bat creek stone translation

1974 A History of American Archaeology. In the case of the former, the primitive excavation and recording techniques employed render the certainty of association between the wood fragments, the inscribed stone, and the skeletal remains indeterminant (or at best very tenuous). LYHW- on both the Yehucal bulla and the Masonic illustration 1892 Improved Cherokee Alphabets. R is for "Ara" which is (Lion) QL is for "Qol" which is (voice) YH is for "Yah" which is (God) Whiteford (1952:218), in a reference to the Bat Creek stone, mentions an "enigmatic engraved stone," while sharply criticizing the eastern Tennessee research conducted under Thomas' direction and questioning the authenticity of some of the archaeological features reported by John Emmert. This small, inscribed rock was reportedly excavated from a mound in 1889 by John W. Emmert, a Smithsonian Institution field assistant, during the course of the Bureau of American Ethnology Mound Survey. http://druidry.org/obod/lore/coelbren/coelbren.html. [17], Lithograph of the Bat Creek inscription, as first published by Thomas (1890) (the original illustration has been inverted to the orientation proposed by Gordon for "Paleo-Hebrew".). Reprinted in Ancient American Vol. At the time the [14][1] Gordon concluded that Thomas had been viewing the inscription "upside down", and when re-read in its proper orientation, the inscription represented "ancient Hebrew". (1747-1826), known also as Iolo Morgannwg. The authors particularly thank Frank Moore Cross, Hancock Professor of Hebrew and Other Oriental Languages at Harvard University, for providing us with his professional assessment of the signs on the Bat Creek stone. I have just received and read your Burial Mounds (i.e., "Burial Mounds in the Northern Sections of the United States" in B.A.E. Hebrew scholar and archaeologist Furthermore, if the Thomas first published the inscription in his The Cherokees in Pre-Columbian Times (1890, Fig. Moorehead, Warren K. inscriptions are also clearly different, the Bat Creek scholar Cyrus Gordon (1971a, 1971b, 1972) confirmed that it is Semitic, Griffin, James B., David J. Meltzer, Bruce D. Smith, and William C. Sturtevant1988 A Mammoth Fraud in Science. Serenwen (undated). When viewed with the straighter edge on the bottom, seven characters are in a single row, with the eighth located below the main inscription. It is unfortunate that many of the important articles found in the best museums of our country are without a history that will justify their acceptance, without doubt, as genuine antiquities. It is safe therefore to base important conclusions only on monuments in reference to which there is no doubt, and on articles whose history, as regards the finding, is fully known, except where the type is well established from genuine antiquities. Even more ambitiously, the mound and its McCulloch, J. Huston, "The Bat Creek Inscription -- Cherokee or Hebrew?," Another of [5], Today, the probable source used by the forger to create the inscription has been identified, yet the question of who made the tablet and why remains unanswered. [3] Yet despite this incongruity, at the time of its finding, there was little controversy regarding the inscription, and in fact, "Thomas did not discuss the Bat Creek stone in any of his later substantive publications". Kimberley, Howard, "Madoc 1170: Were the Welsh the [4] He went on to claim, "it does not by itself indicate anything more than a minimal contact with the New World by a few Hebrew sailors". The Bat Creek Stone found in a burial mound in Tennessee is dated to about 46 B.C. Mound 1 had a diameter of 108 feet (33m) and a height of 8 feet (2.4m), and it was located on the first terrace above the river. Freemasonry, 1902 Archaeological History of Ohio. In: Smithsonian Institution, Bureau of American Ethnology, Bulletin No. authoritative source for the Coelbren alphabet, and give no Chadwick, John In 1988, wood fragments found with The C-shaped brass bracelets that were apparently found under the skull or mandible of Burial 1 (Thomas 1894:393) have been cited by some cult archaeology writers as additional evidence of pre-Columbian contacts and thus supporting their claims of authenticity for the Bat Creek stone (e.g., McCulloch 1988; Mahan [1983:57] contends that "a conscious effort was made to obscure the results of the [metallurgical] tests" by the Smithsonian Institution). been copied from Macoy. Hodge (ed. The latter was inextricably linked to the Moundbuilder debate (Silverberg 1968). separated by a dot or short diagonal stroke The potential significance of the Bat Creek stone rests primarily on the decipherment of the 8 characters inscribed upon it. American Anthropologist 4(1):94-95. 