Tag Archives: Beinecke 408

Hidden in Plain Sight

24 October 2020

Mandrake is one of the best-known plants in medieval herbals. The root is roughly humanoid, and medieval entrepreneurs sometimes carved it to make it more overtly human. Folklore said it was dangerous to dig up the root. The plant would shriek and hearing it could kill you, so harvesters were counseled to use a dog on a leash to dig it up.

The Mandrake in Medieval Herbals

Many medieval herbals included the mandrake, from countries like Italy, France, England, Germany, Greece, the Middle East, and others.

Sometimes only one plant is shown, sometimes two versions: “masculine” and “feminine”, as in these Arabic manuscripts:

The male/female dichotomy goes back to the Dioscorides. In this early copy, the faces are not explicitly drawn, but the roots are distinctly humanoid. A dog is not included in the image, but is mentioned in the text:

Dioscorides male and female mandrake plants — Male and female Mandrake in the 7th-century Naples Dioscorides [MS Suppl. gr. 28]

The humanoid root appears in early copies of Pseudo-Apuleis with a dog, but still does not have a humanoid face:

Mandrake with a humanoid body, but no facial features. [Pseudo-Apuleius, Kassel Mandragora, c. 9c]

The anthropomorphic Mandrake was especially popular in the 12th to 15th centuries. This one, from 12th-century England, includes the dog pulling out the plant while two figures approach with hooks or spears:

BL Harley 5294 humanoid mandrake drawing with dog — A dog pulls the mandrake from the ground and two humans approach it from the left: [Source: BL Harley Ms 5294]

This 13th century example is the same basic theme, with the dog, and figures with spears, but the narrative is broken up into a series of panels:

Codex Vindobonensis 93 mandrake plant with dog — The mandrake was supposed to be excavated with the help of a dog so the human was not harmed by the mandrake’s shrieks. [Codex Vindobinensis 93, 13 century, Wash. University]

On the facing folio, the dog has done its job and two figures poke the root with hooked spears, but it is different from most depictions of mandrake in that a second figure is under the feet of the standing mandrake. The shadow under the character on the left is very doglike.

This version is the same general idea, but the spears are replaced by more familiar tools, and the male and female versions are shown as conjoined twins:

Bologna mandrake drawing — Male and female forms of mandrake cojoined, with the dog pictured above. [Biblioteca Bologna, Gr. 3632]

The dog is not always included. Here are a number of examples that emphasize the humanoid form both sans and with the dog:

sample of medieval mandrake (Mandragora) drawings

Most mandrake drawings include berries. Some have smooth leaf margins, others are serrate. In real life, the margins are ruffled and irregularly serrate.

In the 16th century, the humanoid form was gradually superseded by naturalistic representations.

Is Mandrake in the VMS?

The Voynich Manuscript has a large number of plants in the “big plant drawings” section, and yet there’s nothing that overtly resembles Mandrake. Some have suggested that f33r might be mandrake, but I think there are better identifications for 33r.

A better possibility is f25v, but the root is not humanoid, the leaves are not ruffled or serrate, and they have been carefully drawn with parallel veins, more similar to Plantago or Dracaena. The little dragon is not typical for mandrake plants and I have a few things to say about the critter in another blog.

The VMS is incomplete, so if Mandrake was included, maybe it was separated from other folios. Or… perhaps it is in the section with the small plant drawings…

Artfully Subtle

I’ve been intending for years to write about the small-plants section, but it’s a large number of plants, my notes have turned into a dauntingly huge pile, and it’s hard to find time to write it up properly. But I’m beginning to think I should mention this particular plant because I’ve believed for a long time that it is mandrake, and that it is partly mnemonic:

Voynich Manuscript small humanoid plant maybe mandrake — Is this a sideways, mnemonic version of Mandragora? [Yale Rare Books and Manuscripts Library, Beinecke 408, f89r]

If you turn your head sideways, you can see the human figure, or rather a fairly naturalistic root with humanoid overtones. The head has little rootlets that look like hair, the shoulders have long root-like arms. There’s a rounded body and rootlike legs. To the left, coming out of the head, are two leaves with serrated margins. I believe the leaves are shaped to represent the heads of dogs, with ears facing right and the muzzle vaguely suggested.

Why two dog heads? Maybe the intention was to imply male and female plants without being too obvious about it.

Mandrake is toxic. Maybe the prone posture represents something that can make you ill.

