Re: VMs: The Painter and the Retoucher

[Nick Pelling <incoming@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi everyone,

At 00:14 19/07/2004 -0700, Rene Zandbergen wrote:
> Let's not forget that there was this old argument:
> - since the text shows no corrections, one could
>   argue that the contents are not meaningful.

> The 'no corrections' statement is now obsolete (...)

It's not certain at this stage whether the Retoucher's intention is to 
correct errors or to clarify text. IIRC, there *are* a few obvious 
corrections in the VMs, a number of which have been mentioned on-list in 
the past - perhaps a good task would be for someone to track these down in 
the list archives, and to cut and paste them from the sidfiles onto a 
single page (much like my work-in-progress month page).

As a methodological point, the more "longitudinal" studies of the VMs like 
this we can devise and execute, I think the more we'll understand the whole 
object. :-)

> (...) but what we see is not necessarily evidence for
> a meaningful content.

Absolutely true - but I think it does all start to make clear what happened 
to the VMs over the centuries... and hence should help us predict what the 
VMs most likely originally looked like, which I contend should be our real 
starting point.

> I am not so sure that the 'retoucher' is necessarily
> a different person than the original scribe,
> nor that there was only one :-/

Perhaps a better analogy might be that we are uncovering various parts 
being played within a drama, though we remain uncertain of how many actors 
were actually employed, and when. :-)

For me, the initial question is whether we can demonstrate whether any of 
the labels the Heavy Painter painted over had already been retouched by the 
Retoucher... something to think about!

The more we understand the layers, the more it seems to me that a physical 
examination of the VMs (using, for example, Raman spectroscopy, as 
mentioned on-list several times) might now be able to help us physically 
"separate" those layers. But perhaps we should carry on looking for a while 
first, to see what other subtle wonders we can find hidden in the sidfiles! :-)

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


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