Eighteen?

Many close studies of the Voynich contribute nothing to its clarification. On the contrary, many studies do nothing more than compound the general impression that the manuscript is strange. Yes, we know it is strange: we don't really need a thousand more examples of its strangeness. The studies that are valuable are those that point to system and coherence in the work, rather than just adding to the catalogue of weird and unaccountable features. 

Here is an example of a useful observation:

It is generally conceded that the diagram on page f57v must be significant. It shows a sequence of letters and glyphs repeated four times around a circle. It is taken to be some sort of alphabetic key.

But are there seventeen or eighteen letter/glyphs in the sequence? Most people count seventeen, but one of the glyphs appears to be doubled. Is this one or two letters?

In one of its presentations it seems to be clearly made of two letters that are joined by a ligature:

Although the ligature joins smoothly in one case, in the others we can see that two distinct letter forms have been joined together:

Reinforcing this impression is that, spatially, this glyph takes up the space of two glyphs in the sequence. Although the glyph is joined as one, it occupies the space of two glyphs. It appears to be a double letter, or a single letter that has appropriated an extra loop that occupies the space of another glyph.

It is arguable, therefore, that there are eighteen glyphs in the sequence, not seventeen, or at least seventeen glyphs occupying eighteen spaces with one of them double.

This is assuredly odd, and the joined letter form is odd, and having a double letter spread across two spaces would be odd, but this is an odd manuscript full of odd things. This type of ambiguity - is it seventeen or eighteen? - is entirely typical of the manuscript as we find it.

It has no doubt been noted before, that the same ambiguity is explicit on page f67v. Here we see a sunburst set heliocentrically among the stars apparently divided into loose constellations. But how many sunrays are there?

There are eighteen, but two of them are very explicitly cojoined.

So, while there are eighteen rays, two of them act together as one. We can thus count them as seventeen or eighteen:

This appears to be a very deliberate ambiguity in this case, and it is the same ambiguity - seventeen or eighteen, or both? - that we encounter on page f57v.

It is difficult to extrapolate between pages in the Voynich ms. but in this case I think that the sunburst on f67v - demonstrating a deliberate ambiguity between seventeen and eighteen - adds weight to reading the letter sequences on f57v as eighteen units each. The relevant maths of the circles on that page is therefore 4 x 18, but in each set there is a double letter, two letters cojoined into a single form. 

It is entirely redundant to say we cannot be certain of this. Of course we cannot be certain of it! Everything we say about the Voynich ms. is a guess. But there are educated and well-founded guesses, and then there are wild and baseless guesses. It is a well-founded guess that these two pages, 57v and 67v, share the same system.

R. B.