As fellow Voynich researchers may know, finding parallels for headdresses worn in the Voynich manuscript can be easy and hard at the same time. Easy, because many hats from many periods look alike, so one can, with some perseverance and eye-squinting, find a similar one in a variety of contexts. Hard because, well, for the same reason. There’s a relatively high risk of false positives.
That is why I decided to take a step back now, and make an inventory of the kinds of headgear we can see in the manuscript. Since the figures are relatively small, this is not an easy task, but I have attempted to sort them as objectively as possible.
The Hatless
Many nymphs have nothing on their heads, only hair.
That was easy! Wait… was it? For example, the nymph bottom right, is she wearing a hair net of some sorts, or is that her hairline? And the one bottom left, is she wearing some kind of hairband or diadem, or is her hair just combed sideways? At this scale, it’s hard to be certain about the details – they look much bigger on the screen than they are on the page. Luckily, some other cases are more obvious. In the following analysis, I will not specifically address the figures without headgear.
The Calendar Section
Many different kinds of hats are found around the twelve month roundels. If we look at the section as a whole, we notice something strange. In the first roundels (1, 2, 3, 4), lots of color is applied and there is a large variety of headgear. These are the nymphs that are sitting in barrels.
The fifth roundel (dark bull) has both barrel nymphs and standing ones. Here the headgear is still abundant, but hardly any color has been applied, allowing us to see more detail in the line work.
In the image below, a representative nymph has been selected for each roundel. (1) is the first one, (2) the second one and so on. This will hopefully show the reader how the headgear, and indeed the figures themselves, evolve throughout this section.
In six, seven and eight, headgear becomes rare and is, apart from some exceptions, restricted to some basic forms. The same is true for the final four roundels, but here some nymphs have gotten what I call the dark diadem. Examples are 9, 10 and 13 in the image above. It appears as if these have been added in a different pen to an existing figure. Since this is a complex feature, I will keep it for a later post.
The difference in the amount and type of paint that has been applied can make it difficult to interpret the type of headgear correctly. Let’s consider the examples below, all from various month roundels. Looking at the colorful item top left, one would think that this is a wide-brimmed hat or some kind of cushion that has been placed upon the head.
If we compare it to some unpainted examples of a similar shape, however, we notice more details. The example top right appears to be some type of turban, with bands of fabric wrapped around the head. Something similar is seen bottom right, though this example is smaller and has been colored with a clear type of paint. The nymph bottom left appears to be wearing a patterned roll of some kind. The pattern clearly suggests the curve of the material. All this leads me to believe, like many researchers before me, that the heavy paint distorts the original appearance of the imagery.
Considering the types of headgear, then, we see a number of categories. First, the crowns. These three crowns are each found in a different month roundel. It is interesting to note that two of them have been added in darker paint, while the one in the middle appears to have been drawn at the same time as the human figure. EDIT: Nick Pelling wrote that he considers the red crown the “real deal” and the others fake in this June 2015 post. I agree that it looks like that is the case.
Second, a voluminous roll or brim or wrap around the head. There is quite some variety even within these examples. Most of these were taken from the first month roundels.
Thirdly, something similar, yet with a little circle on top. These hats are relatively rare and only appear in the first month roundels. They are usually worn by man-like nymphs, with one unambiguous exception (the bottom one in the image below).
The calendar section also features veils of all kinds and sizes. Many veils are marked with a dotted line, possibly indicating a certain material. It is often not clear whether something is supposed to represent long hair or a veil, though most of the ones below are obvious. The two red-shirted women in the bottom of the middle column are dubious examples.
There are many examples of smaller headgear, but it’s often hard to tell what exactly is going on. They could be small veils, hair nets, diadems or even elaborate hair styles.
And then there’s this man (?) with a small hat or band that has two structures on the side, like curved horns or some other kind of extension.
I believe most hats found in the calendar section can be placed in one of the above categories. However, there are many (many!) unclear examples so it is far from exhaustive.
Quire 13, the “bathing section”, part A
In Quire 13, there are, in my opinion (and that of others), two kinds of folios. There are those where the nymphs are more homogeneous, with often all nymphs within the same pool looking more or less the same. On the other hand, there are what I call the narrative folios, where each nymph looks more like an individual, often with a special attribute. As expected, bold fashion statements are rare in the “homogeneous” type.
For example, in the first folio (f.75r), we see this pool. All nymphs wear a similar diadem- hair net – veil. Only the one top right is distinguished with a large diadem or crown. Note how this queenly figure is also larger. Readers accustomed to my thoughts about the manuscript and with some knowledge about ancient conventions on perspective will understand why this is important, though it is not the subject of this post.
