did not like to part with his books.

My impression is that Dee was constantly in financial difficulty (probably to
an extent because of his book collecting) -- if you look at Dee's diary for
1585, you'll see that the Queen had to send him money so he could serve a
proper dinner to the visiting Lasky.

> Of course - there are many other candidates. And on the other hand 
> - we only have Rafael Misovsky's word (and even that is second-hand)
> for the fact that VMS was in Rudolf's collection. I do not mean to
> say it wasn't (after all, I should trust a name-sake <g>), but 
> really certain history of VMS starts with the elusive Georg Baresch.

Rafael Misovsky was born in 1580, so he could have had first hand knowledge.
If the info is wrong, then the specifics given by him (including the price)
cry out for explanation. *Someone* (I just realized while reading the Marci
letter, it's not clear whether Raphael or Rudolph) thought the Mss was by
Roger Bacon, supporting an English source. Of course, Marci is writing his
letter 22 years after Rafael's death, but Marci's recall of GB's
correspondence with Kircher 27 years earlier is accurate.

Given the persistent Jesuit links of the apparent owners, it seems likely that
the transfer of ownership from Jacob Tepenece (d. 1622) to Baresch (writes PUG
557, f353 in 1639) through any intermediate owner(s) was relatively orderly
and unaffected by the political chaos in Bohemia at the time. We can at least
hope to fill the gap. Are there any surviving collections of papers or
correspondence by Tepenece? Do we know who he left his books and mss. to?

Karl


From jim@mail.rand.org  Wed Jun 21 22:28:21 2000
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To: Dennis <ixohoxi@micro-net.com>
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Subject: grille cipher
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On Wed, 21 Jun 2000, Dennis wrote:
>     This is a "grille cipher".  There's also a "turning grille" cipher where a
> quarter of the message is written, then the grille is turned 90 deg. etc.  This is
> in HF Gaines' book.   It's a "regular transposition" cipher, and as such not very
> secure, not a lot better than simple substitution.  I remember breaking some of
> these as a teenager.  I don't know how old it is.
> 
>     As for the VMs...  One would see a single-letter frequency count like normal
> language, like the VMs, but there would be very few repeated digraphs, trigraphs,
> etc., quite unlike the VMs.

Only if all or most of the letters on the page are plaintext letters,
re-arranged by the transposition.  What I was talking about was a
relatively small number of transposed plaintext letters embedded in a
stream of meaningless material.  If the meaningless material were
generated by a human attempting to write something that looks random,
rather than by something like drawing letters out of a hat, then I
think it might well have the statistical properties we've observed.

Unfortunately, it'd be difficult to distinguish that situation from a book
of pure human-generated randomness.  There are so many ways to select a
few characters from the page that we could extract whatever "plaintext"
from it we wanted and the exercise wouldn't really prove anything.
There's also the cursive nature of the writing - my proposal that it could
be a copy made by someone who didn't understand it doesn't really hold
much water.

But I *do* think it may be worth thinking about the physical position of
VMS writing on the page when attempting to decipher the writing.

Matthew Skala
mskala@ansuz.sooke.bc.ca                   I paid for it, I own it.
http://www.islandnet.com/~mskala/

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Date: Thu, 22 Jun 2000 01:27:54 -0400
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From: Daniel Harms <dmharms@acsu.buffalo.edu>
Subject: FATE magazine
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	I don't recall anything being mentioned about this, so here goes.
The latest coverage of the Voynich in a popular forum appears in an
article called "The Books of the Damned:  Fact or Fiction?" by Scott
Corrales, in the July issue of FATE.  

	I suppose it can be said that it's not too horribly inaccurate 
(Voynich MS. being 200 pages long, and little space given to explaining
what's wrong with different theories).  However, it does mention
Mr. Landini and Mr. Zandbergen, though without a corresponding
voynich-l reference.

Yrs.,


Daniel Harms     dmharms@acsu.buffalo.edu
The Internet:  Learn what you know.  Share what you don't.

From jim@mail.rand.org  Thu Jun 22 02:03:56 2000
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References: <3951581C.C9DE73EE@amu.edu.pl> (rafalp@amu.edu.pl)
 <200006212257.SAA22106@yarf.eecs.umich.edu> <3951581C.C9DE73EE@amu.edu.pl>
Date: Wed, 21 Jun 2000 23:03:02 -0700
To: voynich@rand.org
From: Clay Holden <cholden@netcom.com>
Subject: Re: Why not Dee?
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Karl Kluge wrote:

>> It does include it: "630 Ducatos illi exhibuimus coram Deo".
>
>This *may* be what Brumbaugh was refering to, but it seems odd that he or his
>source would confuse what is normally called Dee's "diary" with the _True
>and Faithful Relation_, would spell "ducats" as "doucats" in translating
>the phrase from Latin to English, and would put a translated phrase in
>quotation marks without so indicating, making it appear to be a direct quote.

The material transcribed in _A True and Faithful Relation_ *is* a
significant portion of Dee's *esoteric* diaries for the period of late 1583
through 1587 (with some later entries from the end of Dee's life). In my
line of research, the spirit diaries (Sloane MS. 3188 and Cotton Appendix
LXVI in particular) are more frequently referred to as Dee's "diaries" than
the mundane materials found in his "Private Diaries".

Without having time at the moment to reference my microfilm copy of the
Cotton Appendix material from which the "TFR" is drawn, I would note that
Casaubon's typesetters paid little attention to the spelling or
capitalization in the original MS. (the man who transcribed the material
was *not* Casaubon, BTW), so the published material is in no way
authoritative. There are in fact many changes of spellings from the
original source to be found on nearly every page of the book.

The variant spellings of "duckettes", "duckats", "duckatts" or "doucats"
seems only to serve as demonstration that spelling conventions were very
slippery in the late 16th-century, and does not seem to me to be otherwise
significant (Dee used variant spellings of numerous words throughout his
diaries, oftentimes even within the same session on the same day).

I will see if I can dig out the original quote this weekend, when I do the
rest of my archival dig.

Incidentally, my preliminary observations entirely support Rafal's findings
regarding Dee's orthography of the character "8".

Clay

From jim@mail.rand.org  Thu Jun 22 04:35:52 2000
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Date: Thu, 22 Jun 2000 09:35:17 +0000
To: voynich@rand.org
From: Adam McLean <alchemy@dial.pipex.com>
Subject: Re: Found: One tables-like character
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>> Some of the illustrations in her book are misleading to those
>> who have not studied the subject in depth. 
>
>However, the thing I saw wasn't in any list of standard symbols
>I have ever seen and it was a photograph of a page, not am
>illustration.  


Dear Brian,

I think that you will find that all the black and white illustrations
in Diana Fernando's book are actually her own drawings based
on and reworking original illustrations.

If you want to see a reproduction of a list of alchemical symbols 
please go to my web site

http://www.levity.com/alchemy/alchemical_symbols00.html

Alchemical symbols in sixteen pages containing hundreds of symbols. 
>From Medicinisch-Chymisch- und Alchemistisches Oraculum, 1755.

or

http://www.levity.com/alchemy/val_symb.html


>If it had been a drawing I would have dismissed it.  If
>you put the three symbols side by side, it looks like a natural
>evolution, with Voynich being far closer to this character in
>the photograph than the character is to the 'standard' alchemy
>symbol for arsenic.  Hmm, as I said, I don't put much faith in
>the book as a scholarly piece of work, but does that mean the
>photograph is faked?  If you showed me the same photograph with
>the caption, "Taken from the Olaus Wormus edition of The
>Necronomicon" I'd still want to know where the photograph came
>from.

To repeat, this is not a photograph but a drawing of Diana Fernando.
It is a reworking of an illustration from  an alchemical manuscript
now in the University of Leiden, Cod. Vossiana Chemica. Q51
which was in Stanislas Klossowski de Rola's Alchemy: The Secret
Art, London 1973 (pages 126-128).  You can even see that because 
she could not read the German words in the list she just created a 
scribble !!!!  

The point is, this has nothing to do with Trithemius and the
Steganographia except in the imagination of the editor of Diana
Fernando's book.

Best wishes,

Adam McLean



----------------------
alchemy@dial.pipex.com
Web site:  http://www.levity.com/alchemy/home.html
Alchemy Web bookstore:  http://www.alchemy.dial.pipex.com

From jim@mail.rand.org  Thu Jun 22 06:02:24 2000
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From: "Gabriel Landini" <G.Landini@bham.ac.uk>
Organization: The University of Birmingham, UK.
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On 21 Jun 2000, at 21:57, Karl Kluge wrote:
> Rafael Misovsky was born in 1580, so he could have had first hand
> knowledge. 

This is getting interesting.  If Baresch received the ms. from 
Tepenecz when leaving the country, then he (Baresch) should have 
known well its origins (and perhaps the price as well).
But in Baresch letter (1639) to Kircher or in the other Marci letter to 
Kircher (1640), nothing is mentioned at all about the ms. origins...
Doesn't this sound a bit strange?

In Marci's letter (1666) we learn the details from Missowsky, but that 
could be evident from Baresch friendship with Marci and the 
signature in folio 1 (that perhaps could also be read) so the link to 
Rudolf would have been obvious at that time.

So why to rely on Raphael about the ownership?

So [theory hat on] this may mean that:
Tepenecz ownership was a bit unclear ("forgot" to bring it back to 
the imperial library or something like that), and Baresch knew it and 
did not want to publicise having some imperial item that he 
shouldn't. 
When B died, Marci set the record straight and gave all the info he 
had. (In fact, at that time, B's and J's ownership may have been 
irrelevant).

or,

Baresch did not know much about the ms. itself and it was 
transferred with lots of other stuff from JdeT thinking that it belonged 
to J, not to Rudolf. However, Marci would have known the ms. 
details for a long time (from Raphael) so it still seems that Baresch 
was hiding something...

or,

B & M knew the imperial link all the time, but the price and Bacon's 
link were the only info provided by Raphael.
[theory hat off] 

Of course we don't learn anything new from all this. :-(

Cheers,

Gabriel

From jim@mail.rand.org  Thu Jun 22 06:48:38 2000
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Date: Thu, 22 Jun 2000 00:47:36 -1000
From: Brian Eric Farnell <bfarnell@gte.net>
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To: Adam McLean <alchemy@dial.pipex.com>, Voynich List <voynich@rand.org>
Subject: Re: Found: One tables-like character
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Thanks for the clarification, I had assumed she wouldn't
photograph her own work, or make her own work appear to look
like a photograph.
Regards,
Brian

