Tuesday, August 5, 2014

Numerical Oddities and Saint Thomas

The Rohonc numerals are more complicated than they seem at first.

The small numbers seem to be relatively clear, if a little strange. Page 23 gives us the numbers 4 through 11, and by hunting around throughout the text we can fill in the numbers going back to 1:

1: Q1C (top of tablet I, page 14)
2: I I
3: I I I
4: I I I I
5: I I I I I
6: CY
7: CY I or I I I I I I I
8: CY I I or I I I I I I I I
9: LT
10: T
11: IX

This system makes a certain kind of sense, but then what are we to make of numbers like the following?

163.L9: I I I I I I I T IX CY CY
21.L4: IX I I I I I I T
59.R10: I I T T I I I I I
59.R11: I I I T T T CY

The only sense I can make of these is that I I I I I I I T, for example, is meant to be read 70 (i.e. seven tens). In the case of 59.R10-11, I am inclined to think that the I I T T and I I I T T T are intended to write 20 and 30, with the T T and T T T being redundant, since I can't find any case of T T or T T T without a prefix of I I or I I I.

This reading would solve the mystery of John 22, where the picture apparently of Doubting Thomas on page 64 is accompanied by an apparent scriptural reference to chapter I I T T in the book of HF HS. Since the story of Doubting Thomas appears in chapter 20 of the book of John, reading I I T T as 20 saves us having to resort to Byzantine kephalaia to explain this reference.

This would mean HF HS refers to John. If Delia Huegel is right, and the image on page 64 depicts Doubting Thomas, then we might assume Thomas would be mentioned in the text accompanying the image. Assuming RT means saint, the most likely candidate for Saint Thomas is the name mentioned twice in this section: RT CX F O.

64.R8 *Saint Thomas

64.R10 *Saint Thomas

It is interesting that this name contains a glyph that looks like a rotated T, followed by a glyph that looks like an O, as though it contained the abbreviation TO for Thomas.

Note that the word I am tentatively reading as night(s) also contains the O glyph, and that the word for night contains a rounded vowel in a wide variety of Romance languages.

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