Dear VMS - fans,

I´m new here, so I don´t know this forum enough to do everything right. If my thread was a theme before, then, please, show me the old thread, and I will immediately delete this one. 

And sorry for my very bad English!   We, Germans, should not do this! 

The Voynich Manuscript accompanies me since my school time (now: for nearly ten years). Back then I played a very little role in a detective series episode (Pater Castell: Das Voynich Manuskript). Since this time, I tried to find at least the language family the Voynich Manuscript belongs to.

I´ve only studied German and History after my school, but I have written my final exam in a subject called "Language History". So I think, I can say, that I know how words changed over the years. But that isn´t enough to decode the VMS. 

You have to know at least to which family or families of languages it could related to. I have a founded idea now for one VMS language family, which is based on some translation attempts of the VMS plants section, and a check by a "native speaker" of (one of) the last possible descendants of the possible language family.

But before I can follow my theory of a double- (or: maybe triple-) language provenience of the manuscript, I have to check, if there are any problems with the central hypothesis. So I ask you for the following helps:

1. Are there any language families, which are completely impossible as VMS language and if yes, why?

2. Is it possible, that the VMS, as we know it today, could be a copy of an older book?

3. Are there any living or dead language families, which are "hot candidates" for the VMS language and if yes, why?

4. Could you imagine, that somebody from the "Old World" (Europe, Asia, Africa) would "encode" a manuscript, at the time around 1000 - 1500 AD, to hide discoveries in the "New World" (America)?

5. Is it absolutely clear, that Rudolf II. and Jacobus de Tepenece were the first owners of the manuscript or do we know more about the VMS owners today?

To make it clear: 

I have an idea, where the VMS could be from, but I´m not a native speaker of these languages. Furthermore I don´t have a full VMS decoding alphabet, but maybe enough letters to translate some pages, but only in the plant section. My system definitely doesn´t fit for all sections. If I´m right with my theory the plant language is dead today and the other one may lives, but I´m not really sure. If anybody wants to know which languages I suspect, he can write a personal message to me. I could write it here, too, but I don´t want to influence the discussion more than necessary. 

I wrote a blog in Russian. You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
 I compared the distribution of words in Q13 and Q20 separately, if we take the You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. and the upper part of the text You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. as a base of comparison.
For comparison, the distribution was taken when the You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. 1r was used as a base.
Hyperlinks are very large. You must wait.
The diagrams show the “amount of overlapping information” for each bifolio.
The subtleties of reasoning I can not translate into English, so I publish here only preliminary conclusions.
1 / The text on each bifolio was written before stitching them into the book Q20.
2 / The text of Q13 is highly specialized (not narrative).
3 / The last paragraph 116r is an imitation of the epilogue.
4 / Language “B” is gibberish.
* / 2-4 For the replacement character cipher

Hi everyone.

I tried to find downloads of 2004 Scan of high-resolution images of Voynich Manuscript, and found that the website of Beinecke Library now provides only 2014 Scan.

As mentioned You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view., Jason Davies provides downloads of high-resolution images of 2004 Scan on their website, but they are in SID format. I tried to search on Google about how to open the format, and Google pointed me to You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view., which provides a 16-bit application that could run only on 16-bit/32-bit Windows, up to Windows XP. Since I’m running 64-bit version of Windows 10, it doesn’t work.

So, finally, I had to write a small Python script to download tiles from Jason Davies’ website and another small Python script to merge them into whole images. To avoid possible loss, my script saves merged results in PNG format, so they are very, very large (about 9 GiB in total).

I’d like to share the downloaded-and-merged images of 2004 Scan, but I wonder how?

1. Is there anyone who could help me sharing the files by providing some online space?
   
2. If it is impossible, converting them to high-quality JPEG files is also possible. It’s probably better to have JPEG files than SID files or nothing.
   
3. Or, is there any suggestion on opening SID files?
   

I believe that this should have been discussed a lot, and many people have noticed this. But I could not find much information, so I started a thread to ask my questions.

When I was checking f67r2 , I noticed that there are some texts in red. I suddenly realized that most texts were in black. The only red texts I could remember were the symbols on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. and these red texts on f67r2 .

   

My questions are:

1. Is there any other texts in red color?
   
2. Is there any other non-black texts?
   
3. What might they mean?
   

In another thread, Marco referred to McCrone's report about the blue ink:



I selected some blue surfaces from the large plants (first 20 or so folios). Each clip is from a different folio. As you see, there are a few ways in which the blue paint looks off. Sometimes there are dark spots, and often something yellowish shines through:

   


What are your thoughts about this? Has anyone researched paint preparation before?
Is the blue-yellow a result of a suboptimal blend of different substances? Or is the yellow merely a result of a lighter blue wash with pen ink? Or are these the cuprite traces mentioned in the report?

Or - and this is where we enter Voynich territory - does the blue mask a color that was previously applied? While compiling this, I notice the ugliest blue is often found near yellow surfaces.

