Re: Re: Re: VMs: Colored paints, touch-ups, and the michiton text

["Jan" <hurychj@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hello Dana,

you wrote:

      >Even looking at the copyflo, the last letter looks more like an e than a z 
>to me. The ce appear to be joined as we would write it in script.


This is very interesting observation: if the second word is, as I originally
assumed, "z" (written old fashion way, similar to "3",  instead of "de")  then the
form "z Tepence"  would be the exact form of Latin "de Tepenec" in Czech
language  (because  of Czech declination of the word "Tepenec"  in genitive). 
Voynich   probably did not speak Czech  and due to his different quotations -
first indicating the first word as "Jacobus", later as  "Jacobi" would indicate he
could not figure the first word exactly either. We can somehow see the last letters
of the first word as "cky" or "czky", but the detail is so  poor we simply cannot
tell.

How was the original  erasure done? I could see  some 
scratches in older  scan, but we cannot eliminate that some dissolving liquid was
used too - would that much diluted ink turn little bit bluish?  I do not  know.

It is my suspicion, that the "autograph" is nothing more than the record by some
archiver, probably of Czech nationality. Judging by its place in the folio, it was
written later than the rest of  the  folio, is perfectly straight (unlike the lines of the
VM :-) and   Horczicky - if he was an author - would not write it 
( why would he keep all text  secret and still openly write his name there?). If he
 was not author, but only the owner, he could have written it  - but probably only if he had to lend
 it to somebody :-).   If the VM was  willed by BHorczicky to Prague Jesuits, it may have been 
one of their archivers who wrote  his name in and if it was later stolen, there was definitely 
the reason to erase the name then.  We cannot say when, but we  may assume it
  happened before Baresh got it (neither he nor Marci mentioned  name Horczicky in
 their correspondence).

Somewhere I read that  Voynich  claimed there was also  the word "Prague"
 written somewhere below. We could not find anything of that sort - but if it
 was, it was apparently written with the rest of "autograph", and while the VM 
was  still in Prague (which does not make  too much sense).  Strangely enough 
the name was not written on  top of the page  neither it was written inside 
or on  top of the cover (which probably was not present yet).


>   "Bohemian biographical dictionaries yielded the information that Jacobus 
>de Tepenecz was a Bohemian scientist, ennobled by Emperor Rudolph in 1608. 
>He had the right only from that time to sign himself as "de Tepenecz." 

Yes, even Nobilitatio document quotes "Tepenecz", it was probably written that
way in Latin, to stress the soft pronunciation (Tepenec would be otherwise read "Tepenek").
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