Author Archives: J.K. Petersen

Light on the Subject

23 March 2019

I have several ideas for how the middle-right rotum on the VMS “map” could be interpreted, so this is just one possibility. I’ve mentioned it a few times on blogs and on the Voynich.ninja forum, but I thought it might be better to post some visuals.

Rotum 6 is ringed by a textured pattern of small circles painted blue. On the left is a different pattern of lines connecting it to the center rotum.

Within the outer blue texture is a double-infurled scalloped pattern resembling a cloudband. In the center is a small circle with a dot (the dot is the compass point) surrounded by another circle of small scaly shapes. From the inner circle emanate two roughly triangular spreading shapes (or perhaps they are pointing to the inner circle). The open portion between the scalloped band and the inner section is dotted with blue paint:

The first time I saw this, I thought it looked like water and rocks, similar to some of the other rota, but the infurled cloudband-shape makes me wonder whether the intention is mythical or real.

Does the double-infurled band indicate another realm or another time period? Could the band be “air”, as in some medieval depictions of the elements? Or could it be sea foam drawn with an infurled band simply because it was a popular theme at the time and they look somewhat the same?

I can’t cover all the possibilities in one blog, so let’s start with one of the more literal interpretations. For the sake of exploration, let’s assume this is something real with water and rocks. One idea I had is an aerial view of a lighthouse.

Medieval Lighthouses

Most medieval lighthouses have been rebuilt. The few that remain in their original form have been fitted with modern beacons and sound systems to replace the fire beacons and manual horns that were used in the Middle Ages. Sometimes they have been made taller. Nevertheless, we can get a sense of how they might have looked from these images:

Ancient lighthouses may have been more squarish or perhaps a combination of squared and round shapes. Many of the medieval lighthouses were round or somewhat round (octagonal) and when they were built on artificial jetties, those were sometimes round, as well.

What about the “Beams”?

Looking at the central circle in Rotum6, it looks like something is streaming out of it or pointing toward it at the top and bottom. Also, if you look closely, you will see small tickmarks on the lower left. The infurled, scalloped shape that resembles a cloudband might indicate another realm, or it could be foam where waves lap up against rocks:

VMS Rotum 6 possible interpretation of lines

Were light and sound represented with streamers and little tickmarks in the Middle Ages? I wasn’t sure, so I checked, and found that they were:

Examples of tick marks in medieval iconography

This doesn’t prove that the VMS lines mean light and sound, but it does show that it’s possible.

I wasn’t sure whether to include this image, as I’m not certain represents sound, but the way it’s coming out of textured bands at the top of the panel reminded me of the bird on VMS folio 86v that I blogged about here. The orientation is different, but the lofty position and the narrative impression are similar:

Bird in cloudband with lines emanating from its mouth.

This image from Giovaninno Di Grassi, with rays coming out of the cloudband, also reminded me of the tor with the birds on VMS f86v:

Di Grassi cloudband and eagles on high tor

So, let’s take a look at the evolution of this style of infurled band

The Infurled, Scalloped Band

Double Scallop from a c. 1480s German antiphony.

This infurled cloudlike shape was often used as a divider between the earthly and spiritual/heavenly realms. The scalloped edges were a later medieval style that evolved from simpler wavy shapes. Here is one of my favorite early-medieval cloudlike dividers with simpler bands (Tiberius C-VI):

Simple wavy-line cloudband in early medieval manuscript Tiberius C VI

These are some of the innovations that came later that are similar to the VMS band:

Some examples of infurled bands with scallped edges

The earliest of these examples, the 13th-century Louis Blanche band, wasn’t infurled, but it did have scalloped edges.

The scalloped infurled bands were quite common by the 15th century—I have far more examples than I can post. One influence may have been an Anglo-Norman tapestry of the New Jerusalem, woven in the late 14th century. Unlike the contents of books, tapestries were often on display, as signs of wealth, where more people could see them:

Another influence might be the design exemplar created by Giovannino di Grassi. You may have noticed that the illustration of the raptors on the tor above includes infurled shapes with scalloped edges. Di Grassi drew the image in his model book in the late 14th century, to provide examples for other illustrators.

Variations

The Rotum6 band is a single row, but sometimes there are multiple rows of bands, with rays and sound-horns coming out of them. This occurs in both Latin and Hebrew texts:

In contrast to infurled bands, here is one comprised of spiral shapes from eastern Europe (probably Bohemia) that is more similar to Asian cloud clusters than the scalloped bands shown above (Velislavova Bible, c. mid-1400s):

The Lauber workshop, not surprisingly, created quickie versions of the western style of scallop:

Lauber workshop infurled scalloped bands

This form of scallop was later repeated in a printed version of De Sphaera.

This super-quickie version, without the scalloped edges, appears in NYPL ma 104 (c. 1445). The drawing style of the figures is not too different from the VMS, but more care and attention was given to VMS decorative elements and textures:

The motif remained even after printed books displaced hand-drawn illuminations. A mappa mundi created by Hanns Rüst, published in Augsburg c. 1480, includes infurled bands, and a small inverted-T-O in the bottom-right corner:

Double-scalloped band around an inverted T-O representation of the world in three parts. — PML 19921, Morgan Library & Museum, Pubished in Augsburg, c. 1480

On the same page, in the lower-left is a similar image, except it is arranged in bands rather than as a tripartate scheme, and thus the infurled shape is repeated as a representation of “air” within this schema, above horizontal bands of water, earth, and fire:

Horizontal scheme of the elements in c. 1480 medieval map

Thus, it can be seen that the infurled band was most popular in the late 14th century and the 15th century, consistent with the radiocarbon dating, and everything I’ve discovered so far about the paleographic characteristics of the manuscript.

But what does it mean in the VMS? Is it decorative or symbolic? If it’s symbolic, is it representative of another realm, or perhaps the element air? Or is it stylized sea foam around the base of a lighthouse?

Maybe the Answer is Simpler

Maybe Rotum6 is not a lighthouse, even though a lighthouse would fit well with the other water and rock/mountain imagery on the VMS “map”. Maybe it’s something more simple or more abstract.

Coming back to examples from Cotton Tiberius C VI, it can be seen that biblical stores often include beams of light, horns, and other iconography that represent the light of God, the majesty or power of God, or the voice of God (or one of his emissaries), emanating from a heavenly-realm band:

Infurled bands can also be found in stories of creation, as in this Anglo-Normal Bible (BL Additional 47682, 1330s):

Notice that the centers are rather abstract. You wouldn’t know what they represent without context (which may also be true of the four mid-side rota in the VMS “map”).

There is a more intricate version of the band in Egerton 1894 (c. 1360s), with God creating the animals (note also the rainbow):

Sometimes the story of creation gets all bundled up with Eden, animals, elements, winds, angels, the sound/word of God, and an extra scalloped band for good measure:

So this infurled style of band is frequently used to represent a division between realms (usually heaven and earth), but it can also represent “air”.

Could there be two different “planes” of meaning on the VMS “map” folio?

The VMS “Map” Seen as Layers

Perhaps the central rosette is a spiritual center (a church or temple, or Jerusalem, Eden, or Rome), and the four radiating “mouths” are the winds, connecting it to four rota on the middle-sides. There’s a certain consistency of theme among these. Each one has lines radiating from the center toward the edges (in Rotum6 there are only two rather than multiple spokes). Each one is explicitly connected to the central, larger rotum:

VMS central rotum and four connected rota

The four rota in the corners are drawn and connected in a different way from those on the sides—they are also more literal and detailed in a geographical sense. They are not directly connected to the center, like the side rota. Instead, they have “pathways” that connect around the edges of the folio.

