I have to make this quick. My time for blogging is very limited (and I have many mostly-finished blogs I need to get posted). But I thought this quirk in some medieval zodiacs might be interesting to Voynich researchers.
Mislabeled or Misunderstood
In a cruise through eBay a couple of years ago I noticed that many small sculptures, pieces of jewelry, and designs on ceramics that were based on animals were mislabeled. Foxes labeled as mice, hedgehogs labeled as boars, deer labeled as foxes. These were not occasional errors, they were common. Apparently, some people don’t recognize animals, especially if they are small.
I’ve already posted a blog on how unrealistic medieval animal drawings can be, but sometimes this is because the animal was unknown. For example, unicorns sometimes resembled a cross between a goat and a rhino. Tigers were sometimes drawn as stripy horses. Elephants were sometimes cowlike animals with long noses.
I have also seen marginal drawings of goats labeled as sheep (and sometimes vice-versa). The VMS pic where one would expect a sheep, in the slot usually assigned to Aries, does have fairly curvy horns but otherwise is quite goat-like:
Does this happen in other medieval zodiacs? Yes, sometimes. Here are some examples.
Goat-Like Aries or Misplaced Figures
In the first example, extracted from a wheel illustration, the constellation Aries is somewhat goatlike, especially considering that medieval sheep were often drawn with long tails. However, it can still be distinguished from the goat by having slightly more curved horns:
The following drawings are a bit degraded, so it’s hard to see clearly, but the goat and ram have been transposed. The drawing in Aries has long horns and a short, upturned tail (goat-like), and the one in Capricorn has shorter, curved horns and a longer down-turned tail:
In this example, the figures are out of order. The illustrator mistakenly drew Capricorn (goat) and Sagittarius (centaur) in the months for Aries (ram) and Taurus (bull).
In the next example, Aries has a goatlike beard and the traditional goat-fish has been used for Capricorn:
In this example, Aries has sheep-like wool combined with a goat-like tail and beard:
Sometimes the drawings are so similar, it’s difficult to tell the sheep from the goat. In this case the bodies are almost the same (Aries is slightly thicker, but not much). The main difference is the curl of the horns:
Summary
In general, in medieval zodiacs, Aries is depicted with curly horns and a puffy or long tail (usually pointing down), Capricorn usually has a shorter tail, sometimes upturned, with straighter horns and often a beard.
It doesn’t happen often, but Aries is sometimes drawn like a goat, and Capricorn is occasionally transposed with Aries. The VMS goat-like sheep in the Aries slot is somewhat unusual, but it’s not unprecedented, so it’s difficult to know if the deviation is lack of experience, a mistake, or a deliberate choice.
There’s been a fervor of renewed interest in the VMS mystery animal on folio 80v (including a post about the catoblepas on Nick Pelling’s blog), so I looked at the folio again (and glanced back through my blogs) to see if there was anything that could be said about the critter that hasn’t already been thoroughly investigated.
Looking at the Details
The mystery animal usually goes by the working name of “pangolin” or “armadillo” since it appears to have scales and to be in a curled-up position.
The scales are not certain, however, since the bumps are pointing in the wrong direction, and they don’t really look like the plates of an armadillo. They might be scales (they do appear to overlap), or maybe it’s a VMS version of bumpy fur or wool.
The Wispy Tail
The tail is quite ambiguous. Are those untidy hair strands or is it a forked tail? In other VMS drawings, fish tails are quite detailed:
If the “pangolin” has a fish tail, why is it so tentative—why is it strandy instead of loopy? Is it intentionally vague? Or did the different context inspire the illustrator in another direction? Or is it a different kind of tail altogether, like a hairy tail? Maybe it’s vague because it’s an animal the illustrator has never seen.
The Feet
The mystery animal’s feet look like cat’s paws without the claws showing. They look nothing like the feet of a pangolin or armadillo. But the VMS illustrator wasn’t exactly a rock star in the matter of drawing feet, as can be seen by the drawing on the right. These are the hooves of Taurus in the zodiac-figures section. Unlike most medieval drawings of hooves, they have soft edges.
This peculiarity is even more apparent in the feet of the dragon-like critter on the right. Instead of the fearsome eagle-like claws often seen on mythical animals, they are distinctly round, like those of the the mystery animal on f80v. Also, like the 80v animal, this critter has a long nose, long ears, a somewhat ambiguous tail (is it a medieval flower-tail? if so, why does it look like an extra paw?). It has some scaly stuff on its back (are they wings or a turtle shell?). Even though it somewhat resembles medieval dragon drawings, it’s hard to pin down the details.
The Head
The head of 80v, depending on how you interpret it, has a pointy upturned snout, possibly a round eye, and possibly a pointy horn or ear.
