I wonder if any of the people at Yale have seen or know of the following:
THE ILARDI MICROFILM COLLECTION OF RENAISSANCE DIPLOMATIC DOCUMENTS
ca. 1450 - ca. 1500
1856 reels
Compiled by VINCENT ILARDI, Professor of History, University of Massachusetts, Amherst and Visiting Professor (1993-96), History Department, Yale University
MICROFORM ROOM
STERLING MEMORIAL LIBRARY
YALE UNIVERSITY
I have a detailed listing for this. There are some documents from before 1450 and some of them are in cipher. However there are others that are not clear and so may contain ciphers.
Vincent Ilardi's Collection contains documents he photographed from many different European archives, particularly Italian archives.
The manuscripts from the BNF with the enciphered letters that I have just posted about were listed. However they was no indication that they contained ciphers, I learnt this by a completely separate means recently. This makes me wonder if there are other items in this collection which contain ciphers and for which the listing gives no indication.
I have attached a detailed guide to this collection.
Those of you working on plant identifications may be interested in these PDFs of Ethel Voynich's botanical notebooks. I was at the Beinecke yesterday and photographed Notebook 1 in its entirely and Notebook 2 in part (I didn't have time to photograph all of Notebook 2). You can find the PDFs here:
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You may download, share, use, and cite these as you wish, no permission necessary. Please do cite them properly, though, as Yale University, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, MS 408, Box G, Notebook 1 (or 2), and the page number of the notebook.
I took hundreds of images of notes, letters, and press clippings from boxes C-H and will post them once I've got them properly organized and labeled. The general contents of the boxes are listed in Barbara Shailor's description here:
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Ethel's notes are fascinating and detailed. Enjoy!
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Thought board members might be interested in this video game, Inkulinati. Sounds like fun but l’d have to kick my kid off their X-Box to try it (l’m a PlayStation gamer).
If l do manage some console access, l’ll write a review.
I would like to collect early information (pre-1500) on this plant (Tanacetum balsamita) as a possible identification of the You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. illustration.
This old identification, along with recent discussion about the roots as the wings of Saint Michael, in combination with a French name for this plant, Herbe Sainte-Marie, make for an interesting, combined interpretation. If the roots represent Saint Michael, in his role as the Christian conductor of souls, and the herb represents the Virgin Mary, then this is a subtle reference to the Assumption of the Virgin.
Are there early herbal monographs for this plant that have written text?
This one just has names. "Erba di S. Marie"
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(12-08-2022, 12:35 PM)Juan_Sali wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.One of these greek minuscule is very similar to one of rare glyhs of the VM. Any idea of what greek minuscule letter can it be?
nablator wrote:pi !
This symbol is clearly an ancient one, with many different meanings and usages across human history. I think the Greek Minuscule pi is a decently good parallel. Personally though, I've never been able to unsee You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view., which is pronounced as an alveolar affricate in Korean — [t͡ɕ], [tʃ], [dɕ], or [dʒ] in IPA. I'm sure this is a shining example of "correlation does not imply causation", but it has crossed my mind that the Korean Hangul alphabet was a constructed script ("con-script"), invented and published at a date that's within the commonly accepted window of likelihood for the VMs's composition.
King Sejong is usually credited with the invention of Hangul, but he actually assembled a think tank, involving his kingdom's top linguists — most of them scholars, translators, interpreters, and diplomats, and all of them among the most worldly and multilingual Koreans alive at the time. The shapes of the letters were determined by their place of articulation. For example, for jieut, the bottom two lines that look like an inverted V (or EVA v, while we're at it!) indicates a fricative at the alveolar ridge, right behind the upper teeth, as the placement of the tongue tip. The horizontal bar on top, meanwhile, indicates a stop in addition to this. It's a very logical writing system, designed for ease of learning. Its promulgation greatly increased literacy in medieval Korea.
Historians and archaeologists tend to recognize a maximum of four inventions of written language entirely from scratch, pun intended: Sumerian Cuneiform, Egyptian Hieroglyphs, Chinese Characters, and Mayan glyphs. Mayan glyphs almost certainly took no influence from any other writing system. But it's quite possible that the Sumerians actually gave the Egyptians and/or the Chinese the concept of writing, since they definitely traded overland with both peoples extensively in prehistory. This means that written language may have only been invented completely from scratch twice in human history. But barring this controversial and unproven possibility, there are no writing systems in current use that trace an unbroken lineage to either Sumerian or Mayan writing. All naturally evolved writing systems and a posteriori constructed scripts in use today trace their lineage to the Phoenician abjad, itself a product of Egyptian hieroglyphs, or to Chinese characters. King Sejong's think tank included learnèd men familiar with writing systems from both lineages, and the influence of both can be seen in the design of Hangul.