Maybe these paths don’t go through the four side-middle groups as it appears at first glance… maybe they connect directly to the other corners on another plane. We might be looking at a spiritual plane and an earthly plane:

Even though the corners do not connect directly to the center (just as earth does not directly connect to heaven), they do in a sense “point” to the center using protruberances such as pipes and mounds. Each corner rotum has a certain amount of terrain or context extending into the space outside the edges (suns, symbols, textures).

There are two pathways extending from the sides of the corner rota, but each is a slightly different design. And each rotum has a different inner design (oval, spiral, terrain-like, garden-like).

One way to look at this is that the outer corners may represent the earthly plane, and thus embody (from the top-right going clockwise), the elements of water, air, earth, and fire, and still (at the same time) represent real locations, but before this idea is discussed in depth, I have some information on mapping traditions I’d like to post first.

Sorry for the abrupt interruption, but this was originally a small portion of a very long blog that goes into detail on whether the VMS “map” is traditional, metaphorical, or literal. It was much too long for one post, so I split it in two. I will post the rest of it as soon as I can figure out how to break up the remaining portion into two, as well, as it is also much too long.

To be continued…

J.K. Petersen

Ephemeral Emissions

4 Replies

3 4 March 2019

In a recent blog, I described a few interpretations of Rotum 1 (top-left) on the VMS “map” folio. One possibility is an aerial view of a volcano. But Rotum 1 isn’t the only shape that might be interpreted as a volcano. There are other mountain-like structures on the same folio, if one views them from the side instead of the top.

The “map” folio has a wealth of textural structures, too many to describe in a dozen blogs. So this blog will focus on the patterned triangular shapes attached to the sides of the circular rota.

Rotum 3 (top-right) and Rotum 9 (bottom-right) are somewhat different, but the mountain shapes have some commonalities. Both of them are textured, with circles and blue paint in the pattern, both appear to have holes at the top, and both point toward the center of the folio.

Sometimes bumps are intended to describe rough terrain, rocks, or mountainous regions, as this example from Losbuch (15th c):

But the VMS structures are on the outsides of the circles, are more triangular, and appear to have openings at the ends with something coming out of them:

Voynich Manuscript "map" foldout and textured triangular structures

For years I have thought of these as “spewy things”. But if they were, I wasn’t sure whether to interpret them as horizontal outflows (e.g., exit spouts or natural springs), or as vertical steam vents, geysers, volcanoes, or something else.

It even occurred to me that some of them might be steaming compost piles, which might fit one possible interpretation of Rotum 9 as an irrigated garden:

Lumpy, steaming pile of manure [photo courtesy of Mark Duxberry, Youtube]

Details of the Emanations

It’s interesting that the protrusions have different patterns, and different “somethings” spewing from the openings. Here’s a close-up of whatever is emanating from the tops:

vent-like textures in the Voynich Manuscript "map" foldout

The one on the left is somewhat watery and free-form, the other somewhat circular, like the splash from dropping a rock in a pond.

The patterns on both bumps are made of circles and lines, but the one on the left is somewhat scaly and lumpy. The one on the right, more linear and smooth on the edges, with alternating small and large dots. Both have alternating sections colored in blue.

Are the textural differences decorative or meaningful? Are there clues on the page to help us work it out?

There are four shorter spewy things between the central rotum and those on each side. They have a simpler scale pattern, but does that mean they are different structures?

I have enlarged and rotated the insets so it’s easier to compare them:

details of spewy structures on Voynich Manuscript "map" folio

They all connect to the outer rota in essentially the same way. At four points, there emerges a pile of scaly textures with something spewing out. They are not as large as those on Rota 3 and 9 and they are more similar to one another. But the emanations from each has a different pattern. From the top going clockwise, there are

alternating circles and lines, with a touch of blue paint between the rows of circles,
alternating bands, some with very light lines with a touch of pale amber, the others with short lines in the perpendicular direction, parallel tick marks in groups of three,
blank bands alternating with wider bands filled with chevron-style vee shapes, no paint, and
alternating bands of angled tick marks, each band angled in the other direction, somewhat chevron-like if seen from farther back, no paint.

Triangle, chevron, and scale patterns are common to many cultures and go back a long way. They are found in manuscript art, jewelry, and architectural embellishments:

medieval bumpy, scaly, and triangular patterns

This example from the Beehive tomb in Praesos is more than 2,000 years old:

handled bowl from the Beehive Tomb in Praesos, Crete

An Uncertain Context

To me, the central rotum suggests an inverted dome, the kind that is embellished with stars, so I wondered if this rosette might have spiritual significance. The double-scalloped band near the perimeter seems to reinforce this possibility, but since the identity of the central structures is not yet certain, it’s hard to know whether the spewy things are imaginary or real.

I’m also not quite sure how to interpret the pipes. I’ve always wanted to associate them with aqueducts, chimneys, or steam vents, but it’s tempting to think of them as sighting tubes (I’m a gadget freak, so I’m always imagining scientific instruments).
Sighting tubes were in regular use in the Middle Ages, but it would be unusual for there to be so many of them. They’re not all drawn the same, some have smooth sides, with dots around the ends, and come in different lengths; others are the same length, and have a pattern of dots along the length of the tube. Unlike the vent-like structures, they do not spew or connect the rota, and they don’t quite look like chimney pipes. These will have to wait for a separate blog.

I spent quite a bit of time in the early days trying to reconcile the “rosettes” folio with Jerusalem, but every time I tried, the topological features didn’t quite fit. I wasn’t able to reconcile them with mythical New Jerusalem either.

I wondered if it might be a mnemonic map of myths.

Myths, Mountains, and Spewy Things

The interesting structures below are in the Psychro cave in eastern Crete. It has been a sacred cave since ancient times and is associated with the birthplace of Zeus. Some of the textures on the nymph pages remind me of grottoes and caves.

The myth of baby Zeus might fit some of the features…

To save him from being eaten by his father, Zeus was hidden away in a cave and raised by his nursemaid Rhea, goddess of mountain tops and forests.

The cave had bees emanating from it that supplied baby Zeus with honey. Sometimes fire was said to emanate from the cave. Could some of the structures with openings be cave entrances? Might some of the spewings be sacred bees or flames?

The interior of this cave has several textural patterns:

stalactite and stalagmite formations int he Psychro cave in Crete — Photo courtesy of Ingo Wölbern, Wikipedia

Stalagmites don’t spew, but stalactites drip moisture and chemical residues, and are often associated with watery discharges. Could the VMS textures be inspired by cave formations?

The tops of mountains were often seen as sacred places, and sometimes modified to create temples. This is a Minoan artifact with VMS-like scaly structures representing a mountain:

Ancient peak temple goddess with VMS-like texture.

What if the textured bumps are geological rather than ornamental or mythical…

Natural Structures that Spew

There are volcanic structures that spew gases and mud, and the patterns on the sides can be quite varied. Geologically active areas exist in many regions, including Romania, Yellowstone park, Azerbaijan, China, Sicily, Naples, and some of the spa regions in central and eastern Europe. Even Antarctica has towering gas vents sheathed with ice.

Here are some mud volcanoes. Note the varied textures:

Some mud volcanoes splash, as powerful gas blurps out the mud. Others ooze and slowly drip down the sides. The texture changes as the material dries, and is partly molded by local weather conditions. Could the lumps on Rotum 3 and 9 represent different kinds of mud volcanoes, or two different stages in their formation?

Mud vents would fit well with the bathy themes in the VMS. In Naples and the Aeolian Islands near Sicily, people bathe in mud pools. Cleopatra is said to have enjoyed the mud baths in southeastern Turkey:

Could They be Vapor Without the Mud?

Fumaroles, which emit clouds of gases, vary considerably in shape and texture, as in these Google Image examples:

Sample of Google image fumaroles

A fun fact about fumaroles is that they sometimes blow smoke rings.

I thought the circular formation above the bump on Rotum 9 might be a stylized splash, as in the mudbath image posted earlier, or a loud sound, but perhaps it’s the birth of a smoke ring.

