VM408 folio86v ‘The Rosette Map’: Elements of a mappa mundi and a map of the Elements

Abstract

The Rare Manuscript Library at Yale keeps MS408 which is better known as the Voynich Manuscript named after Wilfried M Voynich, who rediscovered it in an Italian monastery in 1912. This manuscript comprises a collection of folios with yet undeciphered text and multi-facetted images. Amongst these are depictions of plants highlighting a botanical or pharmaceutical background, nude women and astrological imageries. Historians and Laymen alike have tried to understand its images and texts over the hundred years since its rediscovery. Many attempts using different techniques to unravel its coding were made, however, to no avail. The continuing unsuccessful attempts to unravel the contents even led to a hypothesis that the Voynich manuscript ‘must’ be fake, based on textual and statistical analysis (1). Rugg provided a way and technique to fake-produce a ‘senseless’ manuscript seemingly effortlessly in a very short time in the style of the Voynich manuscript (2). The question of when this manuscript was produced has also been widely discussed, and remained unresolved so far. A recent chemical analysis based on radio carbon dating sets the date of production of the parchment in the early 15th century (1408-1434) (3). This date was previously predicted by N. Pelling’s independent approaches and evidence based on details in the images in the manuscript. N. Pelling’s book provides an exhaustive amount of details on the Voynich manuscript (4). Of the multitude of sections with botanical, astrological or pharmaceutical imagery one section did not catch the attention and focus so far: The Rosette Map (f86v), named by Mary d’Imperio according to its appearance (5) is one of the most intriguing but also most neglected area of the manuscript. Plenty of speculations exist for the display of details of individual geographic locations in the Rosette Map (Venice, Naples, Pompeii, Tuscan Renaissance gardens), however, no cohesive analysis of the entire map has been published to date. Cartographic depiction of geographic locations in medieval maps was achieved with so-called mappae mundi. These vary in many details (e.g. size, shape, orientation, captions) depending on their use. Huge maps for visualisation and for purposes of presentation e.g. the Hereford map or the