A-Voynich Transcription - A glyph-based transcription

A-Voynich Transcription A glyph-based transcription of the Voynich Manuscript

Contents Overview

page 1

Some Transcription History

page 2

Glyph Construction Theory

page 5

A-Voynich Font Equivalents

page 8

Sample Transcription Pages

page 12

Overview

The A-Voynich Transcription is a product of many years and testing of many different theories on character identification. While this is a project I would have liked to have taken on and mastered many years ago, it has been only recently that quality images of the Voynich script have been released by Beinecke Rare Book Library at Yale. When these images are compared against the black and white copyflo, it becomes evident that much information has been kept from the hands of Voynich enthusiasts over the years. The new images confirm that many ‘strokes’ are routinely connected, and if written in a fluid and connected fashion must most probably be individual glyphs. While my transcriptions have always maintained that certain strokes comprise individual glyphs, my own methods are in need of revision, and in the process perhaps this effort will bring others to the realization that stroke-based transcriptions are very unlikely to lead to a solution of the Voynich Manuscript. Any reasonable transcription methodology should be based on a fairly sound glyph construction theory and incorporate enough information about the characters to make alteration of the transcription a simple matter, without the need to retranscribe large sections of the text. It is with this in mind that this transcription is undertaken, and it is my hope that this effort proves to be beneficial to all Voynich enthusiasts.

Some Transcription History “However complex and interesting the drawings are, the script in which the bulk of the manuscript is written is undoubtedly the most intriguing part of the elegant enigma. It has a deceptively flowing, rhythmic quality that suggests long practice and familiarity on the part of the scribe or scribes. The script seems like a reasonable, workable, well-constructed system of writing, with a look of ease and natural flow. On closer inspection, the surface appearance of simplicity vanishes, and a still more seductive and captivating character emerges, in the form of an intricate but structurally logical system of ligaturing or compounding of simple forms to build up more complex outlines. Whatever else may be alleged concerning the value of the manuscript as a whole to science, I am convinced that an understanding of the construction of this writing system cannot fail to be of great interest in the study of human thought. It appears to be a tour de force of artistry and ingenuity.” M.E. D’Imperio Thus begins Chapter 4 in M.E. D’Imperio’s paper “The Voynich Manuscript – An Elegant Enigma”, a statement that rings in the ears of all Voynichologists. Rather than rewrite the general makeup of early attempts, I quote here D’Imperio’s synopsis taken again from Chapter 4: “It has been concluded by most students that the Voynich script includes at least some compound symbols. Various attempts have been made to arrive at a rationale to explain the ligatures and resolve them consistently into component elements. Some students have proposed that the symbols may have been built up from elementary strokes in a manner similar to the method upon which they supposed that the Chinese writing system was based. Tiltman suggested that missionaries visiting the Far East, who had studied the Chinese system, might have brought back a description of it which then might have inspired some fifteenth- or sixteenth- century scholar to design the Voynich script (unpublished notes). A. W. Exell, in his letter to Tiltman, 30 August 1957, refers to a theory (not further specified) that

