116v

[Jorge_Stolfi]

He just did not care enough about the manuscript to study its writing in any detail.

Assumption.

Yes, that is one of the two assumptions (#2) that the Big Wipe theory requires.

He naturally felt that any reconstruction, no matter how incorrect, would be better than just leaving that text erased for good.

Assumption.

Not an independent assumption.  Assumption #1 of the Big Wipe theory is that there was Voynichese text in that area.  Since now there is a text that is not Voynichese, someone (the "Repairman") must have tried to restore the lost text.  If the Repairman was the owner himself, his motive can only have been that one.  If he was someone else, the he may have had other motives, as I discussed.

Why “abia” and not “ahta/abta”?

There is a "dot" over the third letter: a diagonal stroke, like the "dot" on the "i" of "vix".  Based on the UV image, it seeems very likely that those "dots" are both actual ink strokes, not random dirt. (Whereas the first "i" in "michiton", the former reading of "anchiton", is now seen to be just dirt.)

But maybe the Repairman wrote a "t" at first, then changed his mind and added the "dot" to turn it into an "i".

As for the second letter, it could indeed be "b" or "h".  Either way, it would be different from the "b"s in "ola8aba8" and in "pbrey", and from the "h"s in "anchiton" and "mich".

Also, even though the text itself is not spoken, there are certain meaningful lines. The second line is a spell

Yes, the Repairman thought that the first and second lines were a spell or charm, and "restored" them as such.  But those two lines are definitely not meaningful, and AFAIK there is no other manuscript with a spell or charm that matches them, even partially. 

the third [line] is what needs to be done (to use, apparently, balm and goat’s milk).

That interpretation requires reading the first "8" of "pal8cn" as "s" and the last two letters as "en", and assume that the "p" is a variant spelling of "b".  Then one must assume a missing verb, like "take", for the balsam.  Then one must ignore the word "pbrey".  Then one must read the words after "so nim" as "gas" rather than "gaf" and interpret that as a dialectal variation of "gais".  Then assume that the "mich" was supposed to be "milch" but the scribe skipped the "L".  Then there is a meaningless "o".  And that is it.  But what is the reader supposed to do with that balsam and goat milk?

No doubt the "Repairman" wrote "so nim" because he thought that he saw a "so nim", and that was a very common phrase in medical recipe books.  But he could not "reconstruct" any other meaningful words. 

In terms of style, it’s the same cursive script as Latin. The scribe could easily have developed a skill and written e instead of c, and rendered the “ch” combinations as a gallows on a pedestal.

But there is no precedent for this supposed effect (a person changing the way he writes Latin letters after writing some other script).  Is there?

I could believe that, if the person who wrote that 116v text had no previous experience writing Latin script.  Like, if he was a Greek, Arab, Russian, Armenian, Georgian, etc. (That could also explain why we can't identify the language of the month names.) Then, when he was forced to write in Latin script on f116v, he may have been influenced by Voynichese.  But that hypothesis is not without problems.  For instance, why are the "a"s on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. unlike Latin "a"s and unlike Voynichese as?

All the best, --stolfi