Posted on 02/12/2011 2:01:35 PM PST by FTJM
I know, put the thing on the internet and let the entire wired human race try to decipher it. I am willing to bet that someone in this world can read it.
This book has too many illustrations that are typical for alchemists. Anyone seeing the book would instantly report the fact to the nearest Inquisition office; besides, most people at that time couldn't read, so any common writing would be just as much Greek for them.
And as I mentioned earlier, it's a dangerous thing to have writings in an unknown language because the Inquisition would be quick to conclude that the language is of Devil, and it is its holy task to torture you until you reveal it. If there is nothing to reveal ... too bad for you.
The cipher, if real, is also too hard. Even Leonardo simply wrote with his left hand and read the writing in the mirror. It's fairly easy, I can write this way and I'm sure everyone can. But this manuscript is written in a nearly perfect cipher. It is not necessary to have such a complex code, since the book itself - the posession, the illustrations, the code, etc. - is a far more damning evidence than anything that the text could possibly contain except, perhaps, the working secret of eternal life and such.
As I said earlier, my personal belief is that the manuscript was written for one purpose only - to be sold as an exotic, secret book to someone (an alchemist?) who could pay big bucks and was willing to decipher it. An alchemist close to the throne could pay kingly sums of money, literally. Any reasonably educated monk could do it easily, with access to writing implements and vellum and with knowledge of several alphabets. The words could be made up, one by one, and written on a piece of paper for reuse, and changed slightly where suffixes would normally be.
People do such a cleanup only when they expect other people to read the manuscript. Can it be said about an encrypted work, with no known key or even a hint of a key?
And if the manuscript was NOT meant for distribution then there is no reason to bother cleaning it up. A scientist would rather prefer the unedited version because it contains more information.
This means that the book is not a lab journal. If real, it can be an essay on some alchemical research - no problem with that. But there is no key anywhere; you can't distribute such a complex book if nobody can read it. And if you have readers you must have other materials from which they learned the writing. These are not prehistoric times, documents were well managed at that period and we have tons of them. We'd see a margin note in this language *somewhere*. Nobody would even bother studying such a complex language if there is no body of information in it.
This disconnect is exactly what pushes many researchers into belief that the manuscript is an ancient fake - it just doesn't fit into anything. We'd be better off if it was laser-engraved on sheets of 99.999999% pure Praseodymium - at least we'd know that it's not done by humans. But this book is certainly a product of a human hand.
ahaa - looks like a multilevel plumbing system - starts with rain water off the roof into shower/bath stations down to a hand basin and toilet and the final waters ending up in the sewer ‘for the fishes’ That's my story and I'm sticking with it
The script itself is fluid and confident, with clean strokes. There doesn’t appear to be much evidence of pausing or indecisiveness there. It’s not particularly well ordered or linear upon the pages, however. The weight of the strokes varies from page to page, haven’t looked closely enough to really see anything that might be significant about that. Somebody appears to have been accustomed to writing it, whatever it is, but that someone was not too caught up in appearances, otherwise there would be some semblance of composition and the script would be much better planned and thought through for a more organized and polished appearance.
The illustrations are another matter. They’re irregular, somewhat disordered and fanciful in an inelegant manner that I would deem nearly unskilled, almost childish. Sort of like the naive painters that art buffs would recognize, a certain radiance and vision welling up with very limited talent or means to render it, but the radiance and vision wins out over the lack of technique and training, making it compelling to view despite the amateurishness. There is clearly some vague knowledge of the internal workings of the female reproductive system, not uncommon among artists but this isn’t really an artist, maybe an aspiring one. There are also circular graphics shown repeatedly, with segmentation of 8 or 12. Significant of the zodiac, I’d think. There are also a few characters in the script that might appear to be familiar along those lines.
I have no way of figuring out myself whether or not this writing might be a “language” or not, or what the specific point or points the creator of this might be attempting to record or communicate. That has to be left up to the “experts.” If it’s not an antique hoax, I’d suspect someone involved with alchemy perhaps. It was highly fashionable in some circles during the era in question. There are several so-called books of magic that originated along about then. Also, the Slavonic Book of Enoch and the Greater Key Of Solomon spring to mind. But these weren’t encoded in some unknown script, if that’s actually what this represents.
As a result, all I can say is, if this is something genuine, it really wasn’t intended for wide distribution. More care would have been taken with it if so.
Excuse me, but you’re describing some elements of the worst of the Spanish Inqusition. The Italian versions (and there were several different orders and states in Italy then) was much milder. The inqusition was not monolithic in its goals, let alone its methods. In some places it never even existed.
I am a Catholic apologist and ametuer historian.
Bottom line—who knows? It exists until this day, but came from that part of the world and and timeline. Surely the inquistion would have burned it, and we’d never know about, right?
Nah, Elvis wrote in English, just like everybody else.....
betcha right on that - I think some botonist would have a good chance, what with all the botanical research. should be able to pick up on a word or two - and that’s all it takes to be off and running
True enough, but having some knowledge of manuscripts of the era, I would caveat that the preparation process for vellum and parchment are fairly rigorous and elaborate, and it was such a hot commodity that it wasn't laid around and kept in storage, but generally used as fast as it was produced. In fact, palimpsest pages are fairly common...
...because of the value and relative rarity of vellum, pages would be scraped and sanded to be re-used, leaving latent images of the previous text and images behind.
With that in mind, the Voynich manuscript is all the more curious as the time and resources that went into it would point to some wealthy patron or benefactor behind it's production.
Botanists can't recognize most of the plants.
I, being of “alien” descent can of course read this, but if I tell you what it says...I have to kill you, so I will remain silent. :)
Bflr
He had a large supply of gold-pressed latinum on his ship.
That’s an excellent observation! Why do we assume it’s an actual language that is deep and meaningful? I’m sure there were demented people in that century( lead does things to the mind),psychic writing, insane people who made up their own secret language.
So we’re spending time and money either 1-researching a dead language that, if decoded, might be someone’s diary, or 2-the Mein Kamph of a 14th century Charles Manson, complete with hallucinogenic illustrations.
Ya gotta chuckle at the possibility.
We didn’t accidentally copy someones design did we?
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