@@00-HEADER # Last edited on 2026-02-05 20:31:17 by stolfi # -*- coding: iso-latin-1 -*- # á ã ¡ Hope this gets Emacs to read as latin-1 # Verbal descriptions of all pages. # # Includes comments from: # (unmarked) 2025-07-15 21:15:37 "desc25e1-52.txt" # "T1": 2025-07-15 21:58:02 "../074/text25e1-53.evt" # "T2": 2025-07-15 21:38:49 "../076/starps-U.evt" # "T3": 2025-07-15 21:46:15 "../076/SAVE/2025-07-15-200047/starps-U.eva" ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ @@A00todo TO DO ??? Replace "circle {N}" by "C{N}" or "c:{N}". ??? Specify which details were restored in dark brown ink. ??? Update all 16e6 unit numbers {...} to current numbering. ??? Merge the two or three "Descriptions" of each page into one. ??? Check all "Layout" comments, make sure that they are uniform. ??? In the "Layout" section, distinguish "parags" from "text blocks"? ??? Mark somehow comments that refer to a specific locus order. ??? Uniformize references to images (MLI98, BL2004, BL2014, etc.). ??? Provide fractional line counts for all parags. ??? Standardize the definitions of "edge", "margin", "v-line", etc. ??? Use the notation "spanning (0.2--0.8,0.6--1.0) WE-NS". ??? Check whether parag-title splits in comments match the EVMT trans. ??? Remove "Coloring" from the "Attributes" section. ??? Note on each page the amount of anomalous dark ink and other signs of re-stroking or corrections. ??? Keep only one copy of each description item, in text20e1 or comm20e1. ??? Describe the file format and special conventions, e.g. <%>, line ends, etc.. ??? Extract from "loci-evmt16e6-ivtff.tbl" a list of old units for each page with the new line numbers. ??? Insert the above numbers in each page. ??? Check Rene's page-per-page website. ??? Restore the numeric weirdo codes from "&NNN" (no ";") to "&NNN;" ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ @@A01glossary Glossary: "bifolio": a connected piece of parchment. "binding fold": the fold across a bifolio where it is bound to the spine of the book. "folio": each of the two parts of a bifolio separated by the binding fold. "flap": each part of a bifolio limited by a physical edge of the parchment or by a fold, whether the binding fold or not. "panel": each side of a flap. "recto": usually, the side of a flap that comes first in book reading order. However there may be exceptions for logical or historical reasons. "verso": the side of a flap opposite to the recto side. "logical page": one or more panels that are used as if they were a single page, with text and/or figures spanning across the folds that separate those panels. "quire": a set of bifolios that are folded and nested into each other, like a booklet, and bound together in the book. "nymph": a small human figure, naked or clothed, female with only one or two exceptions. They are almost all seen frolicking in the ponds of the "bio" section, and holding stars in the "zod" section. There is one on page f116v. The term does not include the faces of sun/moon/moons/planets in the "cos" section, the faces in the plants of "hea", "heb", and "pha" sections, or the figures in "zod" representing the signs of the Zodiac. "mechanical line": a smooth and precise straight line, suggesting that it was drawn with a ruler. May show short and somewhat wider "tics" at the ends, possibly drawn before the line itself. "mechanical circle": a smooth and precise circle, suggesting that it was drawn with a compass or tracing around a round template. Often shows deviations from circularity suggesting that the compass or template shifted while it was being drawn. "compass pinprick": the pinhole created on the parchment by the pivot arm of the compass. "rail": an imaginary line that bounds the lines of a left- or right- justified paragraph. This name is used instead of the usual term "margin" because the latter is reserved for the area of a panel between the main text and/or figure and the edges (physical or folded) of the panel. "standard star": a star hand-drawn as a non-crossing polygonal outline with several (usually 6 to 8) rays, each with two straight sides; the length of each ray being 3-5 times its width at the base. The star may have a "tail" which is a sinuous line in the text in that connects to the tip of a ray or to the corner between two rays. It may also have a "core" which is a small circle nested at the center, not touching the star outline; or just a "dot" at the center, both drawn with the text ink. Stars are usually crudely painted with a "splot", a roundish spot of paint applied at the center, possibly extending to fill part of the rays and some of the space between them. If the star has a core, the splot may fill it, or leave it unpainted, or painted with another color. Stars with tails have been conjectured to be flowers. "starlet": a six-pointed asterisk, each drawn as three crossing strokes "notched square": a decorative device used as delimiter in several bands between two close circles. It consists of a square that usually spans the width of the band, with four short tics or notches growing inwards from the sides (the "upright" variant) or from the corners (the "skew" variant). A notched square may also be "dotted" (containing extra dots) and/or "braced" (with the sides enhances by extra radial strokes or other decorative bands). "grushed": said of liquid paint that is applied very crudely to a figure with a brush, leaving an unpainted margin before the outline, or overstepping it. "grubbed": said of paint that is applied very crudely to a figure in a way that suggests rubbing with a solid color pencil crayon rather than liquid brush; namely, leaving a rough dusting of micro spots of color, often in streaks, rather than than a solid cover. It may be the result of brushing with a nearly dry or bad quality brush. "yel": a transparent light yellow paint used throughout the manuscript, for instance on nymph hair and standard stars. "flat on view": of a leaf of flower, means that it is drawn as if its main plane is parallel to the page, perpendicular to the line of sight of the reader. For a leaf, its main plane is the leaf's surface. For a flower, it is the plane perpendicular to the flower's stalk and axis of symmetry. "profile view": of a flower, means that it is drawn as if its axis of symmetry is parallel to the page. "normal ink": the light brown ink used in the majority of the text and figure outlines of the manuscript. Distinguished from "darker brown ink" apparently used to restore some glyphs or figure details, and "red ink" used in f67r2. "weight" of a pen stroke: combination of width and darkness. "medium" stroke weight: the most common stroke weight in the neighborhood. "heavy" stroke: darker and/or wider than medium-weight strokes. "broadstroke": the widest pen strokes used in writing text, such as the SW section of @o, @a, @e, @s, @y, @d. "mousetail tendril": on a figure, an appendage that is long, narrow, smooth, straight or moderately curved, whose outline is just two almost parallel strokes, that tapers gradually to a sharp point. "mousetail stroke": on a glyph, a stroke that is straight or moderately curved, that tapers gradually to a sharp point. The tails of well-formed @y, @l, @m, and @g, as well as the plumes of @r, @s, @n should be mousetail strokes. The term may also be used for strokes on figures. "o-height": the height of an EVA @o, which is the distance between the baseline and the topline. "nib width": the width of broadstrokes. "plume" on a glyph: a stroke that rises from the top of the body of @r or @s, from the ligature of @{Sh}, and from the bottom of the body of @n, @u, @u, @b. Normally it starts going NE, then curves back to N, W, and possibly SW, while staying above the topline. On @{Sh} it may be detached from the ligature, or may start below it. Normally it is thinner than the broadstrokes and tapers out to a mousetail stroke at the end. "tail" on a glyph: the right stroke of @y, @l, @m, and @g. On @y and @l, normally it starts going E, then S, then crosses the baseline, mostly straight (on @l) or curving slightly (on @y), ending towards SSW or SW. On @m and @g, it makes a small CCW loop E-N-W-S above the topline before descending below the baseline and ending like that of @y. On @l it crosses the left (@i) stroke of the glyph; on the other three, it may or may not touch the bottom of the left @e stroke. Normally it is thinner than the broadstrokes, and tapers out at the end to a mousetail stroke. "foot" of a glyph: for a gallows (@t, @k, @p, @f, @w, @z), a short horz stroke that continues either of its legs, at the bottom, in the E direction, after a sharp angle. For an @a, the lower end of the right (@i) stroke, when it extends beyond the end of the left (@e) stroke. "platform slash": the horizontal slash across the legs of gallows glyphs @K, @T, @F, or @P, (or @Z or @W in the 'U' transcription), that normally occur in ligatures like @{CTh}, @{IKh} etc. "slashed gallows": a gallows glyph with a platform slash, namely @K, @T, @F, or @P (or @Z or @W in the 'U' transcription). "unslashed gallows": a a gallows glyph *without* a platform slash, namely @k, @t, @f, or @p (or @z or @w in the 'U' transcription), but not @K, @T, @F, @P, @Z, or @W. "puff": a one-leg gallows, like @p, @P, @f, or @F (or @w, @W, @z, or @Z in the 'U' transcription). "puffed line": a text line that contains one or more puffs. "head" of a paragraph: the first line. "tail" of a paragraph: the last line. "long line": in a paragraph, a line that extends all the way to the right rail, or beyond it. "short line": in a paragraph, a line (often the tail one) that ends to the left of the right rail. This term may be subjective if the shortfall is only a couple of glyphs wide. "faint" stroke: lighter in color than medium-weight ones, possibly with a medial gap and/or "porous" coverage as if the pen was almost out of ink. "recharging": the act of dipping the pen in the inkwell, and the consequent sudden increase in the weight of the strokes. "normal ink flow": the pattern of stroke weight expected from a Scribe writing running text. Namely, heavy strokes for a couple of words after recharging the pen, then medium strokes for a dozen words or so, them progressively fainter strokes for a few words; at which point the Scribe recharges and the pattern repeats. "worm": a bookworm, moth, roach, or any other animal that created wormholes, wormfurrows, or wormscrapes. "wormhole": a hole through the parchment, typically ~0.5 to ~2.0 mm wide, round or elongated in a sausage-like shape, made by a worm. "wormfurrow": a channel dug by a worm on the surface of the parchment, typically ~0.5 to ~2.0 mm mm wide and arbitrarily long, typically starting an ending on a wormhole on the same flap or on the adjacent flap. "wormscrape": an area or arbitrary size and shape where the surface of the parchment was chewed away by a worm, without eating completely through it. "malformed" glyph: a glyph that is significantly deformed from its "ideal" shape, possibly to the point of being impossible to identify. "quillo": an accidental action of the original Scribe that resulted in malformation of a glyph or other detail, such as turning a @c or @o into a round black dot, failing to connect strokes that should be connected, or connecting them in the wrong way, adding spurious serifs and kinks, etc. Includes malformations that turn the glyph into a different glyph. Like a typo, but with a quill pen... "backtraced": a glyph or a group of a few consecutive glyphs, or part thereof, which is drawn in apparently normal ink but with strokes which are noticeably heavier than those of preceding *and succeeding* glyphs, with abrupt transitions of weight. Also said of parts of figure outlines with similar stroke weight pattern. Conjectured to be due to the Scribe writing past that spot, re-inking the pen, then going back to that spot to add those details, or to embolden them, or to correct their shape (e.g. to turn an @s that came out as looking like @r into a more definite @s). "restored": a glyph of figure, or part thereof, that appears to have been drawn once in normal ink and then carefully re-drawn by someone other than the original Scribe. Often distinguishable from backtracing by clues such as obvious ignorance of the contents and of the alphabet, or evidence (like underlying staining or abrasion of the parchment) that it happened many years or centuries after the book was written. "washed" stroke: unnaturally lighter than others in the same region, not as if the pen was running out of ink but as if some of the ink of the finished text had later been dissolved by the liquid from a stain and then removed as the liquid was wiped off. "frushed" stroke: washed but with with blurry halo, as if the dissolved ink had spread out through porous parchment. "whitegrain": tiny (~0.05-0.4 mm) white roundish spots within the pen strokes, due either to cavities or hydrophobic spots on the parchment where the ink did not stick, or to bubbles or saliences where the ink rubbed off over the centuries. Or maybe to worms nibbling away bits of the ink, but only at certain points. "offsetted": of a stain that looks like it was printed by contact with some other soiled object or sheet, as opposed to a drip of liquid or semi-liquid stuff spilled directly in the spot. Agents: "Author": decided to write the book, chose the topics and sources, devised the script, composed the text, sketched the figures. "Scribe": the person who actually wrote on parchment the original version of the text and drew the outlines of the figures, in normal ink. "Painter": whoever applied the paints to the manuscript. There may have been two, possibly acting on separate epochs: the "Light Painter" who applied watercolor-like light transparent yellow (yel) and green, and the "Dark Painter" who applied semi-transparent or opaque tempera-like colors. "Restorer": the person who restored or added some details in the dark brown ink (or, on f67r2, in red ink). There may have been two or more of them, on separate occasions, with different ink colors, nib widths, or skills. "Beautician": Whoever