Hypothesis about page 84v

[ProxyS]

here I have some new translations. A lot seems to support the context assumption. In heaven is Yahwe, his goodness and greatness are praised, furthermore Rephaim, the departed spirits in the Jewish afterlife and the shining Lion of Juda…
There are notes and memos all over this page. The author apparently believed that even somebody who can read the text needs a small explanation to understand what is depicted.

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The words which were coming from the thunders and which John heard in the vision should be kept behind the wall, not to pass over to others. A sentence in Aramaic which would match the pattern is (in brackets is an alternative pronunciation noted in the dictionary):
QAL[QOL] AMAR[EMOR] HU[HI] LO[LA] ADAH
it means: voice says it not (to) pass on
One another example is this one. Here I expected something which clarifies what the powerless sun causes on earth.

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A possible match is:
TIMNATH AMAR ALLATAH
it means: a portion (of the image) speaks/expresses thick darkness/twilight

There is a text in the corner nearby the sun. I still don’t know what it means if we have 3 consecutive c so I couldn’t find a match to the word at top left. The short word to the right means in my opinion:

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YATH which is the untranslatable mark of the direct object or the accusative
The word below means:
SHEMESH(OW)
sun, so something happened to the sun.
The last phoneme could be casus flexion which doesn’t exist in English and is expressed e. g. in German as definite article (der, des, dem, den) but in Slavic languages this casus indicator is a suffix of the substantive so maybe here it’s similar. But don’t want to speculate about grammar too much. Unfortunately, the word to the right isn’t readable but, on this page, most is clear and distinct so we can go to another spot.

tbc...

[ProxyS]

In the middle, I suppose, is the New Jerusalem, so here I would expect the word YHWH and the names of other residents in heaven. YHWH should naturally occupy the most prominent place (in Hebrew, Aramaic at the top, right side).

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In my opinion 8g is the synonym for Yahwe so the word would be then:
YAHWEH ELOWA
God Yahweh
To the right:
TUWB REV RABAH[RABUW]
Goodness (in the superlatively concrete form: the best, beauty, gladness, welfare), appearance of great/greatness
Aramaic words pronounced: toob rave rebaw, sounds very solemn, Jesus spoke Aramaic.
The next one:
ZAMZOM
Zamzummim, the Rephaim, the ancient giants sometimes considered as the forefathers of the Israelites
And further down:
ZAHAR LABIY
the shining lion
The shining lion of Juda, protector of Israel, in the Revelation this lion is Jesus but here in Jewish perception I suppose the first. The word to the right might be ATSAM spoken AW-ZAM (mighty, powerful, strong). I realized on other spots that the spelling follows more the pronunciation of a word than this what I found in Aramaic dictionary. The best examples are the word endings -DAH -BAH -TAH (spoken -DAW, -BAW, -TAW). In Voynichi there is always an o (pronounced v/w) in these syllables. Therefore the idea to conclude the spelling from the written text.

So far my provisional alphabet which covers more than 85% of the words in this section. There are a few characters which are used rare so the text hasn’t given me any indication for a mapping. I didn’t examine other sections until now so I don’t know if the same code is applied to them as well.

In the next post I’ll explain what you called system and what I understand as the process how to come to the correct words. This process however isn’t straight forward. That’s obvious for a code where you have words in source text (Voynichi) which can be mapped to many words in destination language (Aramaic). We have here one-to-many mapping so we need additional measures, indeed. Most probably, these who hoped that plain character decrypting would lead directly to readability will be disappointed. Each sentence first must be determined, but as you see from my ~50 translated words and a couple of short sentences there are ways to achieve this.

Regards, PS

[Soter]

Hello;

Interesting. I imagine not many on our list would know enough to contradict any of what you are suggesting.

Since my own interest lies not in the linguistic interpretation (or even in the hypothesis that linguistic content is present) , but rather in the close analysis of information expressed as imagery , I would have to say the one word in what you discuss with which I very much agree is "mapping".

Yrs
Soter

[ProxyS]

Hello Soter,

you are talking about maps and this is exactly what I see on the rosettes page, a cosmic map with heaven in the middle and earth around, earth at different points of time in an evolving story.