I can’t post this Rights-Managed image, but here is a link, so you can see an example:

Fumarole smoke rings from Mt. Aetna, Sicily.

There are many fumaroles in Iceland, Yellowstone and Lassen parks, El Tatio, Dominica, Naples, and Sicily. These photos illustrate how varied they can be:

Relationships to Other Folios

I like to look at things in context and the VMS is more than a map-like foldout. There are textures in the bathy and cosmological sections similar to those on the rosettes folio.

Could there be a relationship between the structures in the VMS “map” and other textural folios like 86v, or do the bumpy textures on 86v represent something completely different?

Is 86v a Different Kind of Information?

There are textural groups in each of the four corners of 86v, and emanations as well. But it is much simpler, overall, than the rosettes folio, and there are humans and birds on the left and right sides.

The structures at the top might be weather-related or celestial (assuming this folio has a “top” and a “bottom”). Those at the bottom resemble stylized mountains or island tors. They are quite dynamically slanted toward the center, slightly off-kilter. One of the humans appears to be hiding. The VMS rosettes folio has an explanatory, practical feel to it. This one has a more narrative feel.

If it is narrative, can we guess what it is?

I have a lot of ideas about this, but I’ll choose three as examples…

Here’s one possible interpretation, according to an ancient myth:

Voynich Manuscript folio 86v and excerpts from Ovid

But there are other possibilities, like this one:

Excerpts from The Gods and Religions of Ancient and Modern Times by Bennett

Or perhaps something like this:

Voynich Manuscript folio 86v and the book of Revelation

The last one is based on the book of Revelation. It describes the cataclysm that occurs when the Sixth Seal is opened.

Apocalyptic scenes of the Sixth Seal, like the one below from Getty Ludwig III 1 (c. 1255), traditionally show the sun and the moon and sometimes a cloud-like division between heaven and earth. The heavenly bodies drop stars like figs (note the star shapes and snowball shapes). The people hide in the mountains (often there are two mountains resembling giant termite mounds, one or both with a tree):

apocalyptic earthquake at the opening of the Sixth Seal

This more traditional image is stylistically different from the VMS, but ignoring the style, the enigmatic 86v has some of the same narrative flavor as other medieval illustrations.

As a side note, the theme of sun and moon within a defining cloudlike band is very ancient, as in this pre-Hellenic Minoan artifact illustrating rites in a sacred grove (notice also the many textures):

The same sun/moon/cloud-band motif can be seen in the 12th century Eadwine Psalter (which I’ve discussed on the Voynich.ninja forum):

The Eadwine Psalter has some elements similar to 86v, including emanations from the heavens, and trees, birds, and hilltops:

Eadwine Psalter narrative elements similar to the VMS

Note how each wall has a different pattern, even though they are essentially the same kinds of walls. Is this what is happening in the VMS, or are the textures meant to convey differences?

In the VMS, I get the feeling that the varying textures in the big bumps on the “map” folio and those on 86v represent different (or somewhat different) things. The patterns in the emanations from the smaller bumps however (the ones in the insets), might be purely decorative.

Summary

One blog can’t even begin to introduce the subject of the VMS textures—this only scratches the surface. The important thing to remember is there are many ways to interpret the same drawing, and it’s not enough to look at one folio, others should be considered as well..

J.K. Petersen

Postscript 6 March 2019: I mentioned termite mounds in my article, but forgot to include the picture and search link.

Termite mounds are quite sophisticated and diverse in size and texture and some of them resemble the ventlike shapes in the VMS. Some even have regular patterns of holes around the sides. They don’t “spew” from their tops, but if the VMS mounds are meant to be horizontal rather than vertical, then the entrance and exit of insects, like termites, ants or wasps, might be represented by a variety of textures pouring out from a hole.

Termite mound in Namibia [Photo by Olga Ernst, Wikipedia]

Google image search for termite mounds

Wasp holes do sometimes “spew” insects from their tops. Here is a link to some examples:

Google image search for wasp mounds

Google image search for ant mounds

Even certain birds, like the brush turkey, will build large mounds

Clearly there are quite a few natural structures, large and small, that could be expressed by textured mounds with openings.

Head and Shoulders

3 Replies

25 Feb. 2019

I’ve frequently mentioned that the VMS illustrator had difficulty visualizing three dimensions. This weakness is especially apparent in the joints of humans and animals. Joints are attached to the torso with interlocking sockets and a specific pattern of controlling muscles, and the VMS illustrator didn’t “get” this (or wasn’t able to picture it in his or her mind) and thus relied on formulas (or imperfect copies of exemplars) instead.

When I first looked at the VMS “zodiac” figures, I noticed that the hind limbs of VMS critters were distinctly quirky. I searched for examples of this anatomical eccentricity for years and they were harder to find than I expected. Even illustrators with weak drawing skills usually understood that the hind limbs of these animals angle backward, and yet the VMS illustrator did not (click to see larger):

Comparing VMS animal joints ot other drawings.

When I did find a creature with similarly odd hind limbs, it was in a Lauber manuscript that I blogged about in January 2016. It wasn’t just the hind limbs that were anatomically peculiar, the drawing was similar to the VMS in other ways, including subject matter and palette—and both were pond critters. Even the face of the vaguely defined critter was somewhat similar in form and expression to the VMS.

I will post the example again with arrows added so I don’t have to repeat the commentary from the previous blog:

Pic of VMS pond critter & Lauber pond critter.

Obviously the illustrator on the right is more skilled, but the subject matter, general idea, and even some of the execution is similar.

Now let’s look at human joints where there is a similar VMS anomaly.

Note in these samples how the shoulder joint is almost missing. There is a line connecting the neck to the upper arm that never really defines the shoulder correctly. As a result, the neck looks unusually thick and the arm has a vague snake-like appearance. In one case, the arm is coming out of the nymph’s cheek!

pics of VMS nymphs showing the unusual shoulders

The illustrator adapted a formula and rarely varied from it.

Are the Faces Also Unusual?

If we momentarily ignore the arm coming out of the neck, the VMS faces are not especially unusual. Below left are six examples from approximately the same angle. Note that they have similarly rounded bumps for the cheek, vague chins, and almost absent jawlines on the side facing the viewer.

Many of the faces on the right, from other manuscripts, follow the same basic formula. The L-shaped nose is also quite common, as are the ruddy cheeks. The main difference is that the eyes and lips are defined a little better than those in the VMS:

Medieval faces similar to the VMS faces.

So the misplaced shoulder is rather unusual, but the general form of the faces is not.

What about the details?

There are many places in the VMS where breasts and other parts appear to have been added later, sometimes in a darker ink, maybe by a different hand, maybe not. It’s difficult to know if another hand added them since the breasts vary from one drawing to the next, not just from one group to the next. Maybe they were added by the same person sometime later. The only place they seem significantly different is where they are drawn like big round eyeballs.

Note the faces on the left in the following examples. The majority of VMS faces are drawn this way, with a bumpy line defining the outer contour, similar to those in the previous chart. But there are a few that are drawn like the ones on the right, with a distinctive shape that defines a melon-shaped forehead and connects it in a continuous curve to the nose. Like the nose on one of the Aries figures, this looks suspiciously like a different hand, more confident and slightly more skilled, even if it’s an odd way to draw a face:

Different drawing style in some VMS faces.

The added lines on the right have an almost cartoon-like quality. So far, I haven’t found faces in other manuscripts drawn this way.

I thought the over-inking and melon-shaped foreheads might have been done at a later time (perhaps much later), but the more I looked at the faces with this peculiar forehead, the more I realized that other figures with this difference looked like original drawings rather than ones that were inked in later. Here are some examples. Note the hollow-looking eyes:

There’s another variation in the VMS faces that caught my attention. Even though most of the facial features are essentially the same, a few of the VMS nymphs have an extra little point in their chins, a variation that is less common than the rounded or almost-absent chin:

This is the feature that seems most distinctive, next to the melon-foreheads. The weirdly attached shoulder is also unusual enough that it could be spotted in another manuscript.

