Re: VMs: f112r-f112v

["Philip Neal" <philipneal_vms@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

> > Now you're starting to ask the right question - basically, if the VMs is 
> > (in some way) a copy of a pre-existing document, why on earth would 
> > someone go to the trouble of copying a gap?

> 	This keeps coming up; we could certainly use an expert on old manuscripts. 
>   If anyone could get such a person to just take a look at it, it would 
> help a lot.  With the sids they could tell quite a bit without a direct 
> physical examination.
>
> 	I don't recall us ever having someone like that.  The nearest I remember 
> was Lorraine Abram, who specialized in Slavic Ms.  Does anyone else 
> remember someone?  Or know someone?

I handled hundreds of old manuscripts in my days as a graduate student
some twenty years ago. I never heard of somebody copying a gap. It is
just about unknown for a copyist to reproduce the format of an original
at the level of the line.

However, the VMS may be a special case because there is reason to think
that the cipher, if it is one, operates at the level of the line as well as 
the
character and word.

Philip Neal


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