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Re: Re: VMs: Re: Plants in the VM
Hello Dana,
it certainly looks like it - especially the folio 75r - but human or animal, some other folios seem
to show also some other parts, even some "trips through entrails". I wish I know more about liverscopy to find out if the illustrations have their own meanings or if they are just a product of artist's
fantasy. After all, their meanings would be clear only to the certain contemporary experts - for me it
looks more like Dante's Inferno :-).
Either way, we concentreted in the past too much on what the pictures show than what they suppose to show.
Due to the fact that the pictures are not too accurate, many shapes can be misinterpreted. One question
remains: in medieval manuscripts, the pictures were either illustrations ( i.e. of battles, events or
persons) or embellishments - here we are apparently dealing with something different: there is too much
imagination in those sketches that they almost look unreal.
Jan
======= At 2004-05-22, 23:56:00 you wrote: =======
>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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Best regards.
Jan
Our mail is always sent without attachments.
http://hurontaria.baf.cz/enigma/ Enigma, nas novy casopis zahad
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