Re: VMs: Re: Quick question

[Nick Pelling <incoming@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Dan,

At 09:15 05/01/2004 -0700, Dan Gibson wrote:
> Your  question about left-right text is very good. There are MANY things
> about the VMS that hint that the base language was not European, but Middle
> Eastern in origin. The artwork, however points to a Medieval origin. Unless,
> as some suspect, the manuscript ?? Middle Eastern, but illustrated or
> re-illustrated by a European scribe at a later date. If this is the case,
> many of the plants may have changed color (and perhaps design), and the
> people in the pictures would have received European clothing, hats, and hair
> color.

A European origin for the VMs seems a fairly sound starting point (European 
script, European clothes, European hairstyles & hats, Italian barrels, 
Italian architecture, etc) for historical research - and those images which 
superficially point to the Middle East (such as the central rosette of the 
9-rosette "map" page) seem at least as consistent with the kind of 
Byzantine architecture found in (for instance) Venice as in Constantinople.

As for the left-right / right-left issue: I don't know of any pages which 
support the idea of the text being written right-to-left, and IIRC the 
majority of pages seem to support the assertion that it was composed 
left-to-right. AFAICR, scribal ink-flow also seems to fade from left to 
right, which would point to its being (physically) written left-to-right. 
(Please correct me if I'm wrong!)

I don't currently see any compelling reason to suppose a Middle Eastern 
origin for the VMs, nor a right-to-left script: I know that they're the 
theories that particularly excite your imagination, but I don't understand 
how the evidence supports them, sorry. :-(

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


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