Re: VMs: Re: T-maps later than thought?

[elvogt@xxxxxxxxxxx]

Zitat von Barbara Barrett <barbarabarrett@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>:

>> 
> > Funny enough, yesterday I went through an exhibition and saw a manuscript
> > from 1385 with a zodiac circle and the earth in the center
> 
> Most exhibitions have websites these days, did the one you went to have one?

Not that I could find one. It was just a temporary thing ("Aderlass und 
Seelentrost" in the Germanisches Nationalmuseum), so it's possible they didn't 
bother. There is a catalogue available, though.

> And thanks for the example of a medieval circular star/zodiac chart. As
> Rafel pointed out we'd different usages for "chart" which show the problems
> we can get into when we don't have a common vocaulary.

Certainly. To make it clear, I saw a circle with the zodiac signs and a 
calendar of the year surrounding an earth disk -- ie, a symbolic representation 
of the zodiac, not a personal horoscope.

> 
> > -- where the earth was
> > not represented by a T-map, but as a bisectional circle with the top half
> > representing the skies, and the lower half representing the oceans. (No
> > continents here.)
> 
> No surprises there as there are several types of medieval circular world
> maps, each of which served different purposes. I'd have to see it myself but
> it sounds like a type C map (Zonal) which showed "regions" rather than land
> masses. Use of the Zonal persisted until reasonably recently (18th C IIRC).

No zones, since there was _no_land_at_all_ -- only the skies and the water. So 
it either wasn't a map, but a symbolic view of the earth, or a map of the times 
of the great deluge.

> 
> A T-O map has 6 points of identification and the Voynich "galaxy page" T-O
> map has them all which makes a 100 percent correspondence. This is actually
> a higher degree of correspondence than what is necessary to convict on
> fingerprint evidence! 

Uhm... No.

I recommend Barlow, Roger J.: "Statistics" (ISBN: 0471922951) as a good 
beginner's book on the subject.

In a nutshell, two eyes, a nose, a mouth and two ears are characteristical for 
a human being. But they might as well belong to a monkey, a dog, or a 
pig. "100%" means little to nothing.

> As a trained artist I'm very aware of what is actually
> on the page and what ones eyes want to see. The image on f68v3 of the
> Voynich is a T-O map beyond any reasonable doubt.

It would be, if you could read the labels. Until then, it's just a circle with 
two lines. Or we have differing opinions on "reasonable doubt."

> ...
> > P.S.: Oh yeah, and Scorpio in the zodiac was represented by a four-legged
> > critter which looked more like a turtle to me. Just to put the artist's
> > credibility into perspective...
> 
> Now don't everybody die of shock here, but I totally agree with Larry on
> this one! The constellations have been seen as different things by different
> folk in different times and places.
> ...
> I think there's no reason to doubt the artist's credibility  ;-).

In Germany, star signs were adpoted from the hellenistic world, with the 
exception that the names of several signs were "Germanized" -- ie we speak 
of "Fische" (fish) and "Jungfrau" (virgin), rather than pisces and virgo. 
Now "scorpio" has always been "Skorpion", meaning "scorpion."

My point is rather that the painter had probably never seen a scorpion and 
hence had little idea how to draw it. (Similar things happened in other 
contexts with elephants or other exotic animals.) It was meant simply as a 
light-hearted remark.

> 
> Barbara

Cheerio,

   Elmar


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