When I first started juxtaposing the frequency table of Voynich glyphs with the frequency tables of selected medieval European languages, an experiment naturally suggested itself. This was to take a random page from the Voynich manuscript and map glyphs to letters, one by one from the top of the frequency table to the bottom. This might produce a few recognisable words; or it might not.

I did indeed try a few experiments of this nature, starting with the v101 transliteration as the source document and with medieval Italian (as per the OVI corpus) as the destination language. I did the mapping in Microsoft Excel, which has a convenient “find-and-replace” function. Since Excel tends to treat upper and lower case as the same, I first replaced all upper-case keyboard assignments in v101 with similar lower-case Unicode characters: for example, v101-K became ǩ and v101-W became ŵ.

I also made the decision to replace all occurrences of v101-4o (which I believe is a single glyph) with the Unicode character ④.

Not unexpectedly, these experiments did not yield recognisable words. For example, having randomly selected page f090r1, the first two lines:

• goeccoe ④hcoe ④ŵ1o8 1oe9 ǩop / 92oe koy 2coy ④k1oy ④h9 8ayaea
  

• BEROOER CTOER CŵNEL NERA QUEF / APER DES POES CDNES CTA LISIRI.
  

• o, a, 9, c, ④, C.
  

When I tried before, about three journals said that it is not in their scope because the method is new. Even now, when I am trying to submit, due to the large number of pages (109 pages in total = 8 pages article + 99 pages for supplementary materials), the editor said that they will not accept any article for review with this number of pages. What journals do you recommend?

Anybody who likes puzzle games might enjoy this - it includes several nods to the Voynich: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

You play a medieval herbalist who must find and identify plants with the aid of Voynich-esque manuscript. Your MS is written in English but the images are often not literal, and the text is sometimes vague. You have to use your plant IDs to mix potions, help customers, and solve a mystery.


I really like these kind of games and found it had a good level of challenge, nice music, and of course the Voynich references made me smile.

For the avoidance of doubt I'm not involved in the game's production in any way, just bought it on Steam and thought other forumites might like it.

I have been doing a series of presentations on the history of 14th of 15th Century Cryptography in conjunction with the University of Wuppertal and it seems in this context it would not be a bad idea to do one on the Voynich manuscript. 

I could do a presentation on my own theory, however I would prefer to do a presentation that is more general and less specific.

Having watched a few general presentations online I have decided what I don't want in my presentation:

1) Much discussion of late history of Voynich manuscript. Whether Anne Nil, Athanasius Kircher, Hans Krauss etc.
2) Lots of Talk about folios and bifolios and quires.
3) Lists of possible theories already discredited by carbon dating. E.g. Roger Bacon, Wilfred Voynich, Edward Kelley, DA Vinci etc.
4) Voynich is pop-culture

OK. So what does that leave us with, if anything?

1)Comparison with other historical herbal manuscripts of the time
2)Comparision with other astrological documents of that time eg. Diebold Lauber
3) Relevant Statistical work
4) Contemporary figures Giovanni Fontana, Ramon Llull

A hard question is how much time to devote to a known/unknown language theory and how to a cipher theory. Given my strong objection to the idea that the Voynich is written in a unknown language or known language in an unknown script maybe I should present that in the talk even if it might seem to show some kind of bias and I can then still leave the door open to that possibility.

Ok, so I'm just going to post a few things here to see if the pattern I'm seeing is really there or not.  It looks to me as though a gallows character starts almost every page of the Voynich manuscript, and I'm going to cut and paste it along with its accompanying word, if any, to identify similarities and differences. I might not be able to finish the chart in one sitting, but if I put it up here, maybe somebody or some other folks can pick up where I leave off?

f1r: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
f1v: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
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I wanted to share with you a visual aspect of a page. I'm a visual person and i wanted to play with photoshop and try to understand what the text would look like if some characters/letters would be completely removed. So I started removing the characters and I got carried away, as you can see in the pictures below, removing characters based on their shape and frequency.