Similar things are found throughout the MS. Here's an example from the "white Aries" page. The top nymph has a light blue barrel where the wash seems mixed with yellow. The bottom one gets a relatively even blue, in quality not worse than the red of her dress.

   

Voynich's acquisition of the Voynich MS, as part of a larger group of manuscripts, has always been surrounded by mystery, and it is something that has intrigued me for about 20 years now.

It may not be the most popular topic in discussion groups like this, since it will not tell us anything about the meaning of the MS or the meaning of its text.

The recent blog post of Rich (whose family name is actually given incorrectly in the Blogosphere), and especially the ensuing exchange of comments, made me realise how little is know about progress on this particular topic.

The main problem is that Voynich has presented several different versions of the 'story of his discovery'. Quite in general, he is someone whose words have to be treated with extreme care, as he had a strong tendency to exaggerate, to the point of inventing stories that never happened.

However, over the years I have been able to collect a growing body of independent evidence related to this acquisition, and to the time preceding it. In particular, a document preserved in the Vatican archives, which I first saw in May 2015, could clarify most of the mystery.

This document, preserved as Arch.Bibl.109 is a photographic copy of an original that seems to be lost.
It is dated 1903, and it presents a list of manuscripts offered for sale to the Vatican, by the society of Jesus.
Most of these manuscripts were finally incorporated in the Vatican library in 1912, and they are included in a catalogue by Jose Ruysschaert published in 1959. He remarks that some manuscripts that should have been included in this sale are actually missing. He makes a list of them (in footnote in the 1959 catalogue) and indicates that they all seem to have been acquired by W. Voynich.

Indeed, the 1903 catalogue includes essentially all these manuscripts that Voynich acquired.
This means that:

• These manuscripts were never lost. The Jesuits were simply keeping them in hiding, until the time they decided to sell them
  
• Voynich did not discover them, like he always claimed. Instead, he was invited to buy a number of them, under promise of secrecy.
  
• The letter by Ethel Voynich, to be opened after her death, appears to be accurate in all details. So at least Voynich seems to have told *her* the truth.
  

I noticed something about You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. which might be relevant. A quick search on the forum didn't bring up much, apart from JKP's suggestion that it may be a sundew and David's fan palm.

I see why one would think of Sundew (the curl of the flowers) but it seems to me that there are more arguments in favor of something palmy.

An obvious indication is in the stem, which seems to bear the typical marks of lost leaves. Although I'm sure this also appears in other kinds of plants, it is most notable in certain kinds of palms.


   

But I also noticed the leaves have been drawn in a very weird way. There are two lines at the tips, as if some tip extension has been added which was not colored. I did a very rudimentary trace of a part:

   

This again reminds me of palm trees, which easily develop differently colored leaf tips.


That does leave to be explained everything that's blue, from the insides of the leaves to the big flowers to the curled structure. Thoughts?

Edit: I guess the blue could indicate a further color gradient. Leaves which start a deep green in the centre, look greener in the fingers and tend to discolor at the tips.

This is an older link, but it's possible people haven't seen it, so here is a British Library link with enlarged textures of various animal skins:

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Following the water lily thread, I wondered: which plants in the VM can be identified with an above average degree of certainty and consensus? Note that I don't say complete certainty and consensus since both are unlikely. Also, I don't mean specific subspecies (that's not the right question to ask) just general plant type. Let's say as specific as possible without straying too far into "maybe" territory. 

See Marco's post You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. for the origins of some additions.

Edited list so far (proposals where there appears to be especially great agreement are in bold):

• f1v Belladonna, Deadly nightshade
  
• f2r Centaurea (subspecies uncertain: knapweed, cornflower...)
  
• f2v Water lily
  
• f5r paris quadrifolia 
  
• f6v Ricinus (castor oil plant) 
  
• f9v Viola 
  
• f16r Cannabis 
  
• f17v tamus (dioscorea)
  
• f18r Calendula / Mountain aster 
  
• f18v Malva (JKP)
  
• f21r Polygonum Aviculare, a Herniaria species or similar plant. The drawing is broadly considered lifelike, but there are too many plants that look similar. See You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view..
  
• f23r veronica 
  
• f25v plantago 
  
• f26r Sedum telephium (JKP)
  
• f32r Prunella 
  
• f35v Oak (but the climbing plant remains unclear) 
  
• f43v Teasel (right)
  
• f49r Cuscuta (JKP) 
  
• f65v chamomile 
  

Thanks @JKP, that was fast.

The leaf shape is similar to You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. in the VMS (although the leaf is shown the other way round).

Another name for Newfare is nenufar (Seeblomen). But they are presented differently in other manuscripts.

You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. - GW 12270,  Latin herbal with German synonyms, Passau, Anonym, Herbarius, Patavie, 1485,  You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.



Edit: Another spelling for Nenufar is Nenuphar. An older spelling for Seeblome is sêbluome (Mhd).