Talk:Voynich manuscript

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[edit] Hungarian emroidery connection

Look at the pictures of this Hungarian emroidery http://magyar.org/ahm/index.php?projectid=4&menuid=187

Seems reminiscent of some of the plant art in Voynich. Could it be that the artist was familiar with Hungarian embroidery representation of plants and therefore this influenced their style when they painted the manuscript plants? If so this would mean that the artist grew up in the milieu of Hungary and related peoples such as Armenians, Cossacks, Tatars.

Look at the Armenian and Georgian alphabets. There is a certain similarity in style which is also shared by the Voynich writing system. One wonders whether Armenian and Georgian took on their forms partly based on an earlier non-recorded writing system. If so, that former writing system is likely to be more or less syllabic. But that is maybe a bit too speculative. A more likely reason for the similarity is that the Voynich writer lived and worked in an Armenian/Georgian milieu and therefore, when he designed his writing system, he came up with a superficial similarity.

How much effort has been put into analyzing languages like Cuman Tatar, Chuvash, Old Turkic, Armenian, Kartvelian, Adyg, and so on? This manuscript is more likely to be written in a language with central eurasian connections and less likely to be written in a well-known european language.

—Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.152.136.95 (talk) 12:36, 10 February 2007

"How much effort has been put into analyzing languages like Cuman Tatar, Chuvash, Old Turkic, Armenian, Kartvelian, Adyg, and so on?" - None to speak of, and (IIRC) all of it was limited to very marginal quick-and-dirty analyses, none of which have been published in a scientif journal in recent times. Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 11:58, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] History section - clarification

The first paragraph of the History section:

especially the dress and hairstyles of the human figures, and a couple of castles that are seen in the diagrams.

Does a couple mean a pair or several?

They are all characteristically European, and based on that evidence most experts assign the book to dates between 1450 and 1520. This estimate is supported by other secondary clues.

What are those secondary clues? You've got me intrigued, now satisfy the curiosity!

--Cryptic C62 · Talk 00:45, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

I guess couple here means several. The secondary clues are eg the "ductus", ie the style of handwriting and drawing (how much perspective and anatomy did the artist master?, etc.), the type of vellum (parchment) used, and the extraneous writings which were done in Roman letters of that era. Besides, we know that the VM existed around 1600, and cryptography, especially with invented scripts, wasn't around much earlier than 1400. So, while it's not hardcore proof, it's good circumstantial evidence. -- Syzygy 09:16, 18 April 2007 (UTC)
The interesting conclusion of the collected research effort is that while the author was probably European (and most likely from the region around the Alps at that - if the dating is correct), if there ever was an underlying plaintext it almost 100% certainly was not in any of the languages or that region (and neither in any other European language). Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 12:03, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Broken internal link

The "codebreakers" link found at the introduction of the article redirects to a cheat device (Code_Breaker), not to Cryptanalysis. I also left a comment at Talk:Code_Breaker#Disambiguation_page_needed.3F. 77.49.2.144 09:47, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Schinner's claims?

I didn't get around to read Schinner's article in Cryptologica, only a comprehension in Spiegel Online. But it appears to me that he simply compared natural languages with the VM under the assumption that the VM is plaintext, just with a different set of letters. But obviously he did not take the effects of various enciphering schemes into account. For example, anagramming could substantially alter word-initial and word-final distributions of various letters. Does anybody know if my assumptions about Schinner's text are true? --Syzygy 09:26, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

No, he breaks up the text into tokens/syllables which would render his analysis rather resistant to anagramming. But I find his claim that "In particular, the so-called Chinese theory now appears less convincing" to be weak; his analysis does not contain any plaintexts that would be needed to make such a statement. (And it should be "Tungusic, Austro-Asiatic or perhaps Chinese theory").
I noticed a major flaw of many analyses: the assumption that transcriptions of "Voynichese" can be relied upon to render the text correctly. So while there are approaches that dwell upon the differences between "daiin" and "daiiin" and how they might come about, it is not possible to say what "ii" or "iii" actually corresponds to. But this can be circumvented, by trying out a theory in any of the 3 major transcriptions (Currier, EVA, Frogguy). Nonetheless - as per Rugg:

The sample shows "m" in its usual position at the end of a line, and a rare example of "q" followed by "ckh" instead of the usual "o".

But is "m" a letter, or if not, what is it? We just don't know for sure. Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 11:54, 27 November 2007 (UTC)
See also here - some citicisms of Rugg's methodology hold true for Schinner's. Namely puzzling details such as the fact that the Ms. seems to have page or paragraph "headings", which are very often unique words. How are these generated? How come that the "dictionary" seems to be section-specific?
(AFAIK, nobody has ever started with the assumption that, if the Ms. is not gibberish, some of the words in the Plants and Herbals section must mean "root", "flower", etc in the plaintext, and be very rare to absent in all other sections. Which is as reasonable, if not more reasonable, an assumption as the proposal that some guy spent many months to produce a most elaborate hoax. Not exactly a get-rich-quick scheme.) Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 12:14, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Reordering, headers

I've done some copy-editing work on this. My main task now will be clearing out the extlinks (either linking them properly to points where they're referenced in the article or removing them) and figuring out how to better incorporate the illustrations (which have far too much whitespace to themselves just now). Chris Cunningham 13:45, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] "Constellations with no celestial analogue"?

In the Kathar rite section:

The constellations with no celestial analogue are representative of the stars in Isis' mantle.