If we compare all non-narrative folios (those with basic nymphs standing around in pools), we notice a few common types of headgear (apart from “none”). I have listed them in the image below. The first two examples are a bit ambiguous, because it is not clear whether the thing on the head is meant as some kind of hat or an elaborate hair style. the first line (1) almost certainly looks like hair to me. The second line, which I called “horizontal head roll”, might be some kind of headdress, but it could be hair as well. (This was a popular hair style for wealthy women in the Roman empire).
Number 3, “wavy”, looks like the dark diadem, though here it is applied in the same ink as the figure itself. The fourth line is also common, a small, dotted thing worn on the hair. The bottom line shows some varieties, where it looks more unambiguously like a diadem.
There are a number of clear exceptions in these folios. Two of these look like an ornate version of one of the basic types. The lady bottom right with red hair and a somewhat pointy hat or diadem is the most individualized figure.
About the non-narrative folios in Quire 13 then, I conclude that the hats are fairly uniform. This is in line with what separates these folios from the rest of Quire 13: less individualization in the human figures. However, a small number of figures are still marked with more elaborate headgear, making them stand out.
Quire 13 B
Moving on to the more individualized quire 13 folios then. I was surprised to see how many nymphs in these folios are hatless. There are also some themes in common with the rest of Quire 13. For example, the Dark Diadem is back with a vengeance:
Similarly, as seen in the image below, the dotted “thing” is back, here mostly combined with what looks like a veil. Below those, the “horizontal head roll”, which is still a popular choice. Finally, the bottom row shows two nymphs with a striped “thing”.
So there are parallels between both types of folios in Quire 13. However, as expected, there is more variety in the “narrative” folios. Below, for example (1) shows what might be a variation of the horizontal head roll, though the endings pop up, almost like animal ears. (2) shows what looks like a blue wig (Egyptian style?). (3) is wearing a rectangular item topped with a “dark diadem”. Finally, (4) looks a bit ambiguous: is this a diadem, or a colored version of the “head roll”?
Another ambiguous case is seen on folio 83r. The figure appears to be wearing a wig or head scarf like (2) above, but this is topped with a cone and a star. From this star flows a long tail, which is held by the figure on top and ends up in the water. It is unclear which elements are considered headgear and which ones belong with the figure on top. My guess would be that wig+cone+star+tail is all part of the bottom figure.
There are some figures with a relatively small colored band, though all somewhat different.
Finally there are a number of crowns or tiaras here as well. Some of them look like the horizontal head roll with an ornament on top. Two crowns (bottom row) are with a number of circles.
Other Folios
There are quite a number of other human figures and faces scattered throughout the manuscript. I generally treat these separately, just like the central figures in the month roundels.
As we all know, the archer is sporting a unique hat:
The male Twin and Virgo are shown with the same hat in a different color, and a similar hairdo to match. This adds fuel to the rumors that Virgo is a guy in a dress. One difference is that a red detail has been added under Virgo’s hat.
On the female twin we see a blue hair band or diadem, above which her hair emerges. I have added the two hatted figures from f85r as well for comparison. I’m not sure what is going on with the bottom left figure. Either he’s half bald or wearing a white skull cap. The one bottom left appears to be wearing a blue skull cap, but his hair is visible above it. Once again it looks like the paint and the line work don’t fully agree.
Moving on then, there are a number of small faces on f67v, one of which might be wearing a veil, another one a pointed hat. The Sun-face on f68v has been given some kind of narrow hair band.
Finally, there are a total of eight faces in the roots of plants. Only one of these is wearing a hat. This is an interesting figure, because there are not many faces in the botanical sections. Unfortunately, the face is very small and unclear, so I tried to enhance it a bit on the right, without much succes – we can only work with what’s on the page.
The hat might be similar to the “horizontal head roll” common in Quire 13, though this is hard to tell. One aspect in favor of this interpretation is that a veil or long hair has been added, which, just like the head roll, is usually reserved for women in the Voynich.
Conclusion:
There are many different hats in the manuscript, but it is possible to divide them into a number of types + exceptions. Crowns and elaborate headgear are usually unique, while smaller pieces appear often.
I was surprised to see that there was little continuity across sections. One kind of headgear is common in both main nymphy sections (month roundels and quire 13): the small dotted “thing”, which is likely some kind of veil or hair net. Usually though, one can tell by the hat from which section a nymph was taken. For example, the “horizontal head roll” is typical for quire 13.
Additionally, we have seen that the types and depiction of headgear changes from one month roundel to the next. The first ones often feature large, varied hats in thick paint, while later on hats become more subtle and less varied.
