Page f69r

[f68v1]  [index]  [f69v]

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 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 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 W).
  There is no obvious starting place.

  Surrounding the central disk is a band of text (unit 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 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 cup 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

  cup 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.]

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