early Arabic numerals were built up from one, two, three, four or more strokes in a similar Oriental manner; he suggests a sketchy and incomplete correspondence between Voynich symbols and conventional numerals along these lines.” The earliest modern attempt at decipherment was by William R. Newbold, who identified the Voynich script as a “shorthand cipher”, based on an ancient Greek system of abbreviation. His system of transcription involved the use of a magnifying glass and the dissection of each Voynich glyph into several strokes. While Newbold’s methods were publicly refuted, the appeal of stroke-based transcriptions has not diminished. Other early transcriptions included those of Tiltman, the First Voynich Study Group, the Second Study Group, Currier, Krischer, and D’Imperio. While these tended to universally handle certain Voynich glyphs as individual characters, such as the gallows i, h, g and f, or the glyphs a, e, o, and w, there was a decided split of opinion when it came to some other common glyphs, primarily the ' series glyphs. Currier transcribed the strokes 'N and ''N as 'M’ and ‘N’ respectively, while others chose to transcribe them as a series of glyphs. The Second Study Group and the Currier transcriptions are unique in assigning single transcription characters to the more common Voynich combination glyphs. D’Imperio considered the various transcription approaches to embody the theories of individual transcribers, and I believe this is a fair assumption. Somewhere in the 1990’s a new transcription methodology popped up, called ‘Frogguy’ and ‘Neo-Frogguy’, the work of Jacques Guy, a linguist extraordinaire. The apparent purpose of this transcription was to make the Voynich characters ‘pronounceable’. This transcription was heavily stroke-based in orientation, and a clear departure from the transcriptions generated in the cryptographic arena. Frogguy was used as the basis for a complete Voynich transcription project conducted by Gabriel Landini and Rene Zandbergen, entitled the EVA transcription. What sets the EVA transcription apart from cryptographically oriented transcriptions is the use of multiple characters to represent the strokes that compose a single Voynich glyph. Where Currier transcribed a G with a single character, and The First Study Group transcribed it with two, (a combination of g and w), EVA transcribes it with three characters, meant to represent c, g, and Z. While I prefer Currier’s representation of the G as a single glyph, there is logic in the First Study Group’s combination of g and w, since both are very common glyphs in their own right. Occurrences of Z as a single glyph are very rare indeed, and no other transcription divided the extremely common glyph w into two parts, c and Z as they occur in the EVA transcription. EVA also transcribes the very common W glyph as a combination of 2 and Z, when in fact 2 is a standalone glyph that has little to do with the construction of W in this sense. The Voynich combined form X does exist, as does the form x, but these differences are ignored in the EVA transcription. This transcription seeks to encode these differences in common Voynich glyphs.

Voynich Glyph Construction Theory . . . . . ”It is my feeling that we need not look beyond the system of Latin abbreviations, familiar to all learned men of the Middle Ages and Renaissance throughout Europe, combined with early forms of Arabic numerals and some common alchemical and astrological symbols, to find the inspiration for the design of the Voynich script.” M.E. D’Imperio

I couldn’t agree more with any statement made by any other Voynichologist, but the fact remains that esoteric theories of glyph origination and construction still abound. Tiltman’s ‘Chinese Theory’ is still out there, and the belief that the Voynich is a representation of some unknown language is very much alive and well. I hold to the opinion that the Voynich is a manufactured script, hiding some underlying cryptographic system. Those who view the Voynich from this position have little difficulty comparing this script to known stenographic systems and artificial cryptographic alphabets. The alphabets outlined in Trithemius, Agrippa, Vigenere and Porta have common elements, namely the fact that they are a set of symbols that are variations of a base set of glyphs. An alphabet tableau from Porta’s ‘De Furtivus Literarum Notis Vulgo. De Ziferis’, reproduced on the following page, provides a visual example of the human tendency to create glyph variations based on singular forms. The Voynich script is in my estimation not very different in construction from the artificial alphabets found in these books, with the exception that it appears to be more tachygraphically based than any known artificial alphabet. It would be nice to be able to break down the construction of the Voynich glyphs into three sets, simple, compound and combination, but the line is not always clear on which is which. Since the actual intention of the author may not be entirely clear, this theory should be considered but one attempt at drawing the lines of definition, and as with any beginning theory, the room for improvement is a very large room indeed!

(A page from Porta’s “De Furtivus Literarum Notis Vulgo”.)