restored the lips of nymphs in red and added sprinkles of red to their cheeks. "Month Labeler": the person who wrote the month names in the Zodiac section; "Quire Numberer": whoever wrote the quire numbers at bottom right of some pages. "Folio Numberer": whoever wrote the folio numbers at top right of some pages. Seems to have been distinct from and later than the Quire Numberer, since there are inconsistencies between the two numberings: the folio numbers match the current binding state, the quire numbers do not. See the discussion of quire 9 below. "Binder": Whoever bound or re-bound the book in its present state. May have been the same as the Folio Numberer, and there may have been two or more as the book seems to have been re-bound at least once. Abbreviations: "altern" = "alternate" "alternly" = alternately" "approx" = "approximate" "approxly" = "approximately" "bln" = "blank line" "CCW" = "counterclockwise" "CW" = "clockwise" "deco" = "decorative" or "decoration" "diam" = "diameter" "discd" = "disconnected" "horz" = "horizontal" "horzly" = "horizontally" "lig" = "ligature" "ligd" = "ligated". "mfd" = "malformed". "nibwd" = "nib width" "oht" = "o-height" "parch" = "parchment" "perp" = "perpendicular" "perply" = "perpendicularly" "platf" = "platform" "probly" = "probably" "puffed line" = a text line with one or more puffs. "semitrans" = semi-transparent. "signf" = significant "signifly" = significantly "trans" = "transcription"; (of color) transparent. "triang" = triangle or triangular. "vert" = "vertical" "vertly" = "vertically" "wo" = "without" Notations: Folios are numbered "f1", "f2", ..., "f116" based on the numbers written by the Folio Numberer, usually on the top right corner of one of the panels. Bifolios are designated by the numbers of their two folios, e.g. "f2+f7". Flaps are designated by folio number and a digit suffix, like "f72.2". In folios that are a single horz row of flaps, the suffix is usually 1 for the one adjacent to the binding fold, and increases as one moves away from it. The flap numbering on the the complex "Nine-Rosette" bifolio is special and explained in the "Quire structure" section below. Panels are indicated by the flap number with the "." replaced by "r" for the recto side and "v" for the verso side. A logical page is designated by the number of one of its panels. Usually the leftmost one, not considering half-width panels. Note that two flaps may belong to the same logical page on one side of a folio but to distinct pages on the other side. Again, the page numbering on the the complex "Nine-Rosette" bifolio is special and explained in the "Quire structure" section below. "N", "S", "E", "W", "NE", "SE", "NW", "SW": cardinal directions North, South, etc. relative to a panel (or a page). These terms assume that North is towards top of the panel and West is toward its left edge, when the book is open at that place and fold-outs are unfolded as needed so that the panel in question is visible. "T", "B", "L", "R": directions relative to the reading orientation of a text block or text line, respectively top, bottom, left, and right. So a running text line always reads L to R, even when updown or in a text ring; and the parags of a block or the lines of a parag are always read T to B. "flipped": mirrored either in the vertical direction ("vert", "TB", "NS") or in the horizontal direction ("horz", "LR", "EW", "WE"). "03:30" and other hours notation: directions as in a 12-hour clock, assuming that "12:00" (or "00.00") is North (towards the top edge of the panel or page) and "03:00" is East (towards the right edge). "0.7 WE": approx horz position of something relative to the vertical edges of a panel or logical page. Namely 0.7 of the way from the West edge to the East edge. Same for any other fractional number. "0.7 NS": approx vertical position of something relative to the horizontal edges of a panel or logical page. Namely 0.7 of the way from the North edge to the South edge edge. Same for any other fractional number. "(0.3,0.7) WE-NS": short for "0.3 WE and 0.7 NS". "0.7 TB": approx vertical position of something in a text block or text line, relative to the top ot the topmost line and bottom of bottom-most baseline of that block; namely 0.7 of the way from the former to the latter Same for any other fractional number. "0.7 LR: approx position of something in a text block, relative to the left and right rails; or in an isolated text line, relative to its left and right ends. Namely 0.7 of the way from the left limit to the right limit. Same for any other fractional number. In the description of a paragraph: "L-jus": of a parag, means that every one of its lines starts at the left rail of the parag. Of a title, means that it starts at the left rail of the enclosing text block. "R-jus": of a parag, means that every one of its lines ends at the right rail of the parag; except for the tail line, that may stop short of that rail. Of a title, means that it ends at the right rail of the enclosing text block. "T-jus", "B-jus": means that the top line of a parag is imaginary "L" (left) or "R" (right) rails of the parag. However, for "R-jus.", the last line of the parag may stop short of this margin line. "L-fig", "R-fig": of a parag or title, means that the "L" (left) or "R" (right) ends of its lines are flush against some figure or diagram, with at most a few inter-word spaces worth of space. "L-rag", "R-rag": of a parag or title, means that the "L" (left) or "R" (right) ends of the lines is are not vertically aligned. "3.7 lines": means that the parag has 3 whole lines, and an incomplete line that stops at 0.7 of the way from the parag's ideal left boundary to its ideal right boundary, as specified by "L-jus", "R-fig", etc. Same for any other fractional number. "sep 2/3/1 blns": the paragraphs just mentioned are separated by 2, 3, and 1 blank lines. Same for other lists of numbers. Voynichese text embedded in comments (#-comments, inline comments "", or this file) is denoted as "@{CH}" where {CH} is a single EVA encoding character [a-zA-Z?] or a ligature in braces like "{CTh}"; or as "@'{TX}'" where {TX} is a fragment of EVA-encoded text, possibly including ligatures "{...}", weirdo codes "&{NNN}", invalid chars "?", punctuation [-.,«=»], etc. In description of titles and incomplete lines before or after paragraphs: "ctrd": centered between the normal paragraph boundaries. In lists of numbered concentric circles, text rings, figure bands: "O": outside. "I": inside. "OI": from outer to inner. "IO": from inner to outer. In descriptions of figures: Unless stated otherwise, dimensions in mm on the descriptions of most figures, including Herbal and Pharma, are measured on the drawings (actually, on images of the VMS pages, scaled assuming the book height to be 23.5 cm). The actual dimensions of the objects depicted by the Scribe are generally unknown, and may be only a fraction of those given, or many times bigger. The exceptions are on figures that include nymphs or recognizable animals, which allow rough estimation of the actual dimensions of the objects associated with them (such as hats or tubs). In non-Voynichese text: Glyph readings and/or graphical descriptions provided by the original transcribers were mapped to Roman letters by J. Stolfi, based on their similarity to late medieval letter forms --- especially those of a German alphabet from the 1400's posted to the vms-list by Rene Zandbergen. Inline comments "" generally refer to the PRECEDING glyph or word, except for the "..." construct or when the comment says otherwise. In inline comments "" "R" means "restored" and "B" means "backtraced". "R|B" means "restored or backtraced" "Rb" means "begin restored part" and "Re" "end restored part". "M" means malformed. "F" means faint or effaced. "T" means truncated, e.g. of a tail or plume. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ @@include quir25e1.txt ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ @@f1r # LAST REVISED: ??? IDENTIFICATION * Nickname: "First page" * Page: f1r = AA/n001 (Rene) = p001 (Stolfi) * Folio: f1 * Panels: f1r * Bifolio: bA1 = f1+f8 * Quire: A (Rene) = I (Beinecke) Page 1 of the British Library photocopies. Levitov figure 17, page 93. ATTRIBUTES * Language: A (Currier) * Hand: 1 (Currier) * Subsets: T (Rene), unk (Stolfi) * Subject: unknown (text only). * FirstWord: @'za{Ch}ys' (or @'fa{Ch}is' ignoring the hook). * Folio number: "1" on NE corner. * IsolatedLetters: yes. DESCRIPTION Page shape and state: Logical page f1r consists of panel f1r alone. On BL2014, the panel is 3510 pixels tall. Assuming that is ~235 mm, the panel is ~160 mm wide through most of its height, and ~158 mm wide near the bottom edge (however it is may not have been flattened out when imaged). Page layout: The text on page f1r includes four parags, LR-jus, spanning 0.1--0.8 NS, sep 2/3/3 blns. Rails at ~0.09 and ~0.8 WE. * Parag P1 (4.6 lines, 1-5) from ~0.09 NS. * Parag P2 (2.4 lines, 7-9) from 0.25 NS; line 1 indented ~15 mm. * Parag P3 (9.4 lines, 11-20) from 0.45 NS; line 1 indented ~10 mm. * Parag P4 (5.5 lines, 22-27) from 0.70 NS. Each parag is followed by a short right-justified title (T1,T2,T3,T4, lines 6, 10, 21, and 28) which is R-jus but not L-jus. Each title is either aligned with the tail of the preceding parag, or slightly lower than it. There are three large weirdos outlined with brown, painted red: * Big weirdo 1 (&254) is ~10 mm wide and ~8 mm tall. It lies in the margin, just beyond the end of line 1 and resting a bit below its baseline. * Big weirdo 2 (&252) is ~12 mm wide and ~15 mm tall. It is placed as ornated initial of parag P2, resting a bit below the baseline of indented lines 7, extending ~5 mm west of the left rail. * Big weirdo 3 (&253) is ~20 mm wide and ~10 mm tall. It is placed as ornated initial of parag P3, resting a bit below the baseline of indented lines 11, extending ~4 mm west of the left rail. There are three columns of partly erased "key-like" letter sequences in the right margin. There is almost-erased Roman cursive text in the (broad) bottom margin. Voynichese handwriting: The handwriting on f1r is fairly clean and even, mostly with horz and straight lines and evenly spaced well-formed glyphs. Broadstrokes are ~0.7 mm wide, although the first glyph of line 1 has a very thin leg (~0.4 mm) and many glyphs seem to have been restored. Stroke ends are square at 45° with sharp corners or with a small (~0.2 mm) NE serif. The small glyphs are a bit compressed vertically (oht ~1.5 mm). The ink is brown on heavy strokes and ocher on medium ones, with whitegrain everywhere. Glyphs in general are well-formed and distinct. Glyphs @a and @o are quite distinct. Plume shapes on @r, @s, and @{Sh} etc are quite variable, even withing the same word. Several @y glyphs have rather short tails, to the point that some may have been transcribed as @a, or vice-versa (this too may be a consequence of restoring). Glyphs @r and @s are quite distinct overall, but for one or two ambiguous cases. There are puffs and tall gallows on lead lines. Puff initials on P1 and P4, whereas the big red weirdos &252 and &253 take the place of the first glyph or first word of P2 and P3. Internal puffs in P1 (@p and @f in line 5), P2 (@z in line 9), P3 (2×@p in line 13, @w, @p, @p each in lines 17, 18, 19), and P4 (@z in line 24). The word @'kair' on line 2 has smaller oht than all words around it, and looks like it was written after line 3. The baseline of this line has sudden jump N by more than 1 mm just before this word, and yet this word still touches the top of the @k in @'ykaiin' on line 3. The baseline drops by ~0.5 mm after this word. Quillos and weird glyphs: On f1r, the Scribe often wrote the @a glyphs open at bottom. The first glyph on the page is an unslashed @z (hooked @f) gallows whose hook turns 270°, W-S-E-N, instead of the usual 180°. The three "big red weirdos" are very unlike normal Voynichese letters. Their shape emulates bold brush strokes, with flaring strokes and "swallowtail" serifs. However all three glyphs are actually outlined with pen in the normal ink and carefully filled-in with opaque red paint. The big red weirdo on line 7 (&252, ~18 mm wide and ~10 mm tall) is like a V with underbar; or a K on its side; or the Chinese character for "great", upside down, with stroke 2 not protruding. The big red weirdo on line 11 (&253, ~11 by ~15 mm) is like an upside down "pi", somewhat like the one above it, but with a squiggle extending up from between the two horns. The big red weirdo at the top right corner of the page (&254, ~10 by ~10 mm, transcribed at the end of line 1), is partly erased or painted with a lighter red than the other two. It looks like "F" with two tails curving out and up, one extending from the leg of the "F" and the other starting at the middle if the lower arm; all this updown. It has been described also as the letter "a" with a "b" beneath it. There seems to be a small faint square dot on the baseline of line 1, just after @'ytaiiin'. The @P in @'{CPh}o' at start of line 22 is extra tall and wide, but otherwise normal. Backtracing: There are several instances of apparent backtracing (by the Scribe himself) on page f1r. Some examples are seen at the end of line 1 (@o in @'{Sh}ol'), on line 2 (the stem only of the @r in @'{Sh}ar' and the left side of the @C in @'{CTh}ar', on line 7 (first stroke of @'Sy' and @'{CWh}oy', the @o in @'{Sh}ol', etc.), on line 11 (first stroke of @'{CWh}esaiin') on line 27 (the last three @o glyphs), and many more. A fine example of backtracing is on line 15, where the original faint strokes of the almost-dry pen in @'daiin.{Sh}{CKh}ey' are visible under the backtraced @'iin.