Which constellations are meant here? I know that several star "maps" in the VM couldn't be identified unambiguously, but that's not necessarily because there were no matches. --Syzygy 07:53, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Content section - clarification

There is a citation tag for the English & Latin entropy comparison, I found this link to a thorough analysis [1] but unfortunately it doesn't quite seem to fit the requirements of a reference. Still, it's nice to know there is such a study.Nazlfrag 04:47, 2 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Ambiguous wording in the intro

I don't want to criticize anyones particular style of writing or for that matter the authors of this particular entry, but I have some concern over the introduction of this entry. It reads:

 "The Voynich manuscript is a mysterious illustrated book with incomprehensible contents. 
 It is thought to have been written between approximately 1450 and 1520 by an unknown 
 author in an unidentified script and unintelligible language."

I don't want to nitpick on one word, but the word "unintelligible" seems suggests that the writing was done in a way that biases the entry towards the hypothosis that it's a hoax. While the language in use has evaded understanding, the style of the writing doesn't suggest that it was deliberately difficult as the word "unintelligible" connotes. In fact, quite the opposite, structure and sytax are all quite intelligible in the scripts language, even if the actual content of the language is not. Therefore, I'm deleting the word unintelligible so that the introduction sounds more neutral. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Chronocoon (talk • contribs) 00:04, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Voynich and Saragossa Manuscripts?

Has anyone looked into the similarities of the Voynich Manuscript and the Saragossa Manuscript?

Could they be the same thing?

Or could they be something that was popular back then; like "tramping" was popular during Mark Twain's days - so cryptic manuscripts were back in the age of Napoleon . . .

One manuscript might be as similar as Mars is to Earth; but still something to look into.

There are some running themes these two pieces carry with them - namely cryptic language and naked women!

I enjoy both of them, but I feel that most of all these so-called undecipherable documents are far easier to understand than others portray them to be.

I think and feel there were a lot of manuscripts that later became phony manuals or skeleton keys to no where. And sometimes it doesn't matter how much you tell someone the sky is blue they're still going to say its plaid.

The Bible is one of those spectacular and sensational examples, and is probably the most famous rendering of several "mysterious" manuscripts thrown together to emulate one big bad manuscript; filled with more cryptographic elusive double talk, sex, and violence than any other book in history. And obviously a book built upon morals . . . the most famous of last words.

Anyway - I've said my 2-bits. In my opinion I think all of these writings were written by a bunch of drunkards with nothing better to do - like most of history.

4.240.18.21 07:24, 4 October 2007 (UTC)Oct.4th 2007 stnono

By "Saragossa Manuscript", do you mean the fictional work described by The Manuscript Found in Saragossa? Wdfarmer 12:19, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Identification of plants

In the Illustrations section, it is stated that "None of the plants depicted are unambiguously identifiable", with a [citation needed] (dated October 2007) attached. On the other hand, in the Theories about contents and purpose section, it is stated that, although "attempts to identify the plants [...] have largely failed", "a couple of plants (including a wild pansy and the maidenhair fern) can be identified with some certainty". Whilst not strictly contradictory, I find the sentence in the Illustrations section to be misleading. Does anyone else feel it should be changed? Ayla (talk) 14:01, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Sourcing question: Pandora's Hope

The article mentions James Finn's book "Pandora's Hope"; the beef I'm having with it is that it's apparently published by PublishAmerica, a vanity publisher with little editorial control, and as such it should be considered a self-published source. Thus this source should really be scrutinised better. Have these claims been examined in another, more reliable source? --wwwwolf (barks/growls) 11:45, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

Is there a need for it? The article references Pandora as the source of a rumour (ie, this is what the author has to say), not as fact (This is how it is.) So, personally I don't have an issue with self-published references in this case. --Syzygy (talk) 08:05, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] "Weasel words"

I don't think the two words in question are weasel words. The micrography markings are indeed "illusory" in as far as they really aren't there (there are cracks in the ink layer, but no deliberate "letters"), and Martin's process is "convoluted" since (as far as I understand it) it requires a number of steps with the later steps reusing intermediate results from previous steps in an all but straightforward manner. But I'm open to suggestions for a better wording... ;-) --Syzygy (talk) 08:12, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] The Clutch issue

Hi all,

The comparison of the clutch pictures to the Voynich images is clearly not fitting for the WP:

  • Since the manuscript is proven to be in existance as early as 1912, comparing it to an early 21st century clutch is quite pointless. Only a comparison to an early 20th century clutch would have a hint of merit.
  • Anyway, it's original research, not backed up by external reference.
  • While interesting and fun, we may safely assume the resemblance between the pictures and the clutch to be coincidental.

So, please don't include the clutch pictures again.

Cheers, --Syzygy (talk) 08:44, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Cultural impact section...

This was removed a long time back, which is fair enough for unsourced sections in a featured article - nevertheless, some of its items look possibly relevant, if given better sourcing. Anyone know anything more on these, and if they're relevant enough to add back in? They were removed (and can be seen at) this diff. SnowFire (talk) 20:50, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Availability

Where can I get a copy? 74.78.98.109 (talk) 02:48, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

Assuming you want a digitized copy, and not a physical book, you can get it here. There are many more links on the article page that will help you with research. I don't think this is a currently printed book per se, but a lot has been written about it - check bookstores and book selling websites. – jaksmata 18:28, 15 May 2008 (UTC)
The Beinecke images are a bit cumbersome to work with, since you download each page seperately. They offer very high resolution pictures, though. A low resolution pdf of the whole book can be found here. There also used to be a french reproduction on paper under the titel "Le code Voynich", but this appears to be out of print. Cheers, --Syzygy (talk) 08:46, 16 May 2008 (UTC)