Finally, our hat typology has also confirmed that there are two kinds of folios in quire 13. There is little variety in the “generic nymphs in pools” folios, while many nymphs in the narrative folios sport unique hats or crowns.
The Voynich Temple 
Have you seen my 2015 post on the three Voynich crowns?
http://ciphermysteries.com/2015/06/29/the-voynich-manuscripts-three-crowns
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Thanks for the link, Nick! I agree that the red crown is more authentic – I’ll edit in a reference to your post 🙂
Would you agree that the red crown looks the most like the crown on this statuette? The somewhat organic “steps”, the direction and composition of the spikes…
I also think the “dark diadem” – which you believe to be a hair style – was added later in many cases, though not always. Very complex. It surely looks like it could be tressed hair, but what do you make of this example then, where it is added on top of a tall diadem? (Nymph “3” in this image https://herculeaf.files.wordpress.com/2016/11/specials.jpg )
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There’s a certain similarity, sure, but… each to their own, I guess. 🙂
The “dark diadem” awaits a proper ink / codicological analysis, as does almost every page of the ms. *sigh*
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I would so much like to know more about the different kinds of paint. Should we collect signatures and send them to Yale? 😀
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Maybe one day it’ll happen. But I’m not planning to hold my breath waiting. 😐
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Koen,
I see this phrase “tressed hair” used constantly, but have yet to see anyone define what they mean by it. Sometimes it seems to mean braided hair. At other times long hair having a bit of a wave or a curl to it.
What significance it is supposed to have, or just what ‘tressed’ is supposed to imply I cannot guess. What is your take on the term?
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Koen,
The headband-and-veil was traditional wear for women from before the time of the Romans until the fifteenth century, and from mainland Europe to Persia.
It is so widely found, over such a long period, that I’d be inclined to discount its offering -in itself – any proof of the imagery’s origin, or any evidence for the imagery’s having been first enunciated within the one region and period.
The stepped crown (or to use the technical description the “triple-stepped crenellated crown” is Persian in origin, and was used by the Achaemenids before the time of Alexander – they also ruling in Egypt for a time. It is revived by the rulers of Persis (or ‘Persia proper’), then by the Sasanian ruler Ardashir… etc. etc.
I guess that by the time the statue was made in. was it Damascus? this sort of crown represented the type of “the crown” in that region.
The crown with the red bits is most like a type we see used to represent the “king of Egypt’ and in that way it is seen also on Claudius Ptolemy, who until fairly late – as late as the 16th century – was believed by many Europeans to have been one of the Lagids (the ruling ‘Ptolemaic’ dynasty).
The crown that has, or was given, a cross on top is rather like one form of the old Byzantine royal crown, and this in turn informed the style of Christian ruler’s crown in mainland Europe.
To see “the three crowns” as those of Persia, Egypt(?) and Byzantium would argue first enuncation after the 3rdC AD *if* they had all been included at the same time. This doesn’t appear to be the case, as Pelling noticed. On the contrary, the only one that looks as it if came with the exemplar/s is the one coloured with bits of red, and that style of crown is usually seen, in western manuscripts, as a Davidic crown. In that case, I’d expect the associated star to be Canopus, for reasons to do with the history of traditional astronomy and lore in the eastern Mediterranean.
Sources for the ‘Persian crown’ and ‘Davidic crown’: for the first, perhaps the most easily accessed is The Encyclopaedia Iranica, which is available online. (Images are linked, not included in the main text).
For the “Davidic” or “Egyptian” crown (obviously not either of the true dynastic crowns) we seem to have a version of the Persian crown, originally differentiated rather than being of a distinct type.
Two examples from Latin European art. The simpler sort, more like that in Beinecke MS 408:
1/ Brit.Lib. MS Harley 334, fol.95v. attributed to Gautier de Metz, Image du Monde (Le livre de clergie en roumans), from central France (Paris) and England. Dated to the 2nd quarter of the 15th century.
2/ the later sort, much more leafy-looking:
The image is not properly credited in the link, it comes from an early sixteenth-century text, Margarita Philosophica by a Carthusian monk named Gregor Reisch (c.1467- 1525)
Cheers
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Diane
It’s hard to say what exactly happened to the “dark diadems” and the two darker crowns. They both have equivalents which appear to have been included with the original figure. So I think we all agree that the darker items were added in a different pass, but it’s hard to say much more about them with certainty.
The first question is, were they in the exemplars to be copied or not? It is possible that they *were* in the exemplars, and that the crowns were just added when someone went over the whole thing again to correct it. If they were not in the exemplars, they were added in the 15th century. If all crowns were in the exemplars, then they must surely be relatively late, like you say some time after the third century.
