Nick, Has anyone compared the vms with the two books written by Abu Bakr Ahmad ibn Ali ibn Qais ibn Wahsiyah an-Nabati, who was a physician and botanist with interests in agriculture, animal husbandry as well as alchemy, magic and toxicology. He wrote in Iraq around 900 AD. He was not only a scholar of his day, but perhaps the greatest spokesperson on behalf of his illustrious ancestors, the Nabataeans, to whom he attributed nine-tenths of all scientific knowledge known. His books are known as Al-Filiaheh an-Nabatiyah (904 AD) and As-Sumum wat-Tiyaqat (900 AD). This manuscript may have been one of the books that he used for reference when compiling his two great works. There are some interesting similarities. The Nabataean language has only 22 characters. Five of them are found in the VMS. It seems that three of them have degenerated down into a single character, although one section of the manuscript seems to have been written by a different hand, and seems to differentiate between two of them. Since the Nabataean language was written from right to left, the front of the book would have been at the back, were all the text is. My feeling is that the book is probably about the information collected by merchant on this travels. After the introduction, and the places visited (each beginning with a Nabataean Star), the fold-out pages begin the appendices of: stories, plants and star charts collected on the journey. The journey was probably to the orient, hence the oriental/Chinese feel to the appendices. There are still lots of bits of the book that need to be checked out, however, Abu Bakr an-Nabati may have used this as one of his source texts when writing his books of collected knowledge that was known in the Arabian Peninsula around 900 AD. That's the theory I'm working on, but it is only a theory.. With lots of circumstantial evidence, but still no translation of the text. :( Dan Gibson
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