      
   
   
   
   
   
   



I got carried away

As you may remember, last year Marco Ponzi and I transcribed the first one and a half notebooks of Ethel Voynich (ELV) based on photos made by Lisa Fagin Davis. I recently had the opportunity to photograph the remaining notebooks, which Marco and I now also transcribed.

The contents of the notebooks are mostly entries about each large plant drawing (Herbal section), trying to identify it with regards to botanical properties and herbal traditions. She also discusses selected small-plant drawings, and points out links between both sections.

Here is the link to the complete transcription (pdf): You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

Here is a spreadsheet where I gathered Ethel's final guess for each plant, as well as how certain she appeared to be: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
(If you are interested in a certain folio, however, I strongly recommend looking at the full entry, since quite often her discussion is much more nuanced than what can be captured in a spreadsheet.)

I noticed that the drawings of the bath scenes are connecting somehow. like some pipes start at certain points and in other drawings itI noticed that the drawings of the bath scenes are connecting somehow. like some pipes start at certain points and in other drawings it seems like these pipes continue. Also, the theme includes green and blue liquids.

I took the pictures one by one and cut the drawings from each page. I noticed that most of them appear in almost the same spot in different pages. So i took all the images and added them in one image. This is the result. seems like these pipes continue. Also, the theme includes green and blue liquids.
Hi everyone!! I noticed that the drawings of the bath scenes are connecting somehow. like some pipes start at certain points and in other drawings it seems like these pipes continue. Also, the theme includes green and blue liquids.

I took the pictures one by one and cut the drawings from each page. I noticed that most of them appear in almost the same spot in different pages. So i took all the images and added them in one image. This is the result.

I also discovered that some appear in almost the same place on different pages. As if some of them can replace the others. Below are some of the drawings . The basic problem in this "puzzle" is that the pages of the scanned copy of the manuscript are not aligned, so the exact location of the drawings in the papers cannot be easily understood and some of them have been partially corroded

For example, if you see the cut background images, women on top left and center, can be replaced with women from other pages and the drawing continues to make sense in it's way. 

I would love to hear your opinions on this 

Thank you

 I discovered that some appear in almost the same place on different pages. As if some of them can replace the others. Below are some of the drawings . The basic problem in this "puzzle" is that the pages of the scanned copy of the manuscript are not aligned and some of them have been partially corroded
I took the pictures one by one and cut the drawings from each page. I noticed that most of them appear in almost the same spot in different pages. So i took all the images and added them in one image. This is the result.

Attached Files

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Is the VMs large plant section a botanical bestiary?

Here is the story of the pelican from the first listing that popped up.

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From the medieval perspective, if you're buying that one, then the VMs example is no problem.

The VMs example is f46v. Identified from sources as costmary, Tanacetum balsamita. The plant has also been called the 'herb of the virgin' - with reference to the Virgin Mary.

The roots were a bit more of a problem. They look like wings. Interpretations tried to turn them into the double-headed eagle of the Holy Roman Empire, but the headless VMs illustration doesn't have one head, let alone two. It also doesn't have an eagle's legs, claws or tail. A better interpretation was recently proposed. The roots were the wings of Saint Michael. Though you can find an illustration of Saint Michael in almost any color, the red shoulders are a positive indicator. The structure of the "wings" with their tips upward is very hard to find in medieval illustrations of Saint Michael and has much more in common with wings as represented in medieval heraldry.

The association of Saint Michael and the Virgin Mary relates to his role as psychopomp, or the guide of souls and the combination is a subtle, yet clear reference to the Assumption in an era when Mariology was growing in significance.

I make no claim to the investigations that identified either part of this beastly combination. I do think that when things fit together, from a medieval perspective, that it should be acknowledged and not 'swept under the rug' as it seems. So here it is.

The VMs is a botanical bestiary - based on the one example. It is the one example where we can interpret the use of a biblical backstory for the illustration, very similar to the use of the example of the pelican. It is one example where there were 'zero' examples before with nothing beyond proposed botanical identifications. Even if this is the only example, it shows some of what the VMs artist can do and why VMs interpretation has been so problematic.

As is known I hypothesize that the Rosettes Folio is a map. However it has been said that it doesn't look sufficiently like a map to be one. Here is a different hypothesized map->

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