118. to 400 AD.2. make a few comments about Cyrus Thomas' (1890:35) claim that "some of the characters, if not all, are letters of the Cherokee alphabet" and later (1894:393) that "the engraved characters are beyond question letters of the Cherokee alphabet" In the only published analysis of the Bat Creek inscription as Cherokee, McCulloch (1988) makes a reasonable case for his contention that several signs are impossible for Cherokee and that the inscription is not translateable as Cherokee. Brain, Jeffrey P. 1968 The Kensington Rune Stone: New Light on an Old Riddle. For example, Frederic W. Putnam was the victim of the Calaveras skull hoax (Dexter 1986) and several professional archaeologists have recently championed the fraudulent Holly Oak pendant (see Griffin et al 1988 for discussion). No reference to the stone appears in the following significant publications: Gilbert (1943), Harrington (1922), Hodge (1907), Mooney (1892, 1900, 1907), Moorehead (1910, 1914), Setzler and Jennings (1941), Shetrone (1930), Swanton (1946, 1952), and Webb (1938). Pocket Books, New York. [3] Due to the efforts of Thomas and his team, and with the aid of his published work which extensively presented his findings, "the myth of a vanished race had been dealt a fatal blow".[3]. letters, esp. We believe that Emmert's motive for producing (or causing to have made) the Bat Creek inscription was that he felt the best way to insure permanent employment with the Mound Survey was to find an outstanding artifact, and how better to impress Cyrus Thomas than to "find" an object that would prove Thomas' hypothesis that the Cherokee built most of the mounds in eastern Tennessee? the C-14 date of 32 A.D. - 769 A.D. Wilson et al. The Book of the Descendants of Doctor Benjamin Lee and Dorothy Gordon, Anonymous As a strong advocate of pre-Columbian contacts between the Mediterranean region and the New World, Gordon's (1971, 1972, 1974) interpretation of the Bat Creek inscription could justifiably be criticized on the grounds that his zeal to make a case for the radiation of higher culture from a single Near Eastern center caused him to relax the disciplines of historical linguistics, paleography, and historical orthography. The Bat Creek Stone Inscription#1293cMartin G. CollinsGiven 31-Oct-15; 12 minutes. Two additional parallel lines near the widest part of the stone do not appear on the original Smithsonian Institution illustration (Thomas 1894:394) and seem to have been produced by a recent researcher testing the depth of the patina. www.rense.com/general28/weks.htm, dated 8/28/02. Reprinted in Ancient American Vol. 1984 Ghanaian and Coptic Brass Lamps. www.madoc1170.com/home.htm. The mound had some large sassafras trees standing on it when In this paper we have addressed three key issues surrounding the Bat Creek stone and its interpretation. 1978 An American Paleolithic. Because of the style of writing, Dr. Cyrus Thomas declared the inscription to be a form of Paleo-Hebrew thought to be in use during the first or second century A.D. Hebrew scholar Robert Stieglitz confirmed Gordons translation. First European Americans?," undated website at (By Cyrus H. Gordon). approximate site, possibly making a complete loop Bat Creek: Excavations in the Smithsonian Archives,", "The Bat Creek Inscription: Did Judean However, the most telling difference between the Bat University of Chicago Press, Chicago. 1 (Jan./Feb. In: Smithsonian Institution, Bureau of American Ethnology, Bulletin No. Pastor Murray is the scholar who finally translated the inscription. Lake Telico at the mouth of Bat Creek. Hebrew writing inscription found in America- The Bat Creek Stone Biblical Truth 144 280 subscribers Subscribe 303 views 10 months ago Copyright Disclaimer under Section 107 of the copyright. and continued in use until the end of the eighteenth century (Craddock 1978; Hamilton 1967:342; Shaw and Craddock 1984). word divider read, from right to left, LYHWD, or "for Judea." 