Adam McLean wrote:
> 
> >> Some of the illustrations in her book are misleading to those
> >> who have not studied the subject in depth.
> >
> >However, the thing I saw wasn't in any list of standard symbols
> >I have ever seen and it was a photograph of a page, not am
> >illustration.
> 
> Dear Brian,
> 
> I think that you will find that all the black and white illustrations
> in Diana Fernando's book are actually her own drawings based
> on and reworking original illustrations.
> 
> If you want to see a reproduction of a list of alchemical symbols
> please go to my web site
> 
> http://www.levity.com/alchemy/alchemical_symbols00.html
> 
> Alchemical symbols in sixteen pages containing hundreds of symbols.
> >From Medicinisch-Chymisch- und Alchemistisches Oraculum, 1755.
> 
> or
> 
> http://www.levity.com/alchemy/val_symb.html
> 
> >If it had been a drawing I would have dismissed it.  If
> >you put the three symbols side by side, it looks like a natural
> >evolution, with Voynich being far closer to this character in
> >the photograph than the character is to the 'standard' alchemy
> >symbol for arsenic.  Hmm, as I said, I don't put much faith in
> >the book as a scholarly piece of work, but does that mean the
> >photograph is faked?  If you showed me the same photograph with
> >the caption, "Taken from the Olaus Wormus edition of The
> >Necronomicon" I'd still want to know where the photograph came
> >from.
> 
> To repeat, this is not a photograph but a drawing of Diana Fernando.
> It is a reworking of an illustration from  an alchemical manuscript
> now in the University of Leiden, Cod. Vossiana Chemica. Q51
> which was in Stanislas Klossowski de Rola's Alchemy: The Secret
> Art, London 1973 (pages 126-128).  You can even see that because
> she could not read the German words in the list she just created a
> scribble !!!!
> 
> The point is, this has nothing to do with Trithemius and the
> Steganographia except in the imagination of the editor of Diana
> Fernando's book.
> 
> Best wishes,
> 
> Adam McLean
> 
> ----------------------
> alchemy@dial.pipex.com
> Web site:  http://www.levity.com/alchemy/home.html
> Alchemy Web bookstore:  http://www.alchemy.dial.pipex.com

From jim@mail.rand.org  Thu Jun 22 07:35:04 2000
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Date: Thu, 22 Jun 2000 13:39:03 +0200
From: Zandbergen@t-online.de (Rene Zandbergen)
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Claudio Antonini wrote:

> I've had a few email communications with Ms. Eleonora Barbieri, who works
> at the Faculty of Social Sciences at the Gregorian University, and asked
> her if how we could find information related to our purposes (the Voynich
> Ms.). She was very kind to talk to people at the Jesuit's archives and said
> that they are willing to help. I still have to get the specific email. In
> the meantime, is it possible to prepare some specific questions for them?

Excellent!
Yes, indeed, this should be possible. Are you familiar with the 
contents of my web page about the history of the Voynich MS?
(http://www.voynich.nu/history.html)
Most of the questions we could ask can be taken from there, and
I'd be more than happy to help you compose them. (I also have more
background info that will be useful, and which I'll be glad to
share with you).

However, let's first look at a few more fundamental questions:

The history of the Voynich MS after it was received by Kircher is
closely connected with the history of other MSS - in fact complete
collections of  them, and there are many unanswered questions
related to these. This means that any information found will be of
wider use than just our purposes. It also means that other
researchers (professional ones with research grants and letters of
introduction) have preceded us.

We also have to realise what is the extent of the information we may
hope to find. Certainly, we could learn more about what happened to
the MS after it was received by Kircher (or more fundamentally: *if*
it was received by him at all). More interesting for us will be to
find new information about the earlier history of the MS, but we
must realise that chances are slim...

When you mentioned archives, did you mean the Archives of the Pontificia
Universita Gregoriana (APUG) or the Archives of the Society of Jesus
(ARSI)?
I've had an E-mail exchange with the latter (in the person of Fr. J. De
Cock S.J.), who was also very friendly and helpful, and as soon as I
am in Rome again, I intend to visit him at the ARSI. He said that there
have been many people searching his archives for material related to
Kircher, but they usually went back empty-handed.

Still, I think that there is a good chance here of learning something
new, possibly of interest also beyond 'just' the Voynich MS. Some of the
information we have is coming from the personal correspondence of W.
Voynich and will be unknown to the people at the Gregoriana or the ARSI!

Please regard this as an introductory reply. I will now look for my
notes and start thinking about some good questions.

Ciao, Rene

From reeds Fri Jun 23 21:41:19 2000
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From: "Rafal T. Prinke" <rafalp@amu.edu.pl>
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I have found a longer title of this intriguing manuscript 
_Strues Tritemiana_ (_Trithemian Pie_) by one of the important 
people involved in the early history of VMS. Here it is:

Constructio, sive Strues Tritemiana, cuius hae sunt principaliores 
utilitates. Qui nullum unquam idiomatis Bohemici calluit verbum, 
per eam in momento scribet convenienter Bohemice, quantum volet. 
Per eam potest quis spatio unius horae quam plurimas conficere 
periodos Bohemicas, quae etiam paginam unam atque alteram 
excedant, easdemque, quod caput rei est, intelligere et interpretari. 
Latet in eodem dispositio ad id, ut suo modo loqui possis 
fere, quod velis... Accessoriae vero eiusdem utilitates sunt istae: 
Applicatio ad quodvis idioma. Occultus occulti scribendi modus, 
quem nemo mortalium queat penetrare. Variatio eiusdem pene in 
infinitum. Paradigmata Declinationum, Coniugationum et 
Syntaxeos. Opulenta Sinonymorum congeries. Repetitio Linguae 
Latinae. Eiusdem copia et augmentum. Reduplicata Bohemicorum 
lectio. Frequens et inevitabilis eorundem verborum, quo 
facilius haereant, commemoratio. Ad Bohemicum Characterem 
in scripto legendum assuetudo. Ex his liquet, quam brevi 
tempore, et quantum quis queat tali methodo proficere. 
Sed totum positum est in animo et propensa voluntate.
Raphael Mnisch. Konec: Finij ultima Octobris 1628. 
L. D. B. g. M. S. V.

I found it in the bibliography of Czech history where
the reference for it is:

   V. Flajshans, Knihy ceske v knihovnach sved. a rus. 
   [Bohemian books in Swedish and Russian libraries], 
   p. 52, item 2. (no other details)

The piece that was not in the shorter version of the title
and is especially interesting in VMS context reads:

   Occultus occulti scribendi modus, 
   quem nemo mortalium queat penetrare. 

My (incompetent) translation would be: "The secret way
of secret writing which no mortal can penetrate".

Quite a precise description of VMS :-)

Best regards,

Rafal


From jim@mail.rand.org  Thu Jun 22 11:50:30 2000
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From: Jorge Stolfi <stolfi@ic.unicamp.br>
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    > But I *do* think it may be worth thinking about the physical position of
    > VMS writing on the page when attempting to decipher the writing.

Grille ciphers are an intriguing possibility, but I see some problems:

  * The Voynichese "words" have an unusual inner structure,
    a Zipf-like frequency distribution, and a "lumped" spatial
    distribution (see Mark's LSC, Rene's page correlation maps, my own
    colorized VMS, etc.) 
    
    Now, a "dense" grille code (like the quarter-turn scheme described
    earlier) would generate fairly random strings, with none of these
    "natural-looking" properties (except perhaps the anomalous LSC).
    
    So we must assume a sparse grille, with lots of meaningless fill.
    The anomalous word properties would then be a result of the filler
    text. But it is hard to imagine a mechanism that would generate
    text with the proeprties we can see. And even harder to imagine
    why the author would choose such a bizarre filler material, rather
    than plain Latin.
    
  * The layout of the text varies widely from page to page.
    I haven't checked, but from a quick look I would say that
    the line spacing varies by a factor of 2 or more, 
    and often the lines are neither straight nor parallel.
    It seems unlikely that a single grille would fit all 
    pages.
    
  * Then there is the circular and radial text, the labels, etc.
    Most labels seem to be placed more or less in the natural
    position relative to the pictures.  If the text is a grille
    code, we are alsmost forced to conclude that either the 
    labels or the images (or both) are meaningless fill. 
    Either way, it would mean a huge waste of vellum.
    
Of couse these arguments are not rock-solid.  It is possible,
for example, that the geometric properties of words and spaces
provide *some* bits of the code.

All the best,

--stolfi

From jim@mail.rand.org  Thu Jun 22 15:00:48 2000
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Rene Zandbergen wrote:

> > A prime Czech alchemist was Simon Tadeas Budek the Emperor's
> > searcher for metal and gem. He abandoned handwriting for a secret
> > script. This tractate is in Vienna today. Simon Tadeas Budek got
> > his noble title "from Lesin and  Falkenberk" from Emperor Rudolf II.
> 
> While the sentence is not very clear, I cannot help being very
> curious about what exactly is the secret script meant above.
> Does anyone know what this 'tractate' could be?
> I couldn't find it in Adam McLean's MS database (Austria) but may
> have overlooked it...

The sentence seems to be based on the Czech publication _Opus Magnum_
prepared on the occassion of Rudolphine celebrations 2 (or 3?) years
ago - or at least come from the common source as the wording is
almost identical. It also says that Budek was (along with Hajek)
one of the "inquisitors" who examined arriving alchemists before
they were allowed to meet or work for Rudolph. There is an
illustration there, apparently from that MS - very unlike VMS.

Best regards,

Rafal


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Karl Kluge wrote:

> > It does include it: "630 Ducatos illi exhibuimus coram Deo".
> 
> This *may* be what Brumbaugh was refering to, but it seems odd that he or his
> source would confuse what is normally called Dee's "diary" with the _True
> and Faithful Relation_, would spell "ducats" as "doucats" in translating
> the phrase from Latin to English, and would put a translated phrase in
> quotation marks without so indicating, making it appear to be a direct quote.

As Clay has already explained, Casaubon is often referred to as 
"spiritual diaries" while the notes in the Ephemerides - as
"private diary". So if Brumbaugh just says "diary" it is not
precise (I have not seen his book). The only other place might
be the other private diary first edited by Bailey.

> My impression is that Dee was constantly in financial difficulty (probably to
> an extent because of his book collecting) -- if you look at Dee's diary for
> 1585, you'll see that the Queen had to send him money so he could serve a
> proper dinner to the visiting Lasky.

That's right - but that was rather typical for intellectuals not
attached to a university or court. Why should he pay for the dinner
if he knew the Queen would? I would rather say he was never 
financially independent - but also never fell into poverty.
For instance, he donated a number of his books to universities
on the Continent (rather than selling them).

> Given the persistent Jesuit links of the apparent owners, it seems likely that
> the transfer of ownership from Jacob Tepenece (d. 1622) to Baresch (writes PUG
> 557, f353 in 1639) through any intermediate owner(s) was relatively orderly
> and unaffected by the political chaos in Bohemia at the time. We can at least
> hope to fill the gap. Are there any surviving collections of papers or
> correspondence by Tepenece? Do we know who he left his books and mss. to?

His main heir was the Clementinum college - so I suspect his library
would have gone there, too - if it survived his expulsion. 

Best regards,

Rafal


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    > [Dennis:] I used this a long time ago; as I recall, it's a
    > mathematical optimization technique.

It is a technique for discrete optimization problems, e.g. the
"traveling salesman problem" (find the shortest tour that visits N
given cities).

In the "downhill method", you try all sorts of small changes to the
current best solution (e.g. remove three edges from the tour, and
reconnect the pieces in a different order). Whenever the change
leads to a better solution, it replaces the current one. 

