#
# Identification:
#
#   * Title: ???
#   * Page: f69r = JA (Rene) = p129 (Stolfi)
#   * Folio: f69
#   * Panels: f69r
#   * Bifolio: bJ1 = f69+f70
#   * Quire: J (Rene) = X (Beinecke)
#
#   Color reproduction in Frank Smythe's book [1].
#
# Attributes:
#
#   * Language: ? (Currier)
#   * Hand: ? (Currier)
#   * Subsets: C (Rene), cos (Stolfi)
#   * Subject: cosmological
#   * Colors: green-blue(pipes),yellow(stars) (Reeds), blue(paired_lines),green(single) (Rene)
#
# Description:
#
#   The page contains a circular diagram, under a single paragraph 
#   (unit 程P}) with 3.9 lines.
#
#   The diagram is bounded by a faint mechanically drawn circle. Just
#   inside it is a circular band of text (unit 程C}), reading clockwise.
#   This text is divided into 16 sectors; see below for details.
#
#   Most of the area inside the diagram is occupied by a flower-like
#   figure. The core of the flower is a thin mechanically drawn
#   circle, containing a yellow-colored star with six narrow, pointed
#   arms. Each arm is decorated with three transversal pen strokes
#   near its tip.
#
#   The rays of the star divide the interior of the circle into six
#   unequal sectors, each labeled with a Voynichese letter (unit 程W}).
#   There is no obvious starting place.
#
#   Surrounding the central disk is a band of text (unit 程S}), with a
#   discernible gap at 10:00. Surrounding the text is another thin
#   mechanically drawn circle, slightly eccentric.
#
#   Sprouting from the second circle are 45 thin radial lines
#   ("stalks"), extending almost all the way to the outer text band,
#   each of them terminating in an object that looks like a shallow
#   conical cup. The inside of each "cup" is shaded with a dark green
#   paint. The "cups" touch each other, forming a continuous ring.
#
#   The 45 sectors defined by the cup stalks are alternatingly
#   "empty" and filled with 22 radial lines of text (unit 程R}),
#   reading outwards. This leaves two adjacent empty sectors at 02:00.
#   The first of these two empty sectors (going clockwise) is cut by
#   an extra radial line that passes between the two cup cups and
#   extends all the way to the outer circle. The clockwise half of
#   this sector is is decorated with abstract patterns.
#
#   Some of the "empty" sectors have a stripe of dark paint, displaced
#   to one side. Eight of the stripes are dark blue; they are arranged
#   as four pairs, approximately at 00:00, 03:00, 06:00, and 09:00.
#   The two stripes in each pair lie on consecutive "empty" sectors.
#   The remaining four stripes are green, and divide each quadrant in
#   two roughly equal parts. Going clockwise from the pair of blue
#   stripes at 03:00, the counts of cups between consecutive stripes
#   are
#
#     |2|4:4|2|4:6|2|4:6|2|4:5
#
#   Here "|" denotes a blue stripe, and ":" a green one. The 
#   decorated half-sector lies in the last gap, with only 5
#   cups.
#
#   The space between the "ring of cups" and the outer circle is
#   divided into sixteen sectors by another set of radial lines, thin
#   and wavy. These lines divide the outer band of text into sixteen
#   phrases, each containing a few whole words. One of these lines is
#   the extra radial line at 02:00, that defined the decorated band.
#   The other fifteen lines start at the cup ring, either between
#   two adjacent cups (13 cases) or at the middle of a cup (2
#   cases). These lines thus divide the "cup ring" too into
#   sections, which, clockwise from the "start marker" line contain
#
#     2, 2, 2.5, 3.5, 2, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3.5, 3.5, 3, 3, 2, 3
#
#   cups.
#
# Comments:
#
#   The "cups" may be stylized flowers.
#
#   A superficial look at the black-and-white copies may leave the
#   impression that the sectors are solid cylinders, and that the dark
#   stripes are their shadows. However that interpretation is excluded
#   when one looks closely at how the radial lines connect to the
#   "cups".
#
#   There is no obvious place to start reading the letters between the
#   arms of the central star; but if one starts at 11:00 (the smallest
#   sector) the letters spell out "dolsedy"; which may be an
#   unexpected splitting of "dolshdy", a rather common word.
#
#   The radial lines and the outer text probably start at the
#   decorated band at 02:00. On the other hand, the decorated band may
#   be just a filler addded to patch up a mistake (the attempt to fit
#   an alternating pattern into an odd number of sectors).
#
# References:
#
#   [1] Smythe, Frank. "A Script Full of Secrets" and "The Uncrackable
#   Code" in "Mysteries of Mind, Space & Time: The Unexplained", pp.
#   3062-3069. H. S. Stuttman, Inc., Westport, Connecticut, USA.
#   Copyright 1992 by Orbis Publishing, Inc. [Originally published in
#   "The Unexplained" in the UK.]
#
# Last edited on 1999-09-21 20:50:05 by stolfi