Here is a scenario worth considering:
At some time during the Voynich window – the historical period of the carbon dating, roughly 1400-1440 – somebody – our author – was able to contemplate the rare and beautiful 9th C. copy of Ptolemy’s Handy Tables then in the possession of the Bishop of Brescia.
In particular, he was able to consider the puzzle posed by the Tables.
The Tables themselves, along with a list of important cities, has been extracted, in summary, from Ptolemy’s Amalgest, but the Tables contain no accompanying theoretical account of the Tables or their uses.
Instead, the theory behind the Tables has been presented as two illustrations, or an illustration and a diagram, two figures.
The illustration shows the god Helios in his sun-chariot, with the zodiac populated with nymphs.
The diagram shows the world divided into hemispheres and the circle divided into 16 equal parts.
The mystery is to explain how these figures give an account of the theory, the cosmology, underpinning the Tables.
For a reader, then, the focus of the work is the two illustrations, or figures: they are the key to the Tables.
The Tables are elegant, even lovely, in their presentation in this manuscript, and are to be admired, but the curious and the studious will dwell upon the two illustrated pages that go with the Tables.
It is believed that in the original form, these illustrations, figures, were at the beginning of the book but the sequence of pages has been disturbed in the more modern bindings.
They are, in any case, presented as keys to the text – the Ptolemaic system reduced to two illustrations.
There is a complicated history to this, of course, and there are studies showing how this “summary” deviates from Ptolemy and includes other perspectives.
The diagram of 16 parts is somewhat enigmatic, and by one recent study (Un diagramme cosmologique du Vaticanus graecus 1291, by Anne Tihon
in Byzantion; Revue Internationale des Études Byzantines · September 2022) it contains remnants of an extremely ancient cosmology.
And what of the nymphs? And the Nubian nymphs?
The two illustrations, together, present a solar-based cosmology, but it is odd and open to interpretation.
Over the centuries there had been considerable speculation about the relationship of the Handy Tables to Ptolemy’s work, and how to reconcile them.
As I say, during our historical window – let’s say the 1430s – our author has viewed this manuscript, now known as Vaticanus graecus 1291, and has dutifully contemplated the meaning of the two illustrations – the Handy Table Figures.
This means he must have had a private viewing of manuscript, then a prized item in the illustrious book collection of the Bishop of Brescia.
And/or, he had regular access to the manuscript, although one viewing would be sufficient to see and learn the two illustrations that are in question.
* * *
This strikes me as a possible scenario for the genesis of the Voynich manuscript.
The Voynich manuscript, its cosmology and its language too, arises from the contemplation of the Handy Table Figures.
It is possible to see much of the work stemming from this initial inspiration.
To explain and extend the scenario:
Our author has devoted considerable time to developing an interpretation of the Handy Table Figures of Ptolemy and has subsequently extended and demonstrated his interpretation in a practical format.
He has worked out the system of the Handy Tables and has put it into practice.
Most importantly, the Voynich text – the script, the language - has been developed to give expression to the system. It is a cosmological language.
This is already suggested in the illustrations.
Specifically, a system of script based upon the gallows glyphs as markers of the solstitial axis takes its inspiration from these illustrations.
Similarly, the process by which the script unfolds from the gallows glyphs – the cosmogenesis of the language – is based upon the T & O symbol taken from the Handy Table Figures.
* * *
The parts of the Voynich text that do not seem amenable to being extracted from an inspired encounter with the Handy Tables are:
*the herbs,
*the terrestrial (non-zodiacal) nymphs,
*the pharmacology sections.
This would conform to my wider reading of the work where the motive for the creation of the manuscript was, in the first instance, pharmacological - drawing upon an indigenous (alpine) herbal tradition (and its nymph-lore).
In that case, this Ptolemaic cosmology – reconstructed from the Handy Tables – has been applied to that project.
For the most part, it seems, it has been applied to the meteorology and the hydrology of a particular landscape.
Most likely, I conjecture, the glyph-set designed for this purpose has been applied to a set of astrological volvelles or a planispherical astrolabe.
The text has been generated using these volvelles, presumably in meaningful manipulations of the generating instrument.
R.B.
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