The downhill method will often get stuck in a false minimum, where all
possible "small changes" only make the solution worse. The "simulated
annealing" method gets around that problem by allowing occasional
changes for worse; so, even if it falls into a false minimum, it still
has some chance of climbing over the surrounding walls.

The probability of such "uphill moves" is controlled by the user, and
should slowly decrease to zero as the computation proceeds. That
probablilty knob is traditionally labeled "temperature", because of a
vague analogy with the physical process of metal annealing.

    > [Julie Porter:] Well, back in '92 the PS printer was powered
    > with a RISC chip AMD 22XXXX something or other. It was quite a
    > bit faster than the 68020 then in the desktops. We used to joke
    > the fastest computer Apple sold was the printer.
    
This may still be true... Not long ago, one of my colleagues
here was using a laser printer's processor to do image processing.
(It is easy to program a Postscript printers to write data back to the
computer; usually the hardest part is getting the computer to listen.)

    > [Julie Porter:] If I had more time I would love to do some
    > analysis with the positions of the pen strokes in the Vms.
    
    > [Dennis:] One fellow has a web page on this subject, but I don't
    > remember who.

You are probably thinking of Mik Clarke:

  http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/Cafe/2260/voy/voysym.html

It is possible that the Voynichese letters were designed to be drawn
with a brush, as Mik suggests. However, looking closely at the best
VMS images we have, it is clear that this particular copy was written
with a pen: one can clealy see the trace of a split, squarish nib.

In fact many (if not all) of the the colors seem seem to have been
applied with a broad pen, too.

All the best,

--stolfi



From jim@mail.rand.org  Thu Jun 22 15:00:19 2000
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Gabriel Landini wrote:

> So why to rely on Raphael about the ownership?

Exactly! We do not know when it was communicated and
how reliable it is. 

> or,
> 
> B & M knew the imperial link all the time, but the price and Bacon's
> link were the only info provided by Raphael.

or,

There was no imperial link at all and the information 
about Rudolf and the 600 ducats was intended to interest
Kircher (in the same way as the Egyptian link in Baresch's letter).

The Uppsala MS by Misovsky has a section on secret writing
and was completed in 1628. So if Dr. Raphael knew about
VMS at that time (in fact he may have owned it for some time
and then sold it to Baresch) one would expect he should
have mentioned it in his work. 

Best regards,

Rafal

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    > [Rafal:] There was no imperial link at all and the information
    > about Rudolf and the 600 ducats was intended to interest Kircher
    > (in the same way as the Egyptian link in Baresch's letter).

I am willing to believe that Baresch was sincere when he suggested an
"oriental" origin for the manuscript. ("Sincere" doesn't mean
"correct", of course.)

After all, he clearly presented the claim as his own speculation,
nothing else:

  "In fact, it is quite probable that some good man, interested in
  the true medical science (having realised that the common method
  of healing in Europe was not very effective) went to the oriental
  regions, where he acquired some Egyptian treasures of medicine,
  partly from books, partly also from discussions with the expers in
  this art, and that he took this information back with him, buried
  in this book with its characters.

  "This probability is increased by these exotic herbs, drawn in
  the Volume, which escape from the knowledge of the people
  in the German country." 

As for the specific mention of Egypt, I think it would have been a
natural guess for the epoch, since Egypt was *the* land of mysterious
writings and fogotten knowledge. Besides, he may have used "Egyptian"
as a surrogate for "exotic", much as we would use "Martians" to 
refer to any hypothetic extra-terrestrials.

Claiming that he wrote "Egyptian" only to draw Kircher's attention is
pure guess, and only one of the possibilities. I think it is just as
likely that he was moved to write to Kircher because he had already 
come to suspect that VMS was Egyptian.

    > The Uppsala MS by Misovsky has a section on secret writing
    > and was completed in 1628. So if Dr. Raphael knew about
    > VMS at that time (in fact he may have owned it for some time
    > and then sold it to Baresch) one would expect he should
    > have mentioned it in his work. 

Wow, here we have another instant theory:

  Dr. Raphael writes the VMS as a demonstration of his uncrackable
  code, gives it to Baresch, and has fun watching the poor man's
  struggle with it for years. When the Oedipus Aegypticus comes out,
  Raphael urges GB to send the book to Kircher --- for, what better
  prize can he yearn for than have his secret code certified as
  "Kircher-proof"? Unfortunately, GB refuses to send the book, Kircher
  ignores the letters, and nothing comes out of it. So when GB dies,
  Raphael again convinces his heir Marci to send the book to Kircher;
  and, for good measure, invents the story about Rudolf, Bacon, and
  the 600 ducats --- from which Marci, not exactly a provincial fool,
  was very careful to distance himself. (Indeed, his full quote of
  Rafael's name, contrasting with the omission of Baresch's, may have
  been a subtle hint to his friend Kircher --- "watch out, I smell a
  trick by this guy").

Jacobus's name on f1r may have been faked by Raphael; or may have been
written by Marci after hearing Rapahel's story. (BTW, I find 
an intriguing resemblance between the "T"s in the signature and in
Marci's letters...)

Of course this theory can be varied in many ways. I forgot the relevant
dates, but perhaps Dr. Raphael himself was the person who brought the
"Bacon" book to Rudolf and received the 600 ducats, and was later
amused to see the book in the hands of GB or Marci.  (In this variant,
the book may have passed through Jacobus's hands, so his name may indeed be 
his signature.)

.-,  (Only half of a smiley)

All the best,

--stolfi

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    > [Rafal:] 
    > 
    > Qui nullum unquam idiomatis Bohemici calluit verbum, per eam in
    > momento scribet convenienter Bohemice, quantum volet. Per eam
    > potest quis spatio unius horae quam plurimas conficere periodos
    > Bohemicas, quae etiam paginam unam atque alteram excedant,
    > easdemque, quod caput rei est, intelligere et interpretari.
    > Latet in eodem dispositio ad id, ut suo modo loqui possis fere,
    > quod velis... ... Applicatio ad quodvis idioma. Occultus occulti
    > scribendi modus, quem nemo mortalium queat penetrare. ...
    > Paradigmata Declinationum, Coniugationum et Syntaxeos. Opulenta
    > Sinonymorum congeries. Repetitio Linguae Latinae. ...
    > Reduplicata Bohemicorum lectio. Frequens et inevitabilis
    > eorundem verborum, quo facilius haereant, commemoratio. Ad
    > Bohemicum Characterem in scripto legendum assuetudo.
    
I can't quite udnerstand the Latin, but I got the impression that 
Raphael's code is some sort of invented language.  Is that right?

A most intriguing development indeed...

All the best,

--stolfi

From reeds Thu Jun 22 21:33:28 2000
From: reeds@fry.research.att.com (Jim Reeds)
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Date: Thu, 22 Jun 2000 21:33:27 -0400
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        "Misovsky's MS in Uppsala" (Jun 22, 15:10)
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On Jun 22, 15:10, Rafal T. Prinke wrote:

> Subject: Misovsky's MS in Uppsala
> 
> I have found a longer title of this intriguing manuscript 
> _Strues Tritemiana_ (_Trithemian Pie_) by one of the important 
> people involved in the early history of VMS. Here it is:
> 
> Constructio, sive Strues Tritemiana, cuius hae sunt principaliores 
> utilitates. Qui nullum unquam idiomatis Bohemici calluit verbum, 
> per eam in momento scribet convenienter Bohemice, quantum volet. 
> Per eam potest quis spatio unius horae quam plurimas conficere 
> periodos Bohemicas, quae etiam paginam unam atque alteram 
> excedant, easdemque, quod caput rei est, intelligere et interpretari. 
...

Very interesting indeed.  Someone should get a photocopy of this
MS.  The quoted piece reads very much like one of Trithemius's
controversial promises for his planned Steganographia work,
the one that got him in hot water. (The one that was addressed
to Arnoldus Bostius, which was read & circulated by Bostius's
colleagues after his death.)  One of the planned 7 books of
the Staganographia would explain how one could teach a person
ingnorant of Latin how to write elegant sentences in Latin in
the course of one hour...


-- 
Jim Reeds, AT&T Labs - Research
Shannon Laboratory, Room C229, Building 103
180 Park Avenue, Florham Park, NJ 07932-0971, USA

reeds@research.att.com, phone: +1 973 360 8414, fax: +1 973 360 8178

From jim@mail.rand.org  Fri Jun 23 01:59:53 2000
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Date: Fri, 23 Jun 2000 00:56:46 -0500
From: Dennis <ixohoxi@micro-net.com>
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    Theodore Flournoy, *Des Indes a la Planete Mars: Etude sur un
Cas de Somnambulisme avec Glossalalie [From the Indies to the
Planet Mars: Study of a Case of Somnambulisme with Glossalia]*,
Slatkine Reprints, Geneve, Paris, 1983 [original 1899].
[I definitely don't think that Martian is glossalalia!]

 Mlle Helene Smith produced, under various states of hypnosis
and altered consciousness, drawings of plants, villages, persons,
and scenery on Mars.  She also produced, orally and in writings,
messages in a Martian language.

 Words in phrases in Martian have a one-to-one correspondance
with the words in the French translation.  This fact convinced
Flournoy that the drawings and texts were not "really" from
Mars.

 This shows that a person can produce a new language and script,
unknown to them, in an altered state of consciousness.
Martian is certainly based on French; one could call it
a French pidgin or creole.  That Kelley did the same
thing to create Enochian has always been my pet theory.
If any Enochian lovers would like to see more, I could
accommodate them.  To me the parallels are quite
striking.

 Martian has been discussed quite a few times before
on the list.  I don't know whether Voynichese could
be a similar case.

-------

 Helene Smith's drawings of Martian plants:

p. 163:

"Martian Plants and Flowers - No trace of green.

http://www2.micro-net.com/~ixohoxi/voy/martian/MARS15.JPG

"Fig. 15: Brown/clear yellow trunk and leaves; two-lobed, bright red
flowers, from which
emerge kinds of yellow stamins with black netting.

http://www2.micro-net.com/~ixohoxi/voy/martian/MARS16.JPG

"Fig. 16: large brown/clear yellow leaves; flowers with purple petals,
with black
stamins, and black stems covered with little leaves that are purple like
the
petals.

http://www2.micro-net.com/~ixohoxi/voy/martian/MARS17.JPG

"Fig. 17: large violet fruit with black spots, with a yellow and violet
plume
on top; a brown, black-veined trunk, with ten branches that are similar
but end in a
yellow hook; brick red ground.

p. 181:

http://www2.micro-net.com/~ixohoxi/voy/martian/MARS20.JPG

"Fig. 20: Martian ornamental plant.  Fire-red flowers, gray leaves
streaked with
violet."

 They look Voynich-like to me.  As I've noted before, Voynich pictures
are
visionary art and therefore resemble other visionary art, like these.

