18-04-2016, 11:49 AM
Hi all,
Since I think that I was probably, apart from Stolfi, the first person to refer to the manuscript's origins as non-European, and that there has been a generally negative, sometimes very positively negative response to my conclusions, let me give people who have come to the study within the past eight years, a little background.
First, provenancing awkward artefacts is what I do. It's my profession. Chiefly I work with archaeologists who have a small misplaced bit of an artefact, and am assisted by being able to have an independent professional evaluation of the basic materials - with a sherd this would include a raman test for the constituents of the glaze for example.
Lacking a formal codicological evaluation of this manuscript is a major lack. So is the absence of any comprehensive evaluation of the pigments. In my opinion, if we had these, some of the most prominent and longest held ideas about the manuscript would dissolve overnight - if anyone listened, of course.
My area is iconographic analysis, and I specialize in unprovenanced and problematic items. One of the tasks which I'd undertaken, at the request of the late Professor Dummett, was an evaluation of a group of paintings on card now in the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris. Cards of that type are generally described as playing cards, or as 'tarot' cards, but their antecedents were unknown, as was the intended meaning of that particular set. Unusually, because most of the work I do is by commission, and the results are copyright to the patron, not to me, I was able to publish a little of that work.
It was seen by someone interested in the Voynich manuscript, who then wrote and asked my opinion of two images from the calendar section (what is commonly called the 'zodiac').
At first, I had fully expected, from what that person told me, to find that the manuscript was a Latin Christian work from medieval Europe, and I began from that basis.
Within a day or two, it became clear that this could not be the case. I spent about a year's free time, researching it further before having anything to do with the Voynich online 'community'. I like this manuscript, and think it very valuable for all sorts of reasons, so have continued to share something of my research and conclusions online, despite the reactions which have ranged from the indifferent to the fairly determinedly hostile, over the years.
"Just ignore her" is one common meme... but I'm sure this isn't something I need explain to anyone.
Unlike Sam G., of whose lucid and independent way of thought I much appreciate, I think the text could be fairly late and am almost certain that it cannot be as old as the early strand of imagery in this manuscript.
The signs of non-Latin and non-Christian character for the imagery are found on every folio, not only in what is there, but what is absent. Open any Latin medieval manuscript and you will find that it expresses a world-view structured around social hierarchies, and a fixed belief that man is the pinnacle and purpose of all earthly creation. You will see kings and thrones, and above all men (I mean males) riding horses, tilling fields, making war and so forth. Part of the hierarchy involves woman, who are invariably made as beautiful as the artist can manage. Saints and monks, beggars and thieves, monsters and ... you name it. That's the world-view of the European.
Now - turn to the Voynich imagery. Apart from the centres of those month-roundels, which I have always said looked to me as though they'd never been outside the region contained by the Mediterranean and Black Sea, and which include one element (the red splash on the lion) which points to the tenth century, the rest of the manuscript contains absolutely nothing of the Latin, or even more generally, of the Christian world view save a couple of crowns added to some of the nymphs.
In addition, there are specific items which the "all European" theory never addresses. One is the use in the map of an emblem to mark 'west' which alludes to an idea of the sun's setting in the west to be later reborn from a flower. I myself have found no such idea in any Latin imagery, or any of the considerable body of Latin medieval texts which I've consulted during my professional life.
Another plainly non-Latin image, and one alien to the whole corpus of Latin thought, is the style of leonine sun, where the sun appears either clean-shaven or female (I think the latter was intended by the original), and its character as 'king' expressed by the addition of a beard attached by a cord about the chin.
One might go on, and explain where these things did come from, as originally I used to do, thinking it would shift researchers' focus to an appropriate time and place in their hunt for the key to the written part of the text.
I found that to rightly understand the manuscript was not always the first priority for members of the pre-Ninja Voynich world, as it was from 2008-2015, and have come to accept that.
But the information - or some of it - has been published online, and anyone who cares to investigate can find my blog.
I would very much encourage all at Voynich ninja not to accept anything that "everyone knows" without going pretty deeply into the question of where an idea arose, and whether it was just someone acting from prevalent expectations or whether they had really looked at the imagery, described it accurately, and gained their opinion after having done their research, rather than having the idea, and then researching the idea to try and find circumstantial support for it.
About the crossbow, for example. The key here is not found in manuscripts of the fifteenth century, but in the language, common culture, everyday allusion and other imagery, some of it in media other than manuscript art. Indeed, as I've shown recently the fad we see in German calendar art may well have had its genesis in Prague.
But that's quite enough from me. I wish all members well, and am happy to communicate by email with anyone who wants bibliographic information, or just to exchange points of view.