If it’s a horn, then it might be a reference to Jason and the golden fleece, something I’ve blogged about previously. Or maybe it refers to Aries.
If it’s an ear, then it seems to be one that’s long and pointy.
Other Possibilities
I try to look at the animal in as many different ways as possible (fur? hair? scales? leaves?).
Catoblepas?
Here is Pliny’s description of the catoblepas from Pelling’s site:
“…the source of the Nile… In its neighbourhood there is an animal called the Catoblepas, in other respects of moderate size and inactive with the rest of its limbs, only with a very heavy head which it carries with difficulty — it is always hanging down to the ground; otherwise it is deadly to the human race, as all who see its eyes expire immediately.”
When I read it, I thought to myself, that sounds like a warthog. The warthog roots along the ground with its head down, is somewhat hairy with a long mane that blows up when it runs. It has a very heavy head and is a very aggressive animal, dangerous to humans. In other descriptions, a mane like a horse is mentioned:
The well-armored warthog has a very heavy head and a boar-like tail with a hairy tuft [Photo: Bernard Dupont, Wikimedia Commons].
Could Catoblepas Alches from Der Naturen Bloeme (KB KA 16 c. 1350) be a hoofed and heavy-headed warthog?
The rhinocerous also has a very large head and forages with its head down, but it doesn’t have a mane, and most of the descriptions of catoblepas fit better with warthogs.
The range of many African animals has greatly diminished. There used to be lions as far north as the Caucasus and giraffes in northern Africa, so it’s possible the warthog ranged farther north in medieval times than it does now. It is closely related to the wild boar and it’s possible their range originally overlapped. They are very similar in form, but the wild boar does not have the long distinctive mane of the warthog. This Roman mosaic shows a mane and also buffalo-like shoulders:
Roman mosaic preserved in Bardo Museum, Tunisia
Here is another from the Bardo Museum with the mane and forelock standing up:
Warthogs are not especially known for smelly breath (it’s dangerous to get close to a warthog so it’s hard to get a whiff), but they do root around in poo, which might give them a reputation for smelly breath.
So I think there’s a fair possibility that catoblepas was inspired by the warthog. I noticed that Pliny does not mention scales, a feature that appears to have been added in later descriptions.
Wildebeest (gnu) [Photo: Derek Keats, Wikipedia]
Other animals, like the wildebeest are also possible. In basic form it is similar to the warthog, with heavy shoulders and a mane, but it is much larger and has the snout of an ox. In proportion to its body, however, the head is not as big as a warthog’s.
Both warthogs and wildebeests are very aggressive animals…
I wonder if an animal as aggressive and smelly as the catoblepas would be portrayed as the mellow-looking creature in the VMS. Are there other possibilities a little more in keeping with nymphs and cloudbands and more pleasant topics?
The Amiable Aardvark
On the voynich.ninja forum, I’ve suggested the critter on 80v looks like an aardvark (they often curl up like a cat when they are sleeping). The problem is that aardvarks don’t have scales and the critter on 80v might. They do sometimes have fur up to about 4″ long, depending on the climate and variety (seven species of aardvark have been merged into one, so they no longer consider them separate species, but the length and color of their coats can vary widely):
Snout-nosed aardvark mom and baby curled up together [photo courtesy of zooborns.com]
The nose of the ardvaark is a good match for the VMS critter. It turns up at the end, like a pig’s snout, and is used to hoover up ants and termites:
Screenshap from youtube video on aardvarks
When foraging, aardvarks always keep their noses to the ground and hunt by smell. For a long time it was thought that aardvarks and pangolins were related, perhaps because of their long tongues, and similar overall form and diet:
Could the VMS creature be a cross between an aardvark and a pangolin, cobbled together from a confused verbal report that describes ant-eating animals? There are many strange African animals in medieval bestiaries drawn from poorly understood verbal descriptions.
Part of the aardvark’s distribution is Ethiopia, a pilgrimage site sometimes included on medieval maps with a little line of European castle icons. The aardvark is a more amiable creature than the warthog—it is sometimes kept as a pet.
Back to the Beaver
In a 2016 blog, I suggested the critter might be a beaver, the animal most often depicted in herbal manuscripts and bestiaries as the unwilling donor of castorum, a substance in testicles that was thought to have medicinal value. Beavers were often drawn with scales, long ears, and long snouts, as in this example from the previous blog:
It was the curled-up position and scales that made me wonder if it might be the castorum beaver, since it is usually drawn with its nose in its groin, biting off its testicles. A cloudband might also be relevant since the beaver is making a choice between death or life without progeny.