--------

 Also, here is the Martian language's alphabet, p. 201:
http://www2.micro-net.com/~ixohoxi/voy/martian/MARS24.JPG
--
 Here is a sample Martian text, Fig 32, p. 222:
http://www2.micro-net.com/~ixohoxi/voy/martian/MARS32.JPG
--

And its transcription into Latin letters, and
translations into French and English (p. 222):

Martian: Rami, pond  acmi      andlir    tri  antch
French:  Ramie, savant astronome, apparatra comme hier
English: Rami, learned astronomer, will appear like yesterday

Martian: iri      vi  an.         riz vi  ban  mirax  ti Rami ni
French:  souvent  toi maintenant.  Sur toi trois adieux de Rami et
English: often to you now.  Upon you three farewells of Rami and

Martian: Astan.  va divine..
French:  Astan.  Sois heureux!
English: Astan.  Be happy!

-------

Dennis

From jim@mail.rand.org  Fri Jun 23 06:29:48 2000
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Date: Fri, 23 Jun 2000 12:32:30 +0200
From: Zandbergen@t-online.de (Rene Zandbergen)
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Dear all,

I'm not sure if the context of the Mnishovsky reference is clear.
I include it below for those interested.

Rene

--------------------------------------------------------------

When Wilfrid Voynich set out to investigate the history of the
Voynich MS, he wrote to Prague in order to obtain
information related to the names mentioned in the Marci letter
(and the erased signature of Jacobus de Tepenec on the
first folio of the MS). 

A reply followed soon (?), in March 1921, written in French.
Following is a translation of excerpts of that reply into English. 


The Doctor in Law, Raphael Sobiehrd-Mnishovsky de Sebuzin & de Horstein,
Czech lawyer and writer, was born in 1580 in Horsuv Tyn, in W. Bohemia.
He
studied in Prague with the Jesuits. [...]
he continued his studies in Paris and Rome [where he appears to have
been at 
the same time as Baresch - RZ] and he became doctor in law abroad. At
this
time he changed his name from Sobiehrd to Mnisovsky. 

After his return he became royal secretary to the famous diplomat and
politician cardinal Melchior Klesl, who at that time was gouvernor in
Austria.
In this fuction he delivered important services as a political agent,
during
the war of Ferdinand II (then duke of Styria) with the Venetians. In
return
for his services he was appointed counsel to the government in Styria.
At
this time he was instructed to teach the young archduke (later emperor)
Ferdinand III the Czech language. 

For him he probably wrote the Latin work: "Constructio seu strues
Tritemiana.
Qui nullum unquam idiomatis bohemici calluit verbum, per eam in momento
scribet
convenienter bohemice quantum volet" (the manuscript is now in the
library
of the University of Uppsala, where it was transported by the Swedes
during
the 30-years war).  [Wilfrid Voynich put three exlamation marks in the
margin of
this paragraph - RZ] 

[...] 
In 1635 he became royal procurator. [Wilfrid Voynich highlighted this
item
in the letter - RZ] 

[...]
When, on 25 February 1634, Albert of Wallenstein, duke of Friedland, and
his
general Adam Erdman Trcka count of Lipa were murdered in Cheb, being
suspected of high treason, Raphael was put in charge of the criminal
process
of both men, with the aim to justify the confiscation of their goods. 

[...]

Sobiehrd - Mnisovsky was an apt Latin poet who has composed 540 Latin
poems,
mostly epigrams. Shortly before his death he composed a funerary poem
for
himself: "Funebria Raphaelis - Mnissovsky de Sebuzin, quae sibi vivens
adhuc
valensque fecit", and had it printed with the instruction to distribute
it at
his funeral. 

[...]

He died on 21 November 1644 and was buried in the St. Saviour church in
the
Jesuit college at the Clementinum in Prague.

From jim@mail.rand.org  Fri Jun 23 08:29:38 2000
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Message-ID: <3953591B.79097D88@voynich.nu>
Date: Fri, 23 Jun 2000 14:33:31 +0200
From: Zandbergen@t-online.de (Rene Zandbergen)
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Gabriel wrote:

> On 21 Jun 2000, at 21:57, Karl Kluge wrote:
> > Rafael Misovsky was born in 1580, so he could have had first hand
> > knowledge.
> 
> This is getting interesting.  If Baresch received the ms. from
> Tepenecz when leaving the country, then he (Baresch) should have
> known well its origins (and perhaps the price as well).
> But in Baresch letter (1639) to Kircher or in the other Marci letter to
> Kircher (1640), nothing is mentioned at all about the ms. origins...
> Doesn't this sound a bit strange?

Either Baresch did not know, did not think it was important, or wanted
to hide the info. If he got the VMs from Tepenec through illicit means,
he wouldn't want to tell Kircher. Also, Baresch may not have known
Tepenec. His first letter to Kircher (now lost) was written 15 years
after
T's death. 

We may assume that Tepenec knew everything that Raphael knew (and
perhaps
a bit more). Could Tepenec and Raphael have known each other? They were
contemporaries both with some status in the eyes of the crown, but one
was a scientist and the other a politician. Both had a Jesuit training
so
it is possible....
Also, the title of Raphael's "teach yourself Bohemian in one day"
indicates that he was interested in secret writing one way or another.

> In Marci's letter (1666) we learn the details from Missowsky, but that
> could be evident from Baresch friendship with Marci and the
> signature in folio 1 (that perhaps could also be read) so the link to
> Rudolf would have been obvious at that time.
> 
> So why to rely on Raphael about the ownership?

Raphael was a highly placed official (he could sign royal documents,
if my understanding of the meaning of procurator is correct). So
that makes him a reliable witness.
Now he was about 8 (?) when Dee left Prague and 15 or 18 when Kelly
died, but this was before he was in contact with the court.
He was 26 when Tepenec arrived and 42 when Tepenec died, and at this
time all the nasties of the catholic/protestant war had begun.
He was 31 when Rudolf abdicated.

> Tepenecz ownership was a bit unclear ("forgot" to bring it back to
> the imperial library or something like that), and Baresch knew it and
> did not want to publicise having some imperial item that he
> shouldn't.

Well, he wrote his name on it, so it must have been official. But
who erased it? (Could be himself, if he sold it to Rudolf after 1608).

> When B died, Marci set the record straight and gave all the info he
> had. (In fact, at that time, B's and J's ownership may have been
> irrelevant).

We don't know if Marci knew Baresch before 1640, when he came back 
from Rome. The Baresch letter probably reached Kircher while Marci
was there. Marci then writes something about B to Kircher as soon
as he is back in Prague (i.e. he had to inquire). In the next
letter he refers to B as 'Mr Baresch', not 'my special friend'.
So I think it is reasonable to assume they only got to know each
other later.
We do need to find out when Baresch died. This information exists
somewhere.

The period 1640-1644 is when Marci probably got his information
from Raphael. Marci was involved in political struggles between
the two Universities and may have known Raphael from that connection.

The text of the last Marci letter (the one in the VMs) strongly 
suggests that Marci had not written to Kircher on the subject
of Baresch or the VMs in the mean time. (There is a large
gap in their correspondence, which could easily mean that some
letters are lost).  

> B & M knew the imperial link all the time, but the price and Bacon's
> link were the only info provided by Raphael.

I find that highly likely.

> Of course we don't learn anything new from all this. :-(

We can invent new theories :-) 
And there are a few things we can still find out. For example
the death date of Baresch, and perhaps more vital statistics
once we know where he was born. 
Also, we may still find samples of Tepenec' handwriting (we 
have some of Baresch and Marci).

How, precisely, Raphael knew about the VMs is of interest and
may settle to whom Rudolph paid the 600 ducats:

to Dee or not to Dee, that is the question.

(My apologies. I realise that this is pretty awful).

Cheers, Rene

From jim@mail.rand.org  Fri Jun 23 10:46:16 2000
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From: Zandbergen@t-online.de (Rene Zandbergen)
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Betreff: 
            Re: Why not Dee?
     Datum: 
Rafal wrote:

> Karl Kluge wrote:
> 
> > > [someone:] It does include it: "630 Ducatos illi exhibuimus coram Deo".
> >
> > This *may* be what Brumbaugh was refering to, but it seems odd that he or his
> > source would confuse what is normally called Dee's "diary" with the _True
> > and Faithful Relation_, would spell "ducats" as "doucats" in translating
> > the phrase from Latin to English, and would put a translated phrase in
> > quotation marks without so indicating, making it appear to be a direct quote.
> 
> As Clay has already explained, Casaubon is often referred to as
> "spiritual diaries" while the notes in the Ephemerides - as
> "private diary". So if Brumbaugh just says "diary" it is not
> precise (I have not seen his book). 

While I am sometimes not very precise, being imprecise is a specialty
in which Brumbaugh excelled (I know, de mortibus...)
 
> > My impression is that Dee was constantly in financial difficulty 

> That's right - but that was rather typical for intellectuals not
> attached to a university or court. Why should he pay for the dinner
> if he knew the Queen would? I would rather say he was never
> financially independent - but also never fell into poverty.
> For instance, he donated a number of his books to universities
> on the Continent (rather than selling them).

The sum of 600 ducats (2 jewel bracelets or 6 printed books) would
have been a significant amount of money to Dee (would you agree?)
but not to Rudolf. In fact, towards the end of his reign, Rudolf was
willing to spend a *much* larger amount of money on another book (which
he did not manage to acquire) which is famous for not having the letters
written or printed onto, but cut out of the paper. 

So the 630 ducats quote seems to be correct, but Dee was in Trebona 
at the time. Now, Marci quotes Raphael as saying that the 600 ducats
were paid to the 'bearer' (Latin: lator) of the MS, so Dee could have
sent someone from Trebona.
But I think, for various reasons, (and at the same time realise that
it is highly contestible and not easily verifiable) that it would have
been much more logical for Dee to sell the MS to count Rozenberg than
to Rudolf. 

While checking the Marci letter, I saw that I was wrong in my previous 
mail. In Marci's 1640 letter he refers to Baresch as his friend.
This means that discussions among {Marci ; Baresch ; Raphael }
could also have taken place prior to 1640.

Cheers, Rene

From jim@mail.rand.org  Fri Jun 23 15:43:51 2000
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Subject: Re: About Turkish
In-Reply-To: <394C7E12.916FCE99@voynich.nu> from Rene Zandbergen at "Jun 18,
 2000 09:45:22 am"
To: rene@voynich.nu
Date: Fri, 23 Jun 2000 14:43:21 -0500 (CDT)
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Rene wrote:
> But, it is also worth mentioning that Turkish is one of the most
> regular languages in the world. There are hardly any exceptions
> to the grammatical rules, if at all (!) (This actually is the only
> bit I knew about Turkish until this post came around :-) )
> 
> >   Note that Turks used the Arabic alphabet until the 1920's or so.
> 

One thing to mention is that Turkish actually wasn't as regular as it
now is before the 1920's. (That's when Kemal Atatu:rk switched the
language to using the Roman alphabet (with additions) that it now
uses, and made the language as regular as it now is.) 

Someone else already pointed out that the Turkish used at the time of
the VMS' production would likely be far different; this is just a
reinforcement of that. 

