Among medieval manuscripts there is a huge literature consisting of books of tables. There are volume after hefty volume of various types of tables, calendrical, astronomical and so forth.
On the whole it is not a well studied literature. Such works are not glamorous, are tedious in themselves, and critical editions require that every entry in the tables be checked.
The most popular form of this literature were the so-called 'Handy Tables' - abridged editions used for common purposes.
The 'Handy Tables' of Ptolemy, the Canones of Ptolemy, is a notable work in that genre.
It consists of a set of easy-to-consult abridged tables for planetary, and soli-lunar, cycles.
In the Ptolemaic system each of these cycles has a fixed and constant value, which provides only an approximation of how the heavens operate.
To this must be added an adjustment. It is a complex calculation, but in the 'Handy Tables' it is reduced to simple arithmetic.
The Tables are used to quickly and easily calculate the actual (adjusted) positions of the Sun, Moon and planets.
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The edition of the Canones relevant to our studies is a beautiful volume from the ninth century, Carolingean.
It is believed to be a copy, or be based upon, an earlier, lost work, probably from the fourth century, Late Antiquity. The illustrations in the work, such as a miniature of Helios that possibly prefaced the work originally, seem based upon authentic Hellenistic models.
It is valuable, therefore, for the antiquity of its content.
In form, the original Canones (Handy Tables) bears comparison to the Horararium (Temple of the Winds) in Roman civil life. It is a one-stop-shop for all things calendrical and astronomical, but in text rather than in public architecture.
It was widely circulated and widely used. Ptolemy's calculations were accurate enough for all general purposes up until the modern era. It was a very useful work to own.
In the Middle Ages, in both Christendom and Islam, it served as the model for other 'Handy Tables'.
The Carolingean edition - now Vaticanus graecus 1291 - is the edition nearest to the ancient original.
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I contend that the Voynich author knows Vaticanus graecus 1291 and that the Carolingean Canones has served as the direct inspiration for the Voynich manuscript, including its text.
In particular, the work draws upon the Helios minature and from this extrapolates a solar cosmology.
My present explorations of the text, of Voynichese, suggest it is a system of astrological notation.
This would follow if it is not only inspired by but more thoroughly modelled on the Canones.
And it suggests that our text may in fact be a record of astrological readings set out, not in tabular form, but in a quasi-linguistic form.
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Here is an observation to be made of the Canones in relation to the Voynich text.
There is a glyph (letter) in the Greek tables that strongly resembles a benched gallows such as found in the Voynich.
Apart from the resemblance, it is used in a way very reminiscent of how the gallows glyphs are used in the Voynich text. It heads sections. It is used as an initial and a header glyph at the start and top of distinct sections of the tables.
(Oddly, I have not seen this noted before. I have seen a lot of discussion about pilcrows and paragraph markers in Latin texts, and so forth, but here in the Canones of Ptolemy is a very similar textual phenomenon. It is puzzling, frankly, that it has not been the focus of lengthy discussion over the years. Or have I missed it?)
Might this not be the model that suggested the gallows - and benched gallows - as a system marking the units we call 'paragraphs'?
The paragraphs in our text, then, correspond to sections of the Tables, or distinct units of astrological readings.
I will place this evidence, and rehearse the other evidence that our author has been inspired by the Canones, in another post.
R.B.
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