Whatever the case may be, I think you make a good point for Egypt-Persia-Byzantium. And Canopus, yes, I can see why.
All this is hard to answer though, until we find out *why* somebody went over the figures again and added things like headgear and a second breast… Sometimes it looks like one person quickly drew the outlines of the figures and then a second added the details where necessary.
About the “tressed” hair – I have no idea. If it is hair, I’d surely see it as a hair style rather than a hair type 🙂 But very often it is added standing on top of the nymph’s straight hair, and at least in one instance on top of another diadem, so I do prefer to see them as headgear rather than hair, though I can see why people think of it as hair.
I agree about the veil being near universal. It could be from antiquity to 2016 and everything in between 🙂 The same goes for many hat types. That is why I made this post in a “neutral overview” way without referring to interpretations of myself and others. I wanted to see tho what extent there were different “types” and how they remained constant across sections. There does appear to be a certain divide between the calendar and Q13…
Welcome back to online Voynichland by the way 😉
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Nice job collecting and classifying all of these. I’m sure I’ll be referring back to this post in the future.
A few things here could be debated. Is the head from the root on f101v2 really wearing a hat? It looks more like hair to me.
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Hi Sam, thanks for venturing into my comment section 😉
Classifying the hats is difficult and some are very hard to call. Especially the difference between hair and a hat is a recurring problem. So this is more of a first attempt to which corrections will hopefully be made.
I tentatively classified the plant head as belonging to the “horizontal head roll” type. This whole type is problematic, and might actually just be a hair style.
I mean just look at these Romans.
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Thanks for the reply.
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I was reading a (somewhat) interesting book on halo imagery – from the 19th c. Always surprising what books have been chosen to be digitised. The author does a good survey of the changing stylistic conventions of halo drawings over the centuries. Most of his examples come from the walls and windows of church interiors.
I found a couple of facts possibly of interest in terms of the Voynich Ms. The first is that halos aren’t necessarily associated with saintliness or goodness, which I had assumed. Their use is mainly to indicate celestial or heavenly beings. So Lucifer, for instance, is often depicted with a halo.
The second is that by the early 15th century, halos were drawn in a variety of ways but becoming very common were halos as head dresses, crowns or hats. Have you witnessed this in your own researches into iconography?
I offer this because the hats/head dresses in the VMs deserve a “why”? Why are they the only article of clothing on the nymphs? To preserve their “modesty” and ensure we don’t mistake our pregnant nymphs as unmarried women or whores? One reason, perhaps. But the second, I submit, is that whether in the sky or in earthly baths, they are “celestial” and represent “spirit” or “spirits”. Hence, lots of headgear. Water of life, philosophical mercury, essence, immortality, shape-changing, invisible.
Angels, said to be made solely of spirit, like all celestial beings and objects. And spirit, according to the Greeks, is watery. A preoccupation of the medieval scholastics, trying to leverage Aristotle/Plato to determine not only the essence and configuration of angels but what they were made of. Form but not matter, or a very refined matter, etc.
This makes sense of the original one breasted figures too, if we acknowledge a connection to angels. The only one-breasted women I know from myth are the Amazons. Warrior women – the “host” or army of angels of God in the VMs. Each carries a golden star – gold is sulphur or soul – but it is not representing their own soul, but the soul of the human they’ve been assigned to protect. Guardian angels. And this ties into medieval medicine, fate and the zodiac as well.
So one hypothesis I might pose is that the illustrator’s main purpose with the headgear was to make a lot of different hats to signify halos – quantity not quality – and the celestial ‘nature’ or “spirit” of the nymphs, and he or she got fanciful and deliberate with some of them to vaguely designate individuals or groups, but that that was secondary.
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This is something that has crossed my minds before, but I haven’t studied much yet. As usual, there is the problem of Voynich vagueness/ambiguity and the question of (lack of) skill vs. intentionality.
One thing that’s for certain is that figures who have the most halo-like headgear mingle with figures without any headgear, or with different hats altogether. Most folios contain the three kinds:
– could be a halo
– different kind of headgear
– probably just hair (braids etc)
On some pages, there is like a continuum from halo-like to halo-less. On a folio like f79v, most people would probably say that only the prostrate figure is wearing a crown or diadem, the others just hair.
It’s interesting though (I hadn’t noticed this before) that in Q13, the most halo-like cases are found in the “pool” pages, Q13b or whatever one wants to call it. Some figures on f84r, some on f81v… It is definitely something to keep in mind, but there is too much variation and uncertainty to say if they really meant it, in my opinion.