Reptilian Possibilities
I wanted to include these enigmatic drawings because they show how far medieval drawings can diverge from nature. This furry doglike creature with chicken legs is from the Northumberland bestiary (c. mid-13th century):
And this c. 1315 creature has long ears, a wavy mane, fluffy tail and doesn’t look reptilian at all (BL Royal 2 B VII):
It may be hard to believe, but both of them are crocodiles. However, a crocodile is not really designed to tuck its head under its body.
The Folio as a Whole
What else is going on on the folio? Critter 80v is sandwiched between hovering nymphs holding a spindle and a ring. And, oddly, the critter is lightly dabbed with streaks of green, a color associated more with reptiles than mammals.
In the green pool at the base of the folio is a nymph that started out with no breasts and has an unusually shaped pair of “eyeball” breasts quite different from the other nymphs (they look like they were added by a different hand).
There’s a lot going on on the right-hand side, too much to cover in this blog. K. Gheuens has suggested an interesting possibility—a connection with constellations. That’s a provocative idea and a topic in itself, so I’ll leave it to the reader to consider his interpretation while I get back to the critter…
What about the scalloped shape under the critter?
Is that a cloudband? Do the vertical lines represent rain?
Is it water, do the scallops represent waves?
There is certainly the hint of a cloudband in the middle-right rotum on the VMS “map” folio. But similar shapes also appear to resemble fabric.
On folio 79v, which is stylistically similar to 80v, the scalloped shape looks like an umbrella or tent-top with a finial. I don’t think we can assume every wavy shape is a cloudband.
If it’s fabric, maybe critter 80v is curled up on a cushion—a squarish cushion with a scalloped trim. Is this some nobleperson’s pet taking a nap?
The idea of a pet aardvark or catoblepas doesn’t quite fit the context of hovering nymphs with attributes. The nymph above the critter sits in something resembling a double cloudband, at an elevated position on the folio, all of which makes her seem somewhat important. The one below holds out a ring… which brings me back to the idea of Agnus Dei (the lamb of God) that I suggested in a previous blog.
Agnus Dei
The lamb of God is associated with ascension and redemption, based on biblical passages. Much of the time, Agnus Dei is represented like this, standing in a prominent position, with a cross-staff and banner, often nimbed:
Here is another from British Library Additional 17333, with the lamb standing on an altar:
The lamb is often surrounded by a wreath or a rainbow, or decorative elements that one sees in church alcoves.
In almost all instances, the lamb is on some kind of pedestal or cloudband, or perched on the top of a crucifix. Frequently it is positioned midpoint on the page or fresco, between earthly matters and God:
In a 6th century mosaic in the Basilica of Santi Cosma e Damiano, the lamb is standing on a base with water flowing out below its feet. Pagan influences are still present in this very early depiction:
Lamb of God on a rock with flowing water in the Basilica of Cosmas and Damien, Rome [Photo credit: The library of Lee M. Jefferson, CC License 3.0]
Toward the Middle Ages, it became popular to add a scroll or book with seven seals dangling from the base:
Agnus Dei and seven seals in an apocalypse manuscript from the early 14th century [Credit Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, CCCC MS 20]
Another popular medieval theme was setting the lamb on a cushion, cloudband, or book with seven seals dangling from the edge, as in this early 14th-century example in the Martini church in Braunschweig, Germany:
Agnus Dei on a book pedestal with seven dangling seals.
This 19th-century interpretation retains the traditional cross-staff, book, and seven seals, and places the book with the seals on a cloud-cushion:
Agnus Dei by José Campeche (early 19th century)
Could the lines under the VMS “cushion” be rain? Or does it represent movement (ascension?), or possibly an abstract reference to the seven seals?
In this c. 1260 drawing, the lamb stands on a cloudlike line above the heads of watchers, facing an empty cushion, a place for it in heaven ringed by a double-layered cloudband:
Agnus Dei’s place in heaven, c. 1260 in an apocalyptic manuscript from the Flanders region [Bibliothèque minicipale Cambrai MS 0422]
The Sacrificial Lamb
Agnus Dei, St. Antonius, Potsdam-Babelsberg [Photo by Liebermary, Wikipedia]
This version has blood pouring from the chest of the lamb, a detail that might be relevant to the VMS…
The lamb was used for sacrifices and one of those sacrifices occurred after a woman had given birth. There are many hints at ob/gyn themes in the VMS and perhaps this is another one. Below the 80v animal we see a ring, often representing marriage, then we have the lamb, used as a sacrifice following childbirth, above it a woman with a spindle—spinning was an activity that many women took up when the children were grown and their nest was empty. Is there a life-story narrative here?
Notice also, in the St. Antonius example, that the texture of the fur has been drawn as scales.
