# Davis 2020: How many glyphs and how many scribes? Digital paleography and the Voynich manuscript

> Lisa Fagin Davis, 2020. 10 records on Mysteries Department cite it. Davis compares the letterforms page by page and finds five scribes. The site's answer…

Source: https://mysteriesdept.com/sources/SRC08JHRPVG4Z28/how-many-glyphs-and-how-many-scribes-digital-paleography-and  
Publisher: Mysteries Department  
Licence: CC BY 4.0 (credit Mysteries Department and link the page)  

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[Sources](https://mysteriesdept.com/sources)[Voynich Manuscript](https://mysteriesdept.com/mysteries/voynich-manuscript)Davis 2020

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# How many glyphs and how many scribes? Digital paleography and the Voynich manuscript

Lisa Fagin Davis, 2020. _Manuscript Studies: A Journal of the Schoenberg Institute for Manuscript Studies_ 5(1): 164–180.

Uses digital paleography to compare every instance of the Voynich glyphs, concluding that the script has a small, consistently written inventory and that five scribes wrote the manuscript.

**Voynich Manuscript** Articledoi: **[10.1353/mns.2020.0011](https://doi.org/10.1353/mns.2020.0011)** Checked against the original0

## What it's used for here

[How many scribes wrote it?](https://mysteriesdept.com/mysteries/voynich-manuscript/questions/QST08JFZ1503NFG/how-many-scribes-wrote-it)

Part of [What is the object, and who made it?](https://mysteriesdept.com/mysteries/voynich-manuscript/questions/QST08JFXN6R2VQ6/what-is-the-object-and-who-made-it)

AnsweredFive, by their letterforms

Davis compares the letterforms page by page and finds five scribes. The site's answer to how many hands wrote the book rests on it, together with the transcription's own scribe labels.

## Cited by on this site 10 records

[The Voynich Manuscript](https://mysteriesdept.com/mysteries/voynich-manuscript)

The mystery article

MYS

[Reading Without a Key](https://mysteriesdept.com/sources/SRC0D8NJAWT22V4/reading-without-a-key)

The book, version 2.0

SRC

[Toward a Reading of the Voynich Manuscript](https://mysteriesdept.com/sources/SRC0D8NJAN066JH/toward-a-reading-of-the-voynich-manuscript-lexical-anchors)

The March 2026 draft

SRC

[7 methods surveys]

Signal processing, mathematics, imagery, linguistics, frameworks of inquiry, inductive methods, encoding procedures

SRC

## A correction

An earlier draft gave this paper the wrong title and page range. The record now matches the published article. [22 Oct 2026](https://mysteriesdept.com/standards#corrections)

## Cite it

```
Davis, L. F. (2020). How many glyphs and how many scribes? Digital paleography and the Voynich manuscript. Manuscript Studies: A Journal of the Schoenberg Institute for Manuscript Studies, 5(1), 164–180. https://doi.org/10.1353/mns.2020.0011
```

[Read it free at Penn](https://repository.upenn.edu/mss_sims/vol5/iss1/6)

Key

**SRC** 08JHRPVG4Z28

Kind

Journal article

Rights

The publisher's

Checked

Against the published article

Added by

[apollo](https://mysteriesdept.com/u/apollo)

The record

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