The Voynich Manuscript/F67v2

One idea concerning the collections of faces in the corners is they may represent planetary conjunctions. Astronomical research has revealed that such configurations do indeed occur. While providing specific dates, they do not help date the manuscript, as they occurred in both the 15th and 16th Centuries.

An interpretation of the folio is that the conjunctions were observed from the central point while the Sun or Moon was setting (or rising) over the trees.

Here are some of the alignment dates:

NW  Mercury, Venus, Jupiter (Virgo) 29 August 1554
NE  Mercury, Venus, Mars, Saturn  (Taurus/Aries) 17 April 1588
SE  Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter (Leo/Cancer) 10 July 1577
SW  ?

Red Ink

Jorge Stolfi discusses the red ink on this page at http://www.dcc.unicamp.br/~stolfi/voynich/99-12-15-f67-reds/ . I have a couple of comments on this document.

First he mentions "The shadow is painted red in seven of the moons, and light yellow in the other five." Looking at the more recently available SIDs provided by the Beinecke (2004) I'm of the opinion that this yellow is a thinner "wash" of the same color used in the non-red text. In fact it is difficult to distinguish the color from some of the fainter letters.

As far as the red ink goes, my non-expert opinion based on the high quality scans now available are that they are all the same ink painted at the same time.

However, I'm not so sure that the red ink was necessarily applied at the same time as the rest of the text.

Firstly there has been some discussion about the sloppiness of some of the painting. In the "moons" on this page neither the red nor the "yellow" fillins are very neat.

In the case of the lighter color overpainting I believe that the overpainting was applied after the outline had dried. This theory is based on the appearance of where the overpainting overlaps the outline and produces and "additive" darkening effect. However this could be no more than minutes after the outline was drawn so perhaps doesn't say much.

I considered the possibility that the red text was an overpainting of earlier brown "original" text. I can't find much evidence for this theory though:

At the upper right there seems to be a brown dot between two of the words. Dirt?

At the upper left there seems to be a brown dot above one of the words. I'm inclined to think this brown does not quite match the primary text color though. In fact looking back at the first dot I'm inclined to think that it matches the color of this dot and not the primary text color either.

Against this theory is the fact that in some places the red text is rather thin. Perhaps the brush was nearly dry. In those cases I can see no evidence of an "additive" darkening from an underlying brown text, faint or not.

Another random note: What thought has been given to the pattern in the outer band? At first glance it seems to be decorative, but it is fairly complex and not entirely repetitive. It should be noted that this band seems to have the same "yellow" wash in a couple of places as the lighter overpainted moons. This color also appears in the center figure.

KenCausey 18:39, 12 Jul 2004 (UTC)