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VMs: Re: VMS numbering systems hypotheses...
Hi Philip,
The table of numerals from 1 to 100 is a plausible suggestion. The
ordering across the table is intuitive: the downwards ordering less
so (the arguments for identifying one row as 20, another as 80 are
not tremendously strong). Why should 30 and 40 be the very rare
combinations pe- and fe- while 50 is the very common She- ?
Explaining 50 in terms of the looped picnic table (EVA "Sh") is certainly a
weak link. I would argue that, if much of the text is astrological angles,
we should expect a preponderance of 10's and 20's gallows, and anything
else only rarely.
However, I don't believe that numbers comprise everything in the VMS: EVA
"Sh" may well also denote a combination of letters, which might skew the
statistics in the way that you describe.
One other possibility is that 99 is too high (though this is how high many
of the early monks' ciphers described in David King's book went up to), and
that the VMS' numbering scheme is very much more limited. Given the
astrological content I predict, this is also not completely unlikely.
Then, the number scheme would go instead only up to ***48***: "c<gallows>h"
combinations might then merely be a shorthand for 15, 25, 35 and 45 (which
would make 15 and 25 the most likely frequent composite symbol). Angles
that are multiples of 5 might well have a specific meaning in the
astrological system being used.
The looped picnic table could also simply be a shorthand for "5th" (no, I'm
not convinced either). :-)
The table explains many of the frequent combinations which make
the Voynich words so repetitious, but not all of them. The transcription
of 78r simply ignores 'ol' and 'dy' and this is not satisfactory.
I wasn't so much aiming to transcribe f78r as to demonstrate how one might
recognise and decode the proposed number system within some real data. "ol"
& "dy" are still very much a closed book to me. :-/
I am not attracted by the idea of dain, daiin etc as ounces - these
words are extremely common and I defy you to produce a text in which
'ounce' or 'oz' has a similar frequency, however broad the meaning of
the word used to be.
Some recipes in the Caterina Sforza's "Gli Experimenti" use "oncia" many
times over, some use it hardly at all (they came from many different
sources). Similarly, some recipes in Isabella Cortese's use "z bar" many
times, others hardly at all.
It may simply be a stylistic artefact, or it may be an encoding artefact. :-/
You suggest that 'qo' might mark out numerals used in a code book, and
this would explain why the combination is so rare in the star labels
and the marginalia. Presumably, then, the other numerals are supposed
to be used like letters in a homophonic substitution or similar scheme.
These are the lines I am working on myself. I have found that there is
no shortage of ways of converting Voynich text into numerals, but that
any given scheme turns out to be impossible to convert into a plausible
language (you always find yourself with seven consecutive consonants or
a common word like 'and' repeated three times). It is at this stage of
testing a hypothesis that the lack of long repeated sequences and the
internal structure of the line become important problems.
Since you alerted me to this, I too have also been thinking about the
internal structure of a line: for example, some pages' being written out on
alternate lines strikes me not as an *encoding*-related artefact, but
instead perhaps a *professional-copyist*-related thing - someone
experienced copying out alternate lines fast so as not to smudge the text
just written (ascenders and descenders frequently overlap).
Here's a question for you: do Currier Hand A and Currier Hand B both have
pages where they write alternate lines, or is it a practice only carried
out by one of them?
Also: do you know of any evidence in other (roughly contemporaneous) copied
manuscripts of lines having been copied out of order?
All in all, this strikes me as good work. It is not the solution but it
is the kind of thing I would expect a solution to look like, and it may
be an important halfway stage. I will certainly give some further study
to it.
With luck, it's an iterative thing. :-) We'll get there...
Cheers, .....Nick Pelling.....