Re: Filled-in loops

[Nick Pelling <incoming@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Bernd,

> > Steve Ekwall has pointed out that, for two of the four instances of this
> > character on that ring, the central loop appears deliberately filled in.
>
> After  playing around with zoom & gamma correction (taking the scans
> from the Beinecke site as a basis), I am pretty much convinced that the
> loops are *not* filled in (the area in the center of the loops is still 
> lighter
> than the surrounding line) :(

OK... if they're not filled in, are they instead *coloured in*? They do 
seem to be emphasised in some way, but I too have only ever seen monochrome 
images of this. :-(((

> Nevertheless, I think the main purpose of the "elaborated" Cancer symbol
> is to avoid making the resemblances too obvious - the same goes for
> the Jupiter symbol.

Luke Andrews warned that we would be likely to see "tortuous graphic 
etymology", especially with respect to a cyphertext - and this is likely to 
be merely one example (of many). :-/

Cheers, .....Nick Pelling.....

PS: while searching for Agrippa's fixed star symbols mentioned by Luke, I 
stumbled across a very good site devoted to Agrippa (though IE5.5 warned of 
some JavaScript errors, it all seems to work OK):-

Agrippa:                http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Agora/7850
His fixed star signs:   http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Agora/7850/_chrpl2.gif

However, I don't see a lot of common ground between these and the VMS. :-(