RE: VMs: RE: Yet another page

[Nick Pelling <incoming@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi John,

At 16:00 24/07/2003 -0400, John Grove wrote:
> I agree that the first two quires seem to be pretty solid in their
> order, and that as per GC's comments - we need to perhaps take a
> closer look at which came first - the binding or the writing.

The correct central bifolio in the balneological section with the pipes 
going between f78v and f81r (and the out-of-sequence bifolio [containing 
f79r to f80v] erroneously inserted right in the middle of it) would seem to 
point to the writing having come first.

Of course, if the binding were removed for that quire, it might reveal just 
the opposite: but it looks to me as though the writing came first there.

On f71v (the "light" Taurus "volvelle"), it looks as though the picture was 
done first, as the binding (joining it to f72r1) goes over one character's 
head and some of the text on the outer ring. There are a (very) few other 
places where pictures end up being overlapped by the binding - though these 
may of course be where it was rebound due to accumulated damage.

> If written first, then bound - was the text meant to be read from
> f1r then f8v, then f1v and f8r? then on to page two?

The titles appear on f1r and f8r, which make even less sense. :-(

> Second option for writing first, then binding - could be the author
> new exactly what order the pages would go in when bound and therefore
> wrote f1r, flipped over the vellum and wrote f1v, flipped it over
> again and wrote the last two pages the same way.

If copying from an unbound manuscript, this would be easy. Or, if sending 
wax tablets through a scribal production line, there's no problem with 
linking stuff up. To be honest, I wouldn't be at all surprised if the 
encoded contents of some pages turn out to have been placed on the wrong 
diagram. :-o

> I don't know if we can be certain whether the vellum was bound before
> or after writing - or when the quire marks were made. There is no
> doubt that some of the binding gave way over time and repairs were made
> (incorrectly shuffling some pages I think -- like the misaligned quire 9)
> and perhaps the B-tokened pages.

Having someone look critically at the binding stations etc should help 
resolve a lot of these questions - though that might also raise a load more 
questions to be answered (as seems to be the case here).

> If the pages were written separately and piled up in a specific expected
> order before being bound, the author would still have to make sure that
> the result would be read by following f1r/f1v/f2r/f2v wouldn't he - rather
> than the above. This means that if he wrote a full B-tokened page as
> the beginning and end of a quire he would expected the reader to follow
> through the various pages in between wouldn't he?

The concept of "readers' needs" is actually quite hypothetical here: if the 
VMS was intended for archival, we have not so much a reader as a 
"retriever". But I take your point all the same. :-)

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


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