6, respectively, of some era. First, the inscription is not a legitimate Paleo-Hebrew inscription, despite the resemblances of several signs to Paleo-Hebrew characters. As we discuss below, the Bat Creek stone received scant attention from Thomas's contemporaries and languished in relative obscurity (but see Mertz 1964) until 1970 when it was "rediscovered" by Cyrus Gordon, a well-published professor of Mediterranean Studies at Brandeis University and a leading proponent of cult archaeology. Additionally, there are very few references to the stone in the professional archaeological literature. 1988). The second line actually contains After examining the stones inscribed grooves and outer weathering rind using standard and scanning electron microscopy (SEM), and researching the historical documentation, the team of Scott Wolter and Richard Stehly of American Petrographic Services conclude that the inscription is consistent with many hundreds of years of weathering in a wet earth mound comprised of soil and hard red clayand that the stonecan be no younger than when the bodies of the deceased were buried inside the mound. This was an undisputed Hopewell burial mound, and therefore the Hebrew inscribed artifact falls within the time frames of the Book of Mormon in the heartland of America. McCulloch, J. Huston, "The Bat Creek Inscription: Did Judean [3] As Feder explains, "The Bat Creek Stone was an outlier, impossible to put into genuine historical context, and though few said it out loud, it was assumed by many that the artifact had been faked". Learn how and when to remove this template message, pre-Columbian transoceanic contact theories, Pre-Columbian transatlantic contact theories, "The Bat Creek Stone Revisited: A Fraud Exposed", "Report of the Archaeopetrography Investigation", "The Bat Creek Inscription: Did Judean Refugees Escape to Tennessee? ", McKusick, Marshall. The inscribed stone was found in an undisturbed Hopewell burial mound along the Little Tennessee River near the mouth of Bat Creek. The earthwork was reportedly constructed over a limestone slab "vault" containing 16 individuals; a necklace of "many small R. Stieglitz and Marshall McKusick, in the this affinity until it was pointed out by Mertz, Ayoob and Peet 1890, 1892, 1895). this alternate form of Q is already present on Bat Creek, coinscript letters to transcribe 3 at Bat Creek is also rather similar (to Woodland mounds -authors) but apparently possessed non-typical traits such as copper ornaments and enigmatic engraved stone" (1952:218) "The relationships and cultural significance of much of the material excavated by the earlier archaeologists in this area can be explained in light of recent and intensive investigations, but some of the phenomena uncovered by Emmert has never been duplicated. Government Printing Office, Washington, D.C. "The engraved stone lay partially under the back part of the skull" (Thomas 1894:393). More conclusive evidence regarding the stone's authenticity comes from two additional sources. The fact that the Bat Creek stone is not cited in any of these works strongly hints that contemporary archaeologists and ethnologists did not regard the object as genuine (see, for example, Griffin et al_. [1] This interpretation was accepted at the time but was contested about a century later by Cyrus H. Gordon, a scholar of Near Eastern Cultures and ancient languages, who reexamined the tablet in the 1970s and proposed that the inscription represented Paleo-Hebrew of the 1st or 2nd century. As a final point, by limiting the "deciphered" text to Gordon's lyhwd, ignoring the following broken sign, the reading would be anomalous. Atlantic,, Chicago, 1964. Williams, Stephen excavation was made there was an old rotten stump yet on The inscription was assumed to be Paleo-Cherokee, and was subsequently published by the Smithsonian in theirAnnual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology, 1890-1891 on page 392. 1. Despite their academic trappings, rogue professors "have lost the absolutely essential ability to make qualitative assessments of the data they are studying," while often ignoring scientific standards of testing and veracity. 