{Sh}' and @y. Another interesting example is the backtraced stem of the @r, also on line 15, whose still-fresh ink was picked up by the pen when drawing the loop of the @k just below, and dragged a short distance to the SW. The first word on page f1r: The 15 most common words in page f1r: # 8.5 dain # 4 {Sh}ol # 3 {Sh}ody # 7 daiin # 3.25 or # 2.5 dar # 7 {Ch}ol # 3 {CTh}ar # 2.5 kaiin # 5.25 y # 3 {CTh}y # 2.5 {Sh}o # 4.75 o # 3 {Sh}ey # 2 dal LATER INTERVENTIONS Three-column table: Within the right margin area of f1r there seem to be three columns of letters ("key like sequences"). It is usually read as a three-column table, where the the middle entry in each row is Voynichese, and the other two seem to be letters of the Roman alphabet in lower case italic hand. The table starts at the end of the second line of the paragraph at its left, and it is not well aligned with the lines of the Voynichese paragraphs and titles. The table is very faint. The three columns appear to be the Roman alphabet, some Voynichese glyphs, and again the Roman alphabet shifted up by one position. In the first column of the table one can clearly read "a", "b", "c", ... "f", "h", "o", ... "r", "u", "v", "y", "z". The presence other letters (like "j", "w") is disputed. Fewer entries can be read in the third column. In the middle column only a few entries can be read,like EVA @d next to Roman "a", @r next to "c", @g next to "y", @y below "h" and one of the gallows letters somewhere near the "q", "r", "s". ??? Check recent transcriptions. Other extemporaneous writing: In the broad margin at bottom of page f1r there is a line of non-Voynich text, which is more legible after contrast enhancement of the images. Rene claims that, below that line, there is also a "W" in the left margin and what looks like two "7"s near the middle. There may be faint unreadable text in the margin at the very top of the page, apparently in cursive handwriting. Stains and wear: Page f1r generally has a worn and dirty look. Several glyphs have become faint, almost invisible from wear. Like the two word-final @y on line 1, the first word @'y{Sh}ey' on line 8, and the next @{Sh}, and the final @'{Ch}al' on line 15. Bleedthrough of the green paint on the leaves of page f1v (but not the yellow paint) created a background of light green stains on this page. There are two brownish stains ~7 mm wide, with "fractal" edges and a slight pinkish hue, spanning lines 7-9 of P2 and the title T2, at ~(0.72,0.30) WE-NS. They have faint round cores with sharp edges, of a very slightly darker color and ~3 mm wide. Some of the writing inside those stains seem to have been dissolved. The ink of an @o in T2 may have been smeared to SW. Several smaller stains (~2-5 mm wide) with sly fuzzy edges, some of them possibly with the same fluid as the two above, occur on the hook of the initial @w of P1 (line 1), above an @y on that line, ~0.3 WE, on the plume of an @s on line 9, between P2 and P3 at ~0.5 WE, on top of an @'ai' on line 14, ~0.75 WE, on an @n on line 16, ~0.25 WE, between lines 17 and 18 at ~0.20 WE, under an @a and over an @'ii' on line 21 and above an @o on line 22, all three at ~0.8 WE. There is an irregular offsetted smudge over @'ok' on line 25, ~0.6 WE, with a slightly more reddish tinge. There is an elongated stain, ~2 mm wide and ~7 mm tall, with sharp but fractal edges, spanning lines 12 and 13 of P3, at ~0.6 WE. Its color is very similar to that of normal ink. There is a small round very dark stain, ~1 mm wide, on the baseline of line 16, at ~(0.45,0.53) WE-NS. It lies within a green leaf of the plant on f1v. The glyph above this stain may have been an @y with short tail in which case the stain destroyed the tail. But is was probly an @o anyway. In the whole bottom, top, and right margins the parch is stained with various shades and hues of light brown, as if liquid had been spilled or rubbed over it. Writing that falls within the stained area, such as the initial @z gallows and the three-column table, is substantially faded. More details in those areas are visible in older UV/IR photographs, especially with modern image enhancement, than in the modern scans available at the Beinecke site as of 2025. This general staining of the right margin may have erased one or two glyphs at the end of lines 13-15. On line 14, it even partly erased a @d that had been restored. Holes and scrapes: There are several wormholes and wormscrapes over the text at the left margin of page f1r. In particular, a worm apparently scraped the surface of the parch in a large down-pointing triang area, ~20 by ~65 mm, spanning from near the top edge at ~0.6 WE down to line 8. Within that area many glyphs have been damaged, and some were lost. In particular, on line 7, the word before @'{CZh}oaiin' completely lost maybe 2 glyphs. The worm also ate part of words near the end of lines 13, 14, and 15, rendering unreadable a glyph or two on line 13, after @'{CTHh}y'. The worm also scraped over several glyphs at the beginning on the left edge of P4, lines 22-27. Some are hard to guess. The first glyph on line 4 is a @d partly obscured by a hole that made it look like an &136. Restoring: A probable instance of restoring (rather than backtracing) on f1r is the @o of the word @'d{Ch}eo' at the start of line 26. The restoring clearly happened after the original glyph (which may or may not have been an @o) was chewed away by the worm. This shows that the restoring happened long after the book was written. The word on line 1 before @'y.kor' was badly damaged by the worm. It was partly restored but apparently incorrectly. The plumes may not have been there originally. The @h of @{CTh} was turned into an @a, and what now reads @'res' may have been @'s{Ch}' or @'e{Ch}' or who knows. Some @y and @l glyphs apparently had rather long tails, but either were very faint or were erased, and the the glyph was backtraced with a very short or almost non-existent tail. ??? Clarify which are quillos and which are bad restoring: Line 2: @C of @'{Ch}kaiin' is like italic "L". Line 2: @C of second @'{CTh}ar' is crossed by the platf slash. Line 3: @C of @'{CTh}es' is almost an @i. Line 4: @r of @'oteor' has extra stroke in plume. Line 4: @r after @'oteor' is squashed. Line 4: @'{CT}a' of @'{CT}ar' maybe @{CTa} with lost lig. Line 4: @a in @'{CT}ar' is open at bottom. Line 5: @a in @'{CFh}aiin' is open at bottom. Line 7: &410 = @C lig to top of @y with plume on the lig. Line 7: @'oy' is a bit uncertain, was partly worn off. Line 8: @'ok,{Sh}o' the lig on @{Sh} goes only half-way, plume discd. Line 8: @'otairin' body of @r backtraced, small plume; probly should be @i. Line 14: @'oiin' the @o may be @a. Line 15: @e in @'{CK}eo' may be @h wo the lig; then word would be @'{CKh}o' Line 17: @'dydyd' had long tails, backtraced with stubby @y tails. Line 17: @l in @'w{Sh}ol' had very long tail, backtraced to very short. Line 17: @'IT&411y' the &411 was probly @H. Line 18: @y in @'{CPh}ealy' had very long tail, backtraced to almost none. Line 19: @? after @'{Ch}ey' may be @r or @s with tiny boy that was crossed out. line 19: lig of @C in @'dao{Ct}y' touches leg of @t wo crossing. Line 19: @y in @'dao{Ct}y' had very long tail, backtraced to almost none. Line 22: @P in @'{CPh}o' has only half a hook. Line 23: @o in @'{Ch}y.o.kaiin' was partly restored after worm ate NW part. Line 23: @o in @'{Sh}oaiin' was backtraced or restored with a small horn. Line 24: @z in @'zar' has a small foot, bigger than a serif. Line 25: @n in @'k,o,kaiin' has tiny body an kinky plume. Line 26: @O in @'{KOSHh}y' became black dot when restored. INTERPRETATIONS The layout of page f1r suggests that the four paragraphs are quotes or endorsements, and the "titles" below each is the name of the quoted author. Denis Mardle [10 Feb 97] suggested they may describe the four parts of the book. Rayman Maleki [20 Nov 1997] thinks that each paragraph paragraphs may have been added at a different time. The placement of the three-column table suggests that it was added after the main text was written. The same conjecture has been made about the big red weirdo in the top right corner. It has been conjectured that it was added by Marci [???]. The brown staining of the parch and the effacing of the text in the bottom, right, and top margins was reportedly caused by Voynich, when he applied chemicals to the area in an attempt to bring out invisible text. The faint scribbling at the top may be just an artifact of this staining. However, Brumbaugh claimed that there was a date in the upper right corner of f1r before it was obliterated by the application of chemicals (intended to reveal faded writing). The text in the bottom margin is generally believed to be in Roman cursive script, and as such it has been read as the Czech name of Jacobus Sinapius of Tepenecz, specifically "Jacobj a Tepenece". The two "7"s seen by Rene would lie below the "en" of the latter. The handwriting has been reported to match his signature in some other document [f1r.3]. The signature in the bottom margin was identified by Voynich as that of Jacobus de Tepenecz, as reported by Mary D'Imperio. Gabriel [18 Sep 1997] suggests that the signature may have been written with invisible ink. He says that some bits of the signature are visible in contrast-enhanced scans of that page (if one is told where to look). The EVA @r claimed to be next to "c" in the three-column table is rather misshapen. Also the synchronization of the three columns seems rather imperfect. D'Imperio says that the "weirdo" characters EVA &252/&253 are in bright red ink; confirmed by Glen Claston [20 Feb 1998] and Jim Reeds [03 Mar 1998]. Rene [28 Jul 1997] found a medieval astrological diagram [f1r.1], in Greek, where the weirdo EVA &252 is used as a symbol for Aries, which is "kruos" or "kryos" in Greek. He conjectures that EVA &253 may be a variation of the same. But he cautions that the author may have just borrowed the symbol for its looks. The outline of the top weirdo &252 has a peculiar "tail" curving to the left and down at the bottom left corner of its base. Could there be some text under the red paint? Rene [1 Feb 1999] thinks that &253 resembles the old Greek Virgo symbol drawn on its side, but he is not sure. Stolfi suggested [07 Aug 1998] that the symbols may be abbreviations for "Koenig" and "KoenigiN" --- i.e. "K" and "K"-with-squiggle. About the @y and @l glyphs with long tails that were backtraced with very short ones: perhaps to avoid interference with glyphs on the next line? The small stain on the baseline of line 17 seems to be a drop of the Restorer's ink, or even a small circle drawn with that ink. There is no trace of it on the verso page f1v. Comparing the two largish stains on f1r with their "ghosts" on f1v, we can guess that they were created by two drops of some semi-liquid or two-phase stuff, ~2 mm across, that fell on f1r. The Liquid part only seeped through the parch to f1v and created two stains ~3 mm across. When the drops on f1r were mopped up, they were squashed out to their present size and irregular shape, without affecting the stains on f1v. REFERENCES [f1r.1] Codex Taurinensis C VII 15 (author anonymous, no date available). http://www.ficom.net/members/ditch/secret.htm [f1r.2] John Grove http://members.tripod.com/~VoynichMs/Prefix.htm [f1r.3] Catalog entry for MS 408. Beinecke Library, Yale. [f1r.4] Michel Roe's Voynich site, page about dating the manuscript. http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/users/mrr/voynich/date.html Misc notes: ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ @@f1v # LAST REVISED: ??? IDENTIFICATION * Nickname: "Petersen's belladonna" * Page: f1v = AB/n002 (Rene) = p002 (Stolfi) * Folio: f1 * Panels: f1v * Bifolio: bA1 = f1+f8 * Quire: A (Rene) = I (Beinecke) ATTRIBUTES * Language: A (Currier) * Hand: 1 (Currier) * Subsets: H (Rene), hea (Stolfi) * Subject: herbal * FirstWord: @'k{Ch}sy' * Plant: 1 (Petersen) DESCRIPTION Page shape and state: Logical page f1v consists of panel f1v only. On the BL2014 image, panel f1v is 3516 pixels tall. It is noticeably not flat at the NW and SW corners, and possibly also along the E edge; assuming it is ~235 mm tall, its width varies from ~154 mm at the top, ~158 mm in the middle, and ~155 mm at bottom. The width above is signfly less than that of f1r (~160 mm except near the bottom). The difference seems to be partly that page f1v was bulging out, not flat, when imaged; and also that a sliver of parch, ~154 mm tall and ~8 mm wide, along the N part of the W edge of the panel, is folded over in this image, but was flattened out in the image of f1r. Page layout: Page f1v has the drawing of a plant, rougly centerd, spanning ~(0.1--1.0,0.1--1.0) WE-NS. The very tip of the rightmost leaf is buried into the binding gutter. There are two parags in the bottom 1/2-page, sep 1 bln. The rails are at ~0.13 and ~0.9 WE. * Parag P1 (3.7 lines, 1-4) from 0.5 NS, LR-jus, cut by plant. * Parag P2 (5.8 lines, 5-10) from 0.65 NS, LR-jus, cut by plant. Plant: As usual, the stem and branches of page f1v have been drawn as if it was pressed flat on the page, with limited superposition between its parts. Leaves are drawn as if pressed flat. The single flower is shown in mostly profile view, with the top slightly tilted towards the reader. The root perspective is a bit incongruous, but 1/3 or 2/3 of it may have been added at a later time (see "Restoring" below). * Root: a large tuber with with three main lobes directly attached to the base of the stem. Each lobe looks like a thick cylinder, ~30 mm wide and ~40 mm long. Its surface is hash-marked with rows of parallel pen strokes, ~5 mm long; presumably to indicate a wrinkled or knobby surface. ROOT LOBES: Two of the lobes, W and E, are mostly horz and have thin (~0.25 mm) outlines. They appear fused, without any visible seam, along a vertical line, the /root axis/, that is ~3 mm east of stem axis. Their upper and distal outlines are smooth. The W lobe is ~45 mm long (from the root axis to the presumed center of the distal face). It starts ~22 mm wide and broadens to at least ~25 mm, but its bottom outline lies mostly on or beyond the (irregular) S edge of the panel. The the E lobe is ~30 mm wide and ~40 mm long. Its axis is ~7 mm northwards of the axis of the W lobe. Its bottom outline has scallops ~5 mm wide and ~1 mm tall, convex-side down, with each lobe drawn as if it was a bump on the surface of the lobe, lying partly in front of the one just W