Notice also that a turned head is very typical for lamb-of-God imagery.
The lamb doesn’t always look like a lamb. Depending on the skill of the illustrator, sometimes it looks like a kangaroo with its head down:
The lamb of God in a 14th-century English manuscript, looking more like a kangaroo or rabbit than a lamb [Corpus Christi College MS 394]
Sometimes the lamb looks vaguely like the VMS drawing of Aries, drawn within a circle, with a leg held high:
Agnus Dei in c. 1360 Liber Floridus, drawing within a circle, with the leg liftedd [BnF Latin 8865].
This example has a couple of things in common with the VMS: the drawing is not professional level and the “pedestal” is hard to identify. Is it water or a cloudband? Given its early date, it’s probably water:
An early 9th-century representation of Agnus Dei in a Grammaticalia manuscript. The lamb is standing on an ambiguous platform that is probably water, as in the Basilica of Cosmas and Damien example, or possibly clouds [BnF Latin 13025, c. 820].
This example is interesting because it combines Agnus Dei on a fabric platform with imagery that is similar to VMS 86v, and also represents an early example of a sun and moon with faces:
Apocalyptic vision that includes hiding figures, a high tor with a tree, wavy cloudlike shapes in each upper corner, stars, Agnus Dei on a cloth pedestal with head turned and held with a cloudband, and a sun and moon with faces [BnF Français 13096, c. 1313].
Here is one possible interpretation of 86v that I posted in a previous blog:
Could the 80v animal be somehow connected to the imagery on this folio, as well?
Is it possible that the object and wavy lines under the animal represent water, clouds, and cloth all at the same time, and thus encompass all the popular ways of representing it?
Could the nymph holding the ring under the animal represent a marriage scene, as in some of the English apocalypse manuscripts from the 13th century?
Wedding ceremony with lamb and ring [British Library Add 35166, c. 1280]
“Blessed are those who are invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb,” Revelation 19:9
As an aside, I thought I’d share this little gem I stumbled across in an early medieval manuscript. The scribe has turned a flaw in a piece of parchment into a “holy” lamb.
Summary
I have tried hard to find an explanation for the animal on 80v that fits as many aspects of the folio as possible. I suggested the idea of Agnus Dei in a previous blog, but the blog was already too long to add all the pictures, so consider this a continuation.
I rather like the idea of an aardvark on a nobleman’s pillow, or the infamous life-or-death castorum beaver, but the folio does not look like a bestiary—the relationship of the images to one another has a more narrative feel. I wanted to explain the relationship of the lamb to the other figures and to the various props in the margins and, hopefully, to some of the other VMS folios.
The idea of Agnus Dei seems more cohesive than the other possibilities and the fact that the animal appears to have scales is apparently not a problem, since the St. Antonious lamb does, as well.
Many medieval drawings are ambiguous, it may turn out to be something completely different, but at least this idea relates to some of the other elements in the VMS.
Crayfish are on the Voynich zodiac menu these days, so I thought I would cross-reference some of my previously posted maps and point out additional details about traditions that may have inspired the crayfish symbols in the VMS. Crayfish are quite prevalent in medieval and early Renaissance zodiac art (about 40%), with the rest being crabs.
In February 2016, I posted a blog about the unusual placement of legs on the crayfish tail, and also included naturalistic drawings of crayfish, showing how different species have different numbers of legs.
In that blog, I pointed out that some zodiacs have a pair of cee shapes on the backs of crayfish/lobsters and some don’t. I’d like to discuss this detail in more depth.
The Lines that Define
You can see the double semi-circles or “cee shapes” on the greenish VMS crayfish on the left and on the medieval calendar-zodiac crayfish on the right:
The crayfish above-right is from Würtzburg (c. 1240s). It is not the earliest example of a crayfish zodiac (an earlier one from Catalonia was described in the previous blog), but it may be one of the earliest to indicate the carapace with curved lines. It has four sets of spindly legs, like the VMS crayfish, but they are correctly placed on the body, not on the tail.
The earliest crayfish zodiacs emerged around the 11th and 12th centuries, in church architecture and manuscript art, but unlike the VMS, the crayfish was typically paired with traditional male Gemini twins.
There are no cee shapes on the crayfish symbols below. Instead, there was sometimes a line running from head to tail. The cee shapes were not yet a popular crayfish motif.
Some details are added by illustrators according to whim, and color (or the direction the figures are facing) is not always a defining feature, but the cee shapes provide an interesting glimpse into zodiac traditions. They appear to have emerged sometime around the 13th century.