Summary

I have more information on VMS bodies, but this is enough for now. There are certain facial formulae in the VMS that are distinctive, particularly the melon-forehead and chin with a tiny point, combined with the vaguely defined closer side, L-shaped nose, and ruddy cheeks.

This was not an artist drawing from a variety of angles who was thinking about light and composition. The VMS illustrator learned a simple “outline” approach with little consideration for the underlying muscles or joints. The resultant drawings are clumsy, but have the advantage of speed—many figures could be drawn in a short time.

J.K. Petersen

Through a Glass Lightly

8 Replies

The container on f89r of the Voynich manuscript has always struck me as an attempt to draw transparency. The bulbous part near the top (below the finial), and the narrow stem, seem to be encased in an outer layer. It would be difficult to create patterns like this out of crystalline stone, but fused glasses sometimes look like this.

I don’t want to get too tied to the idea of glass, but if it is glass, could such a container be fabricated in the 15th century?

Antique Glass

I’m familiar with Murano glass and Bohemian glass in general, I have antique glass in my personal collection. I saw some exquisite etched glass while traveling through Hungary. Italian glass is well-known and has been actively traded through Venice for hundreds of years, but was glass technology sufficiently advanced in the 15th century to create vessels as fabulous as the one in the VMS?

I don’t have enough free time to research and answer this intriguing question, but I gathered a few pictures of amphoriska that demonstrate that glass-making in Greece, the Levant, and the Roman Empire, were quite sophisticated in earlier times. Most of the following artifacts were created 2,600 to 1,500 years ago.

We can see from the examples, that glassmakers knew how to create translucent, feathered glass in multiple colors approximately 2,500 years ago, and that iridescence and the use of sliced canes (the ancient equivalent of millefiori) had also been achieved by the Roman era. Molded and patterned surface textures (both added and intrinsic) were also part of the glassmaker’s repertoire (click to see larger):

The detail in these little amphorae is extraordinary, considering they were only about 3″ high. Note that the detail in the carved rock crystal (bottom-right) was also remarkable—equal to that of many blown-glass vessels.

Signed pieces from the early Roman era also demonstrate a high level of skill in creating molded pieces, some of which compare favorably to glass housewares from the 1940s.

Layered Glass

But what about cased glass, one of the techniques that might result in a container similar to the VMS drawing? Cased glass is glass that is fused so one color shows through another (e.g., transparent glass over colored glass) and is sometimes cut to further reveal the underlying layer. It’s more difficult than fusing multiple colors within the same layer.

Blue Vase, Pompeii — The Blue Vase with cameo technique from Pompeii, Photo courtesy of m.violante, Wikipedia

Bohemian glass from the last couple of centuries is well-known for this technique (Egermann and Moser pioneered some of the modern methods). Beads made from slices of caned glass (sometimes called “eye” glass) go back to the ancients but I was not able to find ancient artifacts that had a layer of translucent glass fused on top of colored glass in a curved vessel.

The closest I was able to find was “cameo glass” like the magnificent Blue Vase from Pompeii (right), held in the Naples museum (a museum that was “on strike” when I attempted to visit it years ago), but it does not have the same effect as cased glass in which translucent over colored is used instead of the other way around. Still, it does demonstrate the great level of sophistication achieved in ancient times. Some of these techniques disappeared for a few centuries during the Middle Ages.

Medieval Glass

Progress does not occur in a straight line and knowledge is sometimes lost. Millions died in famines, plagues, and wars, and their skills and trade secrets died with them. The techniques illustrated by the ancient amphoras can all be found in Europe in the 16th century, and a century later many new techniques were developed to reproduce ancient styles. But how much was known in the 15th and 14th centuries?

c. 1300 patterned glass courtesy of The Met

It was quite common for medieval glassmakers to add blobs of transparent or translucent glass as decorative additions. Engraved glass was not uncommon either. Glass enameling and a medieval form of “carnival” glass existed by the 15th century. Metal and glass were frequently combined, but it’s a struggle to find vessels in which a layer of translucent glass was fused on top of a colored layer.

If the VMS container is glass (or possibly glass with a metal base), it might not be cased glass. It might be translucent glass with an embedded pattern of colored glasses. The pattern does not look feathered, and appears too even and regular to be caned glass, so it is not an example of the most common styles, but if the vessel is partly imaginary, or a design for something that was not practical to fabricate, then the imagination of the illustrator may have embellished it.

Maybe it’s not glass at all. Maybe it’s one vessel behind another, or two different ideas for the same vessel. Or maybe it’s like a Russian doll, one vessel inside another, but drawn to show both.

I’m hoping that it’s at least partly glass, I like glass, but I’d better not hold my breath. VMS research has a way of stretching out longer than one expects.

J.K. Petersen

Postscript Feb 22, 2019:

I didn’t post this image in the above article because it’s a rights-managed Getty image, and blog readers often don’t click on external links, but I wish I had because it illustrates similarities to the VMS containers that are strongly associated with the 15th century.

It’s a goblet made in Murano with a finial similar to the VMS container (which could be glass or metal). This kind of finial is not difficult to make in glass and is also common to Egyptian glass, so it’s not the primary reason I chose this example. What I suggest you pay attention to is the regular pattern of raised, applied enamel dots, a style and fabrication technique that was not typical of ancient glass:

https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/light-blue-goblet-decorated-with-polychrome-high-res-stock-photography/159620064

Now hold that dot style in your mind and imagine it applied to a raised, translucent pattern, as in these Murano vessels (in the Museo del Vetro). Clear glass was a significant innovation of the early 1400s and from that point on was often combined with colored elements:

Scale motifs are found in almost all cultures, they are not exclusive to glass or to Murano, so I try not to get too excited when I see them, but every time I come across them, I am reminded of the many scaly patterns in various sections of the VMS.

Postscript Feb. 24, 2019:

I thought it might be helpful to include a few examples that illustrate regional differences in enameled glass motifs from about the late 1200s to the late 1400s:

13th to 15 century enameled glass patterns

Smoke or Springs?

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The upper-left rotum in the VMS “map” is often called a “volcano”—a handy term that most people intuitively comprehend even if we don’t know what the drawing represents.

Volcanic eruptions have long been memorialized in drawings and chronicles, including a Pseudo-Dionysius description from the 6th century:

Such was the violent and harsh disaster, which was sent from heaven, that fire alight and consumed those who had escaped from the terrible vehemence of the cataclysm of the earthquake and the collapse: the sparks flew and set fire to everything on which they settled. The earth itself from below, from within the soil, surged, seethed and burned everything which was there. Thus the foundations as well, together with all the storeys above them, were lifted up, heaved up and down and burst apart, collapsed, fell and burned with fire… In the end no house or church or building of any kind remained, not even the garden fences, which had not been torn asunder or damaged, or had not disintegrated and fallen. The rest burned, crumbled away and became like an extended putrefaction.

It’s possible volcanic eruptions were depicted in ancient cave paintings, but this particular cataclysm was not especially common in medieval art, which makes it difficult to identify illustrative traditions.

This clip is from a 1580 Portolan map (BSB Cod.icon.137) and might look like a volcano at first glance…

but it actually represents the source of the Nile River:

which I thought was interesting because there is speculation about whether the wavy shapes inside the VMS “volcano” might represent flames, water, or something else.

This clip from 1587 is drawn in a similar way (except that the poof is red instead of blue) and represents a volcano in Sicily (in fact volcanic eruptions changed the coastline so dramatically, it’s hard to know what it looked like in the Middle Ages):

In one version of De Balneis by Petrus de Ebulo (BNF Latin 8161), bathers enjoy the healing waters at the base of a volcano:

(Note the scalloped pattern around the rim of the archway.)