of it. That is, if the lobe was coming out /towards/ the reader as it got away from the base of the stem. Incongruouly, the distal outlines of both lobes are drawn as if the lobes were cylinders pointing /away/ from the reader. The third lobe is drawn like a similar stubby cylinder, but is shorter, measuring ~30 mm from the root axis to the center of distal face. It extends in the NW direction, with the proximal end and bottom outline hidden behind the W lobe. The drawing could be a perspective view of a horizontal cylinder that extends away from the reader at ~60° from due west. The outline of that lobe is thicker than those of the other two (~0.5-0.6 mm). the visible part of that outline is a portion of the upper part, that (on the page) leaves the base of the stem at ~45°, and is rather irregular; and most of the edge of the distal face, which, unlike those of the other two lobes, has scallops ~5 mm wide and ~1.5 mm tall, convex-side out, with ends partly overlapping as if they were bumps on the surface. ROOT SURFACE: The surface of all three lobes is covered with isolated hash marks, suggesting a bumpy or crinkly surface. On the E lobe, the upper half has roughly parallel very thin (~0.15 mm) mostly straight strokes, ~6 mm long, spaced ~2 mm apart, all oriented NW-SE (that is, roughly circumferential on the cylindrical lobe), giving the appearance of a flat surface with furrows. These strokes are arranged in three horizontal bands. The lower part of the E lobe has two bands of hash marks, slightly thicker (~0.5 mm), ~4 mm long in the general SW-NE direction, ~1.5 mm apart, deviating from straight by ~0.5 mm in the SE direction. The orientation becomes a bith chaotic near the root axis. On the W lobe, there are also five horz bands of hash marks; the bottom band is aligned with that of the E lobe, but the alignment is then lost and the top band is aligned with the second band of the E lobe. The hash marks are mostly uniform, unlike those of the E lobe, with only a small and gradual change of thickness (from ~0.25 mm at top left to ~0.5 mm at bottom right), size, and shape. The general hash mark in the W lobe is like a fishhook, with an almost straight stem ~2-5 mm long, oriented NE-SW, and a hook at the bottom, ~2 mm wide, turning 90-180° CCW. These hash marks give the incongruous appearance of a flat surface with drooping knobs. The hash marks are straight and thin on the E lobe. The NW (background) lobe has four bands of hash marks. The bands are oriented NW-SE, thus roughly parallel to the lobe's axis, and spaced ~5 mm apart. The hash marks are thick (~0.5-0.6 mm) mostly horz strokes ~4 mm long, deviating upwards from the straight line by ~1 mm. They too give the incongruous appearance of a flat surface that is sloping up away from the reader, covered with rows of low bumps. ROOT TENDRILS: Each lobe has a number of short tendrils, spaced ~7 mm apart, sprouting from the visible edge of the distal base. There are respectvely 2, 3, and 5 such distal tendrils on the W, NW, and E lobes. These tendrils start parallel to the axis of the respective lobe but then curve down to varous degrees. The E lobe also has three tendrils along its bottom edge, and the W lobe has three of those too, before it runs into the S edge of the panel. The distal tendrils of the W and NW lobes are between ~8 mm and ~15 mm long, and have roughly uniform width along their length, between ~1 and ~1.7 mm, and stop abruptly with open ends. Their final direction is ~45 to ~70° CCW of the lobe axis. The five distal tendrils of the E lobe start wider, up to ~3 mm at the base. Tendrils 1 and 2 from the top, ~7 mm and ~8 mm long, quickly taper down to a sharp point, curving down by ~45°, like sharp claws. Tendrils 3-5 start tapering too, but after ~6 mm the width becomes uniform, between ~0.5 mm and ~0.7 mm, oriented straight down. Tendril 3 stops after another ~4 mm, with an open end, while tendrils 4 and 5 continue down to the panel's S edge. The bottom tendrils of the W and E lobes start between ~1.2 mm and ~2 mm wide, and either become a bit narrower or keep their width until they disappear at the S edge of the panel, ~4-6 mm below. * Stem and branches: The main stem is straight and vert, ~160 mm tall, ~5 mm wide at base and ~3 mm at the top. There are two side branches, mostly smooth with gradual taper. The W branch starts ~60 mm from the base of the stem, ~3.0 mm wide, ~20° CCW from the stem axis. It is mostly straight for ~50 mm, then curves CCW by ~140° with a radius of ~10 mm, and ends ~1.5 mm wide, splitting into two unequal leaf stalks. The E branch starts ~75 mm from the stem base, at ~20° CW from the stem axis, partially obscured by a leaf. It is ~2.5 mm wide at the base, and extends mostly straight for ~50 mm, at which point it curves CW by ~165° with a radius of ~15 mm. It is ~1.2 mm wide near the end, but then widens back to ~2 mm for a short while, before splitting into two unequal leaf stalks. * Leaves: broad spear-shaped, ~30 mm by ~12 mm, with acute but rounded point and two short rounded tails (auricolae) at the base, ~3 mm wide and ~1.5 mm long. All leaves are of the same size and about the same shape, drawn in flat on view. Some are in opposite pairs, some alternate. The stalks range from non-existent to ~5 mm long. * Flowers: one, growing at the tip of the plant's stalk, depicted in profile view. It has no stalk. It has a conical calyx, ~20 mm wide and tall. Three stubby petals or sepals with rounded tips are visible, presumably there are 5 to 7 in total. A few thin strokes along these sepals may represent wrinkles or veins. Inside the calyx is a hemispherical core, ~15 mm wide. A scalloped line along the base of this dome follows parallel to the edges of the sepals, ~1 mm apart. Figure drafting: The outlines of the plant on f1v are stroked in darker than normal ink, and are mostly narrower (nibwd ~0.35-0.40 mm) than the text. There are no perspective effects. The drafting styles of the three lobes of the root are so different that they seem to be drawn by three or four different artists. See "Restoring" below. Voynichese handwriting: The Voynichese writing on f1v is clean and neatly spaced, with well-formed glyphs (oht ???). Broadstrokes ~0.5 mm wide, square stroke ends at 45° with sharp corners or with a small (up to ~0.5 mm) NE serif. However, the extensive restoring (see below) has made the strokes more irregular and the glyphs more ungainly, and even changed some glyphs. The parags P1 and P2 are left- and right-justified, and every line is interrupted by the plant drawing. There are tall gallows on head lines of both parags, including gallows initials (@k and @w). Quillos and weird glyphs: On line 7 of page f1v there is a slightly curved overbar above the @'qo' that spans from the apex of the @q to beyond the @o. The ink, pen, and weight of the overbar and the glyphs seem to be the same. On line 10 there is a weirdo (&215) that is an unslashed @p gallows growing from the top of a smaller than usual @e. There is a glyph inside the 3rd leaf on the left side of the left branch. Its vertical axis appears to be aligned with the axis of the leaf. It may or may not be Voynichese script. There are some @i strokes that presumably are malformed @e strokes. For instance on line 7, word @'{Ch}oees', the @C became almost like @I, and the second @e became almost @i. Not clear whether it was the Scribe or the Restorer who wrote them as @i. The 15 most common words in page f1v: # 4.5 {Ch}ol # 2.5 {Sh}ol # 2 {Ch}ar # 3.5 dol # 2 dair # 1.75 do # 3.5 {Ch}ody # 2 dal # 1.75 ol # 3 dar # 2 ykol # 1.5 okal # 2.5 o # 2 {CTh}y # 1.5 {CKh}y LATER INTERVENTIONS Stains and wear: The original writing and figure outline on f1v has lots of whitegrain. (The restored parts have none.) Some of the liquid that was liberally applied to the margin areas of f1r seeped through the parch and created similar but fainter brownish stains on the top, left, and bottom margins of this page. The stains overlapped the first few word of every text line, and the whole root of the plant. Most of those glyphs appear to have been restored (presumably before the staining) and the restoring ink seems to be more resistant than the original one. But even the few glyphs that had not been restored, like the initial @w on line 5, are faint but still quite legible. There are two stains at ~(0.30,0.30) WE-NS that match the position of the two large stains on f1r. These are smaller (~4-5 mm wide), similar color to the halos of the f1r counterparts, but are round with fuzzy outlines. The upper one overlaps in part a yellow-painted leaf; it seems to have washed the penned outline but had little effect on the paint itself. The lower one overlapped in part the stem of the plant and a bit of a green leaf. It did not seem to affect the outline very much, but turned the paint from green to dark brown. Some of the green paint on the leaf at ~(0.59,0.37) WE-NS seems to have flowed over the W outline and mixed with the yellow paint on a leaf that is meant to be behind the former one, producing an area ~4 mm wide of green to yellow gradient inside the latter. This leak was otherwise sharply confined by the drawn outlines of the two leaves. There is a small stain, about ~4 mm wide, at ~(0.80,0.73) WE-NS, over the last @'{CH}ol' of line 8. The stain is a rather transparent orange-brown but has several tiny (less than 0.1 mm wide) and very dark specks embedded in it. Holes and scrapes: There are several wormholes in the margin areas, A few large ones lie over the bottom part of the root. There is a wormhole on line 7 of f1v, in @'l{Ch}ody', between the @{Ch} and the @o, which has been mistaken as glyph by some transcribers. The worm scraped the surface of the parch in several places, including over the final words of lines 7, 8, and 9. Restoring: * Text: Many glyphs and words of page f1v, especially in wormscraped areas, show signs of restoring. Samples of the original writing may be * The @'aii' on line 1, near the left rail; but not the preceding @d nor the final @n. * The @{Ch} near the end of line 2; but not the preceding @r nor the following @o. * The @'ar' at the end of line 10 (tail of P2); but not the preceding @l nor the tip of the plume of the @r. On the last @r on line 1, near the end, the top of the plume was restored, but the new trace did not follow the original one; so that both are visible as parallel traces with same endpoints. The restoring sometimes amplified the malformation of glyphs and even turned them into different glyphs: Line 1, @'{Ch}odaiin', after @{Ch}: @o turned into @a or @y w trunc tail. Line 3, @'do.{CKh}y', after @d: @o into @a or @y with trunc tail. Line 7, @'{Ch}oees': @{Ch} into @{Ih}, @e into @i. Line 9, @'d{Ch}or': @o became similar to @a (or vice-versa). Line 9, @'o,t{Ch}s': worm ate plume of @s, turned into @o. Several glyphs that apparently were @d in the original were restored with a straight left stroke, making them look like @j: Line 1: @d in @'{Ch}odaiin' Line 2: @d in @'d{Ch}o' Line 5: @d in @'dair' Line 6: @d in @'d,o,l{Ch}ey' The @{Sh} in the final @'{Sh}ody' on line 9 appears to have a horz-mirrored plume rising from the first @e stroke rather than from the lig. As such it has been transcribed by some as a weirdo &366. However there seems to be a wormscrape that erased the lower part of the original plume. The Restorer apparently "fixed" the damage by connecting the remainder of the plume on the left to the @e, instead of on the right to the lig line. * Figure: On the figure, the lobe of the root that is in the background has broader strokes (nibwd ~0.8 mm) and possibly darker ink than the other two. Its outline is scalloped instead of smooth, and the hash strokes that supposedly represent "bumps" are mostly horz instead of oblique. There is no vestige of any strokes with quality similar to those of the W lobe or the rest of the plant. The E lobe of the root also looks very different from the W lobe. The top half of the outline is thin (nibwd ~0.25 mm) and smooth, like that of the W lobe; but the hash strokes on the top half are even thinner (nibwd ~0.2 mm), mostly straight, and parallel, oriented NW-SE, making the surface look flat there. On the lower half of the E lobe, on the other hand, the outline is scalloped and thicker (nibwd ~0.7 mm) and the hash marks are curved, thicker (nibwd ~0.5 mm), and oriented mostly NNE-SSW. The tendrils on that lobe too are drawn with thicker strokes (nibwd 0.5 mm). Coloring: The leaves of the f1v plant are grubbed with translucent paint, almost alternating between slightly brownish yellow and whitish green. The paint fills the outline of each leaf with little overflow or underflow. The dome-like center or the flower is carefully filled with grubbed dark brown paint, except for the band between the calyx and the scalloped line around the base of the dome. The paint is darker than the normal ink; from the color, it may have been the Restorer ink. The strokes of the narrow stiff "brush" or pen used to apply the paint are visible in most of the painted areas. There is no whitegrain in these areas. The stem and branches are unpainted except for a few pen strokes of light yellow color, ~0.5 mm wide, along some of the lower branches. These wisps of color seem to be lighter than the yellow paint used in the leaves, and could be yel, but it not possible to be sure from the BL2014 scans. The tendrils of the root are grushed with some light transparent paint, yellow green. These may be diluted versions of the paints used on the leaves, but the yellow may be the yel used on several other pages. (This point is uncertain because of the heavy stains bleeding through from the recto side.) The color of the tendrils gradually changes from yellow at the bottom of the W and E lobes to green on the NW lobe, as if the "brush" had not been properly cleaned. Everything else is unpainted. INTERPRETATIONS Identification of the plant: The plant of f1v looks basically normal, except for the very peculiar root and the coloring of the leaves. The root and leaves of this plant are extremely similar to