Charting the Crayfish’s Carapace
After the c. 1240s Würtsburg symbol, there is a cee-shaped crayfish (c. 1260s) thought to be from Austria. It does not include a romantic Gemini or human Sagittarius, but is similar to the VMS in other ways (non-scorpion Scorpius, no-figure Libra, long-nosed Pisces) and might be considered a “cousin” in terms of motif:
Crayfish with cee shapes are sometimes found in Hebrew manuscripts, such as the Machsor Mazhor (which also has a non-scorpion Scorpius and male/female Gemini). The Machsor Mazhor, in turn, has similarities to Morgan M.855 and BSB Cgm 32. All three were created in the same general region (Austria, or possibly Germany) from c. late 1200s to c. 1340:
Geolocating the Crayfish Tradition
In March 2017, I posted a map of the origins of zodiacs that have a crayfish rather than a crab. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to fit all the examples (some dots are on top of each other), but hopefully there are enough to show that crayfish follow similar patterns to other VMS zodiac symbols, with notable clusters in northeast France and southern Germany, but the examples above suggest there may have been a convergence of traditions a couple of centuries after the earliest examples.
Cee-Shape Crayfish Paired with a More Lizardly Scorpius
The three previous examples have the turtle/tarasque style of Scorpius. The following zodiac is thought to be from France (possibly Provençal, c. 1340). It has a lizard-like scorpion and an interesting detail that is not especially common… Aries, Taurus, and Capricorn have rounded “paws” that aren’t very hoof-like, just as the VMS has unusually rounded hooves. The poses are also similar—note how Aries’s head is drawn from the side and Taurus from a higher perspective so both eyes and horns are visible:
While we’re on the subject of anatomy, look at Aries’s nose. It’s not a very common way to draw it, indistinct and very rounded, so I thought I would post this zodiac from Libr. pict. A 92 (possibly from Germany, c. 1400), which is one of the few that has animals with similarly drawn snouts. They’re not exactly the same, the mouths are more deeply indented, but they are worth noting, since it looks like the hooves on Capricorn might be somewhat rounded, as well:
Variations on Cee-Shape Themes
The following zodiacs, also from France, have similar themes to H 437 (traditional nude twins, a lizardlike Scorpius, centaur Sagittarius, and cee-shaped crayfish) but differ in having a figure holding the scales. Despite the differences in palette and style, they are thematically very similar to each other but, in a sense, one step farther from the VMS. Quite a few northern zodiacs had elaborate frames and traditional nude Gemini behind bushes or behind a shield:
Pairing the Crayfish with Human Sagittarius
The previous zodiacs all have Sagittarius as centaur or satyr. The earliest one I could find that has a cee-shape crayfish and a human archer is Vindo. Pal. 1850 from Prague (c. 1405). Unfortunately, the twins are traditional nude males, and the scorpion is naturalistic, so it’s not quite in the VMS ballpark, but it does have a no-figure Libra:
This 16th-century zodiac from Nuremberg (Cod. Pal. germ 833) has only minor differences and clearly comes from the same tradition as Vindo. Pal. 1850:
False Alarms
It’s easy to get excited about individual images when one first sees them. For example BSB Clm 826 (c. 1390) has a leg-tail Leo with its tongue sticking out, but I was reluctant to post it until I had done more research… I discovered that leg-tail lions are extremely common in medieval art, plus other aspects of Clm 826 are quite different from the VMS. It’s a real scorpion, Virgo has wings, Sagittarius is a satyr, and Taurus is a half-bull emerging from a cloudband. It seems unlikely that the VMS illustrator would copy Leo and completely ignore the other symbols when there are quite a few zodiacs that match the VMS quite well.
Summary
This all adds up to some interesting patterns. The VMS chiefly differs from other cee-shape-crayfish zodiacs in having affectionate male-female Gemini rather than the traditional male twins, yet is more similar overall to zodiacs that don’t include the cee shapes on the crayfish’s back, such as these, thought to be from Augsburg and Cologne:
As can be seen from the above examples, two of the better matches, in terms of motifs, are Morgan MS m.94, which has a line down the crayfish’s back, and Augsburg 2 Cod 5, which has an unusually ornate, decorated crayfish.
Part of the challenge of tracing these traditions is sorting out which details are significant, and which ones are not.
There are a number of critters in the VMS that have sheeplike qualities, especially if one considers the wide range of sheep drawings one finds in the Middle Ages. I’m extremely busy right now, so I have to rush this out on my lunch break and get back to work, and can’t comment on these drawings in depth, or provide links, but I’ll put them out there for those who are interested…
Here is a small selection of critters in the VMS that have been likened to sheep in one way or another:
There are many ways one can analyze medieval sheep drawings based on drawing style and individual features. There are also some peculiar ones, such as sheep that look like horses or wolves, and sheep with leopard or dog faces. I also noticed that the tails of sheep were generally quite long and, in contrast to the fluffy tails of European drawings, sheep from a Bhagavad Gita illustration have skinny tails with tufts on the ends:
One can also look at the way the coats are drawn, some with dots, others with rough or regular lines, some with tufts. Note how each of the coats in the VMS drawings is different. Either this is a very creative person or the illustrator may have been looking at examples from different sources.
