19-07-2016, 02:40 PM
(This post was last modified: 19-07-2016, 02:45 PM by Diane.
Edit Reason: *sp*
)
Searcher,
there's no 'T-O' map on folios 85v and 86r (folio 86v as was).
It's a misinterpretation of the north-emblem.
T-O maps depict the entire world; they don't show roads emerging to go beyond the world. In this case, the place is one in the real world which - like many cities including older Constantinople, Mstkheta and many others, was divided into three parts. The 't-o" idea is due to a sense of familiarity which is false: our minds tend to reach for something we know already, and reason then ought to step in and say that the details show that initial sense of 'recognition' is illusory.
You are right about the new scans, though. They're very 'bleached' and on some folios quite important details have been reduced to near- invisibility. I find it helpful to look at as many different versions as possible.
About your interpretation of the script - I suppose that's possible, but someone else would be better able to say; the script and language aren't my area, even if I fall over the odd stunning co-incidence.
I can say that to represent the sun's sinking into the west in that way isn't just unusual if one is positing Latin (i.e. Christian) European invention - it's unheard of. I expect that is why, in more than a century, there was only one person before me who had recognised that it represented the sinking sun, and thus that the opposite represented East... making it potentially possible for them to correctly orient that folio, though it seems that nothing followed. Until I began work, everyone (and I mean everyone) was still looking on the western side of the Mediterranean for the supposed 'castle' (which I think represents the port known as Laiazzo or Ayas).
I think it is telling that no-one took it any further, or did any analysis or research .. the one acute and correct observation was just lost among the interminable intermittent series bits of vague ideas, many silly, and which had included a suggestion that the three-dot motif might be a clock, or that the middle might represent this place or that, or none..
That has always been the problem in Voynich studies, I think. There's a temptation to get to the day-dream/hypothesis stage and then forget the manuscript in the effort to add circumstantial detail to the hypothesis in the hope it may be deemed the most plausible story. Very understandable, but a pity; it means that we end up with everyone urging their idea, and no-one studying the manuscript to see what *it* has to say.
Of course, once I'd done that analysis and identified the map certainly as a map, explained its range and structures, compared with medieval maps, and comparative imagery and historical geography and so forth... now no one doubts it's a map... they just don't like the sort of map it is, because it's obviously not a product of Latin European knowledge, any more than of Latin European style.
there's no 'T-O' map on folios 85v and 86r (folio 86v as was).
It's a misinterpretation of the north-emblem.
T-O maps depict the entire world; they don't show roads emerging to go beyond the world. In this case, the place is one in the real world which - like many cities including older Constantinople, Mstkheta and many others, was divided into three parts. The 't-o" idea is due to a sense of familiarity which is false: our minds tend to reach for something we know already, and reason then ought to step in and say that the details show that initial sense of 'recognition' is illusory.
You are right about the new scans, though. They're very 'bleached' and on some folios quite important details have been reduced to near- invisibility. I find it helpful to look at as many different versions as possible.
About your interpretation of the script - I suppose that's possible, but someone else would be better able to say; the script and language aren't my area, even if I fall over the odd stunning co-incidence.
I can say that to represent the sun's sinking into the west in that way isn't just unusual if one is positing Latin (i.e. Christian) European invention - it's unheard of. I expect that is why, in more than a century, there was only one person before me who had recognised that it represented the sinking sun, and thus that the opposite represented East... making it potentially possible for them to correctly orient that folio, though it seems that nothing followed. Until I began work, everyone (and I mean everyone) was still looking on the western side of the Mediterranean for the supposed 'castle' (which I think represents the port known as Laiazzo or Ayas).
I think it is telling that no-one took it any further, or did any analysis or research .. the one acute and correct observation was just lost among the interminable intermittent series bits of vague ideas, many silly, and which had included a suggestion that the three-dot motif might be a clock, or that the middle might represent this place or that, or none..
That has always been the problem in Voynich studies, I think. There's a temptation to get to the day-dream/hypothesis stage and then forget the manuscript in the effort to add circumstantial detail to the hypothesis in the hope it may be deemed the most plausible story. Very understandable, but a pity; it means that we end up with everyone urging their idea, and no-one studying the manuscript to see what *it* has to say.
Of course, once I'd done that analysis and identified the map certainly as a map, explained its range and structures, compared with medieval maps, and comparative imagery and historical geography and so forth... now no one doubts it's a map... they just don't like the sort of map it is, because it's obviously not a product of Latin European knowledge, any more than of Latin European style.