RE: VMs: RE: Writing in plant illustrations

[Nick Pelling <incoming@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Dear John,

At 21:35 21/06/2004 -0400, John Grove wrote:
>         For my part, I'm not convinced the quires have been corrected in 
> any sense.
> Quire 9 is most logically (look at the images) in the right order only if
> you shift
> the whole quire one place to the left and end up with the quire signature at
> the end of the quire where it would have naturally been. The title page of
> that quire
> is currently hanging out as a foldout. Here's the order that seems most
> logical to me:
>
>         f67r2 is the opening page of the quire and should be the first 
> recto page.
>         The central star in that diagram corresponds with the central 
> spiral of the
> verso
>         67v2 which would obviously be next if 67r2 was the first recto page.
>
>         Then comes 67v1 Sun Circle which is an opening bracket in the 
> next pattern.
>                 68r1 Sun
>                 68r2 Moon
>         Then the closing bracket of this pattern 68r3 with the Moon 
> Circle (and
> Pleiades).
>
>         68v3 and 68v2 - don't really see the Sun/Moon pattern here but 
> they are
> obviously
>         flowing along the quire with the rest of the images quite nicely.
>
>         Finally... and in my eyes most importantly, the next two images 
> MUST go
> together
>         f68v1 Sun followed by the closing Last verso page with a quire 
> marking
>         f67r1 MOON.

This is good stuff, John - you've opened my eyes to quire 9 in a new way! :-)

I completely agree that f68v1 Sun and f67r1 Moon must go together - this is 
similar to the kind of symmetrical matches that drive the correct order in 
the balneo quire.

If you look just right of the edge between f67r1 and f67r2, it seems (to my 
eyes) as though there is a series of circular needle-holes - I think that 
was for the original binding. To me, this suggests that this is not a 
genuine fold-out bifolio, but instead a folded bifolio which has lost its 
original binding, and has been rebound at its left-hand edge (next to f67r1).

Similarly, folio 68 looks to me less like a three-page foldout, and more 
like a a folded bifolio (with the original fold between panels 1 and 2) and 
a two-page fold-out (panels 2 and 3), bound on its far left edge.

Rene, how sure are we that this binding structure is correct?
        http://wikibooks.org/wiki/Quire_9_%28The_Voynich_Manuscript%29

As a side issue: if we can build a strong case that quires 9 and 10 were 
originally bound together, then we should be able to refute any notion that 
the original quire structure matches what we see - and hence that there was 
likely any connection between the quire signer and the original author(s). 
Just a thought.

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

______________________________________________________________________
To unsubscribe, send mail to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxx with a body saying:
unsubscribe vms-list