Again, I don't mean to suggest that anyone involved with the creation of the VMs and its a posteriori con-script was aware of, let alone involved with, the creation of Hangul. Although of course anything is possible, that seems quite literally far-fetched. What I'm suggesting is that both may have inherited, and relied upon, a common and ancient sensibility for how written marks could potentially correlate to human vocal utterances, and how that correlation might be improved upon or played with, to some desired end.
J.K. Peterson has demonstrated beyond any reasonable doubt that Voynichese glyphs, with the notable exception of EVA t and p, all have a history of use as scribal abbreviations of the Roman alphabet during medieval times. Brian Cham and David Jackson, meanwhile, have shown with their Curve-Line System that, like Hangul letters, Voynichese glyphs seem to have a deceptively simple logic to their design and selection: Start with a right-concave curve, a short back-leaning straight line, or a tall vertical line. Attach a flourish to this basic stroke: an upward curve, a downward curve, a downward curve with a loop, or a horizontal bar attached to the top; or, alternately, an upward curve attached to the bottom.
Unlike with Hangul, it is not at all clear which, if any, spoken human language Voynichese was constructed to represent. So it's not at all clear what the logic of its design means, or what implications its apparent logic has for its intended use. But I come back, time and again, to a basic question: What sort of information would Voynichese, in its apparent ad hoc design, be particularly well suited to recording? What kind of speech? What kind of content or data? What kind of information that would be readily apparent (i.e. "easily decodable") to the right insiders with the right prerequisite knowledge, but not so much to anyone else?
I am keen to date the attached cipher. In the inventory it is described as "Lettera cifrata dell'oratore di Milano."
The folder it was in contains only 15th century and very early 16th century documents, so it is unlikely to be from outside that time period, though anything is possible.
It is possible that it is mislabelled and miscategorised, although I would not assume so without strong reasons.
It doesn't look like any of the late 15th century Milanese ciphers that I have seen. It doesn't look like any of the early 15th century Milanese ciphers, however early 15th century Milanese ciphers seem to be much more diverse in design than the late 15th century ones. I have not seem many 16th Milanese ciphers, so it is hard for me to say if it belongs to that era.
Has anyone seen anything similar? What makes it stand out to me is the presence of the symbols written over some of the characters.
The Rosettes diagram includes images of various buildings and several interesting architectural details, though some are hard to read.
Here I have selected a few and compared them with details from You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view., a copy of the well-known "Notitia Dignitatum".
Quote:The manuscript is modelled after the Carolingian copy (the lost Carolingian "Codex Spirensis") of a late antique manuscript. This manuscript is the earliest copy of this text to survive complete, made at Basel in 1436 by an Italian scribe and a French illuminator (Peronet Lamy) for Petrus Donatus, bishop of Padua.
Of course, the fold-out contains other noteworthy architectural details that have no parallel in the Basel manuscript (e.g. the ghibelline merlons, or the "stepped" cylindrical tower). Some buildings have their own threads, others can be discussed here.
I open this thread to discuss the You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. as a reference to San Michael.
A detail of the "wings" are the red bands on the top of both "wings".
Here are samples of San Michael with red feathers on the top on the wings.
From left to right:
SYou are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. unknown artist. Getty Museum
You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. C 1405. Metropolitan Museum
You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. (Spain) 1435-1445
As a heraldic image, the VM eagle (if it is an eagle) would have its wings "splayed", like Sigismund's, so that is something they have in common. However, the division of the VM's feathers is decidedly un-heraldic. In heraldry, the large feathers are in the mid section (blue), hanging under the wings. The feathers in the red section are either absent or small. In the VM though, the top feathers are larger than the ones in the mid section, and they extend well above where the creature's head would be.
In heraldry, the tail generally goes down first, and then outward. For example, in the case of Sigismund's seal, you can see that there is first a vertical column, and then almost horizontal feathers. In the VM, we see something completely different, and you will be hard-pressed to find a heraldic eagle that looks like this.
I'm not saying that these differences must be explained, maybe this is just the best way to draw a heraldic eagle in a root. But I don't find the resemblance as straightforward as some people claim.
