Hi, people! As a complete newcomer, I was also respectfully watching the data exchanges, and I'd
like to contribute with a little footnote.
Star names and notation as we know them at present, were establised by the system used in the star
atlas that Johannes Bayer published in 1603. Previously, one of the main works that descibed the
sky was "El libro del saber de Astrología" (The Astrology Knowledge Book), a compilation of all
the knowledge about stars ordered by king Alfonso X of Spain (1221-1284). In the following link
you can see a facsimile of a page of this work, talking about the constellation of Piscis
Australis (not Pisces), and other excerpts, as the Aries one, in the spanish of that time.
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Atrium/5989/astrono.html
All star names were the ones the Arabs gave to the stars, and almost all started with AL- (THE in
arabic, 'ot' in Voynichese?).
On the zodiac pages, for each sign there are 30 labeled stars. From pages 103R to 116R, you can
count 323 star drawings on the remaining pages (as pages 109 and 110 are missing, that may have
had the other 37). Shouldn't the text on these pages describe the 360 stars depicted in the zodiac
pages?. Just a thought...
Hope this helps, at least a little.
Best regards... Arturo
--- djl@xxxxxxxxxxx escribió:
> Jorge, this is very good! The astrological section, particularly the
> zodiac pages, seem to have many words that could start with Al- especially
> the one star in pisces that we certainly know the name of, the hinge star
> named not in the "circles" but in text in the representation of the
> constellation itself ( I don't have the name here, but have mentioned it
> previously). The first VM characters of that name are echoed in many star
> names (if indeed that is what ! they are) in the rings of Pisces and the
> other zodiacal pages.
> I don't recall, but surely it's in the archives, the Zipf's law constants
> for non-vowel Arabic. Do they match VM?
> Don
> >
> > I wrote:
> >
> > > the "Towneley Plays" ... was it here that I got the hint?
> >
> > It was here indeed, from Knox's site
> >
> > http://home.earthlink.net/~knoxmix/id7.html
> >
> > As Knox notes, the word length distribution (WLD) of the TPs is very
> > "binomial-like". (But still not as symmetric as the Voynichese WLD,
> > though.) I presume that it is due to most words in the TPs being
> > monosyllabes.
> >
> > Both are very different from the WLDs of "literary" texts in many
> > languages. Here are some preliminary plots which you may find
> > interesting. Sorry for the lack of explanations, I am working on them.
> >
> > Voynichese, Latin, Portuguese, German, Russian:
> > http://www.ic.unicamp.br/~stolfi/voynich/misc/wlds/langs-w-lengths-1-euro.png
> >
> > Voynichese, GordonRuggish (software), GordonRuggish (manual)
> > http://www.dcc.unicamp.br/~stolfi/voynich/misc/wlds/langs-w-lengths-1-rugg.png
> >
> > Voynichese: Text, Labels, Both
> > http://www.dcc.unicamp.br/~stolfi/voynich/misc/wlds/langs-w-lengths-1.png
> >
> > Voynichese, WarOfTheWorlds, CulpeperHerbal, TowneleyPlays
> > http://www.dcc.unicamp.br/~stolfi/voynich/misc/wlds/langs-w-lengths-2.png
> >
> > Voynichese in OKO-code, Vietnamese, WarOfTheWorlds, TowneleyPlays, Latin
> > http://www.ic.unicamp.br/~stolfi/voynich/misc/wlds/langs-w-lengths-1-qoko.png
> >
> > Voynichese, Arabic(-V), Arabic(+V), Hebrew(+V), Hebrew(-V), Geez(+V)
> > http://www.dcc.unicamp.br/~stolfi/voynich/misc/wlds/langs-w-lengths-1-smit.png
> >
> > Voynichese, Latin, Greek, Spanish, Geez(+V), Arabic(-V)
> > http://www.dcc.unicamp.br/~stolfi/voynich/misc/wlds/langs-w-lengths-3.png
> >
> > Voynichese, Vietnamese, Tibetan, ChineseNews, ChineseNovel
> > http://www.dcc.unicamp.br/~stolfi/voynich/misc/wlds/langs-w-lengths-4.png
> >
> > Voynichese, CnineseBible (two versions), ChineseNews (two versions),
> > ChineseNovel
> > http://www.dcc.unicamp.br/~stolfi/voynich/misc/wlds/langs-w-lengths-5.png
> >
> > Voynichese, Tibetan (two old buddhist texts), Tibetan (modern budhist
> > text)
> > http://www.dcc.unicamp.br/~stolfi/voynich/misc/wlds/langs-w-lengths-6.png
> >
> > Voynichese, English (Roman-numbered codebook), Chinese (fancy-number
> > codebbok)
> > http://www.dcc.unicamp.br/~stolfi/voynich/misc/wlds/langs-w-lengths-8.png
> >
> > Voynichese, Chinese (compact phonetic script), Tibetan, Vietnamese
> > http://www.dcc.unicamp.br/~stolfi/voynich/misc/wlds/langs-w-lengths-9.png
> >
> > Note the close match with the vowelless Arabic text (the Holy Quran),
> > it was quite a surprise. Who has got the Arabic pizza ticket? 8-)
> >
> > All the best,
> >
> > --stolfi
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