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The Voynich Manuscript

Xanatic* said:
I don't have time to look at the website but that makes it sound like a substituion cipher.
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Careful, don't TL-DR it.

It's looking more like a just a left-to-right isolated script, NOT a cypher, from a spoken-only Urals/Stepps dead dialect that has a strong Arabic influence. The pre/post repeats are an Arabian script habit, to compensate for the lack of written vowels in that language family.

So think of the following influences....an orthography that has something in common with dictionary IPA letter-sets ; emphasis modifiers by repeating letters; left-to-right Arabic-influenced language in a Latinate script (I immediately thought of Moorish dialects, and Maltese, just as I wrote that); A work of guidance regarding herbal health and astrology, that includes a few different language strains (think of repeated texts written in an indigenous and scholarly tongue).

Bax has it cracked...nearly
 
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Kingsize Wombat said:
and come to the conclusion that the book is pretty much a Medieval Hoax:
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The article is much more scholarly than I'd expected, but still fundamentally-flawed.

What, in all seriousness, is more likely? A vast incomprehensible document which contains no intended information? Or one that does contain intentionally-recorded content?

Please: if you haven't read Professor Bax's efforts, then do so. He does not claim that he is definitely right- but his interpretations, attitude and methods are totally beyond reproach.

https://stephenbax.net/?page_id=198

His February research postings about possible correlations between the 1409 annular eclipse, and potential VM constellation matches are fascinating.

Whilst he remains cautious not to claim a total solution (yet) his botanical visual identifications cross-mapped to niche ethnospecific common names appended as labels for the plant illustrations is a solid plank of undeniable logic. He is, in my eyes, a humble hero of stunning intellligence....New York Review: think again.
 
Ermintruder said:
Please: if you haven't read Professor Bax's efforts, then do so. He does not claim that he is definitely right- but his interpretations, attitude and methods are totally beyond reproach.

https://stephenbax.net/?page_id=198
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Thanks for your reply.

I haven't read Prof Bax's efforts, but I'll give it a go. I have no opinion one way or the other really, but a lot of the arguments in the NYR made sense to me.
 
Kingsize Wombat said:
I haven't read Prof Bax's efforts, but I'll give it a go.
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I strongly recommend watching this recording he's made, of an informal talk on his reseach (including collaborations) and the provisional conclusions he has arrived at.

It is utterly fascinating (do not be put off in the slightest by the fact that it's 75 minutes in duration, watch a bit of it, and you just may find it hard to stop watching a lot).

His infectious enthusiasm is very inspiring, he seems like such a nice guy.


Some key points to note:
  • His current employment in modern language learning at University of Bedford (not primarily in ancient languages) and the evident flexibility of mind / approach / collaborations (including online) that this gives him
  • His centaurea contentions, botanical & linguistic
  • The comparisons he makes with other contemporary manuscripts, especially the Persian/Arabic astronomical/astrological quadrant charts (Taurus locations, and the Lunar mansions/phases co-interpretations)
  • Identifications of minims / line-strikes, and how they can be misinterpreted
  • The probable Arabic/Persian/Semitic 'substratum', in a Latinate/phoneticised form (hence the relative lack of vowels)
  • An explanation for the repetition / redundant elements
  • Comparatives regarding variations in other contemporary manuscripts (eg as much as six variant spellings on same pages by known authors, such as letter transpositions/gender endings/irregular plurals/embedded definite articles etc
  • His key point that flawed literal transcriptions, followed by derivative decodes, are doomed
  • Warnings about the risk of it perhaps being an isolate language (ie not even an Indo-European language, but something utterly niche like Basque, as opposed to being the Silk Road argot we'd want it to be)
 
It does sound quite persuasive (the absence of Christian iconography is a good point).

I've had just a quick look at Bax's site, and I can't see any cross-references to this latest research (which for me is not a good sign).

See also Professor Bax's latest TED video on the VM (published in May 2017)
 
Ermintruder said:
Which one? And did it cost an absolute fortune?
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It's the book edited by Raymond Clemens, £30 from Blackwells. It's a lovely book to pour over, replete with fold out pages. It also has accompanying essays outlining "what we have learned", although flyleaf points out there are no answers. Instead the essays and facsimile combine to entice one further into the puzzle.

The Voynich Manuscript, whatever it might be, has always been my fantasy of what academic pursuit should be, as opposed to the generally rather dry reality. When I was younger, my ultra dream was to burrow my way through the Vatican Library, uncovering many truths: it became apparent, as the classic novels, films, and TV programmes arrived, that I had wanted to be Hermione Granger/Robert Langdon crossed with Dana Scully/Fox Mulder to spice things up!
 