Dean Gahlon
dean@visi.com

From jim@mail.rand.org  Fri Jun 23 18:23:36 2000
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Jorge Stolfi wrote:

> As for the specific mention of Egypt, I think it would have been a
> natural guess for the epoch, since Egypt was *the* land of mysterious
> writings and fogotten knowledge. Besides, he may have used "Egyptian"
> as a surrogate for "exotic", much as we would use "Martians" to
> refer to any hypothetic extra-terrestrials.
> 
> Claiming that he wrote "Egyptian" only to draw Kircher's attention is
> pure guess, and only one of the possibilities. I think it is just as
> likely that he was moved to write to Kircher because he had already
> come to suspect that VMS was Egyptian.

That's right - I was trying to incorporate Rene's suggestion 
in his annotation of the letter (Rene's Web pages).

But if Egypt is considered at face value, then how about this:

   Christoph Harant: Putowanj aneb Cesta z Kralowstwj Czeskeho
        do Miesta Benatek, odtud po Morzi do Zemie Swate, 
        Zemie Iudske, a dale do Egypta a welikeho Miesta Kairu,
        potom na Horu Oreb, Synay a Swate Katerziny w Pustie
        Arabii lezicy. Dwa Djly, w Praze 1608. 4to

which translates as:

   Christoph Harant: Travel or journey from the Kingdom of Bohemia
        to the City of Venice, and from there by sea to the Holy
        Land, the Judean Land, and then on to Egypt and the Great
        City of Cairo, and then to the Oreb Mountain, Sinai and
        St. Catherine which lie in the Arabian Desert. Two volumes,
        [printed] in Prague, 1608. In Quarto.

It was later translated into German and published in Nurnberg 1678.
I will have to check the author - but the dating is interesting.
He may have brought a manuscript from Egypt and copy it at home.
Or Horcicky may have copied it. Or an European monk in Egypt
may have copied something.

I don't really believe it - but that is a possibility. 

> Wow, here we have another instant theory:
> 
>   Dr. Raphael writes the VMS as a demonstration of his uncrackable
>   code, gives it to Baresch, and has fun watching the poor man's
>   struggle with it for years. When the Oedipus Aegypticus comes out,
>   Raphael urges GB to send the book to Kircher --- for, what better
>   prize can he yearn for than have his secret code certified as
>   "Kircher-proof"? 

Yes, I thought of it, too - but VMS certainly does not look 17th c.
It must have been produced before 1600. Still, if the Uppsala MS
can be accessed, this possibility can be verified.

Best regards,

Rafal


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Date: Fri, 23 Jun 2000 22:38:42 +0200
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Jorge Stolfi wrote:

>     > quod velis... ... Applicatio ad quodvis idioma. Occultus occulti
>     > scribendi modus, quem nemo mortalium queat penetrare. ...

> I can't quite udnerstand the Latin, but I got the impression that
> Raphael's code is some sort of invented language.  Is that right?

I don't understand it well, either. Jim Reeds has already noted
that it offers a quick way to learn Czech, but also a repetition
of Latin and most interestingly a way of secret writing.

As I said in another message, I do not think Dr. Raphael could
produce VMS - but if he had seen it by 1628, he may have
mentioned it in the "occulti scribendi" section and perhaps
give some details about its provenance ("bearer's" name) etc.

Also, a sample of his handwriting (and foliation) would be
useful.

Best regards,

Rafal


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Rene Zandbergen wrote:

> Raphael was a highly placed official (he could sign royal documents,
> if my understanding of the meaning of procurator is correct).

I guess it means "attorney" - that is how he acted in Wallenstein's
case. He was also the translator of royal decrees and other offcial
documents into Bohemian. 

> Now he was about 8 (?) when Dee left Prague and 15 or 18 when Kelly
> died, but this was before he was in contact with the court.
> He was 26 when Tepenec arrived and 42 when Tepenec died, and at this
> time all the nasties of the catholic/protestant war had begun.
> He was 31 when Rudolf abdicated.

Pelcl says he served for 33 years to 3 emperors. This would mean he
entered Rudolf's service only in 1611 and was sent to Austria, and
participated in the war with Venice. So the chronology is very tight.

If, however, he knew about Rudolf's purchase of VMS from autopsy,
then it must have taken place in the last year of his reign.
Obviously, he may have got the info from some other source
later.

Best regards,

Rafal


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[This one was sent to Rafal only by mistake. --JS]

    > [Rafal:] I would rather say [Dee] was never financially
    > independent - but also never fell into poverty.
    
In England, yes --- but I gather that in Bohemia he got much closer to
bankrupcy, yes?  Fell-Smith reports that on Feb-Mar 1585 Jane Dee demanded
that Dee and Kelley ask the spirits advice on how to make ends meet,
lest they be forced to pawn their "house ornaments".
    
    > [Jacobus's] main heir was the Clementinum college - so I suspect
    > his library would have gone there, too - if it survived his
    > expulsion.

Schmidl's book, which Rene and I saw at the Clementinum (now home of
the Czech Natl Library), has one half-page entry about what happened
to Jacobus's estate after it was inherited by the Jesuits.
Unfortunately the library closed before I had time to copy that item.
>From a quick scan, it did not seem to mention any papers or books,
only real estate and material goods. Most of it was sold over a period
of several years, IIRC.

It is possible that his books (if there were any) were sold as part of
the estate, or (more likely) they were incorporated into the
Clementinum's library. If the latter, they may have ended up at
Charles university, and/or may have been taken to Sweden (I believe
this was Lubos Antonin's guess), or (who knows) they may have remained
in the Clementinum to this day.

All the best,

--stolfi

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[This one should have been sent to the list too. --JS]

-- start of forwarded message (RFC 934 encapsulation) -------
Date: Fri, 23 Jun 2000 22:52:03 +0200
From: "Rafal T. Prinke" <rafalp@amu.edu.pl>
To: stolfi@ic.unicamp.br
Subject: Re: fate of Jacobus's writings


Hi Jorge,

This arrived as a private message - if you intended to send it to
the list, you may forward my reply there, too.

>     > [Rafal:] I would rather say [Dee] was never financially
>     > independent - but also never fell into poverty.
> 
> In England, yes --- but I gather that in Bohemia he got much closer to
> bankrupcy, yes?  Fell-Smith reports that on Feb-Mar 1585 Jane Dee demanded
> that Dee and Kelley ask the spirits advice on how to make ends meet,
> lest they be forced to pawn their "house ornaments".

If we accept this, then Arthur's testimony of playing with toys
of silver becomes even less credible. On the other hand, women
often exaggerate :-)

> It is possible that his books (if there were any) were sold as part of
> the estate, or (more likely) they were incorporated into the
> Clementinum's library. If the latter, they may have ended up at
> Charles university, and/or may have been taken to Sweden (I believe
> this was Lubos Antonin's guess), or (who knows) they may have remained
> in the Clementinum to this day.

I do not think Lubos was right on this point. Pelcl in _Abbildungen..._
says: "Seine Werke ueber die Chemie und Kraeuterkunde liegen noch
in der Handschrift", which means he was aware of them in late 18th c.
in Prague.

Best regards,

Rafal

------- end -------

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    > [stolfi:] Fell-Smith reports that on Feb-Mar 1585 Jane Dee
    > demanded that Dee and Kelley ask the spirits advice on how to
    > make ends meet, lest they be forced to pawn their "house
    > ornaments".

    > [Rafal:] If we accept this, then Arthur's testimony of playing
    > with toys of silver becomes even less credible.
    
I gather that their fortunes were quite variable. The above episode
is from about 6-7 months after Dee and Kelley arrived in Prague.
They had recently moved out of Hajek's house to another one "near 
the Market Place in Old Prague", which he had rented for 70 thalers
a year.  This was a few months before their banishment from Bohemia,
and some 6-7 months before they obtained the patronage of count Rozmberk.

  Money was scarcer than ever. "My wife being in great perplexity,
  requested E.K. and me that the annexed petition might be propounded
  to God and his good angels, to give answer or counsel in the cause."
  Jane's petition set out simply that they had no provision for
  meat and drink for their family, that it "would discredit the
  actions werewith they are vowed and linked unto the heavenly 
  majesty" to lay the ornaments of their house or coverings of their
  bodies in pawn to the Jews, and that the city was full of malicious
  slanders.  Aid and direction are implored how or by whom they are
  to be aided or relieved.  The spirits, while reminding her
  grandlioquently that she is only a woman, full of infirmities, 
  frail in soul, and not fit to enter the synagogue, yet favourably 
  listen, and bid her be faithful and obedient as she is yoked,
  promising that she and her children shall be cared for. Meanwhile
  her husband is to gird himself together and hasten to see Laski and 
  King Stephan.

Jane Dee comes through Dee's diaries as a quite sensible woman.
Indeed, considering all the crazy characters and adventures she had
to put up with, she probably could have taught patience and endurance 
to half the saints in Heavens. Her distress was probably
quite justified.

(The following May, Dee and Kelley did go to see Laski and King Stephan
of Poland, but came back empty-handed:

  Laski urged the King to take the two alchemists into his service
  and give then "a yearly maintenance". In obedience to his
  [angelic] instructors, Dee promises to make the philosopher's
  stone, if the king will bear the charge.  He does not profess
  that he can, but he believes the angels will teach him the secret.
  Stephan was not so sanguigne.  In the King's private chamber,
  a sitting was held, with the crystal set before him, but he
  remained unconvinced. He gave no encouragement, and in August
  the pair, hopeless of patronage from Poland, returned to Prague, 
  where Jane and Joan Kelley, the children and the servants,
  had been left under Edmond Hilton's care.

)

    > [Rafal:] Pelcl in _Abbildungen..._ says: "Seine [i.e. Jacobus's]
    > Werke ueber die Chemie und Kraeuterkunde liegen noch in der
    > Handschrift", which means he was aware of them in late 18th c.
    > in Prague.

That's quite interesting!  We definitely need another Expedition
to Prague...

All the best

--stolfi

From jim@mail.rand.org  Fri Jun 23 20:17:42 2000
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Rafal wrote:

> > [me:] The sum of 600 ducats (2 jewel bracelets or 6 printed books) would
> > have been a significant amount of money to Dee (would you agree?)
> 
> I am not so sure. Obviously, it depends on the period. When he
> was in Trebon, they seem to have been quite opulent (no wonder,
> if we trust Arthur's recollections of "silver production").
> I am still not sure whose 2,000 ductas in two sacks were.

I have my own ideas about how lucrative it was for them to make silver
or gold :-) (Assuming for the moment that they couldn't actually really
do it).

> If you still insist on the Dee connection. 

Not really, just toying with the idea...

> [...] But there is nothing
> tangible that would make Dee preferable to anyone else who
> happened to be in Prague during Rudolf's reign (if Rudolf had
> VMS at all) - especially as Clay has now confirmed my
> observations regarding the VMS foliation and Dee's numbers.

I personally do not doubt that Rudolf once bought it. I just see
no reason to believe otherwise. To me, Marci's mentioning the 
600 ducats is a way of impressing Kircher with his generosity.
But that's not enough to say that he just invented it...

