Re: astrological iconography

["Robert Firth" <robertjf@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

The "celestial" parts of the VMS have always
seemed to me the most likely door to open,
mainly because we already have most of
the required "Rosetta stone" - the stars
themselves, of course.  The calendar was
one of the first things to be deciphered in
most ancient scripts.

And the zodiac pages should be the best place
to start.  So why doesn't that work??

Anyway, I wrote a note a long while ago
about the little pictures, and won't repeat that
here.  But will mention my strong impression that

(a) the month names were added later, by
a different hand (and using a different pen)

(b) the script looks more German than romance
(the names of course are the same across most
of Western Europe)

(c) the obvious explanation - though of course
not necessarily the right one - is that the names
were written in by somebody at Rudolf's court
in Prague.

Yours
Robert

PS: While I know a fair bit about astrology, I most
assuredly do not know what astrology was like in
the 14 or 15 century or how much it differed from
today's.  We need here not an astrologer, but an
expert in the history of European astrology, if
we can find one.