By Sherri Mastrangelo, 20 September, 2025.
Looking at the vertical list on 66r, I wondered if these pattern was repeated elsewhere, and also if any other pages showed a vertical pattern.
The first repetition that jumped out at me, is the “490” that occurs vertically using the first characters of each paragraph.
Let’s look at some examples:
How many of these before it would be considered a pattern? Six more?
We’re at 14 pages (15 examples), then three more on 79v, shown below:
So 18 examples total in 15 pages I believe.
Could this tell us anything about the pattern of a cipher? Or which characters are substituted for others on other pages?
The next step would be to summarize the starting characters of each line for the whole manuscript. With the pages a little out of order it’s hard to see if a pattern stretches across pages, but I’m working on the page order for a separate post.
Below find a few more of the starting character patterns I’ve observed. These are not a comprehensive collection, as I’m still making my way through the text.
Do you think these repetitions are just a byproduct of so many similar words and characters? Or is it alluding to something more?