1993, p. 46. Mertz (1964) herself had first proposed 1-2), Gordon was quoted as saying that: "Various pieces of evidence point in the direction of migrations (to North America) from the Mediterranean in Roman times. 1898 Introduction to the Study of North American Archaeology. Biblical Nothing resembling the mass bundle burials which he found on Long Island in Roane County and on the McGhee Farm in Monroe County has been recovered in more recent work. but merely that this is a common component of Hebrew [12] Neither the University of Tennessee's excavation of the Bat Creek Site nor any other excavations in the Little Tennessee Valley uncovered any evidence that would indicate Pre-Columbian contact with Old World civilizations.[13]. a plausible spot. A134902-0 in the Department of Anthropology, National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution. McCulloch, J. Huston 3-548. Peabody Museum, Cambridge. Scratched through the patinated exterior on one surface are a minimum of 8, and possibly as many as 9 (excluding a small mark identified by some writers as a word divider), signs that resemble alphabetic characters (Figure 1). In the newspaper article (our version is taken from the Nashville Tennessean, 19 October 1970, pp. 1970a A Canaanite Columbus? Radiocarbon dating of the wood spools returned a date of 32-769 AD. The late Semitic languages Cultivating trust, producing knowledge: The management of archaeological labour and the making of a discipline. Academic Press, Inc., New York. makes most sense as an inverted (rho-wise) resh, as adequately classify and evaluate ancient material. However, until sign iv) or he_ (cf. Kimberley (2000)). a little like the second letter (Q) on Bat Creek, but in Willey, Gordon R., and Jeremy A. Sabloff There has been a systematic denigrating on the part of the 'intellectuals' in the Smithsonian Museum of evidence of pre-Columbian migration from the Old World to the western hemisphere. Many of these are pertinent to the Bat Creek stone, but of particular importance is the degree of association between the dated material (in this case, the "polished wood" fragments) and the cultural event to be dated (in this case, the burial of an individual with which the inscribed stone was purportedly associated), as well as the age association between the dated material and the associated remains. 1943 The Eastern Cherokees. The sign is impossible for Paleo-Hebrew. [6] Additionally, these markings are characterized by V shape carvings indicating they were created by a sharper tool than the initial eight characters. Macoy's illustrator, who was The Brass Bracelets by JHM TA Spring 1993, pp. The findspot was about Washington. Revised and enlarged edition. 1974 Riddles in History. American Antiquity 53(3)-.578-582. Investigators concluded that the mound was a "platform" mound typical of the Mississippian period. uses a word divider. 2013 Gregory . 14, No. [9] Historian Sarah E. Baires writes that the attribution of the mound builders to "any groupother than Native Americans" reflects the "practices" of European settlers that primarily "included the erasure of Native American ties to their cultural landscapes". or any other alphabet, the Hebrew reading would have to Antiquity 43(170):150-51. [1] The consensus among archaeologists is that the tablet is a hoax,[1][3] although some have argued that the ancient Hebrew text on the stone supports pre-Columbian transoceanic contact theories. 79-123. The Bat Creek inscription (also called the Bat Creek stone or Bat Creek tablet) is an inscribed stone collected as part of a Native American burial mound excavation in Loudon County, Tennessee, in 1889 by the Smithsonian Bureau of Ethnology's Mound Survey, directed by entomologist Cyrus Thomas.The inscriptions were initially described as Cherokee, but in 2004, similarities to an inscription . earth. reply by JHM BAR Nov./Dec. [8], However, "Despite the preponderance of archaeological evidence that these mound complexes were the work of sophisticated Native American civilizations," this fact has been "obscured by the Myth of the Mound Builders". Our mission is to defend, protect, and preserve free speech online for all people. Pre-Columbiana, and a PDF of the draft is online at Per Barbara Duncan, Education Director, Museum of the Cherokee Indian. inscription, in Old Hebrew letters closely related to those in It has been suggested that Emmert lacked sufficient education to forge the Bat Creek inscription (McCulloch: 1988: 114), but as with similar arguments made in defense of the Kennsington runestone (e.g., Gordon 1974:30), this assertion is not valid. A Reply to Mainfort and Kwas in American Antiquity," Second, the brass bracelets reportedly found in association with the inscribed stone are in all probability relatively modern European trade items; the composition of the brass is equivocal with respect to the age of the bracelets. Accessed 12/28/05. 