In another version of De Balneis (Angelica) the volcanic activity is more explicit:

In yet another version of De Balneis (Edinburgh), the fumes are rising on the far right, and radiating as heat (and possibly also as fumes) toward the bathers:

There is a more detailed history of the baths here (which were eventually destroyed by volcanic eruptions):

By 1585, depictions of volcanic eruptions were more naturalistic, as in Ortelius’s map of Mt. Hekla erupting in Iceland:

One of the significant thermal sources at Pozzuoli was known as The Solfatar, which was commemorated in a fresco in Rome in the early 1600s:

Baratta and Perrey (1680) recorded volcanic activity in Naples in the following engraving, at the site of the former Pozzuoli baths and the island of Nisida.

In the past, I have suggested Nisida as a possible source for the top-right VMS rotum. I have numerous ideas for this rotum, but the island of Nisida is on my Top-5 list because it matches several of the topological features of the VMS “map”.

Nisida is shaped like a horseshoe, with a “bowl” of seawater facing deeper water, and may have been connected to the mainland by a stone jetty as it is today. Sea levels were lower in the early Middle Ages and apparently rose again a couple of centuries before the eruption of Monte Nuovo in 1538.

Here is a 1776 view of the Nisida crater, which formed a small harbor:

Note in the Baratta/Perrey engraving that there might be a lighthouse on one or more of the outcroppings. Could Rotum6 be an aerial view of a lighthouse with light streaming out from a central column and sea foam lapping against the rocks at the base?:

A 19th-century engraving shows a partly-submerged castle in shallow water near Nisida (perhaps connected to the island by a jetty?). There are also grottoes in the area (the VMS has a number of grotto-like images):

Below is a contemporary view of Nisida from the mainland, showing the white-stone jetty. Note the vantage point for the photo is quite high (there are escarpments in the VMS drawing between Rotum 2 and 3 that might correspond to cliffs).

It is a volcanically active area with many hilly craters and thermal vents. The horseshoe part of Nisida juts out to sea and is battered by rougher water when it’s stormy. There are castle ruins and traces of an old wall in the aerial photos.

Could the “channels” between the rota be jetties? Erosion and several changes in sea levels have probably increased the size of the hole in the center, but I don’t know how much this has changed since the 15th century.

If the “stars” in the center of Rotum 3 represent plants or water (or navigational symbols as VViews has shown might be a possible interpretation of star symbols), then they fit well with the idea of a crater island [Image credits: Wellcome Library Collection and Yale Beinecke Rare Books Library].

Other Possibilities

I have much more information on a possible connection to Naples, but what if it’s not a volcano? With the VMS, there are always other possibilities…

As I’ve written previously, the “volcano” in the VMS could be interpreted in many ways—as a volcano, or the biblical Mount of Olives, a coliseum flooded for water sports (which apparently were quite popular), a famous hill (e.g., the hills of Rome), a hell mouth (I think I heard the hellmouth idea from Ellie Velinska), the New Jerusalem (or some other metaphorical location or description of elemental order), the real Jerusalem, the Baths of Pozzuoli (Campi Flegrei or the sulphur craters), and a few others.

Usually a hellmouth was drawn as a dragon, whale, or crocodile with a toothy, gaping maw, as in this example from the Winchester Psalter (c. 1150):

but not always. Here is a schematic representation from the Huntington Library (Germany, c. 1487) that is reminiscent of the eye-shaped rotum in the VMS map (there are even round protrusions on the top-right of the doorway):

Original Ideas

K. Gheuens offered a provocative parallel to the eye-specked fringe of a mollusc. This is one of my favorites, since there are VMS plants suggestive of sea life, including roots that resemble crab, jellyfish, and octopus. Even if none of the imagery turns out to be sea life, the organic shapes give the feeling the illustrator might have lived near the coast for some part of his or her life.

Speaking of sea creatures, this drawing in Bodley 602 has a scallop-like critter that resembles some of the “umbrellas” and other textural motifs in the VMS:

If Rotum 1 really is a volcano, then I think locations like Naples and Sicily deserve serious consideration. If not, then there are many possibilities, maybe even some that haven’t yet been suggested.

J.K. Petersen

Postscript Feb. 23, 2019:

I planned to post this image of Vesuvius in this blog, but I couldn’t find my link. Then I remembered I had posted it on the Voynich.ninja forum in September 2018, along with some images of volcanoes in Sicily, and other structures (like coliseums) that are large and eye-shaped. It is a re-creation published in Popular Science Monthly in 1906 of what Vesuvius may have looked like in the Middle Ages before the significant eruption of 1631:

Vesuvius was the first volcano I looked at (because the crater is eye-shaped), but I soon realized there are many craters around Napoli that might qualify as a VMS “volcano”, and there are other regions with volcanoes that somewhat match the topology in the VMS rota.

It occurred to me when I first noticed the “pipes” on the rosette foldout, that they might be Medieval or Roman aqueducts, or perhaps “soffioni” (hot steam jets) that occur naturally (or might have been installed) in some of these thermally active areas.

Steam vents sometimes had spiritual significance. Lewis R. Freeman reported in Popular Mechanics that the Romans erected an oracle (and later a spa) at the steam vents of Larderello, near Volterra, Tuscany (look up Priest Consulting Oracle in the Museo Guarnacci Volterra to see a frieze). Could the temple-like dome in the central rotum be an oracle or later spiritual center? Even after Europe was Christianized, many of the Pagan oracle locations were retained as religious sites.

The Romans also built a coliseum in Volterra and, right next to it, a bath complex. Volterra was under Florentine rule in the 15th century and now is a major geothermal engineering center.

Zodiac Traditions

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After collecting more than 500 zodiac series and analyzing their patterns, it becomes apparent that the VMS zodiac figures are consistent with thematic traditions from central Europe ranging from the late 12th century to the early 15th century.

Discovering this goes far beyond comparing images. Traditions and thematic families allow leeway for personal expression. For example, colors or the direction in which an animal is facing were not always slavishly copied by illustrators and do not appear to negate a thematic relationship to other zodiacs. Considerable study was necessary to determine which details are significant and what can be expected to vary within a reasonable range without straying outside the pattern.

The VMS only includes 10 of the 12 figures that are traditionally found in figurative representations of “zodiacs”, symbols of constellations that occur along the ecliptic, so Aquarius (water bearer) and Capricorn (the goat) were excluded from searches.

The Difference Between Classical Zodiacs and A Subset of Medieval Zodiacs

Classical drawings of zodiac figures depict Cancer as a crab and Libra as a figure holding the scales or sitting on top of the scales. Most of the Roman carvings, and the Beit Alpha mosaics, follow this model, as do 11th- and 12-century friezes in Spain and France. Here are some early examples that illustrate how the VMS departs from classical tradition by using a crayfish instead of a crab and a scale with no figure:

Occasionally, when space was constrained, the Libra scales were drawn without a figure, but those in manuscripts were usually held by a male figure, or by a scorpion. Similarly, Virgo was usually male. Virgo and/or Libra were sometimes drawn with wings. As time went on, a female was gradually substituted for the male and wings were less often included.

Patterns that Relate to the VMS

I have already posted some “combination searches” in previous blogs. This one attempts to zero in on which relationships to other manuscripts are the most crucial.

Using a sample of 520 medieval zodiac series, only 25% were found to depict Cancer as a crayfish/lobster together with Libra scales without a figure. This break with tradition may have originated in church portal sculpture, but appears to have entered manuscripts sometime around the 12th century:

This puts the VMS in the thematic minority. If we filter the zodiacs further, to exclude Sagittarius with four legs, it reduces the number to 6%.

