VMs: Re: Some michiton oladabas notes...

[Jorge Stolfi <stolfi@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

    > [Nick Pelling:] (1) The large numbers of "+" characters
    > throughout give the superficial impression of a spell or
    > incantation - however, I'm not 100% convinced that this is
    > actually the case.

It is curious, however, that there is an extra cross above the last
word of the second line, whose reading in Rene's alphabet (which is
overall a very good match for the letter forms of f116v) seems to be
"maria". That's of course Mary in Latin, Spanish, Italian, or
Portuguese.

Appending a Christian dedication/invocation to a book which may be
construed as pagan/heretical appears to be a standard safety practice
in those times; witness Dee's "angelical" diaries. I would think that
a dedication to Mary (instead of Jesus or God) would hint to a woman
author. (But this is defintely not a hard rule!)

    > (2) If you rotate the page 180 degrees, the over-stylised "b" of
    > "oladabas" looks a lot like a "g". In fact, to my eyes the word
    > looks like "augus vj", but where someone has turned the first
    > "a" into an "8", and added an "o" at the end (it's heavier ink
    > than the "vj").

Upside-down? An intriguing possibility --- especially if one considers
the possibility that (ahem!) the f1r red glyphs are Chinese letters
upside down.

However, when viewed upside down, the letters look a lot more distorted
than in their "standard" position.  Rene's alphabet is a good match to
the latter, but not to the former.

Hmm... however... consider this scenario:

  The original VMS Author makes a copy of a Chinese medical text. The
  copy gets written some monosyllabic language L1, using some exotic
  phonetic alphabet (e.g. burmese, tibetan, or one invented for the
  purpose.). The L1 writing goes right to left, as in Arabic or
  Hebrew, and the copy is bound on the left side, as Chinese books
  are. The Author also copies the original title on the cover, in
  Chinese characters and in the manner of Chinese books: in red,
  against the right margin, near the bottom of the page (assuming
  binding at left).
  
  This copy either has no illustrations, or these are on separate
  loose sheets. At the bottom of the back cover, the author writes a
  short note, in some western language L2, using Roman letters; and
  includes in that note two words in language L1 --- say, his/her own
  name.

  Some time later, the book gets copied again by a Scribe, possibly from
  Central Europe. The Scribe has never seen the L1 script before, and
  mistakenly assumes that the  is to be read in the Western
  manner, with binding at right. The big red characters on f1r are
  mistaken for ornate capitals, and thus appear to confirm that guess.
  Moreover, since L1 is written right-to-left, then by turning the
  book upside-down the lines seem to be left-justified, as in Western
  text --- especially of each paragraph begins with a shorter header
  line:

    Original (written left to right):

          alb albalb alb alB                     <--- Section title?

                             alb albalb alb alB  <--- parag header?
       alb albalb alb alb albalb alb alb albalB  <--- first line
        albalb albalb albalb albalb alb alb alb
                   albalb albalb albalb alb alb  <--- last line

    Rotated upside-down:

      qle qle qleqle qleqle qleqle               
      qle qle qle qleqle qleqle qleqle qleqle    
      Bleqle qle qle qleqle qle qle qleqle qle   
      Ble qle qleqle qle                           

                         Ble qle qleqle qle      <--- Grove's "title"


  So our Scribe merrily copies each paragraph while reading it upside
  down and back-to-front. (Even if the the original didn't have the
  parag header lines assumed above, the Scribe would probably ignore
  the original line breaks, and fill the margins in Western manner; so
  the last line would end up shorter than the rest, in any case.)

  At the same time, the Scribe inserts the illustrations in the text,
  adds ornate capital letters at the start (originally end) of each
  page, and embellishes the ascenders (originally descenders) in the
  first line of each copied paragraph, as he was used to do.

  The glyphs get reversed too, so that what were ascenders become
  descenders, and vice-versa; and the Scribe naturally adjusts the
  character shapes and stroke directions so that they can be easily
  written with his quill pen.

  However, when he gets to the note at the bottom (now top) of f116v,
  the Scribe can't make sense out of it either, because the Author's
  handwriting was too poor and/or the text was damaged and/or the
  Scribe doesn't understand L2 either; but he can tell that the
  letters are Roman cursive, except for the two words in (upside-down)
  L1 script. So he copies the text, making his best guess for each
  Roman letter; and copies the L1 words just as he did throughout the
  book.

I can't say that I believe this theory myself; it has too many rough
spots (especially the part about the illustrations).  However, it has
the merit of being *one* explanation for *three* major VMS puzzles: the big
red glyphs of f1r, the position of the "Grove titles", and the 
peculiar character of the "michiton" text! 

    > (6) However, there are apparently numerous Voynichese characters
    > threaded through this whole sequence (and these are the opposite
    > way up), so I'm not too sure what's going on here at all. :-(

See above. By that theory, this makes perfect sense since *all*
Voynichese glyphs are upside down!

    > (7) I can't find the words "Roger" or "Bacon" anywhere. However,
    > if it's any help I can see "vigo" in the middle line, who (IIRC)
    > was the bad guy in "Ghostbusters". :-)

I gather that "Viggo" is also the Finnish name of Gaston Lagaffe (q.v.). 
So perhaps the VMS is simply M. de Mesmaeker's contracts? 8-)

All the best,

--stolfi