RE: Nabatean, was Re: VMs: Personal Guess

["GC" <glenclaston@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Jeff wrote:

> While the character form comparison may appear to hang on flimsy threads
> this does not rule out that an offshooot of nabataean script or of some
> other middle eastern script was not used. When Alexandria was
> burnt a lot of
> written text went with it along with the accumulated knowledge. Again in
> Spain knowledge hung very tenuously through troubled times. In
> this respect
> the preservation of knowledge would become a priority. In order
> to preserve
> a text it may need to look unimportant and meaningless. A text that was
> transferred to a culture that could not read it would be guaranteed
> preservation but not assimilation until the right people could
> interpret it.
> Many texts were merely copied and not fully translated through this time.
> However, in this case, the right poeple never showed up.
>
> One more for the general pot....

What most posts like this essentially suggest is that what "appears" to be
an herbal is not in fact an herbal.  What "appears" astrological is not in
fact astrological, etc.  In other words, hidden meaning within an already
quite well "hidden" text.  There's always one or two chances in Hell that
this turns out to be true, but in the mean, this is a major jump beyond
known facts, to a conclusion without current factual support.  If you're
saying it is a copy of an older manuscript in a current theme, that is one
thing, but a copy of an original older manuscript is quite another.  What
conflicts were so important in the early 16th century to warrant the VMS?

With all respect for Steve Eckwall and his "Excitant Spirit", (ES), the VMS
cannot, on the evidence, be "older than you think".  One examination (posted
on Rene's site, but I can't remember her name, Julie Porter?  I may be
wrong....), identified clothing and hats at between 1480 and 1520.
D'Imperio places it (through her own analysis and that of others) to be
1450-1550.  O'Neill and a select few botanists have also placed it after
1493.  From my own studies, the median date would be 1518-1530, simply by
the clothing styles and tentative plant identifications, apart from my own
theories on the author.  Most of this opinion is even high-end for Nick's
current contentions.  Perhaps Nick hasn't taken into account that it takes
time for certain ideas to "filter down" to the peons in the field?

The widest time frame is 1450-1550, based on the visual evidence.  Each of
us uses our own criteria to narrow that marker, but anything earlier or
later requires a degree of reasonable proof.  My reasoning is simply this -
a hat can be drawn years after it became "the style", but not before.  Most
things about the VMS push it to later dates than "earliest" dates, and the
shorthand symbols on f57v are one of the most telling of them all in this
regard.  They say we're not just "early 16th century", but approaching
"middle 16th century", 1525-1550, and possibly a decade beyond.

Steve keeps saying "It's older than you think", but he hasn't come out and
given a proper "time frame" to match his statement.  I'd certainly like to
see any reasonable explanation why our current thinking on time frame might
be incorrect.

GC



______________________________________________________________________
To unsubscribe, send mail to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxx with a body saying:
unsubscribe vms-list