Wider gaps divide the text into about 35,000 "words" of varying length. While there is some dispute as to whether certain glyphs are distinct or not, an alphabet with 20-30 glyphs would account for virtually all of the text the exceptions are a few dozen "weird" characters that occur only once or twice each. Most of the glyphs are written with one or two simple pen strokes. The text consists of over 170,000 discrete glyphs, usually separated from each other by thin gaps. The ductus (the speed, care, and cursiveness with which the letters are written) flows smoothly, as if the scribe understood what he was writing when it was written the manuscript does not give the impression that each character had to be calculated before being put on the page. Longer sections are broken into paragraphs, sometimes with "bullets" on the left margin. The text was clearly written from left to right, with a slightly ragged right margin. The "biological" section of the manuscript has dense text and illustrations showing nude women bathing. Recipes: many short paragraphs, each marked with a flower-like (or star-like) "bullet".Pharmaceutical: many labeled drawings of isolated plant parts (roots, leaves, etc.) objects resembling apothecary jars drawn along the margins and a few text paragraphs.This section also has fold-outs one of them spans six pages and contains some sort of map or diagram, with nine "islands" connected by " causeways", castles, and possibly a volcano. Cosmological: more circular diagrams, but of an obscure nature.Biological: a dense continuous text interspersed with figures, mostly showing small nude women bathing in pools or tubs connected by an elaborate network of pipes, some of them clearly shaped like body organs.Some of these diagrams are on fold-out pages. The last two pages of this section ( Aquarius and Capricorn, roughly January and February) were lost, while Aries and Taurus are split into four paired diagrams with 15 stars each.
Each symbol is surrounded by exactly 30 miniature women figures, most of them naked, each holding a labeled star.
#Voynich manuscript illustrations series#
One series of 12 diagrams depicts conventional symbols for the zodiacal constellations (two fishes for Pisces, a bull for Taurus, a soldier with crossbow for Sagittarius, etc.). Astronomical: contains circular diagrams, some of them with suns, moons, and stars, suggestive of astronomy or astrology.Some parts of these drawings are larger and cleaner copies of sketches seen in the pharmaceutical section (below). Herbal: each page displays one plant (sometimes two), and a few paragraphs of text-a format typical of European herbals of the time.The "herbal" section of the manuscript contains illustrations of plants.
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