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So now they're in Egypt

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• So now they're in Egypt

• So now they're in Egypt

  Koen G > 14-04-2016, 10:11 PM

  My search for the exact location of the root-and-leaf section mnemonic makers goes South, and we have a look around in Greco-Roman Alexandria (Northern Egypt).
  
  On one single folio, we see things as:
  Isis-Tyche, protective deity of Alexandria. It's the Voynich, so she's disguised as a plant.
  
  
  
  
  The famous Lighthouse of Alexandria:
  
   
  
  And a snake wearing the crown of the pharaoh:
  
  
  
  Lots of images again, so I'll refer to my post, where serious arguments can be found as well:
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• RE: So now they're in Egypt

  Koen G > 17-04-2016, 09:52 PM

  Hmm, I wonder if more of the vessels contain nods to lighthouse designs (totally speculative and unresearched at the moment. These should ring a bell.
  
  Pharos of Messana, Sicily: 
  
  
  
  There are a lot of them You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.. This one is from Laodiceia ad Mare, eastern Mediterranean (Syria). Its shape should look You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.:
  
  
  
  And look at this one from Corinth:
  
  
  I'll look into this tomorrow. Possible? Silly? Any ideas or suggestions?

• RE: So now they're in Egypt

  ReneZ > 18-04-2016, 07:02 AM

  (17-04-2016, 09:52 PM)Koen Gh. Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Any ideas or suggestions?

  
  The problem with looking at coins has already been pointed out a couple of times....
  
  I'm sorry but the idea of comparing the pharma containers with the lighthouse of Alexandria seems like a classical case of projecting one's ideas onto the illustrations in the MS.
  Now why do I say that?
  
  Whatever the pharma containers represent, they all appear in the same context in the MS, so there can be no doubt they all have the same meaning. This discussion came up already years ago, when some of them were pointed out to look remarkably like early microscopes, but others clearly don't. Similarly, purely from the geometry, some of them look like Alfonso's cannons, but others don't.
  In addition, there isn't a great reason to expect microscopes or cannons in this place in the MS.
  (This is a very brief version of an executive summary of two longer stories of course).
  
  Now *IF* one container is supposed to represent a tower, then shouldn't all be representing towers?
  What's more, in the middle ages, the whole of (what is now) Italy was filled with towers from north to south.
  
  So why pick Alexandria?
  
  On top of that, a tower is as much out of place here as a cannon.

• RE: So now they're in Egypt

  Koen G > 18-04-2016, 08:24 AM

  Rene
  
  Thank you for your comments. I have come to understand that such proposals are seen as rather silly free association, so I appreciate it.
  
  To explain what I'm seeing in the root section as a whole, I need at least three historical stages:
  
  1) Hellenistic origin
  2) "in between adaptation"
  3) More or less faithful copy of the documents once they reached Europe.
  
  Many plants I have identified so far have their primary use outside of the field of medicine, like teak for timber and other plants for making ropes. Some, like sugar and saffron, did of course have a large medicinal significance as well. The point is, that I think the root section was originally meant as a naval trade-related document rather than a medicine-related one. 
  
  In this sense, supposing the first Hellenistic stratum, towers and lighthouses, i.e. the first buildings one sees when approaching a harbor, would have been very relevant. To say which exact tower or lighthouse they would have represented, is almost impossible. The Pharos was imitated by other structures and many of these early lighthouses are now lost and/or poorly documented.
  
  I agree that what we see now are not towers, especially since many of them have been given a foot or some kind of pedestal. But if you look at You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. for example, and remove the bottom part, what you have left appears to be a tower top. Same is true for You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view., and so on. Especially the simpler "stacked cylinder" type can be seen as fully representing a tower, only having its top opened up to turn it into a vessel.
  
  So my hypothesis would be that this section was first a collection of plants valued in trade, along with separate images from classical mythology as mnemonics, giving a superficial resemblance to what we see now in some pages of the Lombardy herbal: plant with similarly sounding "other thing". Images of recognizable architecture from various ports wouldn't have been out of place either, as well as, perhaps, images of containers.
  
  In the in-between stage, however, someone got rather creative and mixed the plant images with the mnemonic images. Similarly, the architectural drawings got merged with vessel drawings.Why this was done, I don't know. Creating slightly absurd images does help the memory, cfr. "modern" techniques like the memory palace, which have their roots in antiquity and started to decline after inventions like the printing press made memorization gradually less important.
  
  I don't know by whom and where this hypothetical in between stage was performed. I am happy though, that there is at least a partial parallel in other traditions, of merging a plant and an associated image (like "palma christi" and all those).
  
  What I am doing now is trying to uncover the ground layer, which I think was culturally Hellenistic (which may have been well after the first century CE in some areas). In that way, from my perspective, noting architectural elements from the time in those containers may be relevant - much more so than a cannon
  
  But I realize that as long as I stay within this hypothesized first stratum, it will appear as free association to others, and may well be not much different from it.

• RE: So now they're in Egypt

  Koen G > 21-04-2016, 06:28 PM

  I gave up the Pharos idea - not because I think the vessels aren't architectural in nature, but because so many towers and lighthouses were inspired by the Pharos' design, and almost none of them remain standing. Even worse, we don't even know what many of them looked like.
  
  I still think that the vessels may have been drawings of landmarks initially though. They were then perhaps redrawn or re-interpreted by a later copyist. 
  
  As an illustration of the point, I just noticed this: in the following picture, I placed one of the containers in between the towers in the centre of the world map. The vessel has been colored and given a more pronounced "pedestal",  but other similarities are striking. The vertical line pattern, the tip, the proportions of the horizontal sections.
  
  
  
  Also note how the towers in this map have a wavy pattern at their base, which could suggest the presence of water or uneven terrain. I think, if the same kinds of towers were initially in the root and leaf section, as sketches of local landmarks the seamen could look out for, they probably looked just like the towers on this map. It would have been easy then, for a later copyist, to interpret these wavy lines as the "foot" of container and adapt it from there.
  
  I don't know what has been written about these towers before... any ideas or suggestions?

• RE: So now they're in Egypt

  Anton > 22-04-2016, 11:11 PM

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• RE: So now they're in Egypt

  Koen G > 22-04-2016, 11:51 PM

  Thanks, Anton. Apparently they see the towers as part of Jerusalem. Not sure if they are purely metaphorical then or based on an actual atchitetural style. 
  
  Either way it increases the likelyhood of the containers being modeled after towers, I guess, though finding out which ones is almost impossible since they often got destroyed or rebuilt. Almost none of the Greco-Roman lighthouses outside of Europe remain, for example, and information about even the most famous ones is often unreliable.
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