Re: VMs: Link between Phaistos Disk & VMs...!?

[Nick Pelling <nickpelling@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi everyone,

At 23:18 20/07/2005 -0500, Dennis wrote:
> I previously wrote (though it seemed to have got lost in the thread):
> > Though it's stretching the point to claim there's any kind of link with 
> > the VMs here, I just like the symmetry between John Stojko's Old 
> > Ukrainian VMs and Arthur Gleye's Old Estonian Phaistos Disk - and that's 
> > good enough for me. :-)
>
>         I presume you aren't being too serious here.  ;-)

Well... "yes & no". Though I do think Old Ukrainian and Old E[s]tonian are 
equally unlikely as plaintext languages in the two contexts (sorry Wayne, 
John, & [descendents of] Arthur), I'll say it again: I do like the overall 
symmetry, which is why I posted about it in the first place.

And just in case anyone accuses me of being a troll here, I happen to think 
that's a particularly nasty hobbit - I simply like asking orcward 
questions. :-)

FWIW, I think Wayne is doing really well, because (unlike many people) he 
has put the time & effort in to develop a hypothesis & to weigh up the 
evidence for himself: for example, I too think there's a kind of parallel 
between Greek miniscule script and the VMs' script, which he is absolutely 
right to flag. Even so, I believe that tachygraphy probably provides the 
missing link, in the hands of those few Greek scholars (like Filelfo) who 
fled Byzantium in the decades before 1453, clutching piles of precious 
manuscripts (mainly to sell to humanist collectors).

However, a pre-1400 VMs dating doesn't work for me because (a) I believe 
that the circular map depicts Sforza Milan, in the style of Massajo's 1428 
circular map (b) the hairstyles of the nymphs appear to be mid-to-late 
Quattrocento; (c) the maiolica "tubes" are decorated in a geometric style, 
datable to circa 1440-1460; (d) the Wolkenband on the "Andromeda" page is a 
Quattrocento decorative feature; and so on.

Even if the VMs does turn out to be written in a lost European language, 
I'm not sure that Dacian would be a good candidate for it: if you try to 
read Voynichese as a simple monoalphabetic cipher, its repetitiveness and 
(almost musical!) leitmotifs & word-variations make it sound halfway 
between transliterated baby talk and serial composers (more Stockhausen 
than Glass). All in all, I find it extremely hard to imagine Ovid writing 
verse in a language anything like Voynichese. :-(

Of course, a list of those 20 Dacian herb names would still be interesting 
in its own right! :-)

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


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