those of Pharma page f102r1[3,2]. Even the angle of view of the root is the same. The calyx of the flower may be a corolla, with the calyx either missing or obscured. Alternatively, the scalloped line along the base of the core may be the edge of the corolla. The core of the flower could be a berry. The lobes of the root may have been intended to be flat pancakes, but came out looking like thick cylinders because of the Scribe's limitations as illustrator. Petersen identifies the plant as "Solanum Solatrium, Belladonna" specifically the "flower" and cites L. Fuchs [f1v.2,f1v.3]. There is no ë{Solanum:solatrium}, but "solatrium" is an ancient (Dioscoridean) name for some or all of these species: ë{Atropa:belladonna} (deadly nightshade) ë{Hyoscyamus:niger} (henbane) ë{Solanum:nigrum} (black nightshade) ë{Solanum:dulcamara} (bittersweet) All four plants are poisonous in varying degrees. The active principles can be absorbed by smoking or through the skin as well as by ingestion. They were used as potent psychoactive drugs, causing paralysis of involuntary muscles, dizziness, sleep, hallucinations, violent behavior, etc., and have been often associated with witchcraft. Other somewhat less likely plants referred to as "Solanum Solatrium" ë{Withania:somnifera} and ë{Physalis:alkekengi}. The leaves of f1v seem most compatible those of ë{Atropa:belladonna} (shape) and ë{Hyoscyamus:niger} (attachment to stem). The "flower" at the top of f1v does resemble the sheathed, shiny black fruits of these two species. However, ë{Atropa:belladonna}'s root has been described as a roundish rhizome with a long (up to 1m) tapering root, which does not seem to match the highly distinctive "pancake with claws" of f1v. I have found no image or description of the other plants' roots. A very similar root, with quite different leaves, can be seen on another Italian herbal [f1v.1]: The medieval text calls that plant "Gran[i]a maggiore". The modern commentary tentatively identifies it with ë{Ecballium:elaterium} (Squirting Cucumber) I have found no image or description of ë{Ecballium:elaterium}'s roots. Symbol in the leaf: The symbol in the leaf of f1v could be a somewhat mangled Voynichese glyph. It looks like a "picnic table" @x with a tail that starts at the tip of the right foot and curves down and to the left in a spiral, for about 360°. That symbols could also be a Roman letter or Latin scribal abbreviation, but its reading as such is equally uncertain. Root drawing: There is a huge difference in drafting style between the background root lobe of f1v and the other two lobes. strongly suggests that the former was added by the Restorer, or at least someone other than whoever drew the rest of the plant. The interior of the E lobe is peculiar too, especially its lower half. A possible explanation is that the original dawing had only the top halves of the outlines of the W and E lobes, the top row of hash strokes on the W lobe and its two tendrils, and perhaps the thin straight strokes on the top half of the E lobe. Everything else in the root -- the background lobe, the E and bottom parts of the outline of the E lobe, its tendrils, and all the curved hash strokes -- were added by a different artist. However, the almost identical drawing is seen on the root of Parma plant f102r1[3,2], and the style of /that/ drawing seems to be quite uniform. Maybe the original Scribe meant to copy that root but left it unfinished, and some later artist who was aware of the correspondence completed it. Coloring: The green-yellow gradient inside a yellow leaf is evidence that both the yellow and the green paint were applied at the same time. Indeed that may be the place where the Dark Painter switched from Green to Yellow without thoroughly cleaning the "brush". REFERENCES [f1v.1] University of Vermont Library MS 2, fol. 39 (ca. 1500) http://www.library.ucla.edu/libraries/biomed/his/immi/vm9437.htm [f1v.2] Fuchs p. 398. [f1v.3] Fiscker p. 17. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ @@f2r # LAST REVISED: ??? IDENTIFICATION * Nickname: "Petersen's cornflower" * Page: f2r = AC/n003 (Rene) = p003 (Stolfi) * Folio: f2 * Panels: f2r * Bifolio: bA2 = f2+f7 * Quire: A (Rene) = I (Beinecke) ATTRIBUTES * Language: A (Currier) * Hand: 1 (Currier) * Subsets: H (Rene), hea (Stolfi) * Subject: herbal * FirstWord: @'kydainy' * Folio number: "2" on NE corner. * Plant: 2 (Petersen) DESCRIPTION Page shape and state: Page f2r consists of panel f2r only. On the BL2014 image, panel f2r is 3558 pixels tall. Assuming it is ~235 mm tall, it is ~161 mm wide. There however a smooth indentation near the top of the E edge, ~2.9 mm wide and ~46 mm tall, which may be due to the parch being curled and folded under this panel (see the description of page f2v). Moreover, the parch seems to be bulging outwards, so that the S edge is slightly curved and titled CCW by ~2°. Page layout: Page f2r has the drawing of a plant, spanning ~(0.17--0.98,0.05--1.00) WE-NS. There are two parags, both of them LR-justified. with left rail at ~0.15 WE: * Parag P1 (6.5 lines, 1-7), top at 0.1 NS, right rail at ~0.7 WE. * Parag P2 (5.4 lines, 8-13), top at 0.7 NS, right rail at ~0.9 WE. The lines of P1 are interrupted by 2 or 3 flowers. Those of P2 are interrupted once by the two stems of the plant. There are also two labels: * Label L1 in the R-margin, at ~(0.90,0.40) WE-NS, near a leaf. * Label L2 inside a leaf at ~(0.75,0.6) WE-NS. Label L1 is squeezed against the right edge, in smaller font, partly overlapping a leaf. Label L2 is inside the third leaf from the bottom in the first leaf bunch on the right side of the plant, with its baseline tilted ~20° CCW. Plant: As usual, the plant of f2r is drawn as if it was spread flat on the page. The flowers are drawn in profile. The leaves are drawn as if pressed flat on the page. The root is drawn as two-dimensional and in profile. * Root: left-right symmetrical, planar, ~50 mm wide and ~20 mm tall. It looks sort of like a headless stick man with outstretched arms. Namely, it has a horz bar ~22 mm long attached at the bottom of the stem, with two "legs" sprouting from below, and a vaguely lobster-like "pincer" at each end. The right pincer is a "G" shape, ~15 mm tall and ~10 mm wide, rotated about 100° CW about its SW corner, where it attaches to the bar. The left end of the bar has the approximate mirror image of that "pincer". The right "leg" is shaped like an "S" ~16 mm tall, rotated ~30° CCW, that starts vertly from the bar, at ~5 mm from its center. The left "leg" is its approximate mirror image. All parts of the root are ~3 mm wide near the stem, tapering down to ~2.5 mm near the ends. The "legs" end with a stubby point while the "pincers" have round ends. The outline of the whole root and the base of the stem comprise one smooth continuous curve, with no kinks (except the pointy ends of the "legs") and no internal markings or transversal lines. * Plant stem and branches: The stem is ~4 mm wide and extends up by ~30 mm from the root, when it splits into two main branches that further split into 3 (left) and 4 (right) sub-branches, all with irregular width between ~2 and ~4 mm. One of the left sub-branches splits into three flower stalks. Each of the other six sub-branches ends in a cluster of 5 leaves of varied lengths, radiating out over a ~30° angle. The leaves are depicted in flat on view but partially overlapping. * Leaves: Each leaf is lanceolate, varying from to ~25 mm to ~50 mm long and proportionally from ~3 mm to ~8 mm wide. It has smooth sides and a sharp point. Any veins it may have had would have been hidden by the dark paint paint. The leaf stalk is typically ~2 mm wide and varies from non-existent to ~5 mm long. * Flowers: Each of the three flower stalks looks like a branch, ~2.0 mm wide and ~35 mm to ~60 mm long, mostly straight but with slight waves or curvature. The flowers are seen in profile view. Each calyx looks like a football-shaped swelling of the end of the stalk, ~12 mm long and ~6 mm wide. Its surface is covered with ~2 by ~2 mm leaves arranged like fish scales, with a ring of smaller leaves at the base. From the calyx there sprouts a bushy corolla, ~3.4 mm wide at the base, ~25 mm wide near the top, extending out to ~20-30 mm. It consists of several rounds of narrow pointy petals. The first round is ~10 mm long. There is no visible core. The whole flower looks vaguely like a shaving brush. Figure drafting: The original parts of the outline of the plant on f2r were drawn with very thin strokes (nibwd ~0.2 mm). There are no perspective effects. The width of the branches of the plant varies irregularly and the attachment of the leaves to the branches is inconsistently drawn. Voynichese handwriting: The writing on f2r is very neat and clear, with relatively fine pen (nibwd ~0.4-0.5 mm), mostly well-formed glyphs (oht ~1.5 mm). The inter-word spaces are generally clear and there are relatively few narrow spaces (EVA comma). The very first glyph of parags P1 and P2 are taller than usual (as typical on head lines) but also narrower than usual, and with finer strokes (nibwd ~0.2-0.3 mm). The latter is also the case for other gallows on the head line of P1. The right stroke of the @a usually extends beyond the bottom of the left stroke, so it is quite distinct from @o. The head lines of the two parags have tall puffs and other gallows, including gallows initials (@k and @t, respectively). There is also a puff on line 4, not a head line. The glyphs of label L1, at the right of the plant, are smaller (oht ~1 mm) and thinner (nibwd ~0.35 mm), but otherwise they look like normal Voynichese. The baseline of label L2 is aligned with the leaf's midline, tilted by ~20° CCW from horz. Its glyphs too are smaller (oht ~1 mm) and thinner than those in the parags. They seem to be in a clumsier hand than the text of the paragraphs or of label L1. In particular, the first @a has no foot and could be an @o. ??? Check mustispectral images for a more reliable reading. Quillos and weird glyphs: On line 2 of f2r there is an unusual lig @{CTo}: a @C ligd to a @T gallows whose platf slash connects to the top of @o. On the first word of line 4, @'{Sh}aiidy', the second part of the @{Sh} is closed like a Roman "e". Also the @d looks like it was first written as an @e but then corrected to @d. On line 6, the first two @d are a bit malformed (the bottom loop does not close). At the end of line 6, there are two mfd @d that look almost like @j. Also at the end of line 6, the @C in @{CTh} is mfd (with the lig cutting at the midline rather than connecting at the top) and looks almost like an @I. Also at the end of line 6, the final @y has a spurious vert stroke across the loop, and a left stroke that is extra thick at the bottom. On line 10, there is an @o with a plume (weirdo &136). However, the @o is malformed and the whole word may have been restored. Also on line 10, the final word may be @'saiin', but there is an @s-plume between the @a and the @i. The @a with plume is weirdo &412. The last @s on line 11 has a weird plume: two straight lines, up by ~1 mm then left by ~3 mm, with almost sharp corner. The first @a in label L2 (within the leaf) doesn't have the "foot" and looks like malformed @o. The first word on the page is ??? The 15 most common words in page f2r: # 4 dan # 2 {CTh}ey # 2 {Sh}ol # 3 daiin # 2 {CTh}y # 2 {Sh}or # 3 s # 2 {Ch}ol # 1.5 d # 3 {Ch}y # 2 {Ch}or # 1.5 dal # 2.5 saiin # 2 {Sh}eey # 1.5 kol LATER INTERVENTIONS Stains and wear: A triangular "ear" section of parch on the NE corner, %477 wide and %2119 tall, shows signs of haing been folded over this panel for a long time, leaving soiled streaks at presumed fold lines. The margins of f2r are stained by the liquid that was spread over the margins of f1r, as it seeped through folio f1 and offsetted onto this page. The parch is discolored within somewhat irregular bands ~30 mm wide along the right edge of this panel, and ~12 mm wide along the top edge. The impact on the writing and figure is hard to estimate because the affected parts may have been restored. Along the right edge of this panel, the parch seems to have been stained directly by that liquid, on two darker fuzzy stains ~3 mm wide and ~20 mm tall, at ~0.35 and ~0.5 NS. (Similar matching stains are seen on panels f3r and f4r.) The first of these stains all but washed out the final @{Ch} of label L1. There are three tiny translucent brownish-orange stains: ~2.0 mm wide at ~(0.6,0.31) WE-NS ~2.4 mm wide at ~(0.3,0.45) WE-NS ~3.2 mm wide at ~(0.8,0.48) WE-NS There are two very light stains near the SE corner. One is ~19 mm tall and ~12 mm wide, tilted ~10° CCW; the other is ~19 mm tall and ~16 mm wide, tilted ~30° CCW. They are almost aligned horzly and touch at ~(0.9,0.7) WE-NS. A third similar stain, roundish and ~20 mm wide, overlaps the base of the plant's stem, centered at ~(0.6,0.9) WE-NS. A fourth stain, shaped like an egg with the narrow end pointing SW, ~20 mm wide and ~25 mm tall, lies W of the stem, centered at ~(0.37,0.9) WE-NS. A fifth similar stain, roundish, ~11 mm wide, lies W of the stem, centered at ~(0.16,0.8) WE-NS. The interior of each of these five stains has a very slight yellowish tinge that gets stronger along the the edges, which are sharp. These five stains have matching images on f2v, showing that the liquid easily penetrated the parch. There are strong ghosts on f2r of the green paint on the leaf and stalk of f2v. Holes and scrapes: There are a few wormholes in the margin of f2r, near the NE corner. None impacts the text or the drawing. There seems to be several large wormscraped areas near the right edge of the parch. Two small furrows, ~1 mm wide and ~4 mm long, extend in the N and S directions from a wormhole at ~(0.9,0.15) WE-NS. A severe wormscrape affected a band ~6 mm wide and at least ~56 mm tall along the right edge, centered ~0.7 NS; it impacted the tip of one leaf. Another irregular wormscrape may have occurred at ~(0.9,0.7) WE-NS, and may have erased the last few glyphs of lines 11-13 (which would then have been restored). ??? Backtracing: ??? Restoring: * Text: In the text of f2r, clear evidence of restoring are the glyphs @'ld' in the word @'daiildy' at the end of line 8 (head line of P2). Those two glyphs are not only darker than those around and below them, but are also free of the whitegrain that pervades the latter. The @'da' in that same word must have been restored as well. The word @'{Sh}eey' too (like many others) also may have been restored almost entirely, leaving the original ink only in the lower part of the plume on @{Sh} and of the tail on @y. This first restoring, distinguished from the original traces by the dark ink and absence of whitegrain. In the words @'dls' and @'q&136ky' at the start of lines 9 and 10, it appears that the whole words were restored once, leaving out only the tip of the tails of the @l and the @q, and maybe a short section (~0.3 mm) at the end of the horz arm of the @q, where it connects to the next glyph. Compare, for example, the @q of the second word with the initial @y on line 11, just below it. The tail of the @y in @'q&136ky', on the other hand, was clearly restored with a slow and hence thicker (~0.2 mm wide) all the way to the tip. This first restoring apparently included the very unusual plume on the @o (that turned it into &136). It is not possible to tell whether it was present in the original. But then those two words were affected by a second restoring event, with even darker ink, that reinforced the @d (maybe leaving out the bottom of the lower loop), the plume of the @s (with two separate very thin strokes, ~0.2 mm wide), the (incomplete) @o (without the plume), the legs of the @k, and the @y (but only the head and the first ~1 mm of the tail). * Figure: On f2r, restoring is clearly visible on the flowers. Many petals in the central part of the the three corollas were partly restored, not very carefully. Many of the original strokes, whose ink is lighter than the restoring one, are clearly visible sticking out from under the the restored ones. Apparently the original ink in those areas was partly washed away when the salmon-pink paint was applied there. Coloring: The root of the f2r plant is filled with grushed dark red color, which extends ~8 mm up the stem, even though there is no dividing line between root and stem. The paint has some whitegrain. The paint on the W "pincer" is distinctively damaged: it turned into a multitude of tiny flakes, up to ~0.5 mm wide, separated by unpainted cracks. The leaves are grushed with semitrans dull green. They may have been painted first with a lighter and more transparent green (possibly the same paint but diluted), as is visible on the tip of a leaf at ~(0.6,0.45) WE-NS, and a whole right half of a leaf at ~(0.9,0.45) WE-NS. (Coincidentally, that half-leaf overlaps label L1.) The paint mostly fills the outline, but on some leaves it stops short of it, and in two of them it overflows it. The trunk (base of the plant stem) and parts of two of the flower stalks are grushed light green too, and some of that area was grushed over with the darker green of the leaves. There is a smudge of the same grushed light green, ~7 mm wide, with irregular borders, that overflows the base of the stem, just above the root. In the middle of that area there is a red dot, ~2.6 mm tall and ~1.3 mm wide, with very thin (~0.20 mm) dark brown edges. It is not clear which was created first, but there is no unpainted gap around the red spot. Thin red lines, single or in pairs, are grubbed (with a pen?) in red roughly along the midlines of trunk, branches, leaf stalks, and flower stalks. The ink color is lighter and more transparent than the one used in the root. At ~(0.7,0.5) WE-NS, two of these streaks merge to make a solid stain ~11 by ~2.5 mm, slightly darker at the upper end. The stalk and calyx of each flower were initially grushed with the same green paint as the leaves. The darker green was used on the left stalk and calyx; the the lighter (diluted) paint was used on the right calyx, the middle stalk, and the upper half of the right stalk; and an intermediate version of the paint was used on the middle calyx. Then all three calyxes were overlaid with 8-10 red rectangular dots, apparently applied with a pen. The petals are grushed with very light transparent salmon-pink paint. INTERPRETATIONS Plant: The root of the f2r plant looks rather strange, the stems and leaves are somewhat awkward, but the flowers look normal. There seem to be no obvious similarity between the plant of f2r and any of the Pharma sketches. Petersen tentative identification is "Cyanus segetum, cornflower (caeruleus) (cf 153)". That must be ë{Centaurea:cyanus} (cornflower, fiodaliso, bluet, kornblume). The flower shape and branching pattern seem to match fairly well; however, those features are not very specific. Also, the leaves of ë{Centaurea:cyanus} are long and thin, with smooth edges or a few very shallow teeth, attached directly to the stem; quite unlike those of f2r. Infusions of ë{Centaurea:cyanus} were once used as a febrifugue (whole plant) and eye wash (flowers only). Gabriel says that the first word @{kydain} or @{kydainy} appears only here in the whole ms. Could it be the plant's name? Restoring: Text: From the example of @'{Sh}eey' on line 9 of f2r, one may conjecture that most of the text of this page was in fact restored. General restoring of the text could explain several malformed glyphs and the absence of whitegrain on most of it. However, it would require extreme painstaking care by the Restorer. (Or washing away the the remains of the original ink, if it was not iron-gall.) See more discussion in work/Notes/075/report/report.html Coloring: The color of the f2r flowers (light salmon-pink) seems to be wrong for ë{Centaurea:cyanus} (whose flowers are intense blue). But maybe they were originally painted with a vegetable blue that faded over time to that pink. The general whitegrain on the root's red paint suggest that it is much older than the other painting; perhaps original, not the work of the Dark Painter. This conjecture is supported by the small red stain next to the base of the stem, that the Dark Painter apparently mistook for a real feature and surrounded with the light green halo. The extra damage on the red paint of the W "pincer" of the root may have been caused by by the chemicals that seeped from page f1r to f1v and offsetted onto page f2r. REFERENCES ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ @@f2v # LAST REVISED: ??? IDENTIFICATION * Nickname: "Water lily" * Page: f2v = AD/n004 (Rene) = p004 (Stolfi) * Folio: f2 * Panels: f2v * Bifolio: bA2 = f2+f7 * Quire: A (Rene) = I (Beinecke) ATTRIBUTES * Language: A (Currier) * Hand: 1 (Currier) * Subsets: H (Rene), hea (Stolfi) * Subject: herbal * FirstWord: @'kooiin' * Plant: 3 (Petersen) DESCRIPTION Page shape and state: Page f2v consists of panel f2v only. On the BL2014 image, panel f2v is 3556 pixels tall. Assuming it is ~235 mm tall, it is ~157 mm wide. However, a sliver up to ~2 mm wide near the top of the W edge seems to be folded over, so that the panel is only ~153 mm wide at the top. Also, the parch seems to be bulging outwards, so that the S edge is slightly curved and tilted ~3° CW. Page layout: Page f2v has the drawing of a plant spanning from ~(0.3--0.9,0.03--1.0) WE-NS. There are two parags, LR-justified, with right rail at ~0.9 WE: * Parag P1 (3.5 lines, 1-4) top at 0.2 NS, left rail at ~0.15. * Parag P2 (3.6 lines, 5-8) tip at 0.6 NS, left rail at ~0.13. The lines of P1 are interrupted by the plant's flower and its stalk; except the tail line, that ends well before the stalk. The head line of P2 is interrupted once by the left lobe of the leaf and he plant's stem; the tail line ends right next to the stem; and the remaining lines are interrupted by the stem. Plant: As usual, the plant of f2v is drawn as if it was spread out flat, with the root stretched W to E and the only leaf pressed flat on the page. Apart from these perspective violations and the crude job in the E half of the root (see below), the plant of f2v is fairly well-drawn. * Root: a long straight rhizome (diam ~8 mm), spanning the whole width of the panel. It has two quite distinct parts, RzA and RzB. The left part RzA starts somewhere outside the panel, enters it at the SW corner, and ends abruptly ~10 mm east of the base of the stem, at ~0.7 WE. The second part RzB starts where the fist one ended, and ends with a rounded tip just ~1 mm before the binding gutter. The outline of RzA has irregular teeth ~3 mm to ~6 mm wide and ~1.5 mm tall, some sharp, some blunt. Those on the bottom outline are slanted towards E, those on the top outline are slanted the opposite way. Between the two outlines there are many protruding short cylinders, like stubs of stems that were cut away. Each cylinder is ~3.5 mm wide and ~4 mm long in projection. It is tilted towards E so that it makes an angle of (very roughly) 30° with the rhizome's axis. The end of each cylinder is drawn as a circle, containing 3-4 small dots. Some details may have been added by the Restorer (see below). The outline of the RzB part of the rhizome starts at a point R located ~10 mm east of the stem, where RzA ends. This outline (B1) starts with triangular teeth, similar to those of the first part but after ~20 mm these turn into rounded waves ~5 mm long, still ~1.5 mm tall; it is interrupted at the tip of RzB, then resumes on the top side (where the waves gradually increase to ~7 mm long) and terminates at a point Q just above point K, ~10 mm east of the stem, where RzA ends. Superimposed on this outline, starting ~20 mm east of point K, there is another smooth line (B2) that wraps around the end RzB, becomes thicker (nibwd ~0.4 mm), continues past the point Q, and connects to the base of the stem. The part of this line between Q and the stem makes a detour shaped like a thumb, that encloses one of the last cylinders of the first part. Line B2 touches the tips of the teeth of B1, and cuts trough the last one (just before Q). Inside the outlines B1 and B2, the surface of RzB is covered with scale-like elements. Each is about 1 to 2 times as long as it is wide and contains from 0 to 3 random small dots. The elements start small near the stem (~1.5 mm wide and long), grow to a max size (~3 mm wide) halfway through RzB, then shrink again to ~2 mm wide near the tip of RzB. * Plant stem and branches: The plant's stem shoots out from the first part (RzA) of the rhizome, ~10 mm before its transition to the second part (RzB). It is nearly vertical but bends by ~20° CCW at ~45 mm. It starts ~2.5 mm wide at the base, but narrows to ~1.7 mm before the bend, then widens again to ~3 mm near the end. At ~50 mm from the base (~5 mm after the bend), there is the stub of a lost branch or leaf stalk, ~2 mm wide and ~7 mm long, making an angle of ~45° CW with the plant's stem. This stub ends with a sharp diagonal cut at ~45° CW. At ~90 mm from the base, the flower's stalk shoots out from the stem, at ~30° CW. The plant's stem ends at ~95 mm from the base, ~2.5 mm wide, on the edge of the single leaf. * Leaves: The plant of f2v has a single large leaf, which is depicted in flat on view. It has a smooth outline, shaped like a very fat letter "C", turned 90° CW; or as a slightly elliptical disk, ~90 mm wide and ~80 mm tall, with a keyhole-shaped notch on the S side, all tilted ~15° CCW. The notch is ~25 mm tall, ~23 mm wide at the base, ~8 mm at the "neck", ~11 mm at the roundish "head". The notch is off-center so that the center of the head is ~8 mm from the shorter axis of the leaf. The last ~5 mm of the plant's stem serve as the leaf's stalk; it merges into the leaf's edge at about the top of the notch. Some 7 very faint and very thin pen-drawn veins (nibwd ~0.2 mm) can be seen under the opaque paint. They radiate from the notch at the leaf's base and end at the leaf's outline, bending slightly downwards. The veins are smooth but wavy, with waves typically ~3 mm long and ~0.5 mm tall. * Flowers: There is only one flower, drawn with some care in almost profile view, with the axis pointing ~20° CW from north and ~10° towards the viewer. The flower stalk is ~78 mm long and branches off the plant's stem at ~5 mm before its end, with most of its length hidden behind the leaf. The calyx has a base ~4.3 mm tall and a mid-section ~2.9 mm tall, both like oblate spheroids, joined with a sharp neck ~7 mm wide. Above the mid-section is a crown of sepals, ~6 mm tall, ~12 mm wide at the base, ~20 mm wide at the top, slightly flaring out. The creases between these three parts are not marked. Each sepal is tongue-shaped, ~5 mm wide at the base. Three sepals are fully visible, touching at their bases; two more are only hinted at; and the widths are such that two more would exist behind the corolla. The top edge of the calyx is doubled indicating the thickness (~0.6 mm in projection). The corolla resembles that of a lily. It is ~15 mm wide as it exits the calyx, and extends out of it for ~15 mm, flaring out to ~45 mm. It has four petals, fused for most of their length. The joints are marked by very thin partly dashed lines (nibwd ~0.2 mm). Each petal is shaped like a spout. Its free edge is scalloped, with humps ~1.5 mm long and ~0.5 mm tall. From the corolla there emerges a single stamen, with ~15 mm total visible length. The stamen is has a stalk ~1.5 mm wide and ~10 mm long, terminated by a spindle-like head, ~2.5 mm wide and ~5 mm tall. The stalk and head are flanked by a few wiry and squiggly hairs, ~1.5 mm long. Figure drafting: The original outlines of the f2v plant were drawn with rather thin strokes (nibwd ~0.2 mm). However, several parts were restored with wider strokes, see below. There are no real perspective effects. The cutaway sections on the RzA half of the rhizome are round, instead of ellipses as perspective would demand. The edge of the calyx and the mouth of the corolla are drawn reasonably correctly in oblique projection, but the petal in the background is actually bigger than that on the foreground. Voynichese handwriting: The writing on f2v is clear and steady, with almost straight