What is particularly interesting is that this added filter does not change the approximate date range of early examples that break with tradition in the same ways as the VMS and, as an added bonus, the following 12th-century examples also include Leo with his tail wound between his legs. When a pattern like this occurs naturally, without explicit filtering, it is usually not a coincidence:

Some of the zodiacs from this time period match the first three filters, but continue to use the traditional 4-legged centaur to represent Sagittarius. Those with a centaur have proportionately fewer Leos with the tail between the legs. Even though the two sets are regionally similar (primarily Germany and, to some extent France), this may be the beginning of two separate branches.

This series from southern Germany is incomplete (Libra is missing) but it shows that even zodiacs that are drawn quite differently can follow the same thematic patterns:

Note that by the 14th century, leg-tail Leo was paired with centaur-Sagittarius more often than in earlier manuscripts. Traditions don’t always diverge, sometimes they go the other way, as well.

When did Cancer as a crayfish emerge?

Some might say Cotton MS Galba A XVIII (9th c) is the first crayfish, but it’s very oddly drawn, with two heads, and it was very rare for English manuscripts to include a crayfish, most of them are crabs. It is possible that it’s not from England (historians aren’t sure). Many manuscripts in English collections are thought to be from Normandy.

Badly drawn crabs sometimes look like crayfish, but one of the earliest unambiguous crayfish is in Vatican Reg.lat.123 from St. Maria Rivipulli/Ripoll monastery, Catalonia, Spain (mid-11th century).

Crayfish were historically abundant in this area and are still featured on many menus, so perhaps that’s why they substituted a crayfish for a crab. However, as can be seen from the image above, the rest of the zodiac series is completely traditional, and the scales are carried by a winged figure. Other than the crayfish, it doesn’t resemble the VMS.

Taking Cancer and Libra Together

One of the earliest examples that includes both crayfish-Cancer and no-figure Libra is the Stammheim Missal, originating in Hildesheim, Germany, c. 1170s. I have mentioned this before because it has other commonalities with the VMS (including two-legged Sagittarius, and Leo with the tail through the legs). It doesn’t match on all counts, but it’s one of the earliest manuscripts that hints at the transition to VMS-like zodiacs,. Note that the figures are contained within roundels:

There is a Psalter fragment in the British Library (Landsowne 381) created around the same time as the Stammheim Missal that has similar Cancer, Libra, and leg-tail Leo, but the twins are dressed in Roman garb and are not touching, and Sagittarius is a four-legged centaur.

What about Gemini?

I’ve mentioned the Claricia Psalter numerous times because it has much in common with the VMS. In addition to crayfish Cancer and no-figure Libra, it has a leg-tail lion, one of the first overtly affectionate male-female Geminis, a human Sagittarius, and a non-scorpion Scorpius. It originated in Augsburg, Germany, in the 12th or 13th century. In terms of the basic “template”, it differs very little from the VMS and is clearly modeled on the same themes as the Augsburg Psalter. I’ll repost the images:

Note how the goat and the ram are painted different colors, the turtle/tarasque is from a different angle, and the bull and goat are facing the other way, and yet the overall thematic similarities are striking.

Augsburg is in southern Germany, not far from where Hildegard von Bingen created these zodiac figures:

[Image source: Hedidelberg digital library, Cod. Sal. X 16]

Hildegard von Bingen’s zodiac series (c. 1200) features crayfish-Cancer, no-figure Libra, and non-scorpion Scorpius, but Sagittarius is a traditional centaur, and Leo’s tail does not thread through the legs, which makes it more similar to the Oettingen Psalter (BVB Cod.I.2.4.19) and the Bambergher Psalter than the VMS.

You may have noticed that the Soissons Cathedral windows are quite similar to the VMS and even include trees in the background, but some of the glass has been replaced and it’s difficult to know if the new glass mimicked designs from the 12th century or updated them. If the designs are faithful to the original, they follow a similar model to the VMS, including leg-tail Leo and two-legged Sagittarius, as discussed in my earlier posts on the evolution of zodiacs. It even looks like Aries might be nibbling from a bush or a basket.

The use of a crossbow rather than a longbow probably represents a sub-branch or may, in some cases, be a simple matter of illustrator choice (crossbow tournaments were popular at the time). The most important distinction for this sign appears to be the number of legs rather than the kind of bow. Whether Sagittarius is human or satyr also appears to be less important than the number of legs.

The Origins of the Traditions

I’ve created a map to show the origins of manuscripts that emerged with these filters. This is a work in progress and I have not yet double-checked the datapoints, but they are accurate enough to show that zodiacs, when filtered for Crayfish-Cancer, no-figure Libra, 2-leg Sagittarius, and leg-tail Leo, are conspicuously clustered within the Holy Roman Empire and very conspicuously absent from England, Scandinavia, Spain, southern Italy, southeast Europe and the Middle East (at least so far).

Summary

I’ve mentioned these zodiacs in previous articles and can’t present all the pictures because there are too many for one blog, but I did want to emphasize this: the data tells us that the VMS fits comfortably within existing traditions, particularly those in Germany and northeastern France and Flanders.

This doesn’t reveal where the creators of the VMS were from, but it does suggest that at least one of them was familiar with specific illustrative themes and probably copied the ideas (not necessarily the drawings) from one or more zodiac-series exemplars that originated between c.1170 to c.1430. Some of the English zodiacs are similar, but they differ from the VMS in favoring a centaur-Sagittarius, and Gemini as nude male twins.

If you filter even further to include affectionate Gemini and non-scorpion Scorpio, north-central Germany comes closer than England or France:

Examples from 13th-century Augsburg and Magdeburg/Hildesheim are particularly significant. In fact, these somewhat distant locations might indicate an important line of transmission between north and south.

J.K. Petersen

Mixed-Up Musa

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Did medieval illustrators confuse Musa (which we now know as banana) with another plant labeled “muse”? Early drawings of “muse” fruits don’t look like bananas. They are small, with pointy ends. In fact, the taste of “muse” was likened to cucumber or melon, fruits that are much more watery than banana. Yet as time went on, the descriptions, drawings, and the name were changed to “Musa”, which we know as banana/plantain plants.

Bananas and other eastern or African semitropical and tropical plants were probably known to Europeans through word-of-mouth, just as they had heard of hyenas but apparently had not seen them. Medieval drawings of hyenas are quite fanciful, and sometimes understood only by their labels. Is this what happened to banana plants? Did they invent the drawings and call them “muse”, or are the early herbals depicting some other plant that became confused with banana plants as knowledge of the banana gradually spread through Europe?

Sugar cane was known in Europe from early times (although it was not imported into northern Europe until later), probably because it’s easier to ship than many kinds of plants, but bananas are not easy to ship. They bruise and ferment and thus were not as familiar to Europeans as sugar cane in the early Middle Ages.

Historical Background

There were a number of plants locally called “muse/musse/mus” in the Middle Ages—field plants like “mouse ear” that are similar to Hieracium, but they don’t look like the 14th-century drawings labeled “muse/musse” in manuscripts such as the Manfredus herbal, or in the various copies of Tacuinum Sanitatis.

So if “muse” is not the mouse-ear plant (which is often included in herbal manuscripts under other names, and usually drawn fairly accurately), and it’s not banana, then what is it?

Lining up the Illustrations

Maybe Egerton 747, the Manfredus du Monte herbal, and versions of Tacuinum Sanitatis can provide clues. There is a plant in the Manfredus manuscript that has an analog in both form and name that might easily be confused with banana.

First note how “muse/musse” is drawn. It’s not a good representation of a banana plant. It has a basal whorl of upright lanceolate leaves, similar in shape to Inula, and nut-like dangling fruits sometimes painted red, sometimes yellow (this color difference is significant, as will be illustrated later). Banana plants might look vaguely like this when they first start to sprout, but the stalks grow substantially before they bear fruit and the fruits do not hang on long stalks with skinny petioles above the leaves.