Can be, some people expect something like a mathematical proof for the correctness of the interpretation and decryption. It won’t work, because we haven’t any mathematics here. We have only indications and like in an indication trial we have to look for “fingerprints” the author had left. Naturally there are more indications on pages with pictures than on pages with plain text. And in my opinion the rosettes-page left more “fingerprints” and hints than the others, sufficient many to identify the story behind on the basis of the images alone. Two things would surprise me absolutely regarding VMS, one is if we had one whole year without the breaking news that an ingenious researcher found the code and can reveal the meaning of the whole manuscript and the second would be indeed if someone would be able to present a more convincing interpretation of this page than that of Revelation. Here I’m not talking about text, but as you see it is possible to find a word-mapping which supports the interpretation in a satisfying way.

Regards, PS

[ProxyS]

Hi Rich,

here are some thoughts about the process of word-mapping: shorthand Aramaic (after plain mapping Voynich chars to Aramaic chars) -> genuine Aramaic words. Everything what I’m writing applies to the rosettes-page and perhaps to the cosmological section. I hadn’t time to examine the others.

As I see, we have here double ambiguity. On one side we have to enrich the shorthand Aramaic with vowels and these can be done in many different ways. It helps and limits the selection that not every filling gives a regular word. On the other side we must simultaneously determine how to divide a shorthand Aramaic word. A 4-characters shorthand Aramaic word can be differently divided:

XXXX -> X X X X or X XXX or X X XX or X XX X or XX XX or XXX X or XX X X

This makes it not easy to find the resulting sentence. So long the typical meaning of long patterns is unknown the best strategy is to analyse short words and words with presumed meaning. One example is what comes out from the tubes on the rosettes page. In one image I expected the words “release the four fallen angels who are bound in the Euphrates” because that was said to the sixth angel of the apocalypse (here I found a spectacular mapping which narrows the time period VMS was possible created and which I’ll describe in a further post). For this reason, I think it is futile to start translating large text passages without a presumed context. Every new uncovered pattern makes it easier for the next. I already had the words “voice says” from the earlier translated sentence so I could apply them directly to the shorthand Aramaic word coming from the tube.

I have realized that the frequently occurrence of Y (g) at the beginning of a word means “the”, the definite article. In modern Hebrew this article is ha, e. g. hatorah-> the Torah, written as a singular word hey, and here they used presumably this Y alone). So, if you start with a word beginning with g look first if a “the” would make sense. Nothing is guaranteed, can otherwise be the first character of a word which begins with Y. I assume the most of us don’t know any one word in Aramaic so a cumbersome search in a dictionary is necessary.

You emphasise the importance of repeatability of the approach. I guess this approach is repeatable but doesn’t prevent that some people won’t find anything. It’s no guarantee. But neither I can give a warranty a mathematical proof will be understood by many or even few though it was flowless and well explained and (one other example) even many contemporary physicists claimed for long time after publication only Einstein understands his relativity theory. They couldn’t map their acquired knowledge to new concepts.

In my opinion the uncovering of larger text passages will only be approachable by a small group of people anyway. Which small group is it here? A group of talented researchers in Jewish studies with knowledge in Aramaic, having knowledge of Kabbalah and Zohar like the one of Moses de Leon and others. And some additional literature written by people I’m convinced they are the company which created VMS. Unfortunately, the complement literature of the presumed authors and facts about them signals that it could be parts in VMS which are not readable at all because they tried to create a new language and lettering on the basis of Old Hebrew and Aramaic. I’ll try to explain which parts of VMS this could be.

Sure, even a layman can find a singular word or a short sentence and knowing the context these can turn out to be correct but only a group of specialists will be able to make large parts of this manuscript readable. And probably it will be a long process. Comparable to this one of Qumran rolls? Probably shorter as we now have good software available and VMS is not partly destroyed as the rolls were. Among the rolls were 70 in Aramaic. The complete text of the Aramaic rolls only was published 1984 after discovery 1947-1956.

Regards, PS

[ProxyS]

Ok, I owe an explanation of what I have found in the possible mapping of words coming out from the tube in the image in the left corner at the bottom. If the Revelation-hypothesis is correct there must exist a mapping which gives analogous: “release the four fallen angels who are bound in the Euphrates”.

