Circular Text Observations
Klingmann > 26-02-2021, 05:55 PM
Hi all,
Once again, sorry if this has been discussed before (seems to be my standard opening for my posts! I do search for key words before posting, but I think I must be rubbish at searching!)
Following on from another post I made regarding how the circles were drawn, I have made another tentative observation (which I have no doubt many others have noticed before, at some point or another!)
The text which has been drawn within circles very often has some kind of symbol, or at least a straight line at some point, which seemingly divides the vords, or at least creates some kind of break in the vord sequence within the circle. I guess it is a fairly common assumption that this signifies where the "sentence" starts from...?
If I were to write text within circles as has been done in the VMS, I think I'd have probably had these breaks occuring exactly at 12 o'clock, (or North, I suppose). However, having looked through all of the VMS, it almost seems that the scribe didn't pay much attention to where these breaks were... or did he? If you look over all the text within circles (ignoring the Rosettes page for now), you'll see that the 'breaks' all seem to occur between 9 o'clock and 12 o'clock, with an average of somewhere around 10 o'clock. Some could be said to be slightly below 9, but then again none of them seem to appear at exactly 12 either; they are only just before 12, so they are ALL within that same quarter of the circle.
I'm wondering if this holds any significance at all??
Taking this idea further , could we possibly use it to tell which way up we are supposed to 'read' the Rosettes pages individual circles? In other words, could we use this knowledge (that the scribe always put the circular text break between 9 and 12), to tell us which way up each of the 9 circles is intended to be viewed? (If indeed they are not all designed to be viewed straight from the manuscript)
Support for this argument: Look at the bottom right circle, and the bottom left circle of the rosettes page. The text shows clearly which direction these circles are supposed to be viewed from. If you turn the image clockwise until the text is predominantly level, the break in the text of the circle occurs at around 9 o'clock and 10 o'clock respectively! This also works with the middle-right circle. If you turn the image clockwise so the text is legible (well...as legible as voynichese ever is), the circular text break occurs at around 10 o'clock. (there is another break further around the circumference, but this one isn't as pronounced, so it seems like the previous break is the 'main' one.) Okay, what about the middle left circle? At the moment, with no rotation, the break is at 10 o'clock. Should we view the image this way on? The text isn't as easy to tell if this supports the hypothesis here, but at least some of the text is legible at the current, unaltered rotation.
Support against this argument: Top left circle. The break in the text appears at around 10 o'clock with no rotation. That would suggest the image should be viewed as shown. However, the one word we do get in the circle needs to be rotated anticlockwise by 90 degrees to be read, which would then put our circular text break at 7 o'clock. Hmm... Also, top right circle: the main castle makes you want to turn the page clockwise by 90 degrees. This again would make our line break occur at 3 o'clock. However, there are other structures within this circle which are not on the same horizon as the main castle, so perhaps we shouldn't look too closely at this particular building, just because it seems to be the most dominant structure?
Anyway. That's my random observation for the time being. Forgetting the Rosette theory, it is still interesting to me that the rest of the circular text breaks all occur within this same quarter of the circle.
Happy Voyniching everyone.
Gavin
PS, I seem to be obsessed with ((brackets)) in this post. Sorry!