Yes, we are spoilt for choice when it comes to alternatives.
One possibility I have not seen mentioned in the list so far
is the colony of miners/metallurgists that came from Italy
before and during Rudolf's reign. In German publications they
are referred to as 'Welsche' (don't ask me why). 
  
> > But I think, for various reasons, (and at the same time realise that
> > it is highly contestible and not easily verifiable) that it would have
> > been much more logical for Dee to sell the MS to count Rozenberg than
> > to Rudolf.
> 
> If Rozmberk was interested, Dee should have given it to him for free
> (or rather in return for his hospitality).

Indeed. Kelly even gave him some of his red powder (if the source for
that piece of info is realiable - Wrany if I recall correctly). One
could
then wonder if it was this sample which Boetius de Boodt later found and
made him a believer in alchemy (although this is generally believed to
be
a legend). In any case, he is another one of the hundreds of candidates.

As an afterthought, isn't it rather odd that all those who were in
possession
of some tincture that supposedly really worked had always just 'found
it'
somewhere (like Kelly for instance).

Oh and by the way, due to popular demand :-) I have just decided to
change
the wording in my annotation of the Baresch letter somewhat, to allow
for
the (unlikely ?) possibility that B really thought the VMs was of
Egyptian
origin.

Cheers, Rene

From jim@mail.rand.org  Fri Jun 23 20:55:44 2000
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From: Zandbergen@t-online.de (Rene Zandbergen)
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Jorge Stolfi wrote:

>     > [Rafal:] Pelcl in _Abbildungen..._ says: "Seine [i.e. Jacobus's]
>     > Werke ueber die Chemie und Kraeuterkunde liegen noch in der
>     > Handschrift", which means he was aware of them in late 18th c.
>     > in Prague.
> 
> That's quite interesting!  We definitely need another Expedition
> to Prague...

:-)

In the Czech letter to Voynich (1921) this is quoted:
according to Pelzel, towards the year 1777 there existed some writings
of J.T. about chemistry and botany, in manuscript form.

The letter writer did apparently not know what happened to them...

Cheers, Rene

From reeds Fri Jun 23 21:47:52 2000
From: reeds@fry.research.att.com (Jim Reeds)
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        "Re: fate of Jacobus's writings" (Jun 23, 20:56)
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On Jun 23, 20:56, Jorge Stolfi wrote:

...
> Jane Dee comes through Dee's diaries as a quite sensible woman.
> Indeed, considering all the crazy characters and adventures she had
> to put up with, she probably could have taught patience and endurance 
> to half the saints in Heavens. Her distress was probably
> quite justified.

In this connection, read D. Harkness's "Managing an experimental
household: the Dees of Mortlake and the practice of natural
philosophy" which appreared in Isis 88 (1997) pp.247-262.
(Isis is the journal of the History of Science Society.)

-- 
Jim Reeds, AT&T Labs - Research
Shannon Laboratory, Room C229, Building 103
180 Park Avenue, Florham Park, NJ 07932-0971, USA

reeds@research.att.com, phone: +1 973 360 8414, fax: +1 973 360 8178

From jim@mail.rand.org  Sat Jun 24 00:05:48 2000
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"Rafal T. Prinke" wrote:

> Yes, I thought of it, too - but VMS certainly does not look 17th c.
> It must have been produced before 1600.

    Once again.  I feel pretty good about a date of ca 1480.

1)  Julie Porter, who was a Renaissance Fair costumes-mistress several
years,
note that hairdoes are the most clearly dated features of costume.  The
nymph's hairdoes date them to 1480-1520.

2)  Jim Reeds feels certain that the VMs script derives from the "humanist
hand", a writing style that flourished only in several decades in the
1400's.   This style fell between the Gothic style of the Middle Ages
and the Italic style of the Renaissance that later formed the basis
for modern typefaces.

    If anyone has new ideas, I'd like to hear them.

Dennis


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Daniel Harms wrote:
> 
>         I don't recall anything being mentioned about this, so here goes.
> The latest coverage of the Voynich in a popular forum appears in an
> article called "The Books of the Damned:  Fact or Fiction?" by Scott
> Corrales, in the July issue of FATE.

	This article claims (p. 22) that Voynich showed the VMs to H. O.
Yardley soon after purchasing it.  
It's plausible, but I've never heard of it.  It also says that Yardley
was the one to come up
with the ubiquitous sobriquet "the most mysterious manuscript".  This I
doubt, but I don't whether it
was Brumbaugh who came up with it either.

	There's a good color image of f78r, better than the one on Yale's VMs
gallery.

	The article's worst misstatement is that Brumbaugh "determin[ed] that
the document probably concerned the alchemical elixir of life".  :)  I
wonder where they got this.  

Dennis

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From: Zandbergen@t-online.de (Rene Zandbergen)
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Dennis wrote:

>         This article claims (p. 22) that Voynich showed the VMs to H. O.
> Yardley soon after purchasing it.
> It's plausible, but I've never heard of it.  It also says that Yardley
> was the one to come up
> with the ubiquitous sobriquet "the most mysterious manuscript".  This I
> doubt, but I don't whether it
> was Brumbaugh who came up with it either.

It is usually attributed to Manly. Brumbaugh's book has a section which
is
a reprint of the relevant part in Kahn. This says that one of the people
trying to crack the VMs was Capt. John H. Manly (in 1917), then second
in
command of Yardley's MI-8. Then "... with the Voynich MS he failed and
so did Yardley (5)". Note 5 says: "Correspondence relating to the MS,
in Kraus' possession: letters, Yardley to Manly, February 18, 1921 and
January 13, 1922, Manly papers."
 
>         The article's worst misstatement is that Brumbaugh "determin[ed] that
> the document probably concerned the alchemical elixir of life".  :)  I
> wonder where they got this.

>From Brumbaugh :-)
With his translation tables he finds the word ILEXER in the bio section.

D'Imperio is rather supportive of Brumbaugh's theories in her book,
which
may have been for 'political' reasons (but maybe I am too suspicious
again
and she may have really liked his theories). Since D'Imperio and
Brumbaugh
are the usual sources for short introductory articles about the VMs, the
author will have felt justified. (He may of course have used Kahn
directly
to).

Cheers, Rene

From jim@mail.rand.org  Sat Jun 24 07:49:35 2000
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From: Jorge Stolfi <stolfi@ic.unicamp.br>
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Subject: Re: Secret script of Simon Tadeas Budek
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    > [Rafal:] A prime Czech alchemist was Simon Tadeas Budek the
    > Emperor's searcher for metal and gem. He abandoned handwriting
    > for a secret script. This tractate is in Vienna today. Simon
    > Tadeas Budek got his noble title "from Lesin and Falkenberk"
    > from Emperor Rudolf II.

Just curious: could Budek be the "Simon" who lived in Hajek's house
before Dee and Kelley, as reported by Fell-Smith:

    The excellent little study or "stove" (from "stube", German for
    study) in Dr. Hagek's house had been since 1518 the abode of some
    student of alchemy, skilful of the holy stone. The name of the
    alchemist, "Simon", was written up in gold and silver in several
    places in the room. Dee's eyes also fell daily on many cabalistic
    hieroglyphs, as well as on drawings or carvings of birds, fishes,
    flowers, fruits, leaves, and six vessels, all the work, he
    presumed, of Simon baccalaureus Pragensis. Over the door were the
    lines

      "Immortale Decus par gloriaque illi debentur
      Cujus ab ingenio est discolor hic paries,"

    and on the south wall of the study was a long quotation from some
    philosohical work ending with

      "Ars nostra est ludus puerum cum labor mulierum. 
      Scitote omnis filii artis hujus, quod nemo potest 
      colligere frusctus nostri Elixiris, nisi per 
      introitum nostri lapides Elementati, et si
      aliam viam quaerit, viam nunquam intrabit nec
      attinget. Rubigo est opus, quod sit ex solo auro,
      dum intraverit im suam humiditatem."
    
All the best,

--stolfi

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From: reeds@research.att.com (Jim Reeds)
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In-Reply-To: reeds@fry.research.att.com (Jim Reeds)
        "Re: Misovsky's MS in Uppsala" (Jun 22, 21:33)
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	<1000622213328.ZM10090923@fry.research.att.com>
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On Jun 22, 21:33, Jim Reeds wrote:

> Subject: Re: Misovsky's MS in Uppsala
> On Jun 22, 15:10, Rafal T. Prinke wrote:
> 
> > Subject: Misovsky's MS in Uppsala
> > 
> > I have found a longer title of this intriguing manuscript 
> > _Strues Tritemiana_ (_Trithemian Pie_) by one of the important 
> > people involved in the early history of VMS. Here it is:
> > 
> > Constructio, sive Strues Tritemiana, cuius hae sunt principaliores 
> > utilitates. Qui nullum unquam idiomatis Bohemici calluit verbum, 
> > per eam in momento scribet convenienter Bohemice, quantum volet. 
> > Per eam potest quis spatio unius horae quam plurimas conficere 
> > periodos Bohemicas, quae etiam paginam unam atque alteram 
> > excedant, easdemque, quod caput rei est, intelligere et interpretari. 
> ...
> 
> Very interesting indeed.  Someone should get a photocopy of this
> MS.  The quoted piece reads very much like one of Trithemius's
> controversial promises for his planned Steganographia work,
> the one that got him in hot water. (The one that was addressed
> to Arnoldus Bostius, which was read & circulated by Bostius's
> colleagues after his death.)  One of the planned 7 books of
> the Staganographia would explain how one could teach a person
> ingnorant of Latin how to write elegant sentences in Latin in
> the course of one hour...

I was wrong about the timing.

In his 1499 letter to Bostius, J.T. says

  Tertius liber docet artem, per quam possum hominem idiotam,
  scientiam tantum linguam maternam, qui nunquam novit verbum
  latini sermonis, in duabus horis docere scribere, et legere,
  et intelligere latinum satis ornate et diserte, quantumqunque
  voluerit; ita quncunque viderint ejus litteras, laudent verba,
  intelligant latine composita.

(Book 3 teaches a method by which it is possible to teach in two
hours an ordinary person who only knows his mother tongue, who
doesn't know any words of the latin language at all, to write,
read & understand polished & eloquent latin blah blah blah.

Misovsky promises to do the same for Bohemian, in the course of
1 hour!

It's commonly understood that T was hinting at the word-list
ciphers described in Books 1 through 4 of his Polygraphia.

But wouldn't it be nice if there really were such a method for
language instruction!  Two hours for latin, one for czech, then
its time for lunch.  In the afternoon, I think I'll master dutch and
lithuanian.)


-- 
Jim Reeds, AT&T Labs - Research
Shannon Laboratory, Room C229, Building 103
180 Park Avenue, Florham Park, NJ 07932-0971, USA

reeds@research.att.com, phone: +1 973 360 8414, fax: +1 973 360 8178

From jim@mail.rand.org  Sat Jun 24 18:41:35 2000
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From: Zandbergen@t-online.de (Rene Zandbergen)
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Jim Reeds wrote:

> (Book 3 teaches a method by which it is possible to teach in two
> hours an ordinary person who only knows his mother tongue, who
> doesn't know any words of the latin language at all, to write,
> read & understand polished & eloquent latin blah blah blah.
> 
> Misovsky promises to do the same for Bohemian, in the course of
> 1 hour!
> 
> It's commonly understood that T was hinting at the word-list
> ciphers described in Books 1 through 4 of his Polygraphia.
> 
> But wouldn't it be nice if there really were such a method for
> language instruction!  Two hours for latin, one for czech, then
> its time for lunch.  In the afternoon, I think I'll master dutch and
> lithuanian.)

