Astronomical MS in Northern Italy (and a bit of Coptic)

[Rene Zandbergen <r_zandbergen@xxxxxxxxx>]

Dennis wrote:

> We usually say "northern Italy" for various reasons.
 
> [snipped]

>  3)  Rene has noted that the astrological ms. which
> contains diagrams with nymphs positioned around the
> diagrams in a very Voynich-like fashion, was in
> northern Italy at the time.  

There are two points I'd like to make about this MS.
Most importantly, I think, is the fact that it gives
a precedent. It means that the VMs writer did probably
(or should I say perhaps) not invent the nymphs in the
zodiac section out of the blue sky. 

The second important thing is one I (we) still need to
find out. Does this page stand all by itself or was it
part of a tradition? The MS in question contains the
so-called handy tables of Ptolemy, of which there are
other copies, some equally beautifully illustrated,
but
this particular page (known as the Helios miniature)
does not strictly form part of that text.

It would be a bit risky to take this one MS as
evidence
that the Voynich MS originates from N.Italy as long as
we don't know if there are other illustrations like
it.
At the same time, it lends some nice support for my
wild
theory (we're all allowed to have one, right?) that
the VMs
was written by George of Trebizond. He wrote a
translation
and a commentary on Ptolemy's almagest, and lived in
Venice and Rome. He would not have missed the
opportunity of
consulting this MS, which would have given him the
idea
of the nymphs...

> Don't forget that Thomas Young was probably the one
> who first thought that the signs in Egyptian
cartouches
> were alphabetic rather than morphographic - which
our
> friend Athanasius Kircher had not believed. But it
is
> indeed true that Champollion's Coptic made the
> difference.

The Coptic connection is the one thing that Kircher
did
get right (but was it more than a wild hunch?) and
Champollion acknowledged his debt to Kircher in that 
area.

Cheers, Rene

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