Here are sheep textured with dots, spots, or curved and wavy lines:
Sometimes the texture is artistically shaped, blended, or drawn with different colors:
The most common way to draw the sheep bodies was with lines following the direction of the coat, especially tufts:
Sometimes the artist took this idea a step further and rendered the tufts as wave-like curlicues, scales, or calligraphic shapes. Some depicted practical considerations—the drawing on the right has four deliberately different coat textures:
In terms of drawing style, there were two very early drawings that caught my eye. They have the pinched nose and pointy rounded ears one sees on the VMS dragony critter and dead-looking pond critter. This doesn’t necessarily mean a connection, but I found them interesting nonetheless. Note that the one on the right, which illustrates the lamb of God, has a body that looks more like a horse than a sheep and the one on the left also has a rather long neck for a sheep (even one that is recently shorn):
The VMS drawings sometimes have more in common with drawings of the early and middle medieval periods than the late 15th century. This might indicate access to a library that included early manuscripts, or it might be a consequence of limited drawing skills. Note that the sheep on the left has paws, just as the VMS zodiac hooves are somewhat rounded and paw-like.
I have more sheep drawings but this is all I have time for at the moment. One thing I always notice when looking at VMS animals, that stands out from other medieval drawings, is that they are usually smiling. This, in combination with the fact that there are no obvious signs of weapons anywhere in the manuscript, other than the traditional Sagittarius bow and one pointy finger, makes me wonder if whoever created the drawings led a sheltered life.
Recently Voynich Views posted a blog about the line (or lack of one) connecting the fish that represent the astrological symbol Pisces, paying specific attention to those that look like the VMS long-nosed fish. I have a dataset of more than 500 zodiac cycles, so I thought I would post them to help round out the picture.
Long-nosed fish are definitely in the minority. Only about 8% of the total samples in my files have long noses, and if you filter out those with a line between the fish, only 3% remain.
The majority of those with long noses originated in France, with a few from Austria and Germany. There were also single examples from Italy, Spain, Belgium, and the Netherlands. If you look back at the map of symbols similar to VMS Scorpio, you will see that several of those that resemble the VMS lizardy Scorpius are also from France.
The earliest examples, mainly from the 12th and 13th centuries are from France, England, Cologne, and Austria. Those enclosed in circles are from France, Austria, Germany, and the Hague.
Only two or three of the fish pairs have the same “wavy” shape as the VMS fish (a couple from Paris, possibly one from England, and one from Austria). Note that the 12th century zodiac from Seckau, Austria, may have had the drawings added in the 15th century, so I have sorted according to the later date [click to see larger]:
It’s interesting that so many of the VMS details are in the minority. Crossbow Sagittarius is relatively uncommon, as is lizardy Scorpius, and double-Cancer. The Gemini “courting couple” is also uncommon.
Pisces with a long nose is quite uncommon, especially those without a line between the fish. I sometimes wonder if the person who designed the VMS zodiac signs got the general idea from looking at zodiacs but inserted pictures copied from other sources. For example, in CLM 10072 and BNF Lat. 13025, we see a long-nosed fish in a pond, and a long-nosed fish with the scales emphasized in an embellished initial. The Book of Wonders and the Rochester Bestiary also have a variety of long-nosed fish. Plus, there are a couple of “zodiac man” images with long-nosed fish under the man’s feet that I didn’t include in the above compilation.
Another way that the VMS fish differ from many fish drawings is the way the scales cover the whole body. Many illustrators don’t put scales on the bellies:
The wavy form of the VMS bodies is also unusual. I found a “wavy” fish in an Arabic manuscript, but other than the undulating posture, it doesn’t strongly resemble the VMS fish. It has spots, three fins top and bottom, a pale belly, and a drawing style that is much more eastern:
There are also some long-nosed fish in the marketplace and in the water in Tacuinum Sanitatus:
This fish is scaly top to bottom, but the fins and nose are quite different from the VMS fish:
In the planetary influences section, Cod. Sang. 760 has a human Sagittarius and some scaly long-nosed fish, but the fish are roughly sketched and probably later than the VMS:
Morgan B.19 has a very cute drawing that looks like it was done by a child that includes a long-nosed fish with double dorsel fins:
In the Andalius De Sphaera (c. 1327), we see long-nosed dolphins. They’re not fish, they’re mammals but many old texts refer to them as fish and even today many people call them “fish”:
Family emblems, such as this one (which also features cloud-band imagery), sometimes include long-nosed fish:
The best match I’ve seen for the VMS fish outside of zodiac imagery was the one pointed out by MarcoP in the Sachsenspiegel. It has a long nose, a face quite similar to the VMS fish, and is scaly top to bottom. I’ve turned it sideways so it is easier to see:
Summary
Even though the VMS long-nosed fish are unique in a number of ways, there are several possible sources for the imagery, including zodiacs, bestiaries, and manuscripts unrelated to astrology.
