Re: VMs: Sideways text? Bleedthrough? Erased image?

[Nick Pelling <incoming@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Larry,

At 22:52 30/08/2003 -0400, Larry Roux wrote:
> I was just looking at the August page (f72v3)
> http://voynich.no-ip.com/folios/f72v3.jpg
> and noted that there appears to be text running sideways that is bled 
> through, erased, or something.  It is most apparent under the lion running 
> down up from the "u" in 'Augst' to the lion, and there appear to be other 
> lines including one to the right that goes through the lions mid-section 
> and one to the left that appears best to the bottom of the page, just 
> under the two blackish bars.  The lines run clear to the bottom of the page.

I've tried to enhance these from the no-ip scans - it does look like 
there's something there, but I suspect it's not quite what you think it is.

First things first: I don't think we're looking at a palimpsest here - I'm 
sure we'd have seen more evidence anywhere if that were the case. Still, 
any explanation would have to account for the North-South direction of this 
anomalous line of text-like marks (which is typically how palimpsests were 
used).

Secondly, I can see no obvious bleed-across or bleed-through source for 
these markings: so I'm fairly sure they're not intra-text contamination.

But really: the simplest explanation for these marks would that they are 
contact ink transfer marks from some other not-quite-completely-dry text 
being briefly laid on top of the August page at 90 degrees. As such, you're 
probably trying to read them back-to-front or left-to-right ATM. :-o

Now, while it does look as though something *is* there, I'm not convinced 
you'll be able to read it with any certainty either from the CopyFlo or 
from the no-ip scan - for one, it's just too faint (enhancing doesn't seem 
to be of much help), for two, the resolution is too low, and for three, 
it's possible that the Augst text may have written over part of it (it's 
very hard to tell).

But be warned that I've been in this general situation before - I was once 
convinced by planet-glyph-like JPEG artefacts in f57v that there was an 
encrypted natal horoscope encoded on the page, which was simply not there 
on a higher-resolution scan (2288 x 3176 8-bit TIFF, a fair bit higher than 
the no-ip scans). :-(

I think a close examination of this VMs page itself might be revealing - 
but that otherwise we might not have the tools to deal with this.

It's fairly likely that the Beinecke already has a high-resolution scan of 
this page (the astrology pages are quite a popular starting point for 
would-be code-breakers), so if you want to take this further, it might 
simply be an idea to buy a copy of it (on CD) from them and see what you 
see. If you do, I have some super-resolution (resolution increasing) 
software I can run on it, which might help make things clear.

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


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