Since I think that I was probably, apart from Stolfi, the first person to refer to the manuscript's origins as non-European, and that there has been a generally negative, sometimes very positively negative response to my conclusions, let me give people who have come to the study within the past eight years, a little background.
First, provenancing awkward artefacts is what I do. It's my profession. Chiefly I work with archaeologists who have a small misplaced bit of an artefact, and am assisted by being able to have an independent professional evaluation of the basic materials - with a sherd this would include a raman test for the constituents of the glaze for example.
Lacking a formal codicological evaluation of this manuscript is a major lack. So is the absence of any comprehensive evaluation of the pigments. In my opinion, if we had these, some of the most prominent and longest held ideas about the manuscript would dissolve overnight - if anyone listened, of course.
My area is iconographic analysis, and I specialize in unprovenanced and problematic items. One of the tasks which I'd undertaken, at the request of the late Professor Dummett, was an evaluation of a group of paintings on card now in the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris. Cards of that type are generally described as playing cards, or as 'tarot' cards, but their antecedents were unknown, as was the intended meaning of that particular set. Unusually, because most of the work I do is by commission, and the results are copyright to the patron, not to me, I was able to publish a little of that work.
It was seen by someone interested in the Voynich manuscript, who then wrote and asked my opinion of two images from the calendar section (what is commonly called the 'zodiac').
At first, I had fully expected, from what that person told me, to find that the manuscript was a Latin Christian work from medieval Europe, and I began from that basis.
Within a day or two, it became clear that this could not be the case. I spent about a year's free time, researching it further before having anything to do with the Voynich online 'community'. I like this manuscript, and think it very valuable for all sorts of reasons, so have continued to share something of my research and conclusions online, despite the reactions which have ranged from the indifferent to the fairly determinedly hostile, over the years.
"Just ignore her" is one common meme... but I'm sure this isn't something I need explain to anyone.
Unlike Sam G., of whose lucid and independent way of thought I much appreciate, I think the text could be fairly late and am almost certain that it cannot be as old as the early strand of imagery in this manuscript.
The signs of non-Latin and non-Christian character for the imagery are found on every folio, not only in what is there, but what is absent. Open any Latin medieval manuscript and you will find that it expresses a world-view structured around social hierarchies, and a fixed belief that man is the pinnacle and purpose of all earthly creation. You will see kings and thrones, and above all men (I mean males) riding horses, tilling fields, making war and so forth. Part of the hierarchy involves woman, who are invariably made as beautiful as the artist can manage. Saints and monks, beggars and thieves, monsters and ... you name it. That's the world-view of the European.
Now - turn to the Voynich imagery. Apart from the centres of those month-roundels, which I have always said looked to me as though they'd never been outside the region contained by the Mediterranean and Black Sea, and which include one element (the red splash on the lion) which points to the tenth century, the rest of the manuscript contains absolutely nothing of the Latin, or even more generally, of the Christian world view save a couple of crowns added to some of the nymphs.
In addition, there are specific items which the "all European" theory never addresses. One is the use in the map of an emblem to mark 'west' which alludes to an idea of the sun's setting in the west to be later reborn from a flower. I myself have found no such idea in any Latin imagery, or any of the considerable body of Latin medieval texts which I've consulted during my professional life.
Another plainly non-Latin image, and one alien to the whole corpus of Latin thought, is the style of leonine sun, where the sun appears either clean-shaven or female (I think the latter was intended by the original), and its character as 'king' expressed by the addition of a beard attached by a cord about the chin.
One might go on, and explain where these things did come from, as originally I used to do, thinking it would shift researchers' focus to an appropriate time and place in their hunt for the key to the written part of the text.
I found that to rightly understand the manuscript was not always the first priority for members of the pre-Ninja Voynich world, as it was from 2008-2015, and have come to accept that.
But the information - or some of it - has been published online, and anyone who cares to investigate can find my blog.
I would very much encourage all at Voynich ninja not to accept anything that "everyone knows" without going pretty deeply into the question of where an idea arose, and whether it was just someone acting from prevalent expectations or whether they had really looked at the imagery, described it accurately, and gained their opinion after having done their research, rather than having the idea, and then researching the idea to try and find circumstantial support for it.
About the crossbow, for example. The key here is not found in manuscripts of the fifteenth century, but in the language, common culture, everyday allusion and other imagery, some of it in media other than manuscript art. Indeed, as I've shown recently the fad we see in German calendar art may well have had its genesis in Prague.
But that's quite enough from me. I wish all members well, and am happy to communicate by email with anyone who wants bibliographic information, or just to exchange points of view.