If this is Mandrake, it gives us insight into the drawing style and thought processes of the VMS designer. The important elements are there, but nothing is completely traditional or overt. The figure is sideways, thus making it less noticeably humanoid. The dogs are not drawn separately, but included as a mnemonic in the leaves. It’s subtle, whimsical, clever, and irresistibly cheeky.

J.K. Petersen

The Last Page But Not the Last Word

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Folio 116v Revisited

In 2013, I posted a couple of times about Folio 116v, which is sometimes referred to as the last page of the Voynich Manuscript. I also suggested, as I worked through my journey of personal discovery, that it might be a healing charm. I knew nothing about healing charms before trying to puzzle out the VMS, but I was following a hunch that it might be associated with magic when I saw the strange word oladabas. I later discovered, in 2013 and again in 2015, that abracula was a charm word (a very old and and venerated one) used to cure fevers, and posted some examples of 15th century charms, which follow a format surprisingly similar to the VMS text.

Considering how little is written (and drawn) on Folio 116v compared to most other pages, it’s surprising it has generated so many questions. One of the persistent challenges is the interpretation of the characters, some of which are faded and some of which are unconventional. I can read Gothic Cursive better now than I could in 2013, but that doesn’t help when a word is a blobby mess like the one in the middle of the first row of the main body of text (marked with an arrow):

Vm116CeveBig

Deconstructing the Blob

I didn’t pay any attention to what others proposed as the reading for this word because I was so focused on other aspects of the page that I never followed it up, but the subject was raised on the Voynich forum today and I thought it was time to post my impression of what the letters might represent.

In 2013, I thought the word-group in question might be a messy rendition of toe because “o” and “e” are sometimes combined in old manuscripts as œ. After looking at it for a while longer, I realized the explanation might be something completely different.

Let’s say, for example, that this was originally written as a bench character (EVA-ch). The bench char isn’t only a Voynichese char. As I’ve mentioned before, it’s also a common Latin ligature that can represent a wide variety of combinations of “t” “c” “e” and “r” characters, since they are similar to one another in Gothic cursive. In fact, in some manuscripts, it’s hard to distinguish “c” from “e” or “t” from “c” without context.

So, if it’s a bench character, maybe it’s a bench char with a cap or maybe the “cap” is part of the corrected shape or something not used anywhere else. I’m not sure. The cap is smaller and lower than usual, so it might be part of the corrected shape, but we don’t know if the script on the last page is written by the Voynich scribe or someone else who is somewhat able to mimic VMS text but doesn’t do it exactly the same. In the example above, I’ve lightened the shapes that appear to have been added after the initial shape was drawn. I left in the “cap” or “elbow”, but it’s probably best to picture it in your head both with and without the cap-shape since its connection with the other shapes is unclear.

All right. So let’s say for the moment that the scribe drew a bench character. What happened then? Why did he turn it into an unreadable mess? Perhaps the scribe was trying to correct an error. Maybe it’s Voynichese and he didn’t want to give things away. Maybe it’s a common Latin ligature and he decided it looked too much like Voynichese and could be misinterpreted later. Maybe it’s simply a mistake.

Here’s what I think the scribe may have tried to do to correct it… I’ve added colors to the letters so they’re easier to see because I think the answer may lie right in front of us.

In this illustration, the “c” or “t” is purple, the added “e” or “c” is green, and the added “v” or “r” is bluish. Note how the bench char is still in the background, making it hard to clearly see the letters in front even when they’re highlighted with color? So… if it’s a mistake, adding the letters didn’t fix the problem.

What was he trying to write? Was it tev/ter/tar or tcv or ccv or cev or cer—all of which might have been written with the first two letters as a ligature in Latin? I think maybe it’s “cer” or “cev” (ligature ce plus v) and he never finished correcting it because it wasn’t working, so instead of taking the time to scrape away a mistake—he wrote it again correctly as the next word, spaced out better and not blobby, to create “ceve” or “cere”.

Plausible?

I don’t know. It’s just an idea, I can think of other interpretations, as well, but I think it’s worth mentioning in case it sparks some fresh thoughts about how to read it.

J.K. Petersen

Voynich Large Plants – Folio 9v

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There is significant controversy (and consternation) over the identities of most of the Voynich plants. The illustrator was reasonably good on details, but short on artistic skills. That’s not to say the drawings are bad—they are better than many of the herbal-style drawings of the time—but they don’t yield their secrets easily, even after centuries of study.

