116v

[Anton]

Returning to the issue of difficulties of the good reading, the point so far mostly neglected here is what Nick Pelling once noted, that the text of You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. bears resemblance of being heavily emended by a later person - and that person, I would add, may have been "semi-proficient" indeed, introducing much mess with his inadequate emendations. The degree to which the descenders faded in the last line compared with the intensity of the top portion of letters suggest the degree of change that may have been introduced here.

I think I earlier posted in this thread the observation that somewhat to the left of the leading "a" in anchiton there is the original letter "a" visible.

Applying this idea to the "gasmich" stuff, and taking gasmilch for the working hypothesis, one may suggest that the letter "l" simply faded for the most part over time, and was erroneously emended to "i". In this case what was emended as "i" was in fact the lower portion of the "l". And in such case the faded loop of the "l" should reveal itself under UV or through color correction. I think that I can see some traces of it, but they are uncertain, so I'm far from sure. Also, what was later emended to "m", would then be "mi" originally. I tentatively show the supposed loop, let those who are proficient in graphic editing check if they can see the same. That's what I call careful analysis, not just postulating that "mich" is "milch" just because it "makes sense" if "improved" this way, suggesting others to believe that the guy missed a letter in a commonplace word in the line of five words and failed to notice that - a thing in the whole world less probable than the VMS being written in simple substitution of Middle English (sorry!).