:-)

I (almost) hate to bring this up, but didn't Roger Bacon make
some related claims? (About a general method for teaching any
language in a minimal amount of time?)

Cheers, Rene

From reeds Sat Jun 24 19:04:59 2000
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From: reeds@fry.research.att.com (Jim Reeds)
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Date: Sat, 24 Jun 2000 18:50:18 -0400
In-Reply-To: Zandbergen@t-online.de (Rene Zandbergen)
        "Re: Misovsky's MS in Uppsala" (Jun 25,  0:45)
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On Jun 25,  0:45, Rene Zandbergen wrote:

[about high speed language instruction]
> 
> I (almost) hate to bring this up, but didn't Roger Bacon make
> some related claims? (About a general method for teaching any
> language in a minimal amount of time?)

I don't know.  Bacon wrote a lot, & I wouldn't know where to
look.  If Bacon did, then Trithemius's use of this idea is
another example of his general stragegy of giving his cryptography
the appearance of magic.


-- 
Jim Reeds, AT&T Labs - Research
Shannon Laboratory, Room C229, Building 103
180 Park Avenue, Florham Park, NJ 07932-0971, USA

reeds@research.att.com, phone: +1 973 360 8414, fax: +1 973 360 8178


From jim@mail.rand.org  Sat Jun 24 20:36:07 2000
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Date: Sat, 24 Jun 2000 20:34:23 -0400 (EDT)
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Subject: Re: Misovsky's MS in Uppsala
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Jim Reeds wrote:

> On Jun 25,  0:45, Rene Zandbergen wrote:
> 
> [about high speed language instruction]
> > 
> > I (almost) hate to bring this up, but didn't Roger Bacon make
> > some related claims? (About a general method for teaching any
> > language in a minimal amount of time?)
> 
> I don't know.  Bacon wrote a lot, & I wouldn't know where to
> look.  If Bacon did, then Trithemius's use of this idea is
> another example of his general stragegy of giving his cryptography
> the appearance of magic.

I believe this idea of methods for high-speed language instruction is
covered to some degree in Umberto Eco's book on the search for the
perfect language.

Karl

From reeds Sat Jun 24 20:46:43 2000
From: reeds@fry.research.att.com (Jim Reeds)
Message-Id: <1000624204643.ZM11983793@fry.research.att.com>
Date: Sat, 24 Jun 2000 20:46:42 -0400
In-Reply-To: Karl Kluge <kckluge@eecs.umich.edu>
        "Re: Misovsky's MS in Uppsala" (Jun 24, 20:34)
References: <3952102C.A969340@amu.edu.pl> 
	<1000622213328.ZM10090923@fry.research.att.com> 
	<1000624143443.ZM11891292@fry.research.att.com> 
	<39553A19.4FA3F4D8@voynich.nu> 
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On Jun 24, 20:34, Karl Kluge wrote:

> Subject: Re: Misovsky's MS in Uppsala
 ...
> I believe this idea of methods for high-speed language instruction is
> covered to some degree in Umberto Eco's book on the search for the
> perfect language.

Rats! My copy is at the office.

Tradionally, one practices magic in order to obtain sex, money, or
power (or some combination thereof; what the hey, why not all 3!)
or to protect against disease or (bad) magic. This idea of
magical language acquisition is interesting!

-- 
Jim Reeds, AT&T Labs - Research
Shannon Laboratory, Room C229, Building 103
180 Park Avenue, Florham Park, NJ 07932-0971, USA

reeds@research.att.com, phone: +1 973 360 8414, fax: +1 973 360 8178

From jim@mail.rand.org  Mon Jun 26 05:38:58 2000
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From: "Gabriel Landini" <G.Landini@bham.ac.uk>
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Hi all,
I am just back from a meeting held at Cambridge on the History of 
Cryptography organised by the British Society for the History of 
Mathematics.

I was invited to give a talk on the vms. Given that I do not have any 
cryptology, history or maths background but a Biomedical one, I felt 
a bit uneasy about the (high) level of the audience, but at the same 
time I thought that it would be a good opportunity to get feedback 
and other people interested in the problem.
At the start I used the excuse that in Biology there are lots of 
"uncracked codes"; for instance we do not know the meaning (if 
any) of introns in DNA which make about 90% of the total. That 
seemed to do the trick and (I think) and the talk went well.

There were some very interesting questions and info exchanged at 
question time and during the lunch hour.

Judith Field (the organiser, one of the most amazing and interesting 
persons I met) and who is an expert in Kepler, informed that Rudolf 
was well known for not paying his bills (it was not put exactly like 
that) and it was surprising that he would have paid 600 ducats for a 
book in code.

Also mentioned that the humanist hand arrived at slightly different 
times in parts of Europe. Unfortunately I did not followed it up, but I 
got the idea that it was meant to be more like a "wave" rather than 
a specific period bracket.

A *very* interesting bit of information (and that will be sent to me by 
email later) was from somebody who knows (or knew well) the 
biographer of Mrs. Voynich. The conversation was about the selling 
of the ms. to HP Kraus. 
Apparently, Ms. Nill (Mrs. Voynich companion) did not have good 
financial situation and Mrs. Voynich had an agreement to leave the 
vms to pay for Ms. Nill's retirement.
Remember that Strong asked for copies of the ms. and these were 
rejected with no apparent reason? 
Perhaps if cracked, the ms would loose value and so would Ms. 
Nill's little fortune, so I guess that this is a possible reason for the 
ms. being taken out of circulation.

The most interesting part was that when Ms. Nill moved to work HP 
Kraus, and (suspense music in crescendo) the ms. was deposited 
in Kraus' safe. This person mentioned that this happened just after 
Mrs. V death, but Kraus says that Ms. Nill work for about 10 years 
for him.

Mrs. Nill died soon afterwards (about 1 year after Mrs. V. -- I haven't 
checked, all this should be confirmed) and so the claim is that the 
manuscript was not "bought" by Kraus, it was "acquired".
This person told me that there were some relatives of Ms. Nill who 
never saw a penny from the sale of the Ms. (!)

However this is quite a statement. I just checked D'Imperio's book 
and there is even a date for the sale: 12 July 1961. I also checked 
Kraus' chapter in "A rare book saga" and he says he bought it from 
Ms. Nill and the price he paid ($24000 or so).
Then it goes saying that he wanted to sell it for $160000 and Ms Nill 
would get half of the profit over the price he paid for it. When did 
Ms. Nill die?

As I said before, this person will "look into his files" and e-mail me 
whatever he finds.

Some other comment/questions were about carbon dating and 
again J. Field, suggested to look into the maps used for the 
astrolabes (sp?) and compare them to the star maps in the vms.
My feeling is that the diagrams in the vms are very low tech 
compared to real navigation maps, but we should look into those as 
well.

Cheers,

Gabriel



From jim@mail.rand.org  Mon Jun 26 21:27:51 2000
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Reply-To: "John Grove" <John@morewood.net>
From: "John Grove" <4groves@sprint.ca>
To: "Voynich List" <voynich@rand.org>
Subject: Split Gallows
Date: Mon, 26 Jun 2000 21:27:55 -0400
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If anyone has a more complete list than below of all the Split-G's in the
manuscript please add to this list for me... thanks.

f8r - c'ho c'hey
f8v - c'hod soac'h
f30v - c'hrc'hain
f35r - c'hoo r choly c'hy
f42r - s'ho ofaiin cthaih c'hy
f56r - o'chal chchs'y
f68r1 - 'oeeoyc'hy
f68r2 - o'ol c'hy
f80r - c'hc'hey
f86v6 - c'holc'hy
f90v2 - c'hdai'hy
f90v1 - c'odai'hey
f95v2 - 'olteedy c'ho
f99v - c'holroc'hey
f100r - c'hda'coto
f100v - c'hdac'hy
f101r1 - c'olc'heol
f102r2 - c'hol d c'hody ***
f105r - 'aiin dar'  ***

(The last two have added loops along the top of the extended line, as well
as a series of dots below the line. I believe there are 12 loops/9 dots on
f102r2 and 9 loops/7 dots on f105r. This may be insignificant decoration -
or maybe not. There are other 'regular' gallows with a series of loops
and/or dots - f14v has 12 dots, f42v is really loopy and has 9 dots (one per
loop), f78r as 12 vertical strokes inside the gallows, while f78v has 9
vertical lines.)

Just some idle observations on Split-G's - more to come on some double
characters...

John.

From jim@mail.rand.org  Tue Jun 27 01:17:53 2000
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Date: Mon, 26 Jun 2000 22:16:43 -0700
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Subject: A book that may be of interest
References: <3952102C.A969340@amu.edu.pl> 
			<1000622213328.ZM10090923@fry.research.att.com> <1000624143443.ZM11891292@fry.research.att.com> <39553A19.4FA3F4D8@voynich.nu>
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Below is an URL related to a book dsicussing deciphering mysterious
texts (Frogguy may notice the reference to rongorongo). Cheers, Mark

http://www.jse.com/bookreviews/12-4/fischer.html

From jim@mail.rand.org  Tue Jun 27 01:24:47 2000
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Date: Tue, 27 Jun 2000 05:23:48 +0000
From: Jim Gillogly <jim@acm.org>
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References: <3952102C.A969340@amu.edu.pl> 
				<1000622213328.ZM10090923@fry.research.att.com> <1000624143443.ZM11891292@fry.research.att.com> <39553A19.4FA3F4D8@voynich.nu> <395838BB.1970BC66@nctimes.net>
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Mark Perakh wrote:
> 
> Below is an URL related to a book dsicussing deciphering mysterious
> texts (Frogguy may notice the reference to rongorongo). Cheers, Mark
> 
> http://www.jse.com/bookreviews/12-4/fischer.html

In fact, Frogguy has dissected this guy in detail in other fora.
-- 
	Jim Gillogly
	Hevensday, 4 Afterlithe S.R. 2000, 05:23
	12.19.7.5.18, 5 Edznab 1 Tzec, First Lord of Night

From jim@mail.rand.org  Tue Jun 27 03:17:13 2000
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Message-ID: <395854CB.28AE1522@voynich.nu>
Date: Tue, 27 Jun 2000 07:16:27 +0000
From: Rene Zandbergen <rene@voynich.nu>
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Thanks to Gabriel for his post.

The bit about Miss Nill is interesting...
Did you learn where the biography of Mrs Voynich was published?

I have two items related to the episode:

When Kraus was being considered as the buyer of the VMs, it 
was Miss Nill personally who started sending out letters to
all owners of copies of the VMs to please return them,
since the prospective buyer wanted to buy the MS only under
the condition of obtaining exclusive publication rights of
any fascinating discoveries. Many of the addressed didn't 
actually do this, but just promised that they would not
publish anything or distribute further copies.

