For the most part, constructing plausible explanations for the drawings in the Voynich Manuscript is a fairly straightforward exercise. Given the strange rotating designs machines? The words inside the roadway when there are some also appear to be written this way except the northeast rosette by the castle. And yes, there are indeed plenty of theories about this page! In , Patrick Lockerby proposed that the central rosette might well be depicting Baghdad which, along with Milan and Jerusalem, was one of the few medieval cities consistently depicted as being circular.
Also in , P. Kronborg Slot was extensively remodelled in , burnt down in and then rebuilt: but I wonder whether it had swallowtail merlons when it was built in the s? All in all, I suspect that the nine-rosette page will continue to stimulate theories and debate for some time yet! Apologies to Nick for my ignorance of his priority. As an aside, I started out just trying to cover a couple of theories, but the page just grew and grew⦠oh, well.
Just not sure how long it has been known in Voynich studies. What are the rune-like Hebrewy characters in the middle-top and middle-middle images? Can we have a much closer look please?
Nothing to get excited about! A good collection of theories⦠and thanks for the mention of the 3D Rosettes. On that page I show and compare other Utopias and how they were illustrated⦠IMHO, very similarly to how the Rosettes is laid out, in many ways.
A lot of the comments seem to me to be attempting to guess what an individual meant to express by the drawing. I think that this is perhaps not the angle of approach for a drawing set down in the early 15thC. If you think of the drawings less as a means of personal expression, and more as an alternative, and formal, system of communication, then the stylistic features are as telling of their period and context as a variant form of handwriting is.
