In a previous post I considered the relationship between the script and the text. See here.
The question was whether the script is unique to the text. In that post I rehearsed various arguments for and against. In the end, on the weight of pros and cons, I argued for its uniqueness. I came to this conclusion:
The peculiar nature of the script seems apiece with the peculiar nature of the text itself. Both display tight design principles applied with quite rigid system. It seems likely that they are the products of the same mind. This leads me to conclude: the mind that composed the text also designed the script.
The relevant criterion, in that case, was “tight design principles applied with quite rigid system.”
When we look at the design of the script we see that it is carefully constructed. So too, I argued then, are the words (vords) that constitute the Voynich language. Very likely, I figured, they are the product of the same mind and are made to go together.
The question is whether the script is multi-lingual or mono-lingual. The Roman script is an example of a multi-lingual script. The same script serves many languages. The Arabic script is another example. If we see Arabic letters it doesn’t automatically indicate Arabic: it could indicate Persian, or Ottoman Turkish, or other languages that have adopted the Arabic script.
But there are mono-lingual scripts. If we see something written in the Armenian script, we know it is Armenian.The script is specific to that language. Ditto, in the main, Hebrew. Is this the case with the Voynich script? Is it specific to this language?
My conclusion now, after further consideration around this matter, is an emphatic yes. There is strong evidence, I would say, that the script has been designed for purpose: it is made for the Voynich language and it is unique to the Voynich manuscript.
This is because of the nature of the design in both cases, script and language. Not only are they both carefully constructed as a general observation, but they are constructed towards the same end: mutability. Both script and language are designed according to the same principle. They surely go together.
The conclusion arises, inadvertently, from the studies conducted by T. Timm. He demonstrates two things:
1. The language – or the lexicon - is highly mutable. We find permutations of vords. Vords run in series, or families, exhausting all the possible, permitted variants. There are rules and complexities to the formation of valid permutations, certainly, (more than Timm allows) but there is overwhelming evidence of a SYSTEMATIC LEXICON – combinatorics - where vords mutate through a range of possibilities. The entire lexicon is like this.
2. The script is designed to be highly mutable and to allow one letter to change into another at a quill stroke. There is a simple principle afoot: letters that look similar are, by function, designed to be interchangeable. This, moreover, accommodates point (1.) above. The permutations we see in vords, in the lexicon, are easily accomplished because the script is designed for them.
This means that the script and the text are part of the same design, the same scheme, the same system. The script has not been made for sundry purposes. It has very specifically been made for writing this text, the vords in this lexicon. Its very purpose is to render this lexicon.
We have: a system of glyphs in which some easily mutate into others (at a quill stroke) serving a lexicon in which vords – entries in the lexicon - easily mutate into others (at a quill stroke.) There is mutuality. The script and the language are inseperable.
But not, surely, for the reasons T. Timm proposes, namely in the service of a rather overblown hoax done by the text copying itself. His conclusion fails, in the end, because he is forced to dismiss the illustrations as “fanciful”, merely decorations to make the text more attractive to a potential buyer. That is, he gives no good account of the illustrations – in what is, after all, an abundantly illustrated work. Any full account of the manuscript must give a worthy account of the illustrations, and most hoax hypothese fail to do so.
But that aside, the observed phenomena could have many explanations. There is nothing wrong with Timm’s data and observations, but his autophagy hypothesis – the self-eating text – begs for an alternative interpretation.
It is important, though, to establish the nexus between the script and the text, or more correctly the lexicon. (It is more a lexicon, not a language.) It is not a case of a preexisting script having been adapted to a new purpose. Instead, the script has been designed specifically to write this language. It is designed to accommodate the permutations required by a lexicon of highly mutable vords.
Or is it the other way around? Is it that the lexicon expnds and explores the innate possibilities of the script? Certainly, there are so-called “keys” here and there in the manuscript where the script is privileged and the glyphs appear to have inherent values and associations, symbolic and not merely linguistic. This might suggest that the script is primary, and it is not merely utilitarian. In that case, the lexicon of vords made from the glyphs might be better understood as having been extrapolated from the script. The script is not just a neat and convenient vehicle for the lexicon. Rather, the lexicon serves the script in what we might describe as some ‘Qabbalistic’ manner.
An example: there is somewhere a webpage devoted to the idea that the 17 x 4 (or 18 x 4) letters on page f57v represent the 72 letter Name of God. A lexicon extrapolated systematically from that Great Divine Name would then mean that vords are Divine Names or Divine attributes. This would be a case where the lexicon serves the script. The Letters are primary. The lexicon is an extension, an actualisation of the possibilities inherent in the alphabet. That would be a scenario in which we could find such a tight nexus between script and lexicon without resorting to the idea that the text is devouring itself.
R. B.
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