Talk:Voynich manuscript

Page contents not supported in other languages.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Former featured articleVoynich manuscript is a former featured article. Please see the links under Article milestones below for its original nomination page (for older articles, check the nomination archive) and why it was removed.
Main Page trophyThis article appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page as Today's featured article on June 20, 2004.
Article milestones
DateProcessResult
March 25, 2004Featured article candidatePromoted
March 28, 2008Featured article reviewDemoted
Current status: Former featured article

Cathar doctrine?[edit]

This ref claims to translate most of Voynich. According to https://medcraveonline.com/JHAAS/JHAAS-07-00262.pdf the text words are transliterations of Arabic words, which when translated are mostly repetitive nostrums or musings on death from the Cathar faith. Having studied it at some length, it seems to me that the claim has some merit, though some of the transliterations are not exact and some have redundant letters, for example the 'L' of VM. 2001:8003:1D51:6B00:8DB5:8894:10DD:E8C5 (talk) 10:50, 30 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Are there reliable secondary sources taking it seriously? If not, then it's no more notable than the many other claimed decipherments that are not included. Justin Kunimune (talk) 12:41, 30 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Relevance of the so-called "Alchemical Herbal"[edit]

Sergio Toresella is a scholar who published several works about ancient herbals. In 1996, he published a paper about "The Herbals of the Alchemists" (in Italian "Gli erbari degli alchimisti"). The article appeared in the catalogue of an exhibition in Genoa ("Arte farmaceutica e piante medicinali: erbari, vasi, strumenti e testi dalle raccolte liguri" - Pharmaceutical Art and Medicinal Plants: Herbals, Vessels, Instruments, and Texts from Ligurian Collections).

Quote from Toresella's paper: "col nome di erbario degli alchimisti sì indica una collezione di figure di erbe, quasi sempre fantastiche, che non è riconducibile a nessuno degli erbari di cui si è detto finora. Il nome fu dato dal grande naturalista bolognese Ulisse Aldrovandi (1522-1605) chè aveva raccolto un certo numero di questi erbari e li aveva rilegati assieme proprio con questa etichetta: Piante degli alchimisti e in mancanza di una migliore definizione anche io userò questo termine. Da un lato quindi gli erbari degli alchimisti sono molto elusivi perché non sembrano connettersi a nessuna tradizione iconografica o testuale conosciuta, dall’altro lato però sono immediatamente riconoscibili perché le loro rappresentazioni fantastiche sono di un tipo inconfondibile."

Translation: -the term "Herbal of the Alchemists" refers to a collection of plant illustrations, almost always fantastical, which cannot be traced back to any of the herbals mentioned so far [i.e. Dioscorides, Pseudo-Apuleius, Tractatus De Herbis]. The name was given by the great Bolognese naturalist Ulisse Aldrovandi (1522-1605), who had gathered a certain number of these herbals and bound them together with this label: "Plants of the Alchemists." In the absence of a better definition, I will also use this term. On the one hand, the herbals of the alchemists are elusive because they do not seem to connect to any known iconographic or textual tradition. On the other hand, they are immediately recognizable because their fantastical representations are of an unmistakable type.-

The most extensive study of the Alchemical Herbal tradition is Vera Segre Rutz "Il giardino magico degli alchimisti" (2000) ISBN: 8870504492. The book includes the edition of the copy of the text in manuscript Aldini 211, Pavia. The name "Alchemical Herbal" is somehow misleading, since actual alchemical operations are only mentioned for a minority of plants, but it is now consolidated by the many references by a number of authors. The work survives in several copies. This web page by Philip Neal repeats the incomplete list provided by Vera Segre-Rutz (24 manuscripts). Neal also lists the 98 plants that appear in the "alchemical herbal". The earliest known copy is Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Can. Misc. 408, written in Milan in 1378.


Toresella stated that "Tra gli erbari degli alchimisti si deve anche annoverare quello contenuto nel codice Voynich. ... Tra queste pergamene, [...] si allineano decine di erbe simili a quelle degli alchimisti, ma che non appartengono a quella tradizione iconografica" -Among the herbals of the alchemists, we must also include the one contained in the Voynich manuscript. ... these pages [are] lined with dozens of herbs similar to those of the alchemists but not belonging to the same iconographic tradition-. I understand he is saying that the two works are related but clearly different (he is not claiming that the Voynich manuscript is one more copy of the AH).

Alain Touwaide has published hundreds of books and papers about the history of medicine in general and illustrated herbals in particular. For instance, he edited the edition of British Library ms Sloane 4016 (Latin, Tractatus de Herbis), but he also wrote extensively about Greek and Arabic medical works.