Sometimes the fruits of “muse” are drawn a little more capsule-shaped, with striations, but these too are quite different from banana. The image on the left is from the Manfredus herbal (late 14th century), those in the middle are from two different versions of Tacuinum Sanitatus:

In the text that accompanies earlier drawings of “muse”, the leaves have been compared to Inula (which does not resemble banana leaves), and the taste has been compared to melon and to citric fruits (which doesn’t match well with banana either).

So there are several problems with assuming that “muse” is Musa (banana):

The name is different.
The leaves are shaped and positioned differently.
The fruit stalks are much too tall and the fruits too discrete and the wrong shape for bananas.
The description of the taste doesn’t fit banana.

In later herbals, the descriptions start to sound more like banana (based on the assumption that “muse” was an alternate spelling for “musa”) and the name is changed to “musa”. Eventually drawings and descriptions of real banana plants are substituted.

Other Possibilities

Is there a plant that matches “muse” better than banana?

Yes. I don’t know if it’s the correct plant, but melegueta matches better to the drawing and description of “muse” than the banana.

And here’s the interesting part (and another reason it might be confused with banana). Banana became known as Musa paradisa. The melegueta plant is known as “pomum paradisi” (apple of paradise). Thus, if someone unfamiliar with melegueta saw the name “muse” in combination with “paradisi” they might assume it was a banana plant.

Here are some images of melegueta and cardamom. Melegueta is a west-African plant with lanceolate leaves. It has slightly dangling fruits on spindly stalks, and the ripening fruits are often red or yellow:

Comparison of “muse” plant with leaves and fruits of pomum paradisi, the melegueta plant. Image credits: Bibliothèque Nationale de France, gernot-katzers-spice-pages.com, tropical.theferns.info, sciencedirect.com.

Medieval illustrators aren’t the only ones who appear to have confused “musa” (banana) with early depictions of a plant called “muse”—15th-century annotators and 17th- and 18th-century commentators made the same mistake. No one appears to have critically evaluated the way medieval descriptions and drawings changed over the course of two centuries from “muse” (pomum paradisi) to Musa paradisi (banana), nor have they investigated what exactly was meant by “muse” in the earlier herbals. It has long been assumed that the old herbals, even ones with good illustrations, specifically included erroneous descriptions and bad drawings of banana plants rather than reasonable drawings of a different plant.

The drawing and description of “muse” is similar in shape, proportion, name, and colors to melegueta and a few other Amomum species, but there’s more…

I found two additional pieces of evidence to support this tentative ID.

The first has to do with taste, which is described in one early medieval source as “citric” (I don’t think anyone would describe the taste of banana as citric). The Wikipedia entry for melegueta describes the taste as peppery “with hints of citrus”.
The second is a sequence of plants in Egerton 747 (c. late 13th century), a reference that bears many similarities to the Manfredus herbal (some say Manfredus is copied from Egerton 747, others say both are copied from a common source). In Egerton 747, is a series of shrubby trees, beginning with Nux muscata and ending with Nux vomica. Note that it includes Nux sciarca (melegueta):

In the Manfredus herbal, the mystery plant “muse” follows “muscata”. If “muse” is meant to represent melegueta, it’s more accurate than the picture of melegueta in Egerton 747, but what is even more significant is that it follows closely to muscata. Manfredus does not correspond 1-to-1 to Egerton plants, but the contents and sequence are very similar.

Melegueta (Aframomum grana-paradisi) is a medicinal plant in the ginger family with anti-inflammatory properties. It is native to coastal west Africa, and is related to cardamom. Its inclusion in Egerton 747 suggests that it was known in Europe at least since the late 13th century (possibly through Arab traders).

There are several Amomum plants that should be considered together with melegueta, including Amomum villosum, Amomum cardamom, and Amomum compactum (false cardamom).

Note that the Manfredus and Tacuinum drawings of “muse” resemble Amomum plants more closely when they are younger. Melegueta leaves tend to become more palm-like as the plant grows, although some of the other Amomum species remain more lanceolate, like the drawings above.

Summary

I’m not sure how a name like Nux melegueta or Amomum might become “muse”*, but it’s not surprising that “muse” (pomum paradisi) might be confused with “musa paradisi” (banana).

Name changes are not uncommon. “Earth apple” used to refer to Cyclamen, a common medicinal plant with a big lump of a root. After the conquest of America and import of New World plants into Europe, the potato came to be known as the “earth apple” (pomme de terre) and Cyclamen gradually lost the name.

But I don’t think this is a case of the name changing. I think it’s the result of confusion…

Aframomum and Musa (banana) plants were not well-known in the west and had similar names (pomum paradisi vs. musa paradisi).

The 13th- and 14th-century drawings and descriptions of “muse” match well to melegueta and a few of the other Amomum species, and less well to banana. By the middle of the 15th century, traditional descriptions were altered to better fit the banana and the name was changed to “musa” and, finally, by the 16th century, the name “musa” was paired with drawings of actual banana plants and the name “muse” seems to have disappeared.

J.K. Petersen

Postscript, Nov. 10, 2018: One possible origin of the plant name “muse” that I forgot to include is hinted at in this quotation from classical Greek, which connects the Muses with a plant called “amomum” as follows:

“… Then he wove in Damagetus (a dark violet); Callimachus’ myrtle—sweet, but ever full of sour honey—; Euphorion’s rose campion; and the Muses’ amomum, who takes his name from the Dioscuri.”

It’s not enough information to identify the plant (Fée suggested Amomum racemosum, but there is no consensus of opinion) or to know if a connection between the muses and something called “amomum” still existed in the Middle Ages, but it might be worth filing for future study.

*Perhaps the answer is closer to the home of the plant itself. The Timneh tribes of Sierra Leone generally refer to the amoma/melegueta plants as “massa” (The Pharmaceutical Journal and Transactions, Volume 16, J. & A. Churchill., 1857. See also detailed discussion in Elements of Materia Medica).

The Ligature Legacy

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“…some symbols in the Voynich Codex show similarities to letters found in sixteenth century codices from New Spain (Tucker and Talbert 2013; Comegys 2013) particularly the Codex Osuna (Valderrama 1600; Chávez Orozco 1947).” —Janick and Tucker, Aug. 2018

The authors are talking about shapes that roughly resemble EVA-k and EVA-t. The following statement is much more surprising:

“We thus conclude that the author of the Voynich Codex made up his syllabary/alphabet, and the letters were borrowed from contemporary post-Conquest MesoAmerican manuscripts such as the Codex Osuma.”

In scholarly circles, “conclude” is a strong word—a word that needs to be backed up with solid evidence. Unfortunately, I find this conclusion highly questionable. The examples the authors use in their arguments are conventions that originated in Old World Latin scripts long before the 16th century. How can one use Old World scribal conventions to argue for a New World conclusion?

Is There a Preponderance of Evidence to Support the Conclusion?

Perhaps the authors felt that if the glyph shapes are taken together with botanical and biological identifications, there is enough evidence to support a New World origin, but the botanical and biological identifications of Tucker, Talbert, Janick, and Flaherty are highly questionable, as well. If you haven’t been following this discussion, then at least scan-read the previous blogs:

Even though the VMS 93r “sunflower” has a number of possible identifications (both New and Old World), Janick bases broad conclusions on this unproven ID as though it were fact:

“Simply put, there is no way a manuscript written on vellum that contains a sunflower and an armadillo could have been written before 1492,” —quoted on Purdue The Exponent news site, 10 Sep. 2018

There isn’t any proof of the identity of the “armadillo” either. It looks more like an Old World pangolin than a New World armadillo, but even this identification can be contested.

