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The Voynich MS - Table of Contents

Brief introduction

This is the Table of Contents primarily of the core section of this site. In addition, further down is a table of contents of part of the reference section. These terms are explained at the site map. There is a separate Table of Contents for the so-called additional material.

Section titles ending with » can be accessed directly by clicking on the title.
 

Core section

The Voynich Manuscript »

Welcome...
The executive summary
Organisation of this wb site »
More help in finding your way

Description of the Voynich MS »

General description »
The writing »
The illustrations »
Collation and terminology »
Foliation »
Missing folios »
Theodore Petersen's numbering »
Quire marks »
Formal collation
Visual collation »
About the binding of the MS »

Analysis of the illustrations »

Introduction
Illustrations by section of the Manuscript
Herbal illustrations »
Astronomical illustrations »
Cosmological illustrations »
Zodiac illustrations »
Biological illustrations »
Pharmaceutical illustrations »
Text-only with marginal stars »
Text-only »
Illustration details »
Animals
The Sun
The Moon
Stars, Constellations
T-O maps
Christian imagery
Objects held by people»
Miscellaneous
Possible relation between illustrations and text

The origin of the Voynich MS »

Introduction
A word on terminology »
When and how was the Voynich MS produced
The materials »
The order in which the MS was produced »
Collation of the MS »
Folio and quire numbering »
Missing folios »
The current vs. original page order »
Some special cases »
Tentative reconstruction »
How long did it take to write the MS »
Where lies the origin of the Voynich MS »
Hints from the illustrations in the MS
Extraneous writing »
Some more annotations on the MS
The place of origin according to some theories
Who was the author of the Voynich MS »
Author / scribe
Does the text of the Voynich MS have any meaning?
What else can we deduce about the author(s)?
The author according to some theories »

The history of the Voynich MS »

Introduction
Overview
The earliest history of the MS
The road to Prague
The John Dee hypothesis »
Who brought the MS to Prague? »
Karl Widemann »
The Bohemian period after Rudolf II »
Jacobus Horčický de Tepenec »
The unknown owner
The next (previously unknown) owner: Barschius »
Johannes Marcus Marci of Kronland »
The Roman period »
Athanasius Kircher and the Voynich MS »
The Collegium Romanum and its Museum »
The vicissitudes of the Society of Jesus »
Second suppression of the Society, 1873 »
The English / American period
Wilfrid M. Voynich enters the stage »
After the death of Wilfrid Voynich »

History of research of the Voynich MS »

Introduction
Overview
The earliest research
Barschius »
Mnisovsky »
Marci »
Kircher »
Back to the 20th century: Wilfrid Voynich »
Newbold and Manly »
The Catholic University of America
Theodore C. Petersen »
Theodor Holm
Hugh O'Neill »
Some science and art historians
Erwin Panofsky »
Richard Salomon »
Charles Singer »
The end of the Roger Bacon cipher MS
Other researchers
Feely
Strong
William and Elizebeth Friedman »
First Study Group
Second Study Group
John Tiltman »
The 1970's
Robert S. Brumbaugh
William Ralph Bennett
Jeffrey Krischer
Mary E. D'Imperio »
Prescott Currier »
A.G. Watson
John Stojko
Leo Levitov
Child
Modern research »
Jorge Stolfi
Gordon Rugg
Nick Pelling
Andreas Schinner
Edith Sherwood
Web logs (blogs)
100 years of Voynich MS
More statistical analyses
More recent proposed solutions
More forensic and expert investigations
Yale photo facsimile of the MS

Text analysis - the Writing System »

Introduction
Text and Layout »
Main text writing
Labels »
Titles »
Text in circles »
Character or word sequences »
Non-sequential writing
The character set »
Latin abbreviations »
The so-called gallows characters »
Alchemical symbols
14th and 15th Century cipher
Initials
Rare characters
The handwriting »
General
Currier's Hands »
Recent developments - Lisa Fagin Davis »
Apparent lack of corrections »
Extraneous writing »
Folio and Quire numbers
Month names in the zodiac section »
Apparent colour annotations »
Other 'plain text' writing
Mixed writings in or near margins
Other
Overview of additional or extraneous writing »

Text Analysis - Transliteration of the Text »

Introduction
Purpose and terminology
History
FSG »
Bennett »
Currier »
Transliteration in the age of the WWW
Frogguy »
Landini-Zandbergen: Eva »
Takeshi Takahashi »
The interlinear transliteration file »
v101 »
Summary - Status around 2017
Achievements
Problem areas
Common transliteration file format »
Superset of all transliteration alphabets »
Introduction
Main problems to resolve
The resulting alphabet
Usage of the STA alphabet and STA-encoded files
Location of main transliteration resources »

Analysis of the text »

Introduction
Text Analysis: Table of Contents

(1/5) - Introduction »