One plant that has escaped most of the controversy is the flower on Folio 9v. I haven’t searched the Web extensively for plant IDs for this page, but the few that I’ve seen all state that this is probably Viola tricolor. I readily agree that it looks like a viola and V. tricolor, a common wildflower, should certainly be considered, but I don’t think we can assume it’s V. tricolor without considering other possibilities.

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There is a field pansy called Viola arvensis that matches Plant 9v quite well. It is broadly distributed in Europe and North America and has leaves similar to Plant 9v. Many violas have rounded or heart-shaped leaves that don’t match the VM drawing at all, but V. arvensis has a mix of lanceolate and spidery palmate leaves very much like Plant 9v. V. arvensis is often white and yellow or light blue and yellow, but some variations lean toward violet-blue with yellow. Like Plant 9v, V. arvensis branches lightly and has leaves alternating up the stem at some distance—an important detail since many violas have basal whorls and tend not to branch.

Despite its promising characteristics, Plant 9v probably isn’t V. arvensis. In real life it tends to be a bit squatter than this botanical drawing, which is stretched out to show details, and it is more often white than blue. But the key difference is the shape of the flowers. The shape and proportion of the petals varies from one species of viola to the next and V. arvensis flowers have a double pair at the top and a broader tongue-shaped petal at the bottom. Plant 9v, in contrast, has three at the top, rather than four.

The Corsican violet (V. corsica) and Viola dubyana both have many characteristics in common with V. arvensis and their colors range from violet-blue to a light purple. Due to the color, both these species match 9v a little more closely than V. arvensis but, once again, the shape of the flowers is wrong.

Odd Anomalies

But wait a moment.. there’s a mystery in the making. Viola tricolor doesn’t match either, even through the leaf shapes, the spacing of the leaves, the roots, and the color are a good match. As with the previous flowers, there are two pairs of petals above and a broader one below. Even an extensive search of other viola species fails to turn up an example that matches all the characteristics of the VM plant—the leaf shapes, growth habit and flower shape/colors.

Sorting out the anomaly. Could it be that the flowers on Plant 9v were drawn upside-down? If they are reversed, they would be a good match for any of the above species. This little detail, which I haven’t seen mentioned anywhere else on the Web, surprised me until I thought about it for a few moments. I’d love to believe there is some mystery message in the orientation of the flowers but…

Before offering an explanation for this anatomical curiosity, it’s worth noting that there is text hidden behind the blue ink in one of the blossoms. I did some Photoshop adjustments to see if the obscured text could be seen more readily and I think I can make out the letter p on the two lower petals (at least) and what appears to be “por” on the upper one. I’ve noticed annotations on other plants, the letter “g” on a leaf that was painted green and the letters “r o t” (German for red) on the unpainted stem of plant 4r. If this says “por” then it may mean purple (or violet) as por is an abbreviation for purple in several languages.

Many varieties of Viola tricolor, and the Corsican viola, are distinctly purple and the fact that the VM plant is painted blue (the trace of purple in the above example is a Photoshop artifact from trying to make the text more clear) might be due to the painter’s limited palette. Since 15th century pigments were mixed from a variety of natural materials, it took some skill to blend them. Even if the color combination was correct (e.g., red and blue to make purple), the chemical balance might not work and the result could be a muddy mess. The person blending the colors also had to have a sense of which colors to mix.

So, it’s possible that the annotation means purple, but purple pigment was not available (or too much work to create), or that por stands for something else.

A Mystery or a Practical Explanation

But getting back to the strange upside-down flowers… soon after I discovered the Voynich manuscript, I noticed some of the more identifiable plants may have been painted from herbarium samples. They have a flattened aspect that is not characteristic of plants drawn from life. This is particularly noticeable in the leaves. If Plant 9v had been gathered and flattened and the viola flowers flipped up to prevent the hooked part of the stem from breaking when pressed in the natural direction, that might account for the odd reversal. The person who painted them may not have cared if the upper or lower part of the flower was painted yellow or may not have noticed the petal reversal in the underlying drawing. As has been mentioned a few times, the person who painted the plants is not necessarily the same as the person who drew them.

So, there may not be any mystery hidden in the reverse orientation, but it’s a tantalizing clue to the creation of the manuscript if the VM plants (or some of them) are drawn from gathered specimens. It means someone took the time to press them and to do so in a way that reveals the fronts of some flowers and the backs of others, a good practice when creating botanical drawings so that the shape and size of the sepals can also be seen.

Posted by J.K. Petersen

Voynich Portal

Ruminations about the mysterious 15th century "cipher manuscript"