Vowels and 17

Latin Alphabet – the number 17 again

From http://latindiscussion.com/latin/alphabet/history/evolution

“Before the Renaissance, letters J and U had been merely glyph variants of I and V.
W was first used by scribes writing Old English during the 7th century AD.”

CLASSICAL LATIN ALPHABET:

(22) A B C D E F G H I L M N O P Q R S T V X Y Z

REMOVE VOWELS:

(5) A E I O V

REMAINING:

(17) B C D F G H L M N P Q R S T X Y Z

f57v

Glyphs on f57v, 3rd ring, Voyn_101 encoding – 4 sets of 17 characters each:

o.e.8.y.?.?.h.p.f.?.k.y.?.?.9.?.?.
o.e.8.y.?.?.h.p.f.?.k.y.?.?.9.?.?.
o.e.8.y.?.?.h.p.f.?.k.y.?.?.9.?.?.
o.e.8.y.?.?.h.p.f.?.k.y.?.?.9.?.?.

compare:
b.c.d.f.g.h.l.m.n.p.q.r.s.t.x.y.z.

(Glyphs marked with “?” are very rare, and occur only on f57v and one other folio.)

Latest Vowel-less Table for Genetic Algorithm results

 

Gallows

The significance of the Gallows characters

There are 19 gallows characters in Glen Caston’s Voyn_101 transcription:

Unlike the majority of standard VMs characters/glyphs, these are unusual in appearance and some appear to be composites of other gallows with the “c” and/or “cc” characters. My opinion is that the 2nd and 4th in the above set are the same, as are the 1st and 8th. This reduces the count to 17. An attractive proposition is that these are simply the capital letters in an alphabet of 17 letters. Indeed, the gallows characters often appear initially in the first word on a page. However, they also appear within VMs words, which is odd – unless a) the VMs words are not words at all, orb) they have been assembled unusually (e.g by anagramming).

The Number 17

The number 17 crops up in several places in the VMs, notably on f57v, where it is the number of characters repeating around the 3rd. circle (counting circles from the centre). If any one page of the VMs cries out to be a way in to the cipher, this must be it.