Stilts

What are the gallows glyphs in the Voynich script? The answer is obvious but rarely observed. They are elevated letters. That is to say, they are letters on stilts. Certain letter forms have been raised up to the level of superscript. They have been placed upon legs and lifted above the main text. That is the whole function of elevators, ascenders. Why are some letters taller than others in the Voynich script? Some letters have been lifted up to the level of superscript above the main level of the text. They have been put on stilts.

The plainest example is the letter <t>. At first this seems like two loops on two legs, but in fact it is the letter formation <qo> put on stilts. There are countless places in the text where this is very apparent. It is also true of the letter <p>. In both cases the left hand loop at the top of the ascender is clearly the same letter we mark as Voynich <q>. It is not a loop; it is a 45 deg. wedge like the Arabic number 4. The loop on the right is circular.

It is perfectly clear in some cases, in fact, that the left hand part of the letter <t> is the same letter as <q> but is placed differently on the line.

The letter <q> has a descending leg that goes below the rest of the text. In the gallows letters (or two of them) this glyph is repurposed and lifted up to the position of superscript above.

This can been seen throughout the manuscript, sometimes more explicitly than others:

If we block out the other letters we can see that the letter <q> and the left side of the letter <t> are the same:

What this might mean and how it works in the script and language is another matter, but in the first instance this is enough evidence to give an answer to the question: what are the gallows letters? Answer: they are letters on stilts. Their function is the lift letters up above the main level of the text. That is what letters-on-legs do. It may not mean that the gallows letters have the same value as the letters they lift up, but we can see that elevating letters is their function by design.

It is probably significant, given the above, that the common prefix <qo-> is very often followed by one of the gallows letters. Gallows? It is already a misnomer. Who names these things? 'Gallows letters' means something entirely different. It would be better, and more descriptive, to call them stilts.

R. B.