1.1 General »
1.2 Currier languages »
1.3 Entropy »
1.4 Zipf's laws »
1.5 Hidden Markov Modelling »
1.6 Other tools »
1.6.1 Cluster Analysis »
1.6.2 Sukhothin's various methods »
1.6.3 Long-range correlations »

(2/5) - Character statistics »

2.1 Introduction
2.2 Observations in the printed literature
2.3 Character frequencies
2.4 Entropy »
2.6 Vowel/consonant detection »
2.6 Hidden Markov Modelling »
2.7 Other material
2.7.1 Line-initial/final and word initial/final character properties
2.7.2 Location of gallows (and other) characters

(3/5) - Word structure »

3.1 Introduction
3.1.1 Tiltman's split in roots and suffixes
3.1.2 Mike Roe's generic word
3.1.3 Robert Firth's split into odd and even groups
3.2 Jorge Stolfi's ground-breaking work
3.2.1 Split into 'soft' and 'hard' characters
3.2.2 Fine structure
3.2.3 Word grammar
3.3 Hidden Markov Modelling
3.4 Summary »

(4/5) - Word statistics »

4.1 Introduction
4.2 Observations in printed literature at the word level
4.3 Are word spaces significant?
4.4 Are words really words?
4.5 Word frequencies
4.6 Word length distribution
4.7 Word entropy »
4.8 Zipf's laws »
4.9 Other material

(5/5) - Sentences, paragraphs, sections »

5.1 Introduction
5.2 Observations in printed literature at syntax level
5.3 Repeating Phrases
5.4 Cluster analysis of the MS text »
5.4.1 Older work, mostly page-based
5.4.2 Topic modeling
5.5 Long-range correlations
5.5.1 The Letter Serial Correlation analysis
5.5.2 Long-range correlations by Gabriel Landini
5.5.3 The work of Amancio et al.
5.6 Other analyses
5.6.1 Andreas Schinner »
5.6.2 Word permutation analysis by Marke Fincher
5.6.3 Reddy and Knight
5.6.4 University of Adelaide

Epilogue (part 1) - my views »

Introduction, or: what is it about the Voynich MS, really…
The text…
What does a good solution look like
More generally about solutions
Assumptions
What I believe
General
Origin, time
Origin, place
Author(s)
Who, why?
More about the MS history
The meaning of the Voynich MS
Plain text, cipher or meaningless
The word structure
The overall meaning of the MS
What I think should be done next »
What has already been done
Expertise
Availability of information
Tools »
Frequently asked questions »

Epilogue (part 2) - towards the solution of the MS »

Foreword
Introduction
Facts: what we know, what we think, and what we think we know »
The origin of the MS
The text
Anything else?
Features »
Summary
More about the text
Another feature: corrections
List of topics »
Classification of solutions of the MS text »
Introduction
Approach
Analysis
The complete tree structure
What we may learn from the MS text entropy »
Introduction

 
 

Reference Section

The Voynich MS - Bibliography and references »

Introduction »
Libraries including collections of material related to the Voynich MS »
Foreword
The Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library of Yale University »
The Grolier club in New York »
The George C. Marshall Library in Lexington (Va.) »
Internet resources »
Foreword
Discussion boards »
Wikis »
Sites and blogs with general information »
Herb identification »
Some proposed text solutions »
Bibliography and References »

The Voynich MS - Archive material »

Introduction
Primary material »
The Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library of Yale University »
The Grolier Club in New York »
The British Library (formerly British Museum) »
The George C. Marshall Library in Lexington (Va.) »
Penn University »
The New York Public Library
Archives of American Art
J. Paul Getty Center for the History of Art and the Humanities
The New York Academy of Medicine Library
The NSA Historical Records Collection
Secondary archive material »
Introduction
Österreichishes Staatsarchiv ("B") »
National Library of the Czech Republic ("B")
Strahov Library ("B")
Historial Archives of the Gregorian University in Rome ("R") »
Roman archive of the Society of Jesus ("R")
National Library of Italy in Rome ("R")
Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana ("R")

The Voynich MS - Biographies »

1. Introduction
(A) Leonhard Rauwolf »
(B) Karl Widemann »
(C) Rudolf II »
(D) Jacobus Horčický de Tepenec »
(E) Raphael Mnišovský »
(F) Georgius Barschius (Baresch) »
(G) Johannes Marcus Marci of Kronland »
(H) Athanasius Kircher S.J. »
(J) Joseph Strickland S.J. »
(K) Wilfrid Michael Voynich »

The Voynich MS - Picture Gallery »

Gallery 1: Illustrations of the MS
Beinecke Library images »
Other sources for Voynich MS images »
Gallery 2: Portrait gallery »
Gallery 3: Locations of the MS »

 

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Copyright René Zandbergen, 2022
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Latest update: 29/12/2022