Re: VMs: Re: Plants in the VM

["DANA SCOTT" <dscott520@xxxxxxx>]

Hello Jan,

A thought concerning the "biological" drawings is that they might be based 
not on human entrails but on other sacrificed animals.

An interesting artifact is the "Liverscope": (6th image down on page)
http://faculty.maxwell.syr.edu/gaddis/HST210/Oct28/Default.htm
http://aaron.bluehome.net/school/web120/a4/entrails.html

I wonder if garum might be the contents of the "jars" in the middle  of the 
nine medallion volvelles? (f85/86)
http://www.pompeisepolta.com/english/garum.htm

Canopic-type jars might be another possibility:
http://www.mummytombs.com/museums/uk.oxford.ashmolean.canopic.jpg


Regards,
Dana Scott


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Jan" <hurychj@xxxxxxxxx>
To: <vms-list@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Saturday, May 22, 2004 4:59 PM
Subject: Re: VMs: Re: Plants in the VM


> Hello Scott,
>  ======= At 2004-05-22, 14:35:00 you wrote: =======
> >I would say that the plant drawings are based in part, if not in whole, 
> >on >real plants the
>  characteristics of which were well known to the author of >the VMS.
>
> Well, I have not seen the list of Latin names for the plants in  the VM 
> which were 100%
>  identified and I doubt if there  is any -  except for  sunflower and some 
> even doubt that. But I
>  agree with you that most parts do look like those existing in reality. 
> But only the PARTS - he
>  problem with identification is that some of them were used for wrong 
> plants
> and we cannot say with certainty: this plant is marigold and so on.  Even 
> Georgius Baresh noticed in his letter to Kircher that the plants  are not 
> from Europe; the  others even claim
>  they  are not from this Earth :-).
>
> I was looking for the reason  of that discrepancy and it certinly looks 
> illogical that while   the
>  author took pain to hide the names of plants (if we consider their tags 
> to be exactly that), he
>  would draw next to them the real  plants, as a clear giveaway. So he may 
> have modify some parts,
>  exchanging  some of their parts with others, and sometimes even adding 
> some impossible
>  combinations.
>
> On the other hand, why  would  he draw the unrecognizable pictures at all? 
> We can see he did take a
>  pain  - while he was surely no big painter - to draw the plants with 
> clear outlines and in color!
>   It almost looks like they are supposed to convey something else, but 
> what it is, I do not know.
>  Maybe it is some code, who knows? But it would be surely  hard way how to 
> pass relatively very
>  little of information :-).  Could  it be that the author saw the plants 
> somewhere and forgotten how
>  they look? I guess we would be impossible to draw all those plants from 
> memory only.
>
> So what is left? Could those be the pictures of some hybrids from 
> somebody's laboratory? They do
>  not  look like  results of some cross-breeding, however. So what is 
> left - pure fantasy?  True,
>  but than the  author must have spent many hours   observing the real 
> plants - most parts do look
>  like  real. No unskilled imagination would be able to invent them in such 
> closeness.
>
> That brings another crazy idea: those ladies with "plumbing" - first I 
> thought they were some
>  anatomical pictures only (considering the poor knowledge of human body at 
> that time, before
>  regular autopsies), but they look so unreal that I changed my mind. What 
> I think now is that the
> "plumbing" could be some kind of  crypto-art, too.
>
> Regards,
>
> jan .
>
>
>
>
>
> >
> >----- Original Message ----- 
> >From: "Jan" <hurychj@xxxxxxxxx>
> >To: <vms-list@xxxxxxxxxxx>
> >Sent: Saturday, May 22, 2004 6:12 AM
> >Subject: VMs: Plants in the VM
> >
> >
> >> Hello,
> >>
> >> looking at the plants in the VM, it occured to me, that they are
> >> unrecognizable, because the author deliberately  modified their
> >> appearance. Did anybody get the same impression? I do not mean that 
> >> they
> >> contain the code - that would be real overkill -  but in the case the 
> >> book
> >> contains some secret recipes (e.g. for  "Aqua Sinapia" or others) it 
> >> would
> >> be foolish to hide the text and provide the exact pictures of the real
> >> plants used.
> >>
> >> Some plant parts are defnitely "out of this world", but they also look
> >> like fabrications. On the other hand, they also contain some elements 
> >> of
> >> true  plants, many  of them recognizable, see ref.
> >> http://nabataea.net/vplants.html
> >>
> >>
> >> Best regards.
> >> Jan
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> ______________________________________________________________________
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> = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
>
>
> Best regards.
> Jan
>  Our mail is always sent without attachments.
>  http://hurontaria.baf.cz/enigma/ Enigma, nas novy casopis zahad
>
>
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