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True the ambiguity but as you say yourself under the “hatless”, the figures could be wearing barely-discernable bands or nets, even if the hair is long in back. I looked closely and could not say incontrovertibly any were hatless. There are a few in a green pool that look the most hatless to me, but the green surround is so thick in the pool I rather think that could be attributed to sloppy heavy-handed coloring covering the hats up. To my mind the weight of the endless hatted figures, and the few that might be hatless, rules most in favour of hatted (possibly haloed) nymphs.
In my hypothsis, of course, all the nymphs should be celestial, just some are encased in matter on earth and need to be distilled out to resemble their purely celestial “spiritual” cousins. That’s why there are blue and green pools, I suspect, spiritual substance/quintessence and the earthly prima materia – likely sap but not necessarily – from which it is distilled.
I do think the author is having fun with historical and fictional myth, however, so has included hints in the hats and other accoutrements to identify personages to the acute readers of his/her circle. Thank you for sorting them. Nowadays we’ll mostly miss the hints, so I am still so amazed you caught the Ovid stories!
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Yeah I get what you’re saying, almost all nymphs do look like there is “something” there, and this something often happens to be circular and yellow. These would be ridiculously small halos though.
If you look for halos in medieval art, you’ll see that they most often completely encircle the head, so they also appear in front of the face. The Voynich never does this – the “halos” are always where hats could also be. Later, halos can become like a flat disk that lies on top of the head like a hat, but I’m not sure how often this occurs pre-1450, I haven’t studied this in detail yet.
In favor of halos for some of the more elaborate examples is that they are often patterned with dots, circles and parallel lines, which is also seen in some of the VM nymphs.
The bottom line is though that all halos in the Voynich very much behave like headwear, and not like a disk _behind_ the characters’ heads. It also seems very clear to me that the VM artist thinks of them as some sort of hat, even if they may represent halos. This makes the case impossible to argue: if we say “they are halos but they look like hats”, then the reader will say “all I see are hats, diadems and crowns”, and they’d have a good point, because they all do look like headgear, unlike most medieval halos.
So well, it’s something to keep in mind, and I personally think it’s possible, but I wouldn’t use it as part of an argumentation (apart perhaps from some of the more obvious examples, where there may be less ground for disagreement).
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What’s your theory on the hats, then? Feel free to speculate, I won’t hold you to it! I didn’t pay much attention to them except, as you know, I feel there are thematic similarities between The Book of the Holy Trinity and the VMS. The anonymous author of The Buch said readers could call him Modesty, which I thought weird, so googled it and was taken to “On Modesty” by church father Tertullian. The whole tract was about the need for women to cover their hair. So I wondered about the head dresses a bit in that regard too. For myself, I’ve got a clear and cohesive, if layered, idea of the nymphs – why they’re naked, why they’re pregnant, what they’re pregnant with, why they’re in buckets, what the buckets are, why they’re leashed to stars/flowers, why they populate the zodiac as well as water systems. The Art of the day might not be comparable in illustration/style but the philosophy behind the VMS was taught in every university in Europe; the author has just synthesized the ideas into this one figure. The head dresses could be explained as halos or ironically as “modesty”, but I’m still searching for the closest fit as they’re a bit of an outlier.
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I don’t really have a theory about the hats in general, but my overall “theory” about Q13 is that its imagery is layered by design, and on one layer of meaning the nymphs represent souls ascending to heaven. Or better said, souls of believers ascending through virtue or descending through sin. This is why “low” and “high” are important concepts on these pages, as well as left and right. High-low and left-right were important in scenes of the Last Judgement (often seen in public places), because the faithful ascend at the right hand of God (i.e. our left) and sinners are cast down at his left (our right).
Since the Ovidian stories, like those of Philomela and Callisto, were in the Middle Ages seen in terms of sin and forgiveness, downfall and restoration, they are decent matches for the Last Judgement layout.
Apart from that though, it cannot be denied that the MS overall resembles a medicinal compendium on the surface. There is a reason why people call Q13 “balneological” or even “biological”, and that is because it looks like that at first glance. So I think one of the sustained metaphors is that the soul can be healed, just like the body.
(What people often forget nowadays, with their focus on the budding sciences, alchemy etc, is that the late Middle Ages were still deeply, deeply religious, and if Jesus isn’t in plain sight, you can still be sure he’s lurking around the corner. Religion was just such a common theme in the Middle Ages that we prefer to focus on non-religious aspects which we can relate to more closely).
Now with all this, I would probably expect there to be some reference to halos, but not too overtly or unambiguously. Which is kind of what we’re seeing, I guess.
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