Where are the numbers?

Where are the numbers? This strikes me as a key question. In all the voluminous chatter about the Voynich manuscript and its text, it is a question rarely asked. Let us put it this way:

Is it likely that the subject matter of the work requires numbers?

Answer: Yes it is. On the evidence of the illustrations there are astrological and calendrical pages as well as what seem like herbal recipes. It is very likely that sections of the work refer to matters that involve coordinates, counts of days or months, and quantities.

And yet, as it appears, there are no numbers in the text or on the diagrams. That is, there is no numeral set distinct from the text’s glyph set. In particular, there are no Roman numerals nor Arabic numerals, nor Greek numeration, these being the numeral sets we might expect to appear.

There are some scripts, of course, that use letters as numbers, or else numbers are written out in full without a distinct number notation.

What is the case in the Voynich manuscript?

There have been proposals that the text is, in fact, numbers, and that the text consists entirely of mathematical elements and is not a language at all.

Others point out, more reasonably, that some of the glyphs in the Voynich glyph set are identifiable as numbers in other glyph systems. Even to the untrained eye there are forms that look like Arabic numerals: 4, 8, 9. And then there are sequences of the letter [i] – series of backslashes: \\\ that resemble Latin counting. In fact, the way the glyph set is constructed might very well be described as a set of numbers as much as a set of letters.

In any case, since the subject matter strongly suggests there will be numbers, there must be some way for the text to write numbers. But, evidently, it is indistinguishable from the rest of the text. Are some of the words numbers? Is this why we can have sequences of repetition in the text like [dain dain dain]?

Studies and proposed solutions to the Voynich text rarely address this question. They routinely assume the entire text consists of words (vords). But where, in those words, are the numbers? Perhaps this is a major obstacle to understanding the text – at least some of it is numbers, not words?

Again: it is very unlikely that a work on herbalism, the preparation of herbal tonics, moon cycles and other astrological matters does not include numbers as counting, measures and calculations. Any account of the Voynich text must give an explanation as to how the text handles numbers.

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As it happens, by my own interpretation of the work, it is very much about measures and numbers. One of the keys to the text is the depiction of the mountain nymphs measuring. They are shown holding various measuring devices, the simplest being a stick to measure water depth:

This is what the nympha are depicted doing: they measure and regulate the mountain waters in relation to the wider cosmos. On my reading of the manuscript, this is largely what the work is about. I therefore expect the text to include a high proportion of numbers and for the glyph set to accommodate a wide use of numbers.

R. B.