Re: Marche: VMS zodiac based on Hermetic sources going back to Dendera

[Dennis <ixohoxi@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Julie Porter wrote:
> 
> Brian Eric Farnell <bfarnell@xxxxxxx>
> >
> >1)  The hair.  Fashions repeat themselves.  People don't
> >necessarily draw what is current.  Fashions appear and
> >dissappear at different times in different places.
> >
> You bring up some really good points. Yes fasions are cyclical and revived
> from time to time.

	Since Julie addressed the first issue, I'll try to
address the second one.

> 2)  Humanistic hand.  This can be applied to the above as well.
> Formalized styles appear out of what was done commonly (but not
> formally) for decades or even centuries in informal settings.  A
> good example of this is the 'modern' short form characters used
> 'only' in the PRC as 'created' under Mao.  Truthfully, all he
> did was codify what people had already been doing for at least a
> century in informal styles.  Taiwanese have their own short
> forms that are mostly similar but not exactly because they have
> never been formally codified.  I know we are talking about an
> influence more than a codification, but lets not forget that
> allot of people usually do something for a while before it
> starts to gain enough acceptance to make itself visible.  True,
> the introduction of some new idea will sometimes give you a time
> period something can't predate, but I'm not sure that's the case
> here.  Truthfully, I don't know what the humanistic hand is, but
> these are my questions about dating based on style.  I think
> we'd need at least one more indicator on top of the other two in
> order to make a reliable assumption.

	In fact we do have more than one indicator here.  

	First.  I've been keeping a file of clippings from the
list on what seem to me to be fairly definite
historical precedents to things in the VMs:

http://www2.micro-net.com/~ixohoxi/voy/precednt.txt

	There is the humanist hand, probably dated any time in
the 1400's.  It was a transitional form itself.  

	There is also a book of late-14th century cipher
scripts by a chancery crippie named Trandechino.  The
cipher scripts in his book show that the Voynich script
is well within the repertory of cipher scripts in use
in the late 1400's.  A scan of some of Trandechino's
scripts is available, but I can't find where.  

	Finally, we've seen a letter with embellishments that
look exactly like the gallows letters.  From a note by
Jim Reeds:

> But I can refer to one of the few photographic facsimilies in my copy (well,
> really my wife's copy) of Cappelli's Dizionario (the 1967 reprint of what
> appears to be the 1929 edition), namely "Tavola IV", which shows a letter
> "1172, Giugno 13 -- Savino abbate del monastero di S. Savino in Piacenza
> investe il mugnaio Gerardo Albarola per se e suoi eredi maschi in perpetuo,
> di un mulio di ragione del detto moasstero -- Scritura carolina. --
> Pergamena origen., conservata nell'Archivio di Stato di Parma, monastero
> di S. Savino." with glorious gallows letters all over it.

	I can hardly describe the excitement that swept
through the list when we saw a scan of this page!!
We've seen so few things as definite.  However, I don't
know the date of this letter.   

	I don't want to be too long-winded, so look at the
Historical Precedents file for more details.

Dennis