10-07-2025, 05:42 PM
We can't know what the stain is unless Yale does material testing, which is not going to happen anytime soon, if at all. I've examined the stain in person, and it is doesn't have the depth that a wax stain should have, even if the dried wax was removed. Whatever it was was clearly greasy, however, as seen by the way it bleeds through the leaf and offsets onto 102v and 104. The retouching is certainly later, as it was done by someone who was not as fluent a writer of Voynichese as was Scribe 3.