First there are 4 short words above. Is this the place the 4 were bound? A lot of waters around, could be Euphrates…

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There was not even difficult to find a meaningful mapping. The word to the left says what it is:
EYTAM
lair of wild beasts
and the two words to the right:
YARE ROA
be afraid/fear badness, sadness, evil

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To the words from the tube:
No 1. QAL[QOL] AMAR[EMOR] ‘EL UBAL
voice says: at/by/against stream/river (between two bigger c’s there is one smaller, I interpret it as prefix ‘el)
No 2. Y EHELBAH(-BAW)
the Fertile (fertile stream -> Euphrates)
the next I struggled long to find, there weren’t any alternatives to find here
No 3. YARE ELIYL (spoken EL-EEL) LEBAB (spoken -BAWB)
shoot/pour (normally stands yare for fear but there is this additional meaning); idol, no value, thing of nought, false god; inner man/soul/mind (between two bigger c’s there is one smaller too)
No 4. Y ARBAH
the four (the char between R and B must be a deletion, there isn’t any char like this at other places)

It seems in Aramaic the adjectives come behind the substantives: at stream fertile. Or the sentence changes the meaning if you put them before it like in Romanic languages. E. g. in Spanish una ciudad grande -> big city, una grand ciudad -> major city, metropolis.

Interesting formulation, indeed: at fertile stream pour the four idols (false gods) of mind! The idols of mind hint directly to Francis Bacon and Francis Bacon deals with the idols in the book of The Advancement of Learning 1605 or maybe already in a smaller paper a few years before. My first reaction was: the author knew what Francis Bacon had written so VMS can’t be created before 1600. But at a second glance it could be the other way round: Francis Bacon took his idols of mind from the bible and modernised them. In the bible (OT) the idols of mind (but it means soul as well) are mostly four false gods/religions with reference to the four main Gods of Egypt Re, Isis, Torus and whoever the 4th is. On the other hand, can the recreation of old religions be meant with pouring of these idols? More probably is devotion to new idols (tribe, nation, economy, …). Example for an interpretation: politics and others in some countries embraces regimes and dictators and make them stronger and stronger in the name of the economy idol. Is the meaning not more likely that such a doing will lead to devastation at the end?

Whatever the interpretation is, I have to revise my statement in the former post that I can narrow the period VMS was possibly created.

[ProxyS]

There is more to uncover…

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In this word the second occurrence of SH is slightly different to the first, could be similar but different spelling and pronunciation. I take S instead of SH.
I like this one:
ISH MAR, SIY[SEE] MAR
there is bitterness of water, loftiness drop (drop of loftiness)
drop is mentioned in OT e.g. here: the nations are like a drop from the bucket

b and l are often connected (bl, lb) to one char, probably the big gallows B can supersede L in a similar affinity.
Here is a remarkable text and picture.

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A match reads as follows:
‘AY RASHAM BAAH(BE-AW) AY OWR(spoken ORE) LO[LA] OLELAH
thou inscribe, note (that which is inscribed): where entrance becomes light (will be illuminated) not to glean
He points to the picture below, there is shadow over the entrance. And he points to a psalm, psalm 119:130 which says:
The entrance of Your words gives light; It gives understanding to the simple.

But the author hints here the unfolding of the words will be futile and bring no light to the people. Why? Because the people won’t listen, are ignorant and got tired to listen? Ok author, warning understood!

This psalm, the longest in OT, has 22 verses, each beginning with one another of the 22 letters of Hebrew alphabet. It’s big poetry.
And the author of the VMS?

khel-baw -> ar-baw
ish mar -> see mar
be-aw -> o-lay-law

He rhymed even his short sentences! Our man was a poet!

[ProxyS]

These 3 chars are still not finally clear:

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Are they same or different chars? However, I’ll narrow the interpretation to leading Q or G and following l or d.

But first one new decryption.

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Very good match is here (in brackets is the assumed pronunciation):
GADA'H(gaw-dahd) CAM(sam) ‘ATHAH(aw-thaw)
to penetrate/cut into oneself; sweet/spice smell; to come/arrive (about time)
penetrating sweet-spicy smell arrives
And you see a fire wave devastating a landscape.

