3 hours ago
(9 hours ago)npcompl33t wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.[Recto and verso] diagrams don't have the same number, however. In the MSI image i shared, there are 10 nymphs and 9 vertical bars. The bars line up perfectly with the first few nymphs, but then diverge. They clearly aren't spaced proportionally, and the fact that 4 line up dead center with different total numbers seems coincidental if nothing else.We can guess where the Scribe started drawing the nymphs by looking at the angular spaces between them. As far as I recall, he usually started each band of nymphs, inner then outer, near 12:00 and continued clockwise without planning the position of the nymphs before hand.
On the 5+10 half-sign diagrams he had no problem fitting all the nymphs. However, on some diagrams the spacing was too small at first and then had to be stretched, while on others it was the other way around. In the inner band, nymph 1 should be opposite to the point midway nymphs 3 and 4. In the outer band, nymph 1 should be opposite to nymph 6, and the cardinal direction at 03:00 (west) should be halfway nymphs 3 and 4, and 09:00 (east) should be halfway between 8 and 9. You can check how well he got those checkpoints.
On the 10+20 full-sign diagrams he struggled to get all nymphs in the diagram and resorted to different solutions on different signs. On Pisces, for example, he had to flip nymph 29 to get it into the diagram, and gave up on nymph 30. The Voynichese label at the center must be the label of that missing nymph, and the two stars there were probably the result of him mis-counting the stars in the bands as 28, or forgetting to draw one star (as he did on two other diagrams) and adding it only later. (Or maybe somehow he thought at first that there should be only 28 nymphs because Pisces is February, right? And then was scolded for not counting them in the draft.) On f72r2 he had to put 5 nymphs outside the diagram, standing on top of it. On You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. he had 4 "standing room" nymphs and on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. he had 3. On f72r3+4 he had more space so he draw three bands, 5+5+5. On the opposite side f72v4+3 he just made the circles bigger and managed to squeeze all 30. You will find all those details on my never-to-be-finished You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view..
We can see similar apparent counting and spacing errors in the Astro/Cosmo diagrams. On f70r1 the first 8 "mouths" and the first 8 radial labels are spaced as if there were supposed to be 8 of each. He apparently started with the "mouth" at 11:00 and went clockwise with 45 degree increments. But then in the last quadrant he had to squeeze the last two mouths in the remaining ~50 degree sector, even making the last "mouth" at 10:30 only 1/3 as wide as the one at 01:00. Were there supposed to be really 9 items, or maybe 10? Who knows...
Quote:And if the entire point is to align circles with a compass, why do these match up? The stars don't even use a circle at all.
Maybe his placement of the nymphs and rays was influenced by the see-through of his drawing on the other side. But I don't think he consciously tried to get the nymphs or star arms aligned across the vellum.
The alignments must be partly chance, partly because he followed similar (non)methods in all diagrams. For instance, in most of the Astr/Cosmo and Zodiac pages I think he guessed by eye where was the center of the page, stuck the compass there, then drew the outermost circle so that it would graze the side edges, and then drew the inner circles by eyeballing the necessary spacing between them. When he drew the second side of a flap, he just reused the same compass pinprick because he knew it would work for that page too. Except that on the last two Zodiac diagrams, You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. and f73v, me must have been told to leave a blank margin on all sides.
All the best, --stolfi