What I see in the papers and book by these authors is a collection of inadequately researched suppositions combined in a circular argument to support a New World theory. They pick out a few similarities and ignore the larger body of contrary evidence. They identify two completely different fish as the same fish. One of the plants they identified doesn’t even grow in MesoAmerica. They ignore numerous significant details like the cloudband under the “armadillo”. They ignore alternate IDs for the sunflower.

Unfortunately, the authors’ identification of Voynich-like glyphs suffers the same lack of critical evaluation as the plant and animal IDs, so let’s take a closer look at those.

The VMS-like Letters in the Codex Osuna

Here are examples of the Voynich-like glyphs cited by Janick and Tucker (and by Tucker and Talbert in a previous publication) in the Codex Osuna.

EVA-k is at the top, and EVA-t is at the bottom. Note that the handwriting is different:

Before you say, “Oh, those are similar”, make sure you read the rest of this blog. Bats and owls might look similar to a visitor from another planet, but one is a mammal, the other is a bird, and they are not closely related.

Visual Similarity is Not Enough (especially when they’re not actually that similar)

Something important Janick and Tucker did not mention is that the letters that appear to resemble EVA-k and EVA-t exist in two different scripts in two different languages. Failing to mention this distinction obscures the origin of these shapes, so I will fill in the missing pieces:

The EVA-k shape is in the sections written in Nahuatl.
The EVA-t shape is in the sections written in Spanish.

There are simple reasons for this, but they are important ones because there is no specific relationship between the Spanish and Nahuatl shapes. The similarities are coincidental, but some background might be necessary to make this clear…

Nahuatl Version of EVA-k

If you’ve heard the Bushmen click language, you know it can be very difficult to express this with Latin letters.

Similarly, there is a sound in Nahuatl that is hard to write. It’s made with the tongue against the back of the teeth, so the Spanish missionaries chose to represent the sound as the letters t + l and they wrote it as a ligature tl, with the crossbar of the “t” connecting to the loop of the “l”.

This ligature is not specific to Nahuatl or to the New World. It exists in Old World words like “atlas”, “battle”, “gatling”, etc. Note that the crossbar in the first letter “t” always extends some distance to the left of the stem, which is different from the way EVA-k is written:

It’s possible EVA-k is a ligature (two shapes combined) but if it is, then it follows age-old scribal conventions that are not specific to the New World (or to Nahuatl script). It doesn’t seem likely that VMS EVA-k was copied directly from Nahuatl if one goes by shape alone. It is more similar to some of the European ligatures and abbreviations such as “Il” (French) or “Item” (Italian, German, Latin) than the ligature on the left.

What About EVA-t?

Another common ligature in Old World languages that used Latin characters was the d” + “e” and since the letter “d” was written a dozen different ways, the “de” ligature is quite variable. A similar ligature combines “d” and “l” as in words like “headless”. Sometimes they are hard to tell apart from each other and from ligatures like “il”, but the concept is the same—two letters are combined so they can be written faster or in less space.

Here are examples of how “de” and related ligatures were sometimes written in Spanish scripts from the 14th to 16th centuries. The two on the right are from the Codex Osuna. The faster and loopier the writing, the more it resembles EVA-t (sort of):

The examples on the right illustrate how loose a ligature could be and how combinations like “de” or “dl” or “Il” or “Ie” need to be seen in context to be distinguished from one another, especially if it is an open-loop “d” followed by a very round “e” or “l”.

It has been suggested by Janick and Tucker that the glyphs above-right inspired EVA-t in the VMS, but this seems unlikely. EVA-t has long straight stems:

It’s possible the VMS char is a ligature, but even if it was inspired by “de” (I highly doubt that “de” was the inspiration but let’s pretend for a moment that it was), this ligature was common in many Old World languages.

The authors of Unraveling the Voynich Codex didn’t mention that the two shapes that resemble VMS glyphs are taken from two different sets of scripts (one in Nahuatl, the other in Spanish) and, more importantly, that these shapes were part of the normal scribal repertoire of Old World Europe and thus might have been seen by the creator of the Voynich Manuscript long before the conquest of MesoAmerica.

Summary

The authors didn’t provide any solid evidence that the inspiration for these shapes was specifically New World sources. In fact, the position of EVA-k and EVA-t within VMS tokens doesn’t match well to Nahuatl letter order, either, which further weakens the authors’ interpretation of the VMS script as a Nahuatl substitution code.

I’m not entirely opposed to New World interpretations. I think the VMS is probably Old World, but I will listen to New World arguments, as long as they are good ones. Unfortunately, many New World theories are marred by faulty logic and hasty conclusions.

J.K. Petersen

Més reflexions sobre 116v…

Hiding in Plain Sight

2 Replies

I often wonder if the text on VMS f116v was a later addition to the manuscript, and whether the writer had any knowledge of Voynichese. The Voynichese characters in the lower left are often mentioned but I’ve never seen an assessment of the folio overall. Are there clues that have been overlooked?

Researchers mostly agree that “aror sheey” in the lower left is Voynichese, even if they don’t agree on whether the first glyph is “a” or “o”. There are quite a few ambiguous “a” or “o” glyphs in the VMS, so some transcripts include both possibilities.

However, just because the Voynichese lines up with the other text on the line, I didn’t want to assume there was a connection between the Voynich characters and the 116v text. The ink that follows “aror sheey” is darker, and the letters are Latin, with different thick-and-thin proportions. It isn’t necessarily written by the same person. The drawings and Voynich glyphs might have preceded the other text by days or years.

But is this the only Voynichese on the folio?

In a past blog, I’ve mentioned that the “i” shape in “vix” looks like Voynichese. It’s darker, is distinctively backleaning, and doesn’t resemble any of the other “i” letters on the folio:

I am not sure if the word after oladabas is multos, imiltos, or something else, so I did not include the debatable “i” in this word. I’m also uncertain about letters 2 and 3 in abia/ahia/alka, so I didn’t include this either. All the other “i” letters are fairly consistently upright, with distinctive serifs, as can be seen from the samples. They do not resemble the “i” shape in “vix”:

Okay, so maybe there is another Voynichese character besides “aror sheey”, but why just one in the middle of a line? When there is only one, it’s hard to speculate on the reason. Was the writer a VMS scribe who slipped into an old habit? Or is it purely coincidence?

Here comes the interesting part, something I haven’t seen mentioned… might there be another Voynichese glyph? One that’s completely overlooked?

Look at these “a” letters. Even though the handwriting is variable, they do have some important commonalities:

The most distinctive traits of these letters are the upright pointed stems, and the distinctively upturned serifs. I’ve tried for years to find handwriting that matches this “a” shape and it’s quite difficult.

Now look at the second “a” in this clip, from one of the most scrutinized words on the folio:

With the angled stem and lack of a serif, this character resembles the Voynichese “a” more closely than the other “a” glyphs on this folio. But is it Voynichese? The shape is right, but the stem stretches slightly farther below the baseline than most Voynich “a” glyphs.

If it is a VMS “a” then it might be important. For example, perhaps

whoever wrote the 116v text knew Voynichese and used it occasionally (maybe for pronunciation purposes? or to represent a letter that doesn’t exist in Latin?), or
whoever wrote the 116v text was at least familiar with Voynichese glyphs, even if he or she didn’t know the meaning of them, and wasn’t necessarily using the last page as a place to write something completely unrelated to the rest of the manuscript, or
whoever wrote the 116v text helped pen the Voynichese text and would sometimes slip into the habit of using the often-repeated glyph forms.

After 10 years of sampling medieval text that resembles the letterforms on f116v, it seems probable that it was written in a late-14th or 15th-century script, so the writer could have been contemporary with the creators of the VMS. If the “a” in oladabas is Voynichese, then it increases the likelihood that the writer was aware of the VMS shapes in a more than casual way and maybe even helped design or pen other parts of the VMS.

J.K. Petersen