When we browse the internet, we sometimes hit on presented alphabets which partly shows analogy to the alphabet presented here. One example to mention is the Pahlavi Hypothesis presented by J. M. Herrmann of University of Edinburgh, School of Informatics. Some few characters are mapped to the same transcriptions as in our alphabet. But following a completely different motivation. We can’t see in VMS a Zoroastrian cosmology. We see an author who is devoted to the psalms of the Old Testament, a Jewish or Christian kabbalist having deep knowledge of Aramaic allowing him to formulate his revelations as lyric poetry. All the more the more hints and links to OT we can identify. As a further example we can show that this mysterious picture plus text, which explains satisfactorily what the picture represents, point to one another concrete psalm (I’ll explain this in a further post).

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Particularly, we don’t see any correlations to the EVA alphabet (only one character is mapped in the same way g <-> Y) and I was wondering if EVA alphabet can help to identify and explain only one single Voynichi word.

What we have found so far are ~65 words and sentences in which we identified hints and links to the Old Testament (names of the tribes of Israel, words how to praise Yahwe, explanations concerning the events in the Apocalypse and rhymed statements hinting to psalms and prayers).
As for now the question occurs how sure can we be having applied the right alphabet and decryption approach. Indeed, different questions arise.
One is: are we certainly confronted with a human language at all? Unfortunately, we can’t apply the Zipf’s law here because for that we have to know the words (but not meanings) in the text. This we don’t know as one word in Voynichi is a line of a composed poem in our opinion. It can be than only determined a-posteriori.

Curiously, it will be easier to answer following one: provided we have found the right underlying language, does the number of our findings give us already now a statistical relevance which qualifies for the assertion that this alphabet and system will lead to decryption of the whole page and section? Did we reach a confidence range to say this page or section will be potentially decrypted? We ask then for a measure about the quality of the decoding and the probability that our alphabet is good enough to decode the rest of the page or section. And if our confidence interval will be tight enough, we can state: this page has been unfolded with a confidence evidence of X%!
Fortunately, my son is statistician and economist and will help to find a criterion.

[ProxyS]

It’s a longer story to explain how the syntax- and semantical heuristics can be employed to narrow the choice of words etc…

Here is one further example for a translation acc. to our alphabet. The small image in the corner of 86v.

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1 AZAH(AZ-AW) ATHAH(AW-THAW)
heat will come
2, 3 ‘AYIL(AH-YIL) ‘OW DAY(DAHEE) SHAM TAM
strong men, if enough, then (thence) sound (wholesome)

Points to Jeremiah 17:8
They will be like a tree planted by the water that sends out its roots by the stream.
It does not fear when heat comes; its leaves are always green.

Who will be strong enough when the heat will come? I guess, in authors opinion these who study the Tanach and live according to it. The symbol in the circle is a T and the Tanach's (TNK) first letters in Hebrew in handwriting are Tet(⎿), Nun(|) and Kaph(⏋) which compose the T. And a stream flows through this T. There are many such short references to psalms and prayers on this page.

[ProxyS]

last week I realised, Voynich Net Forum is up and running again…

Meanwhile we refined our alphabet and translated pretty much the entire central page of the foldout, the text around the central picture of heavenly Jerusalem, and some other short sentences like that below. As I know it’s the longest Voynich text decrypted on the basis of a code or alphabet ever presented. We prepared a paper which can be downloaded from the following URL: https://enspace.net in which we explain the decrypting method, the motivation, our alphabet and give the transcription and translation of the text. A further paper will show the translation of the second part of the central text and give details about the acrostic found in the text. This acrostic hints to Zefat (Safed) as the place of the text composition (but not encryption). Therefore, we gave our theory the title “the Zefat theory of the VMS-cosmological section”. Here is a further example for a short sentence from the foldout 85r/86v of VMS. It's a very rare sequence of consonants, one wouldn’t expect to find something meaningful, but with a new glyph used at the beginning of a word ’ar/’or:

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'arubbah tachti arar (ar-oob-baw' takh-tee' ar-awr')

chimney (lattice opening where smoke escapes)
the lower parts, nether parts, the depths
stripped
(the lattice opening to nether regions lays bare)

We can find the word 'arubbah in the midst of heaven again:

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towb 'arubbah-ot {tobe ar-oob-baw'-ot)

good, right (ethical), appropriate, fair
lattice, window, sluice
-ot feminin plural
(heaven’s fair windows)

In the OT heaven’s windows or windows of heaven are mentioned several times. Their opening cause floods like in Noah’s times or earth shake; Isaiah 24:18 For the windows above are opened, and the foundations of the earth shake.