and horz baselines and mostly distinct word spaces. The head line of P1 has a puff (@w), and both head lines have tall (~8 mm) initial @k gallows. The strokes of the latter are rather thin (nibwd ~0.25 mm) but the rest of the text, including the rest of the initial words, is more normal (nibwd ~0.5 mm). The o-height is ???. Some @a glyphs have salient feet and thus are quite distinct from @o glyphs. However some glyphs may have been malformed by the Restorer (see below). Those parts of the writing that were not restored are often faint and sprinkled with generous amounts of whitegrain. ??? Quillos and weird glyphs: On f2v, some @o, @a, or @y glyphs are misshaped and may have been mistaken for each other, by the original Scribe or by the Restorer(s): Line 1, both @o glyphs of @'kooiin'. Line 1, the first @o in @'{Ch}eo,w{Ch}or'. Line 2, the @o in the initial word @'k{Ch}o' Line 5, the @o in @'dor' near the end. Line 8, the @'eee' in @'qoteeey' may be @'{Ch}e' with almost skipped lig. On line 9, the final @'oi{Sh}e' of the first word @'{Ch}okoi{Sh}e' is very unusual. Perhaps the @o after @k is an original quillo and should have been an @a. The @i and the @{Sh} minus the plume were restored, probably incorrectly. The final @e is unusual and may have been an original quillo. On line 5 there is the uncommon ligature @{CKo}: a @C ligd to a @K gallows whose platf slash connects to the top of @o. The platf slash almost but not quite touches the @o. On line 2, the @y in the second word @'k{Ch}y' was definitely @y in the original version, with a VERY faint tail; but restoring truncated its tail. There is a small undecipherable scribble above the @{or} of the first word of P2. It was partly obscured by restoring, but it seems to have been originally a tall glyph like an integral sign, or an Italic "f" with a long descender, followed by a glyph shaped like a Roman "e" or "c". The first word on the page is ??? The 15 most common words in page f2v: # 5 {Ch}or # 1 daiiin # 1 k{Ch}or # 4.5 daiin # 1 dair # 1 l{Sh}y # 3.75 {Ch}ol # 1 dolody # 1 ot{Ch}y # 2 {Sh}o # 1 keol # 1 qoteeey # 1.5 dor # 1 kooiin # 1 qoty LATER INTERVENTIONS Stains and wear: The page has a generally darker and soiled appearance. A triangular "ear" section of parch on the NW corner, %477 wide and %2119 tall, shows signs of haing been folded over this panel for a long time, leaving soiled streaks at presumed fold lines. There are two small stains on f2v, ~1.5 mm wide, on or near the flower, respectively at ~(0.7,0.06) and at ~(0.9,0.10) WE-NS. Unlike most other VMS stains, these are two are black with fuzzy gray halos, with little or no brown hue, except at the very periphery of the halo. There are two very irregular smudges of red paint, ~4 mm wide, at ~(0.25,0.09) and ~(0.11,0.17) WE-NS. There is a brown stain at ~(0.20,0.45) WE-NS. It has an irregular core with sharp edges, ~5 mm by ~2 mm, with a thin descending "tail" ~4 mm long; and a lighter fuzzy halo ~1.5 mm wide on the E and S sides. A "satellite" stain similar to the core is located ~5 mm to the SW; it is ~2 mm wide and ~1.5 mm tall, tilted ~45° CW. Another brown stain, lighter than the above, lies at ~(0.8,0.8) WE-NS; it is ~1.9 mm tall and shaped like a Phrygian hat. There are two very light stains on f2v, near the SW corner. One is ~17 mm tall and ~11 mm wide, tilted ~10° CW; the other is ~18 mm tall and ~15 mm wide, tilted ~30° CW. They are almost aligned horzly and touch at ~(0.12,0.7) WE-NS. A third similar stain, roundish, ~28 mm wide, partially overlaps the rhizome W of the stem, centered at ~(0.6,0.9) WE-NS. A fourth similar stain, shaped like an egg ~20 mm wide and ~25 mm tall with the narrow end pointing SE, overlaps the base of the plant's stem, centered at ~(0.6,0.9) WE-NS. A fifth similar stain, roundish, ~11 mm wide, lies E of the stem, centered at ~(0.9,0.8) WE-NS. The interior of each of these five stains has a very slight yellowish tinge that gets stronger along the the edges, which are sharp. These five stains match five similar ones on f2r. There are fairly strong ghosts on f2v of thee green paint on the leaves of f2r. There is a blury brownish stain at ~(0.3,0.9) WE-NS, which may be a ghost of the W "pincer" of the root of f2r, where that paint is most damaged. It may have been carried by the chemicals that seeped from page f1r to f1v, offsetted onto page f2r, and seeped to this page. ??? Holes and scrapes: ??? Backtracing: ??? Restoring: * Text: Restoring on f2v probably includes the undecipherable scribble above the @'or' on line 5, which apparently had the middle section of the first glyph and all of the second glyph mangled by the Restorer. There is a thin stroke (nibwd ~0.2 mm) in very dark ink, ~1 mm long and shaped like a comma flipped NS, high above the @{Ch} of the word @'qot{Ch}o' on line 2. Some transcribers mistook it for a plume and thus incorrectly read the @{Ch} as @{Sh}. * Figure: ??? Coloring: The rhizome of the f2v plant is grushed with light yellowish ocher paint. It does not seem to be the standard yel paint. In the first part (RzA), the paint generally avoids the stem stubs. In the second part (RzB) the paint strokes are more random and pay no attention to the "scales" that presumably stand for those stubs. When it crosses over the pen strokes of those scales, it seems to wash them, mix with their ink, and carry that ink away. This washing does not seem to occur in RzA. This pattern suggests that the painting was done at the same time that RzB was drawn, but much after RzA was drawn. The leaf was filled with smooth dark green paint. The outline is respected everywhere except for a small overflow (~4 mm long and ~2 mm wide) on the NW edge. There is a spot of brownish green color, ~20 mm long and ~6 mm wide, inside bottom part of the leaf, east of the notch, parallel to the outline. That stain seems to be a brush stroke, that promptly becomes narrower (~2.8 mm), turns green, and continues along the rest of the outline, in the CCW sense, creating a slightly darker border for the leaf. ???Presumably badly cleaned brush. A thin red line was drawn (with a pen?) along the stalk and flower stem, as in f2r, up to the base of the calyx. The plant's stem and the branch stub were crudely grushed with semitrans green paint, overflowing the outline in a few places, all but hiding the red line above. Likewise the flower stalk was grushed with semitrans dark green, over the red line above. The calyx was first grubbed or grushed with transparent light green, but then an irregular spot of darker green, %86 wide, was grubbed near its center. The stalk of the stamen too was grubbed with light green. The corolla, the edge of the calyx (between the two parallel outlines of the sepals), and the tip of the stamen were left unpainted. ??? INTERPRETATIONS Plant identification: The plant of f2v looks quite natural and well-drawn, apart from the perspective violations and the blotched RzB. There seem to be no obvious similarity between the plant of f2v and any of the Pharma sketches. The leaf shape suggests it is a water plant. With that assumption, the choices are quite few. Rene proposed ë{Nymphaea:candida} (a.k.a. ë{Nymphaea:alba}; water lily, seerose). Michael Roe [f2v.1] mentions another variant, ë{Nymphoides:peltata} ("Nymphaia" in Dioscorides, "al qulqas ahli" in the Arabic translation). The second half of the root (RzB in the description above) is clearly a very bad copy of first half (RzA), added by someone who did not understand the latter. Specifically, he did not understand that the cylindrical protuberances of RzA were cutaway stems, and substituted scaly leaves instead. It may have been the original Scribe, who copied RzA from somewhere else (the Pharma section?) and then tried to "complete" it so as to span the panel's width. Stains and other damage: The ??? stains look like water or some other clear liquid??? REFERENCES [f2v.1] Michel Roe's Voynich site, page about plants. http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/users/mrr/voynich/plants.html ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ @@f3r # LAST REVISED: ??? IDENTIFICATION * Nickname: "Page f3r" * Page: f3r = AE/n005 (Rene) = p005 (Stolfi) * Folio: f3 * Panels: f3r * Bifolio: bA3 = f3+f6 * Quire: A (Rene) = I (Beinecke) ATTRIBUTES * Language: A (Currier) * Hand: 1 (Currier) * Subsets: H (Rene), hea (Stolfi) * Subject: herbal * FirstWord: @'t{Sh}eos' * Folio number: "3" on NE corner. DESCRIPTION Page shape and state: Page f3r comprises panel f3r only. The height of folio f3 is ~3-5 mm less than that of most other folios: as the book is currently bound, the N edge of flap f3 is aligned with that of adjacent flaps, so that the shortcoming is at the S edge. On the BL2014 image, panel f3r is 3484 pixels tall near the binding, and 3432 pixels tall near the E edge. Assuming that most folios are ~235 mm tall, panel f3r is ~162 mm mm wide. However the parch seems to be bulging outwards on that image. Page layout: Page f3r has the drawing of a plant, spanning from from ~0.04 to 1.0 NS, touching the very bottom edge of the panel. The foliage spans ~(0.5--1.0,0.04--0.49) WE-NS, while the root (below all the text) spans ~(0.4--0.9,0.8--1.0) WE-NS. There are four parags, sep ~4/1/1 blns. * Parag P1 (9.5 lines) TL-jus, R-fig. * Parag P2 (3.5 lines) from 0.4 NS, L-jus, R-fig. * Parag P3 (2.6 lines) from 0.6 NS, LR-jus. * Parag P4 (2.7 lines) from 0.7 NS, LR-jus. The shared left rail of all four parags is at ~0.13 WE. The lines of parags P1 and P2, except the tail lines, end a couple of mm before the outline of the plant's foliage, which can be taken as their irregular right rail. Parags P3 and P4 lie below the foliage and above the root. The tail lines of P1, P2, and P3 end well before the plant's outline, and that of P4 ends right against it. The other lines of P3 and P4 and are interrupted by the plant's stem; their shared right rail is at ~0.9 WE. Plant: As usual, the part of the plant that is above ground is drawn as if it was spread out on the page. The leaves are drawn as if flattened against the paper, but each leaf overlaps the one above it and covers most of it. * Roots: a ring of unbranched wavy tentacle-like roots radiating from the stem's base, at an overal angle of ~45° with the stem. Each tentacle is roughly triangular, between ~50 mm and ~40 mm long, ~6 mm to ~3 mm wide at the base and tapering to a sharp point. Its axis has smooth waves ~5 mm tall and ~20 mm long. Its outline is smooth and there are no markings on its surface. * Stem and branches: the stem starts upright from the center of the root, with no dividing line. After ~20 mm it has a somewhat sharp bend by ~45° CW. After another ~30 mm, it bends back to vert, and continues for another ~40 mm where it disappears behind the dense foliage begins. It tapers gradually from ~6 mm to ~5 mm wide along that length. There are no branches. The midline of the stem was traced in normal ink, and the left half of the stem was hatched with short diagonal lines, ~2 mm long, branching from the midline at ~45° CCW angle. This hatching gives the impression that the cross-section of the stem is square rather than round. * Leaves: there are 27 leaves, arranged in 13 opposite pairs plus a single one, vert, at the very top of the (hidden) stem. Each leaf is lanceolate, with a salient tip up to ~10 mm long and ~5 mm wide, sharp or rounded, twisted in various ways. It grows straight off the stem, without a stalk. The leaves of the bottom pair are perp to the stem; they are ~40 mm long, and ~15 mm (W) and ~20 mm (E) wide. All other leaves seem to have about the same size as these two, but their angles with the stem decrease to ~45° for the pair just below the top. Every leaf has a dotted line from base to tip, with dots ~2-3 mm apart. On the bottom pair of leaves, this dotted line marks the leaf's midline; otherwise it follows the upper edge of the leaf (or E edge in the case of the top unpaired leaf), ~2 mm away from it. * Flowers and fruits: none. Voynichese handwriting: The quality of the original handwriting on page f3r is hard to evaluate because most of the text appears to have been restored at least once (see below.) The faintest broadstrokes, which may be original, are relatively broad (nibwd ~0.4 mm). Apart from that, the handwriting is fairly neat, with well-formed glyphs (oht ~1.5 mm) and unambiguous word spaces. Figure drafting: The outline of the plant of f3r is mostly drawn with a roundish and rather broad nib (nibwd ~0.5 mm). The midline of the stem and the hatch marks branching from it were drawn with finer strokes (nibwd ~0.4 mm). There is substantial weight variation on the outline, but it is hard to tell whether it was due to recharging, backtracing, or restoring. There are no elements of perspective on the stem and foliage of the plant. The root has decent perspective effects in the direction and size of the tendrils. Quillos and weird glyphs: ??? ??? However the horz arm of the first @p bends down to baseline level. Malformed glyphs: ??? The 15 most common words in page f3r: # 7 {Ch}ol # 2 qokeey # 1.5 dam # 7 {Ch}or # 2 y{Ch}eor # 1.5 ol # 4 {Ch}am # 2 {CTh}ol # 1.5 {Sh}ey # 3.5 s # 2 {CTh}y # 1.25 or # 2 daiin # 2 {Ch}om # 1 ?or LATER INTERVENTIONS Stains and wear: There are strong ghosts of the green paint from the leaves of f3v, and also of the blue paint of its flowers. There is a very faint ghost of the reddish-brown root. ??? Holes and scrapes: ??? ??? Backtracing: ??? Restoring: * Text: On line 1 of f3r already there is evidence of two rounds of restoring, using two tones of ocher ink. the second slightly darker than the first. Restored strokes are often a bit "shivering", and the parts that should be narrow (~0.1 mm) are rather wide (~0.4 mm), almost as wide as the broadstrokes (~0.7 mm). On the first word @'t{Sh}eos', in particular, it seems that the (very light and narrow) plume on the @{Sh} is original; the @e and the @s were restored once; and the @o and the body of the @{Sh}, minus the plume, were re-restored. As for the initial @t, the left half of the left loop and the right half of