Secondly, the 'De Ricci' catalogue of Mss in the USA and Canada,
first issued in 1937 and listed in the references page of my
VMs site was reprinted by 'Kraus reprint corporation' in
1961. This reprint included an alphabetical index of names
(authors, owners) of the MSs. This showed that the only Mss
related to Kircher or Marci known to be in the USA (or 
Canada) was at that time the VMs. This index volume was signed
Anne Nill. I don't know if that means that the index volume
was an addition only available in the reprint. (It would make
it a bit more than a reprint).
In any case, she definitely worked for Kraus at this time.
She may have been working for him already well before
Mrs Voynich's death...

 
FWIW,
      Rene

From jim@mail.rand.org  Tue Jun 27 04:41:19 2000
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From: "Gabriel Landini" <G.Landini@bham.ac.uk>
Organization: The University of Birmingham, UK.
To: voynich@rand.org
Date: Tue, 27 Jun 2000 09:39:14 +0100
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On 27 Jun 2000, at 7:16, Rene Zandbergen wrote:
> The bit about Miss Nill is interesting...
> Did you learn where the biography of Mrs Voynich was published?

According to this person I met, the biographer in the end did not 
want to publish the biography. There were apparently some 
disappointing episodes in Mrs.V that made the biographer give up 
the idea. I am not entirely sure of what that meant, and of course it 
is not fair for me to comment; I am just repeating what I heard.

One think I remember was that Mrs. V used the Voynich name even 
she was not married to W and also that she refused to marry him 
until he got a life insurance (apparently Mr. V had been sick 
(tuberculosis was mentioned) and so he had trouble with insurance 
companies as several refused to insure him).

I am waiting to hear from this person and learn in more detail about 
the fate of the ms. during those years.  

> I have two items related to the episode:
> When Kraus was being considered as the buyer of the VMs, it 
> was Miss Nill personally who started sending out letters to
> all owners of copies of the VMs to please return them,

Do you know when was this?

> In any case, she definitely worked for Kraus at this time.
> She may have been working for him already well before
> Mrs Voynich's death...

Yes, this is the bit is not clear. Mrs. V died in 1960 , and the vms 
was "bought" in 1961 and Ms. Nill worked for K for about 10 years.  
Kraus' book is dated 1978. 
Was Ms. Nill working for K before 1960?


Cheers,

Gabriel



From jim@mail.rand.org  Tue Jun 27 12:44:45 2000
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Date: Tue, 27 Jun 2000 16:46:11 -0700
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Subject: Re: A book that may be of interest
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				<1000622213328.ZM10090923@fry.research.att.com> <1000624143443.ZM11891292@fry.research.att.com> <39553A19.4FA3F4D8@voynich.nu> <395838BB.1970BC66@nctimes.net>
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Mark Perakh wrote:
> 
> Below is an URL related to a book discussing deciphering mysterious
> texts (Frogguy may notice the reference to rongorongo). Cheers, Mark
> 
> http://www.jse.com/bookreviews/12-4/fischer.html

I Ren wrote back, I dissected the fellow -- fancy, a frog
dissecting a fisher! --  but here is a good review of the
book:

http://www.math.leidenuniv.nl/~lipi/archaeology/glyphbreaker.html

Good, and fair. Yes, fair! (The book is *that* bad)

From jim@mail.rand.org  Wed Jun 28 02:54:06 2000
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From: Jorge Stolfi <stolfi@ic.unicamp.br>
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    > [stolfi:] Just curious: could Budek be the "Simon" who lived in
    > Hajek's house before Dee and Kelley, as reported by Fell-Smith:
    > 
    > [Rene:] Remember that Hajek's father was called Simon, and the
    > house was originally his. Although I would not be surprised if
    > there is some potential confusion of persons here.

Ah, that's the most likely explanation. (Presumably Dee didn't
bother to record "Simon"'s relation to Hajek in his diary, and
Fell-Smith did not know Hajek's father's name either.)

    > You (Jorge) may remember that Michal Pober said that the Faust
    > House in Prague, once owned by Kelly, had pharmaceutical or
    > alchemical drawings on the walls. Now I'm beginning to wonder if
    > there is no possible confusion between the Hajek house and the
    > Faust house.

It doesn't seem likely.  Fell-Smith is definitely describing 
Hajek's house, and Kelley was still living with Dee at the
time, (She goes on to tell how Dee bought a keg of wine for 
Mrs. Hajek, which Kelley and one of Laski's men promptly 
got drunk from.  There followed a drunken fight between the two,
complaints by the night watchman, another fight the following 
morning,  which Dee and K's brother had to stop by force, etc..)

All the best,

--stolfi

From jim@mail.rand.org  Tue Jun 27 21:53:02 2000
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Date: Wed, 28 Jun 2000 01:54:51 -0700
From: Jacques Guy <jguy@alphalink.com.au>
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For a while I had been searching my grey cells for
an algorithm capable of distinguishing homonyms
(e.g. "plant" as in "trees and grasses" versus
"plant" as in "industry and factories").

Inspiration came two days ago, and it looks like
there will be very little perspiration. However,
before start developing it, I wonder if I am not
reinventing the wheel (to _my_ knowledge, I am not,
by note the _my_).  The algorithm is just a 
clustering algorithm which allows one point to
belong to more than one cluster at once. 

Now for my question:

Does anyone here know of such an algorithm?

What I have in mind (I have not even written it
down yet) will be very fast. I used to be worried
about overfitting the data, but that is taken care
of now. 

And no, it is not applicable to the VMS. It would be
if we knew where the words begin and end. The
old problem of segmenting continuous text. I had
a few ideas too, but I want the solution to that to
be applicable to bitmaps of texts. A nice problem is:
given a picture of the Phaistos disk, how do you
identify its 45 different signs? (The problem is nice
because the writing is in a spiral)

Back to my thinking cap.

From jim@mail.rand.org  Wed Jun 28 08:28:38 2000
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Message-ID: <3959EF2E.6DF08003@voynich.nu>
Date: Wed, 28 Jun 2000 12:27:27 +0000
From: Rene Zandbergen <rene@voynich.nu>
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Dear all,

Dee, Rudolf II, Kircher, their faces are relatively familiar.
If you ever wondered what Edward Kelly, Jacobus of Tepenec, Wilfrid
and Ethel Voynich and a few others looked like, have a look at:

http://www.voynich.nu/gallery.html

Cheers, Rene

From reeds Wed Jun 28 18:06:43 2000
From: reeds@fry.research.att.com (Jim Reeds)
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Here, without permission, is Landini's report to the Voynich MS
mailing list.

--- Forwarded mail from G.Landini@bham.ac.uk

From: "Gabriel Landini" <G.Landini@bham.ac.uk>
To: voynich@rand.org
Date: Mon, 26 Jun 2000 10:36:16 +0100
Subject: Cambridge meeting
Reply-To: G.Landini@bham.ac.uk

Hi all,
I am just back from a meeting held at Cambridge on the History of 
Cryptography organised by the British Society for the History of 
Mathematics.

I was invited to give a talk on the vms. Given that I do not have any 
cryptology, history or maths background but a Biomedical one, I felt 
a bit uneasy about the (high) level of the audience, but at the same 
time I thought that it would be a good opportunity to get feedback 
and other people interested in the problem.
At the start I used the excuse that in Biology there are lots of 
"uncracked codes"; for instance we do not know the meaning (if 
any) of introns in DNA which make about 90% of the total. That 
seemed to do the trick and (I think) and the talk went well.

There were some very interesting questions and info exchanged at 
question time and during the lunch hour.

Judith Field (the organiser, one of the most amazing and interesting 
persons I met) and who is an expert in Kepler, informed that Rudolf 
was well known for not paying his bills (it was not put exactly like 
that) and it was surprising that he would have paid 600 ducats for a 
book in code.

Also mentioned that the humanist hand arrived at slightly different 
times in parts of Europe. Unfortunately I did not followed it up, but I 
got the idea that it was meant to be more like a "wave" rather than 
a specific period bracket.

A *very* interesting bit of information (and that will be sent to me by 
email later) was from somebody who knows (or knew well) the 
biographer of Mrs. Voynich. The conversation was about the selling 
of the ms. to HP Kraus. 
Apparently, Ms. Nill (Mrs. Voynich companion) did not have good 
financial situation and Mrs. Voynich had an agreement to leave the 
vms to pay for Ms. Nill's retirement.
Remember that Strong asked for copies of the ms. and these were 
rejected with no apparent reason? 
Perhaps if cracked, the ms would loose value and so would Ms. 
Nill's little fortune, so I guess that this is a possible reason for the 
ms. being taken out of circulation.

The most interesting part was that when Ms. Nill moved to work HP 
Kraus, and (suspense music in crescendo) the ms. was deposited 
in Kraus' safe. This person mentioned that this happened just after 
Mrs. V death, but Kraus says that Ms. Nill work for about 10 years 
for him.

Mrs. Nill died soon afterwards (about 1 year after Mrs. V. -- I haven't 
checked, all this should be confirmed) and so the claim is that the 
manuscript was not "bought" by Kraus, it was "acquired".
This person told me that there were some relatives of Ms. Nill who 
never saw a penny from the sale of the Ms. (!)

However this is quite a statement. I just checked D'Imperio's book 
and there is even a date for the sale: 12 July 1961. I also checked 
Kraus' chapter in "A rare book saga" and he says he bought it from 
Ms. Nill and the price he paid ($24000 or so).
Then it goes saying that he wanted to sell it for $160000 and Ms Nill 
would get half of the profit over the price he paid for it. When did 
Ms. Nill die?

As I said before, this person will "look into his files" and e-mail me 
whatever he finds.

Some other comment/questions were about carbon dating and 
again J. Field, suggested to look into the maps used for the 
astrolabes (sp?) and compare them to the star maps in the vms.
My feeling is that the diagrams in the vms are very low tech 
compared to real navigation maps, but we should look into those as 
well.

Cheers,

Gabriel




---End of forwarded mail from G.Landini@bham.ac.uk

-- 
Jim Reeds, AT&T Labs - Research
Shannon Laboratory, Room C229, Building 103
180 Park Avenue, Florham Park, NJ 07932-0971, USA

reeds@research.att.com, phone: +1 973 360 8414, fax: +1 973 360 8178

From jim@mail.rand.org  Wed Jun 28 18:18:16 2000
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Gabriel wrote earlier, after his Cambridge meeting:

> [...] J. Field, suggested to look into the maps used for the
> astrolabes (sp?) and compare them to the star maps in the vms.
> My feeling is that the diagrams in the vms are very low tech
> compared to real navigation maps, but we should look into those as
> well.

There are two illustrations in the VMs which migh be compared to
the star layout on astrolabes. Both contain scattered labelled 
stars in a circular araa. A positive match would mean that
the stars on one (or both) of these pages are actually depictions
of known (and named) stars. It is not all that unlikely, but
my first reaction is that someone should have found this before.
(Not a very good argument, though)

Cheers, Rene