The Parisian zodiac dating from c. 1350 (Morgan M.75) is the closest I’ve found so far as a Pisces symbol, in terms of style and features. Morgan M.75 also includes a four-legged Scorpius and crayfish Cancer, so perhaps there is some common source that connects them, but I’d like to gather more information and continue analyzing what I have before venturing any conclusions.
J.K. Petersen
[Postscript July 27, 2018] I found this picture after I posted the blog:
The drawing style is different from the VMS, but the features are notable. It has long-nosed double-dorsal fish that are scaly from top to bottom. Plus, something that is even harder to find in fish with these characteristics… the lower one has an undulating posture. The image detail is from a 14th-century hell-mouth fresco in the Timios Prodromos monastery in Serres, Greece.
Serres also has grottoes with fabulous stalactites. I’m always on the lookout for grottoes since some of the VMS bathing images have grotto-like structures.
J.K. Petersen
Postscript 30 August 2018: It has been suggested that the VMS Pisces symbol represents the New World alligator gar. Here is a picture of the gar. Note there is one fin top, two sets of fins bottom-front, and another fin back-bottom. Drawn from the side, it might look like one top and three bottom.
If the researchers who identified the VMS fish as alligator gar are going to ignore the mismatch in the number of fins, then any fish with a long nose could be said to be similar to the VMS fish, including the northern pike, which is indigenous to both Old and New Worlds:
The same researchers claim the fish with the nymph in its mouth on folio 79v is also an alligator gar. I can’t take that seriously. Look at the mouth, it’s very broad and blunt, more like a wide-mouthed bass:
In contrast, the mouth of the alligator gar is long, narrow, and toothy (especially this species):
Natural or Traditional?
Four years ago, I looked at hundreds of pictures of New World and Old World fish and there are several with long noses and two fins top and two bottom, but I have the feeling the VMS illustrator consulted other drawings rather than studying real fish because VMS Pisces resembles medieval illustrations more than it does naturalistic drawings of the time.
Here is a small subset of Pisces symbols with varying numbers of fins and long noses. They are all Old World illustrations:
I’ll leave it to the reader to decide whether the VMS fish look more like the New World alligator gar, or like fish in pre-conquest medieval illustrations. I’m partial to the fish in the Sachsenspiegel with its similar face and tail, and to the fish in the Greek fresco, which have the right number of fins, top-to-bottom scales, and narrow curvy bodies.
The leaves of Plant 51r resemble beetles, but could there be any reason to add a beetle to a section devoted to plants?
It was not unusual for medieval manuscripts to include drawings of reptiles and mammals. Snakes were often drawn alongside plants that had “serpentina” in the name, snakelike roots, or which were believed to cure snake bite. Animals with names similar to plants, like camel and Camelina, were often shown next to one another.
Critters are not uncommon in herbal manuscripts and bestiaries, but they are quite scarce in the plant sections of the VMS. The dragon-like creature that appears to be nibbling on Plant 25v is the exception rather than the norm.
Are There Bugs in the Leaves?
When I first saw Plant 51r, the leaves reminded me of stag beetles, industrious little bugs that use their mandibles like a stag uses its horns, to fight off rivals vying for sexual favors. There are three “legs” on each side, a pair of “mandibles” on the outer end, and a decorative line running down the middle.
The VMS leaves are reminiscent of beetles, with the correct number of legs and rounded “mandibles” like the clawlike choppers of the stag beetle. The illustration on the right is from an early 16th-century French manuscript that includes many plants and insects accurately drawn from life. Were the VMS leaves meant to represent bugs, or is it a plant with bug-like leaves?
I’m not aware of any plants that have points coming off the leaves that are quite as exaggerated as f51v, and the unpainted line running across the middle looks less like a plant vein than most of the other plants. I’m also not aware of any plant leaves with this basic shape that have distinctively different end-leaflets. As mentioned in the previous blog, the entire plant strikes me as more stylized than naturalistic, with a somewhat anthropomorphic pose.
