Ancient number-encoding formats...

[Nick Pelling <incoming@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi everyone,

Here is a page explaining how numbers were encoded in Hebrew and Greek:-

	http://www.theomatics.com/theomatics/struct.html

BTW, "theomatics" is basically a gematria-based thing that, 25 years ago, 
came out of Portland, OR.

Similarly for Chaldean, 
http://members.aol.com/chaldeans7/people/language.htm (the link may be 
broken, so use Google's cache or http://www.archive.org to get it) says:-

	Alap Beth Gamal Daleth He Waw Zain Heth Teth
	Yoth Kap Lameth Mim Noon Semkath Ey Pe Sadhe
	Qpe Resh Sheen Taw
-->
	1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
	10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90
	100 200 300 400

Note that numbers that fit within the respective ranges 
(Chaldean/Aramaic/Hebrew = 1...499, Greek = 1...899) have the property of 
not requiring doubled letters! This would fit the pre-1500 ciphertext 
paradigm (that the Voynich seems to work within) very well.

I think that if numbers in the VMS are encoded using a system something 
like these, then they should be basically crackable - after all, the 
page-numbering system in the Codex Seraphinianus was the first (and only?) 
thing to be broken. :-)

But I do have one unanswered question: in these numbering systems, can 
anyone say how out-of-range numbers were traditionally written? If you're 
writing a date in years since Creation onto a wedding contract, I'm pretty 
sure you'd need to go higher than 499. :-)

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