User:Charlene M. Jett/sandbox

Charlene Likes the 1) Voynich, 2)Antikethera Mechanism and 3)Archemedes: 1)In his book Solution of the Voynich Manuscript: A liturgical Manual for the Endura Rite of the Cathari Heresy, the Cult of Isis (1987), Leo Levitov declared the manuscript a plaintext transcription of a "polyglot oral tongue".[46] This he defined as "a literary language which would be understandable to people who did not understand Latin and to whom this language could be read". His proposed decryption has three Voynich letters making a syllable, to produce a series of syllables that form a mixture of Middle Dutch with many borrowed Old French and Old High German words.[citation needed] According to Levitov, the rite of Endura was the assisted suicide ritual for people already believed to be near death, famously associated with the Cathar faith (although the reality of this ritual is also in question). He explains that the chimerical plants are not meant to represent any species of flora, but are secret symbols of the faith. The women in the basins with elaborate plumbing represent the suicide ritual itself, which he believed involved venesection: the cutting of a vein to allow the blood to drain into a warm bath. The constellations with no celestial analogue are representative of the stars in Isis's mantle.[citation needed] This theory is questioned on several grounds. First, the Cathar faith is increasingly being assaulted in Medieval studies for being a misinterpretation of Occitan customs as organized heresy, and is not generally associated with Isis. Second, this theory places the book's origins in the twelfth or thirteenth century, which is several centuries earlier than most experts believe based on internal evidence. Third, the Endura ritual involved fasting, not venesection. Levitov offered no evidence beyond his translation for this theory.[citation needed] Jim Child, a linguist of Indo-European languages, asserts that he has identified in the manuscript a "skeletal syntax several elements of which are reminiscent of certain Germanic languages", while the content itself is expressed using "a great deal of obscurity".[47]