Would there be any reason to include beetle leaves (or other insect leaves) in a section about plants? Pliny the Elder, who was the inspiration for many medieval herbal manuscripts, mentions that stag beetles were called “lucanus” after a region of Italy in which they were used as amulets, much as the rounder, less fearsome-looking scarab beetles were used in Egypt. In the middle ages, the horns of stag beetles were said to be medicinal.
Maybe the VMS leaves aren’t beetles, maybe they are visual references to some other kind of bug. Ants were commonly included in medieval bestiaries and you would never guess they were ants if they weren’t labeled:
The ants on the top left are missing a pair of legs, but are otherwise fairly recognizable [British Library Harley MS 3244] and are somewhat similar to the VMS “beetle” leaves. The ants below them, from the 13th century, look more like centipedes or caterpillars. Those on the right are fearsome ants, drawn like dogs and bears, and it’s only because of the text that we know that they are ants [BL Cotton MS Vitellius A XV]. Another example (not shown) depicts ants as lunging hounds on leashes. Naturalism was apparently not as important as getting the concept across.
Sloane 4016, a manuscript familiar to Voynich researchers that has good drawings compared to many of its predecessors, includes an image of a spider on a web that suggests the illustrator had very little knowledge of spiders or their webs. The spider is missing a pair of legs and looks more like an ant than a spider. One might speculate that it’s a reference to a spider-like insect that was used to create red dyes, rather than an actual spider, except that it’s labeled Aranea which specifically refers to orb-weaving spiders.
Decorative Veins
The leaf dots on Plant 51r are out of character with most of the other plant drawings. Many of the VMS leaves are well drawn, accurately recording leaf margins and veins (note that this is my opinion, not everyone agrees), but this one resembles a zipper-like decorative element from a painting or piece of medieval stumpwork. It’s like the pattern on a rubricated initial or a caterpillar’s back.
Beetles have inspired art for thousands of years and often include decorative elements down the middle of the back. Left, antique pin courtesy of Ten Two Three. Right, jewelry by Court Jeweler House of Bolin, est. 1791.
If the leaf were a reference to ants, it would be hard to explain the line. But beetles have wings under a protective cover and when the two sides are slightly spread, a textural difference emerges.
Jewelers often use this anatomical feature as inspiration for adding a row of precious stones down the center of the back. Given that scarabs and other forms of beetles have been used in jewelry for thousands of years, it would not be surprising to see a decorative element added to the back of something based on a beetle.
Possible Plant IDs
What if the resemblance to a stag beetle is unintentional? Can the VMS plant be identified without resorting to mnemonics or stylistic similarities to non-botanical elements? Are there plants with bug-like leaves with exaggerated leaflets?
There are many plants with irregular, lacinated, or ruffled leaf margins, but I’m not aware of any that look like the leaves of f51r if (this is an important “if”) you narrow them down to plants that have flowers with a bulbous section under the petals, as well.
Plants with Pinwheel Flowers and Beetle-Like Leaves
Perhaps the leaves of rocket (Eruca sativa), or one of its relatives, might qualify. Rocket leaves are similar to dandelion, but more deeply indented and with fewer leaflets. The vein down the middle is a little lighter than the rest of the leaf. It has 4-petaled flowers that look like pinwheels with a slightly bulbous attachment to the stem and a narrow tap root.
Rocket, also known as salad mustard or arugula, is widely used as food and was also a medicinal herb in the middle ages. It’s a Eurasian plant common to the Mediterranean that now grows worldwide. If sufficiently stylized, a rocket leaf might resemble 51r, especially if you consider that deer like to walk along and munch off the ends of the leaves, leaving them concave instead of convex.
Groundsel (Senecio) might qualify, but the leaves are longer, with more indentations, and the flowers don’t look like pinwheels. Silene or Saponaria have the right kind of flowers, but the leaves are lanceolate, not at all beetle-like. I glanced at Edith Sherwood’s ID just now, and she has listed sea rocket (Cakile maritima) as a possible ID, but the leaves are quite a bit longer and more narrow than the VMS plant and I think Dame’s rocket (Eruca) is a closer match than Cakile.
What about sound-based mnemonics? There is a plant called beetle daisy, but it doesn’t look like 51r and it’s from S. Africa. Another called beetleweed with rounded leaves grows in the eastern U.S. Trying to search for plants with the names of insects is almost impossible unless you’re willing to sift through millions of insect pictures to find one or two plant names in each language.
Summary
The leaves of Plant 51r may have nothing to do with beetles, but I thought it worth exploring because the morphological resemblance is pretty strong and the more stylized a plant, usually the more likely it is to be associative rather than naturalistic. It isn’t the most exaggerated VMS plant, there are some that are even wilder, but it is pretty animated and that adds to both its mystery and its charm.