In 2015 Touwaide published his article "Il manoscritto più misterioso - L'Erbario Voynich" included in the book "Villa Mondragone. Seconda Roma", Marina Formica ed. (ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 8860606853 / ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-8860606853). He confirmed the connection between the Voynich manuscript and the alchemical herbal: "Numerose rappresentazioni di piante del Manoscritto Voynich presentano una corrispondenza con le illustrazioni botaniche dei secoli XIV e XV, particolarmente -ma non solo- con i cosiddetti manoscritti alchimici." ("Many plant illustrations in the Voynich manuscript correspond with botanical illustrations of the XIV and XV Centuries, in particular -but not only- with the so called alchemical manuscripts"). This passage is followed by a bibliographical reference to Toresella's paper.


The parallels that can be detected are about the overall non-naturalistic style. Would Toresella and Touwaide say is that there appears to be a relationship between the Voynich manuscript and the AH, not that plants in the Voynich manuscripts can be matched with plants in the AH. I am not sure I can upload images here, so I uploaded to imgur a few examples of parallels between the Voynich and Alchemical herbals: https://imgur.com/a/cYh3oqr


The following is a list of features that this tradition has in common with the Voynich manuscript. The list is based on the observations by Toresella and Touwaide and analysis of the primary sources (in particular BNF Lat. 17848):

  • a similar time-frame (the Alchemical Herbal probably originated in the 14th century and was very popular during the 15th century)
  • a layout in which each page includes the illustration of a single plant together with a short text (layout varies in different copies of the alchemical herbal, BNF Lat. 17848 is one of the copies that displays this layout)
  • plant illustrations are largely unrecognizable; in AH, many (but not all) can be recognized on the basis of the names, which however tend to be badly distorted (e.g. it is unclear what Antolla lupana is supposed to be).
  • Touwaide mentions that one of the copies of the Alchemical Herbal (Florence, Biblioteca di Botanica dell'Universita MS 106) includes a cipher alphabet on its first page
  • Touwaide mentions what appears to be a colour annotation written in German ("rot" = red) in the root of Voynich f4r. Rene Zandbergen observed that the "rot" color annotations also appears in a copy of the Alchemical Herbal, MS 362 (formerly MS G.23.2.3) of the 'Biblioteca Civica Bertoliana' in Vicenza. See page 14 in this pdf presentation by Zandbergen.


P marco (talk) 10:42, 3 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

This information does appear to show that the Voynich manuscript is relevant to the concept of the Alchemical Herbal, but not necessarily that the Alchemical Herbal is relevant to the Voynich manuscript. Are there third-party sources that discuss these papers (Toresella, Toresella, Segre-Rutz) and discuss how relevant or accurate those comparisons are? When it comes to the Voynich manuscript countless people have made various claims and suppositions, so third-party scholarly analysis of a person's claims is generally looked for when considering whether to add that person's claims or analysis to the article. - Aoidh (talk) 13:24, 4 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you for your reply!
I don't think I understand your first sentence: This information does appear to show that the Voynich manuscript is relevant to the concept of the Alchemical Herbal, but not necessarily that the Alchemical Herbal is relevant to the Voynich manuscript. The two (AH and VM) are different works; the AH is about half a century earlier than the VM; why is the VM relevant for the AH, while the other way round does not hold?
I agree that "countless people have made various claims and suppositions", but claims made by well respected scholars formally published in books could maybe have more weight than blog or forum posts? Also, when it comes to Voynich images, very few academic experts have said anything, so I think each expert contribution is important, expecially when formally published. The book including Touwaide's paper was edited by Marina Formica, a Professor at the Torvergata University in Rome. https://web.uniroma2.it/it/contenuto/villa_mondragone__seconda_roma_
About third-party confirmation, I thought that Touwaide could count as confirmation for Toresella. Both scholars have given much attention to the study of herbals in their careers. From Touwaide's publications, I get that he is a great expert in medieval herbals. What other evidence could support his actual experience in the field? Minta Collin's "Illustrated Herbals" is a good book, possibly the most popular on the subject. She references Towaide's work tens of times https://www.google.it/books/edition/Medieval_Herbals/s7c2EaxDYjUC?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=touwaide
Currently, about Herbal illustrations, the wikipedia page says: "Each page displays one or two plants and a few paragraphs of text, a format typical of European herbals of the time." Actually, the VM has a single plant per page 97% of the times (I think there are only 4 pages with two plants, obviously excluding the "pharmaceutical" sections which is entirely different). A single plant per page is not the typical format of late medieval European herbals: usually several plants appear in each page; the text for each plant can start on one page and end on the next one.
E.g. (from older to newer, at least approximately)
Ashmole 1431
Trinity O.2.48
BL Egerton 747
Manfredus' Herbal BNF Lat 6823
Cadamosto, NY Spencer 65 https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/9507eb10-1326-0131-8537-58d385a7bbd0/book#page/21/mode/2up
But a single plant illustration per page is the typical format of the Alchemical Herbal; in the earliest copies of the AH, the text appeared after the illustrations (several paragraphs of text per page for as many plants). In some copies (e.g. BNF Lat. 17848) the format is the same as the VM: a single plant per page with a short text on the same page. I suggest adding a reference to the Alchemical Herbal at least to mention an actual work that that shows a similar format to the VM, so that the current claim is made both more precise and less misleading.
Thank you again for your time and patience! P marco (talk) 16:48, 4 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Where was VM found by Voynich[edit]