the right one seem to be original, while the rest seems to have been restored in the first round with five separate strokes. The original trace between the legs is VERY faint, and was apparently missed by the Restorer. ??? * Figure: ??? Coloring: The root of the f3r plant is grushed with rusty brown. The left (hatched) side of the stem, and every other leaf starting with the lowest ones, are grushed in semitrans green. The other leaves are painted with opaque red. The two lowest leaves are fully painted, while each of the others has only the middle part painted, leaving an unpainted stripe along the border, avoiding the dotted line. ??? INTERPRETATIONS Plant identification: There seem to be no obvious similarity between the plant of f3r and any of the Pharma sketches. The plant of f3r looks strange because of the dense leaves. Perhaps they are actually the sheaths of leafstalks, badly drawn? Perhaps the dots along the leaf rim are short spines? Someone suggested that it may be ë{Origanum:dictamnus}, "Cretan dittany". REFERENCES ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ @@f3v # LAST REVISED: ??? IDENTIFICATION * Nickname: "Page f3v" * Page: f3v = AF/n006 (Rene) = p006 (Stolfi) * Folio: f3 * Panels: f3v * Bifolio: bA3 = f3+f6 * Quire: A (Rene) = I (Beinecke) ATTRIBUTES * Language: A (Currier) * Hand: 1 (Currier) * Subsets: H (Rene), hea (Stolfi) * Subject: herbal * FirstWord: @'koaiin' DESCRIPTION Page shape and state: Page f3v comprises only panel f3v. On the BL2014 image, panel f3v is 3475 pixels tall near the binding, and 3424 near the E edge. As observed in the description of page f3r, this folio is ~3-5 mm shorter NS than the adjacent ones. Assuming that most folios are ~235 mm tall, panel f3v is ~158 mm wide at the top and ~162 mm wide at the bottom. The difference at the top with panel f3r may be due to the parch being bulging out when imaged. Page layout: Page f3v has the drawing of one plant, spanning ~(0.37--1.0,0.03--0.97) WE-NS. The outlines of some leaves and of the topmost flower lie right on the binding fold. There are two parags in the top 1/2-page, sep 1 bln. Their shared left rail is at ~0.16 WE. They extend up to the plant's outline, which functions as their irregular right rail. * Parag P1 (6.0 lines, 1-6) is TL-jus, R-fig. * Parag P2 (7.5 lines, 7-14) is L-jus, R-fig. Figure drafting: As usual, the plant of f3v is drawn as if flattened out on the page. Leaves are drawn lying flat on page. Flowers are shown in half-profile, with the center of the corolla tilted ~45° towards the reader. The root is drawn bent W with the tip curled; circular cut surfaces (see below) that should be horizontal in the real root are drawn as almost round circles. Original outline strokes are very thin (nibwd ~0.2 mm), but some parts were drawn (possibly restored) with much wider strokes (nibwd ~0.7 mm). Plant description: * Root: single long root, consisting of six "telescoping" conical segments. Four of them have a flat top, as if they were cut. The first and last segments instead have spherical knobs at the top, ~11 mm and ~5 mm wide, respectively The first segment is ~20 mm long, ~10 mm wide at the top, and ~4 mm wide at bottom, where it inserts into the second segment. The length, top width, and bottom width of the next five segments are ~22 by ~9 to ~3 mm, ~27 by ~8 to ~4 mm, ~23 by ~7 to ~4 mm, ~20 by ~7 to ~2.5 mm, and ~27 by ~3.5 mm to ~2 mm. The last segment is bent by a little more than 180° and ends in another small spherical bulb, ~3 mm wide. The side wall of each segment is covered with many hairs ~4 mm long. They are seen only sticking out of the outline, spaced ~3 mm apart; any such hairs that may have existed within the outline would have been obliterated by the paint. * Stem and branches: The stem is straight, vertical, unbranched, %1590 long. It starts from the spehrical knob at the top of the root; the boundary between the two is tilted ~45° CW. It is %83 wide at the bottom and %50 wide at the top, where it splits into a leaf stalk and two flower stalks. * Leaves: There are six leaves. The lowest four are paired, one on each side of the stem, ~20 mm apart along it. At ~35 mm further up there would be another pair, but the left leaf is missing and only the stalk remains. At ~30 mm further up a single unpaire leaf branches out to the right. The leaf stalks are ~1.5 mm wide and ~10-15 mm long. They leave the stem at ~45° fron N and bend out umtil they are perp to it. Each leaf has a round "body" ~17 mm to ~20 mm wide, with two "tails" next to the stalk, two "arms" roughly opposite to them and a swallowtail-shaped "head", with long outward-curved "antennas" at the distal end. The tails point back toward the stem. The arms point away from the step at ~45° from the leaf axis. Each tail or arm is ~8 mm-~10 mm long and ~3.4 mm wide at the base, slightly wavy, and ends with a round or pointy tip. The head is squarish, ~10 mm wide by ~7 mm long. The antennas are triangular, ~20 mm-~30 mm long and ~5 mm wide at the base; they leave the head at ~45° from the leaf axis and bend outwards until they are perp to it. All these parts merge smoothly with the body in a single continous outline. There are no visible veins inside the leaves. * Flowers: two, very unequal size, growing out of the tip of the plant's stem. As they are now, they seem to have a flower stem, a huge calyx, a corolla that is almost vestigial, and a central flat core. The calyx of each flower is shaped like half of a croissant or a bent sweet potato, transversally cut. Its axis is directed more or less upwards at first, but then curves down by a bit more than 90°. It starts as narrow as the stalk, widening at first like a cone with ~60° apical angle; but it gradually stops widening, and even starts become a bit narrower, so that its wall surface is nearly cylindrical at the distal end. The latter is a flat disk, which makes a sharp 90° edge with the calyx's wall. That flat disk is also the core of the corolla, which is a single row of tiny semicircular petals, ~2.5 mm wide and ~1.5 mm tall, attached to the very edge of that disk. Inside the core there are concentric circles of dots, dashes, or tiny comma-liek strokes. The smallest of the two flowers, on the W side and facing W, has a ~11 mm long stalk, directed ~30° CW from the vertical. The calyx starts at ~(0.70,0.25) WE-NS. Its (bent) axis is ~25 mm long. The maximum width is ~15 mm and the closing disk is ~13 mm wide. Just inside that disk there is a ring (diam ~11 mm) of radial strokes, ~1.5 mm long and ~1 mm apart. Further inside that disk there is another ring (diam ~8 mm) of short circumferential strokes, ~1 mm long and ~1 mm apart. The largest of the two flowers, facing E, starts with a vert stalk ~30 mm long. The base of the calyx is at ~(0.48,0.18) WE-NS. Its (bent) axis is ~50 mm long. The maximum width is ~34 mm, which is also the diam of the closing disk. Just inside that disk there are four concentric rings of marks. The outermost ring (diam ~30 mm) consists of mostly-radial comma-like strokes, ~1.5 mm long and ~1.5 mm apart. The other three rings (diams ~30 mm, ~22 mm, and ~15 mm) consist of circumferential dashes, at most ~1.5 mm long and ~1.5 mm apart, but sometimes shrinking to simple dots. Voynichese handwriting: The handwriting on f3v is generally neat and clear, with few malformed or ambiguous glyphs, and only a couple of dubious word spaces. The average o-height is %25. Original broadstrokes are %9 wide; restored ones are a bit wider, %11. Quillos and weird glyphs: Since most of the text on f3v was restored, only a few original quillos and weird glyphs can still be seen. See the "Restorings" section below. * Line 4 (parag P1): the last glyph of the last word @'eeb' is definitely @b, which is a very rare glyph. The plume may have been restored, though, so perhaps it was originally an @e or @s. * Line 8 (parag P2): the last word @'oka' is quire unusual. It lies right next to the flower's outline, but there is no paint that would hide any glyph after that. * Line 12 (parag P2): there is a dubious word space between the initial @o and the next glyph @{Sh}, which would make the latter a word on its own. Malformed glyphs: See also the "Restoring" section below. * Line 3 (parag P1) ends with @'ai' right against the outline of the calyx of the NE flower. One would expect an @n or @'in' after that, just inside the plant's outline, but such glyph would be completely hidden (or washed out) by the opaque dark blue paint. One can barely make out the plume of an @r or @n there, under the paint, but that could be an illusion. * Line 5 (parag P1): the glyph following the word @'y{Ch}ear' was originally a @y, but the tail is exceedingly faint and was missed by the Restorers. * Line 5: The last word starts with a round filled disk. Because of the slashed gallows it can be assumed to be a @C, but conceivably be an @O. * Line 5: the last visible glyph is almost certainly a @y, but the tail lies inside the SW flower, and thus was completely hidden (or washed out) by the dark blue paint. The glyph could be an @a, but that would be a highly unusual word and line ending. * Line 5: There are some small light brown wisps just above the plant's outline at ~(0.6,0.19) WE-NS. They might be part of a malformed plume of a gallows sticking out of the plant, or a detail of the outline. However the blue paint overflows the outline in an irregular splotch right at that point, and the exact nature of those brown wisps is not guessable. The first word on the page is ??? The 15 most common words in page f3v: # 4 {Ch}or # 2 {Ch}om # 1 dar # 3 t{Ch}or # 1 daiidy # 1 dol # 2.5 s # 1 daiim # 1 koaiin # 2 {CKh}y # 1 daiin # 1 kor # 2 {Ch}ol # 1 dain # 1 k{Ch}am LATER INTERVENTIONS Stains and wear: There are strong gosts of the green paint from f3r, and weaker ones from the red paint. ??? There is an elongated stain above the root tip, in the bottom left corner. Could it be an erased label? Holes and scrapes: ??? Backtracing: ??? Restoring: There seems to have been two rounds of restoring. The first one (Rt1) applied to almost the entire text, and some parts of the figure outline. The second round (Rt2) affected only scattered glyphs of parts thereof. * Text: On teh first two words of line 7 (parag P2), @'t{Ch}or.ot{Ch}am', the first @t seems to be original; the @C part of the two @{Ch}, the second @o, and the left half of the first @o would be Rt2; and all else is Rt1. On line 1, Rt1 affected the bottom and top part of some gallows, like in the words @'{CWh}or' @'{CKh}ol', and @'ykoaiin', while leaving the middle part of some legs untouched. * Figure: On the plant, the seemingly original traces are seen, for instance, on the NW edge of the core of the bigger flower, and are very thin lines (nibwd ~0.2 mm). Broader strokes ones (nibwd ~0.5 mm or more) seem to be restored. The small semicircular petals may have been added by Rt1. Round Rt2 seems to have acted on the bottom of the outline of the topmost flower's central disk, at ~(0.8,0.17) WE-NS, as well as some of the dots inside that disk and one or two of its petals. ??? What else Coloring: Each root segment has the sides painted semitrans rusty brown, and the cross-section unpainted. The leaves are painted with the common semitrans green. The stem and leaf stalks are grushed green. The flower sides are painted solid opaque dark blue, and their stalks are grubbed with the same color. The flat face of each flower is grubbed yel, following the circles. Everything else is unpainted. INTERPRETATIONS The plant looks quite strange. The bloated flower calyxes of f3v are similar to those of f90r1 (even ignoring the blue paint). The main differences are that these end with the maximum width and their axess bend by more than 90°, whereas those of f90r1 have straight axes and become narrower at the top. The telescoping root of the plant on f3v is similar to that of f100v[1,1]. The real root presumably was supposed to be vertical, but was drawn bent 90° and with a curled tip in order to fit in the page. The telescoping sections of the root are hard to explain. Maybe it was copied from the Pharma section where it was drawn sliced in order to show the inside. Maybe there it was not a root but a bundle of rolled-up leaves, like a banana tree "trunk" The leaf shape is unusual but not impossible. It looks like a simplification of that seen in f90r1. The bloated flower calyxes are very strange; they may have been drawn from pressed and dried specimens. Alternly, if the petals are indeed later spurious addiitons by the Rt1 Restorer, it seems possible that the "flowers" were in fact copied from a lost drawing from the Pahrma section, where they were actually tubers or fruits, drawn sliced open to show the pattern of veins inside. The last word @'oka' on line 8 has been misread as @'okas' or @'oka{Sh}', presumably they were working from poor quality images and mistook a petal of the flower, which looks like an @e glyph, as the body of an @s or @{Sh}. REFERENCES ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ @@f4r # LAST REVISED: ??? # ??? REPLACE # T1: # There may be a parag break here. Evidence is line spacing and the gallows on next line. # T1: # T1: # T1: # Unit : Labels on plant. # T1: # "U" readings by J. Stolfi from BL2004. # T1: # T1: # Writing on the stem, just above. Assuming they are Voynichese glyphs # T1: # are transcribed by reading sideways and upwards (SU). Assuming they # T1: # are (badly misshaped) Roman letters, they are transcribed as comments # T1: # by reading from top down (NS), with each letter upright. # T1: # ??? Get other people's transcriptions. # T1: # h.o.si # T1: # T1: # On rightmost flower. # T1: # A tiny but clear uppercase Roman "F". # T1: # # T1: ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ @@f4v # LAST REVISED: ??? # ??? REPLACE # T1: # T1: # &CT; = a @C ligd to a platf gallows @T but NOT ligd to next glyph. # T1: # &CTo; = a @C ligd to platf gallows @T ligd to top of @o. # T1: # T1: ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ @@f5r # LAST REVISED: ??? # ??? REPLACE # ??? REPLACE