Rerenny said:
It's the book edited by Raymond Clemens, £30 from Blackwells. It's a lovely book to pour over, replete with fold out pages. It also has accompanying essays outlining "what we have learned", although flyleaf points out there are no answers. Instead the essays and facsimile combine to entice one further into the puzzle.
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Coincidence- just after I read your post, I stumbled across the review of that very book in FT.
 
CarlosTheDJ said:
Coincidence- just after I read your post, I stumbled across the review of that very book in FT.
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I can't recommend the book enough. I follow Reece Shearsmith on Twitter and he was banging on about it a while back and that prompted me to go and buy it. it took me forever to track down in Blackwell's; I was wandering round and round the history section, getting sidetracked by books about the French Revolution and witches until a sales assistant rescued me and directed me to the classic fiction floor :huh: Blackwell's has clearly made up its mind about what the Voynich Manuscript is!

Sitting down with it is a lovely experience. It's so elusive, like perfume, or Latin before you start Latin classes. There's something there, a pattern, a something that you almost recognise but can't translate, just lying beneath the surface. A dark shadow moving below and away from you.

It's Moby-Dick, isn't it?!:)
 
Further info here....

The World’s Most Mysterious Medieval Manuscript May No Longer Be a Mystery

But we’re not reading the Voynich manuscript quite yet.

THE VOYNICH MANUSCRIPT, A 15TH-CENTURY document full of undeciphered writing and a variety of cryptic illustrations, has invited its fair share of conspiracies. Named for 19th-century Polish bookseller Wilfrid Voynich, it has been suggested to be a Victorian forgery, the guide to the philosopher’s stone (real or scam versions), and even the work of a lonely alien adrift on Earth.

But Nicholas Gibbs, an expert on medieval medical manuscripts, says the answer may be far more prosaic than any of that. In an article in the British Times Literary Supplement, Gibbs explains that the manuscript seems to be made up of Latin ligatures—a kind of shorthand. “Ligatures were developed as scriptorial short-cuts,” he writes. “They are composed of selected letters of a word, which together represent the whole word, not unlike like a monogram.”....

http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/solve-mystery-voynich-manuscript-gibbs-crytography
 
Stand down, stand down...

So much for that Voynich manuscript “solution”

Librarians would have "rebutted it in a heartbeat," says medieval scholar.

Last week, a history researcher and television writer named Nicholas Gibbs published a long article in the Times Literary Supplement about how he'd cracked the code on the mysterious Voynich Manuscript. Unfortunately, say experts, his analysis was a mix of stuff we already knew and stuff he couldn't possibly prove...#

https://arstechnica.com/science/2017/09/experts-are-extremely-dubious-about-the-voynich-solution/
 
Can't click through to the Times article. So has he or has he not translated the manuscript?
 
This latest gyno / Latin shorthand theory is probably nothing more than conjecture. Professor Stephen Bax doesn't appear to really think much of it (see https://stephenbax.net/?page_id=198 and trust his analyses).

Come on....Latin shorthand....that's never been considered before? What about the redundant repetitions of letters?

And the Gibbs / TLS thing above is just History Channel sheer bunkum...embarrasingly-so (shades of Trevor-Roper, I feel)

Trust Professor Bax. If he says it has been decoded/decyphered, it has. If not, it hasn't.
 
According to their algorithm, the Voynich manuscript was likely written in Hebrew and then encrypted using a substitution cipher in which letters are shifted, and the vowels have been removed from words. Kondrak and Hauer’s algorithm found that the first sentence of the text translates as “She made recommendations to the priest, man of the house and me and people.” In its analysis of the first 72 words of the manuscript, the algorithm has identified “farmer,” “light,” “air” and “fire” as the four most common words, with “covfefe” coming in a close fifth.
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Oh come on! Surely you're not doing serious work if "covfefe" is on the list?
 
Kingsize Wombat said:
Surely you're not doing serious work if "covfefe" is on the list?
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A very cromulent point. That trumps the validity of the whole preceding experiment.

In fact, the algorithmic AI must be playing with it's masters. Or, it's connected to The Trump, and world domination will ensue. Or not (is this a Bible Code big-data emergent 'egregious evidence' effect? Cue JFK and Nostradamus' email address at Chapt10?)

But seriously- read again Professor Bax's approach. Name-labels within the VM itself, adjacent to the illustrations of plants.

Reconcilliation of the common / proto-systematised names, from all known/targetted language groups, matched against the botanically-probable plants and flowers, as depicted. Use this as a sub-stratum to self-corroborate letterforms and abbreviations, then apply within body of text.

A rose by no other name shall be the Rosetta Stone that breaks the veil around the Voynich....
 
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