The article gives Villa Mondragone, Frascati as the place where the VM rested until offered for sale to W. M. Voynich. But apparently, that's not right and the actual place was Villa Torlonia in Castel Gandolfo (near Rome again). There was some secrecy around the sale that perhaps led to this confusion. (source: [1]) Mandevil (talk) 19:23, 21 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Terminological distinctions[edit]

ApLundell, the reason why, in the "Voynich manuscript" lead, I changed "decipher" to "decrypt" is that cryptologists reserve "decipherment" for the reading of a cipher by its intended recipient; and "decryption", for the reading of either a cipher or a code by an unauthorized recipient.
Similarly, while persons innocent of the difference between a cipher and a code often, in English, refer to either as a "code", there is a very basic distinction between a cipher and a code. (Some other languages commit the opposite error, calling both a code and a cipher a "cipher".) David Kahn, in his The Codebreakers (loosely titled thus for readers innocent of the differences!) very carefully explains the distinctions.
Best, Nihil novi (talk) 04:36, 29 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
You don't need to put a message on my talk page, page me to it, then put the same message here, and page me here.
Anyway, here's the reply I was about to put on my talk page :
"Decipher", outside of crypto industry jargon, has a bunch of meanings at least one of which must apply to the manuscript, but "decrypt" specifically implies that the text is some form of code or cipher, which is not established and implying otherwise is a point of contention. If using the plain English meaning of "decipher" offends those who insist words must only be used according to narrowly defined jargon, then I suppose "understood" or "explained" would also work there, but to my mind that would be a slightly weaker sentence.
I'm not sure why you bring up the difference between codes and ciphers. I do understand the difference, but to my knowledge applying either to the manuscript is entirely speculation. ApLundell (talk) 04:56, 29 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Very much with ApLundell here. Approaching the Voynich as being written in either a code or a cipher is to assume facts not in evidence and very much in dispute. Cheers. Dumuzid (talk) 13:18, 29 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
As I note above, the verb "to decrypt" is applicable to either a cipher or a code, particularly to the reading of an enciphered or encoded text by an unintended recipient.
The verb "to decrypt" comes from the Greek for "to uncover" or "to render unsecret". Even If the Voynich manuscript were to prove neither a cipher nor a code, the verb "to decrypt" would still remain applicable to that manuscript. At the same time, that verb's use would make a small contribution to preventing public misapprehension and misapplication of the terms "cipher" and, more especially, "code", which in recent years has been massively misused.
Nihil novi (talk) 01:05, 1 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
You are still assuming facts not in evidence. In order to be "decrypted," there would have to be an underlying message. It has not been proven that is the case. Cheers. Dumuzid (talk) 02:19, 1 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Greek italics could be the way it has been written[edit]

The text in the Voynych Manuscript could be Greek Italics. Lara3030 (talk) 09:02, 1 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

It could be telling a story about nitric oxide (which was not even discovered at the time of the manuscript's assumed creation date) and the importance of health directions to try and avoid ovarian cancer. These words could be picked up by running a Greek to Russian translation with Google Lens (Google Lens seems to pick up some parts of the text as Greek Italics). Lara3030 (talk) 09:22, 1 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
There is also something about the Greek army service in 401 BC, though I may be wrong. Lara3030 (talk) 09:23, 1 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The text could be many things, but only hypotheses repeated in reliable secondary sources warrant inclusion in the article. Otherwise the article would be much too long. Also, Google Lens, like all machine learning models, is based on guesswork and often makes mistakes. Justin Kunimune (talk) 22:18, 1 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]