VMs: Personal Guess

[Vladimir Sazonov <vladimir@xxxxxxxx>]

When?
Here are 2 dates - the original text and the copy of it.
The ciphered copy with illustrations was done  about 1585 (plus or minus 
20 years) for to King Rudolf II to sell it.
The original non-ciphered text could be done before (probably 20-300 
years, more probably not very long time before) and had a quality "for 
home using" without excellent illustrations.

Where?
The copy was done by jews in Europe, not very far from Prague - maybe Germany or Italy or Yugoslavia(Turkey).
The original text was brought from an oriental land (probably Arabic region or Iran, but maybe more far)

Who?
An educated jew living in Europe, by commitment with a handler. He had ciphered the original book and made good illustrations to it.

Language?
Likely semitic (jewish or arabic or other)
maybe other, also rare language, but most likely it was the language known by the copy producer.

Contents?
As seen by illustrations:
- A medical plant encyclopedy
- A calendar of 12 month connecting with everyday using of plants or drugs
- Astrology
- Remedy list
- Star calendar

Decipherable / hoax?
Generally the text was damaged by making the copy, but not very strong. 
As I estimate, 1-3% of letters could be mistaked (a standard mistake ratio by non-professional typewritting)- I will be surprised if the mistake ratio is less.
The plant pictures was done using more imagination and less real plant experience. Maybe the plant pictures were also "ciphered" using simple image-changing rules.
The producer probably kept in mind the idea of later "deciphering" of the text for an additional payment, therefore he tried to make the ciphering as honest as possible.
Anyway, the text can be deciphered. The way of coding should not be very sophisticated. The deciphering can be very complex, but possible.

Possible ciphering technique:
- vowel omitting
- dot omitting in arabic language
- inserting of not-meaningful letters (or letters having additional 
meaning like a "way of singing" - it may be a first gallow letter)
- using of 2-3 letter combination to code one letter

All my best
Vladimir Sazonov
http://voynich.naobum.de/




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