Simple Strokes A mere two strokes appear to form the basis for the majority of Voynich glyphs, these being the c and the ' strokes. Since these two also stand individually, they are to be considered simple glyphs and not just strokes. The c glyph stands at the base of other glyphs, those being a, e, o, 8, 9 and 2. The ' glyph stands at the base of only two glyphs, the N and the s. All but the 8 are formed by adding a simple stroke. The 8 adds a loop, or perhaps it is a combination of glyphs, the c and the e. One other glyph appears to be used to form the ‘gallows’ characters, this being the 4 glyph with a loop attached. There are two basic forms of the gallows glyphs, the i and the g. These forms are modified on the left side to create the h and f glyphs. Compound glyphs From the two simple glyphs c and ' come the compound set a, e, o, 2, 8, 9, N, and s, to which may be added the w glyph, the only standard compound glyph in this set containing three strokes instead of two. The 4 glyph generates the standard set 4, i , h, g and f. There is some discussion whether the string 4o isn't a single glyph comprised of a combination of the 4 and the o. While it does appear almost exclusively at the beginning of a word, its occurrence doesn’t appear to be any higher than that of the strings 89 or oe. Transcribing the string 4o as two characters does allow for a global change to a single character if necessary, which allows for alternate readings of this set of glyphs. Variations A wide range of variations exist for most compound glyphs, and sometimes those variations appear to be dependent on where the glyph is located within the Voynich word or line. It has been noted for instance, that the g and f glyphs appear a very high percentage of the time in the first line of a paragraph, but very rarely in the body. One is tempted to conclude that these are variant forms of the i and h glyphs. The simple glyph ' when located in the middle of a word appears as a ', but at the end of a word appears with a tail, thus N. This tail at the end of words may be an artistic embellishment having little or nothing to do with the meaning of the glyph itself. Cases in point would be the combination sets c, C, and D. When D ends a word, it almost always has a tail, d. The same is true of the combination sets ', u, and U found in the middle of words. One is tempted to conclude that these are no different than the N, n, and

m glyphs found at the end of words. an 8 in the middle of a word many times appears as an * at the end, and there are probably a few more examples I’ve omitted. Combinations From many of the standard glyphs come sets of combination glyphs. c generates C, D, and d. c combinations also include characters such as @. ' generates u, U, n, m, and N, and when combined with the s glyph generates S and t. Another similar series is generated with the * glyph. When the ' is added, we get glyphs such as p and P. The w glyph has a set of combination glyphs all its own. This glyph gives us the variations W, x X Y y and also z and Z. (There is one occurrence on folio 1v of the glyph ¡.) When combined with the gallows glyphs we get I, H, G and F. As is to be expected in a handwritten and laboriously composed document, many minor variations of these standard glyphs are present in the Voynich. Some wierdos are probably errors or corrections, and others may indeed have altered meaning. As D’Imperio suggested, this transcription differs little from others in that it embodies the above theory of construction, but steps have been taken to encode enough information to allow for easy global changes in the event another Voynichologist wishes to test another approach.

What follows are the current assignments for the A-Voynich Transcription, which, while incomplete at this point, demonstrates the current methods of transcription, and invites others to offer criticism designed to improve on this model.

A-Voynich Glyph Set Chr Code Name ! 33 Exclamation

A-V Chr Code Name = 61 Equals 

A-V 

“

34

Double quote



>

62

Greater than



#

35

Hash



?

63

Question mark

?

$

36

Dollar



@

64

At sign

%

37

Percent



A

65

A



&

38

Ampersand



B

66

B



‘

39

Apostrophe



C

67

C

C

(

40

Open bracket



D

68

D

D

)

41

Close bracket



E

69

E



*

42

Asterisk

*

F

70

F

F

+

43

Plus sign



G

71

G

G

,

44

Comma



H

72

H

H

-

45

Minus sign



I

73

I

I

.

46

Period



J

74

J

J

/

47

Forward slash



K

75

K



0

48

Digit 0



L

76

L



1

49

Digit 1



M

77

M

M

2

50

Digit 2

2

N

78

N

N

3

51

Digit 3



O

79

O



4

52

Digit 4

4

P

80

P

P

5

53

Digit 5



Q

81

Q



6

54

Digit 6



R

82

R



7

55

Digit 7



S

83

S

S

8

56

Digit 8

8

T

84

T



9

57

Digit 9

9

U

85

U

U

:

58

Colon



V

86

V



;

59

Semicolon



W

87

W

W