The new and very high-quality images of the Voynich manuscript recently made available by the Beinecke Library at Yale reveal letters or words within and around the plants on many pages. The examples considered here are of several kinds - some appear to be Voynichese, and others are not. All examples here are composed of letters clearly distinct from the illustrations themselves - they are not worked in or otherwise concealed. Some have been difficult to see in the past because they are often on top of painted areas that appear black on older scans.
The "close-up" images shown here are at the full resolution of the MrSid images, mostly cropped to 150x200. They were exported with the Windows version of LizardTech MrSid viewer (downloads page at Lizardtech; older versions at capi.nl) running in Wine under Linux. The colors have not been manipulated.
The Voynich Manuscript is owned by Yale University's Beinecke Library, which has generously made made these images available for study. The MrSid images are mirrored at http://voynich.squeep.com/index.php?pagename=ManuscriptImageIndex, indexed by folio number.
One common symbol resembles a lower case gamma or a y. Something similar is also seen in the non-Voynichese writing at the bottom left corner of f66r. Another common symbol is the same but without the descender, to make a cursive v.
The most sensible suggestion for the significance of these notations is that they are notes for the painter, indicating which colors should be used. Some of the examples may be "g" for "grun" (green), "r" or "rot" (red), and "p" or "pu" for "purpur" (purple), if they are in German. Some information about this sort of marking is found on the Medieval Manuscript site posted by Mark Hippenstiel: The Technique of Illumination in the Middle Ages and in the Rennaisance. It would be great to see some examples of these notations from different times and countries, but this might be hard to find. These characters and the Michiton ones look like a bastarda script to me, but that's only based on some Google searching. If they are indeed notes for the painter, the painting must have obscured or wiped out most of them, since so few examples are now visible. Also, he must have failed to follow the directions some of the time, since we have several examples that didn't get painted, and multiple colors associated with what looks like "rot."
| Page | Item # | Location | Type of character | Transcription | Notes | References | Close-up image | Locator image |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| f1v | 1 | Center of green leaf below left stem | Latin? | g | Philip Neal suggests "g" for green. Vertical gouge has broken some lines. Alternatively, similar to red weirdos on f1r. |
Beinecke 1006077 |  |
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| f2r | 1 | Right edge of page, partially through a tip of middle right leaf | Voynichese | ytoailch | Already noted as a label | Beinecke 1006078 f2r.L.1 |
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| f2r | 2 | Center of lower right leaf | Voynichese | iorano(i)n | Not entirely clear. Gabriel Landini reports "ioranon" based on color decomposition. |
Beinecke 1006078 |  |
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| f4r | 1 | Inside rightmost flower | Latin capital | F | Also visible in older scans. Seems out of place! |
Beinecke 1006082 |  |
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| f4r | 2 | Inside stem | Latin? | rot? | Also visible in older scans Philip Neal suggests "rot" for red. |
Beinecke 1006082 |  |
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| f7r | 1 | Midway along left root | Latin? | qot? | Similar to item #1 in f9v Gabriel Landini reports "rot" (red) based on color deconvolution |
Beinecke 1006088 |  |
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| f9v | 1 | Upper left flower - large top petal | Latin? | rot ? |
Gabriel Landini reports "rot" (red) based on color deconvolution | Beinecke 1006093 |  |
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| f9v | 2 | Upper left flower - between top two petals | ? | - | ? | Beinecke 1006093 |  |
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| f9v | 3 | Upper left flower - rightmost petal | ? | - | Could also be a Voynichese "r" or a Latin "v" | Beinecke 1006093 |  |
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| f9v | 4 | Upper left flower - bottom petal | Latin? | p | Matches f20r item #1 Also matches a character that stands alone in bottom left corner of f66r |
Beinecke 1006093 |  |
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| f9v | 5 | To the right of upper right flower | Voynichese? | y | EVA "y" with a trailing twiddle? | Beinecke 1006093 |  |
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| f20r | 1 | Near the bottom center of the page, in the stem | Latin? | p | Like f9v item #4 Also matches a character that stands alone in bottom left corner of f66r |
Beinecke 1006112 |  |
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| f28v | 1 | At the center of the large flower(?) | ? | - | Is this already classified? | Beinecke 1006129 |  |
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| f29r | 1 | At the center of the roots | Latin? | r? | Somewhat like top symbol in f4r item #2. | Beinecke 1006130 |  |
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| f32r | 1 | In bulb of lower right flower | Latin? | pu? | For "purpur" (purple)? | Beinecke 1006136 |  |
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| f53v | 1 | Bottom right leaf | Voynichese? | od o ch |
Not very sharp - could be transfer of text from facing page! | Beinecke 1006179 |  |
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