30. or "dh ' 7NESb" in Thomas's orientation. Hodges, New York. Government Printing Office, Washington, D.C. fact that during the Civil War, Emmert served in the Confederate Quartermaster Department, presumably as a result of his previous experience as a "store keeper" (John W. Emmert, Compiled Service Record, M268/346, National Archives). 131. An inscribed stone reportedly excavated by the Smithsonian Institution from a burial mound in eastern Tennessee has been heralded by cult archaeologists as incontrovertible evidence of pre-Columbian Old World contracts. Wolter, Scott, and Richard D. Stehly. the tell-tale string -YHW again, in the name of Yehucal's father, 32 no. Finally, if we focus exclusively on signs i through v, and accept Gordon's values, the text does not make sense as Paleo-Hebrew. serving as a word divider, rather than by a American Anthropologist 12:337-343. the stone was at the Smithsonian, sometime between 1894 and 1971. Robert Macoy, George Oliver. Symbols, December, 1988, pp. The Bat Creek Inscription: Cherokee or Hebrew? "had been covered by a cluster of [1] Emmert claimed to have found the tablet in Tipton Mound 3 during an excavation of Hopewell mounds in Loudon County, Tennessee. They were typically formed by bending sections of relatively heavy brass wire into a "C" shape. In classic cult archaeology style, Cyrus Thomas (1894) is denigrated by these writers for stating that the bracelets were made of copper, when in fact they are actually brass. Hodge, Frederick W. (editor) Also relevant here is the. The sign is impossible for Paleo-Hebrew. excavated and whose context been carbon-dated to Smithsonian Institution, Bureau of American Ethnology, Bulletin No. [1][3] Archaeologist Bradley T. Lepper concludes, "the historical detective work of Mainfort and Kwas has exposed one famous hoax". Fowke, Gerard John Emmert excavated Bat Creek Mound 3, doing so "alone and in isolation". 1907 Handbook of American Indians North of Mexico.Smithsonian Institution, Bureau of American Ethnology, Bulletin No. Two of the most hotly contested issues in American archaeology during the nineteenth century were the existence of an American Paleolithic of comparable age to sites in Europe and hypothetical pre-Columbian contacts with the Old World (Willey and Sabloff 1974). does not prove that the Mazar assistant who supposedly Archaeology and Creationism, edited by Francis B. Harrold and Baymond A. Eve, University of Iowa Press, pp. Mounds 2 and 3, on the west side of Bat Creek, had been leveled prior to the University of Tennessee investigations, and no testing was conducted near these earthworks (Schroedl 1975:103). 1991 Fantastic Archaeology: The Wild Side of North American Prehistory. In the 1894 Report on the Mound Explorations of the Bureau of Ethnology, the inscription was first officially mentioned along with other artifacts recovered from the Bat Creek Mound excavations. [16] It has subsequently been loaned to the Museum of the Cherokee Indian in Cherokee, N.C., where it has been on display since 2015. the main line are test scratches made by an unknown party while Arundale, Wendy H. Journal of Archaeological Science 5(1):1-16. In fact it is not surprising that two Hebrew inscriptions would The fact that Thomas In Thomas' defense, however, it is worth noting that some of the signs (ii, iii, and vii in the orientation illustrated by Thomas [1890, 1894], and i, 11, iii, and vii in the purported Paleo-Hebrew orientation) exhibit moderate to close resemblances with characters of the Cherokee syllabary. As noted above, the Bat Creek stone has recently been cast into greater prominence as a result of an AMS radiocarbon determination. Gordon, Cyrus, Before Columbus (New York, Crown, 1971b), Appendix. 1975 Unexpected Faces in Ancient America, 1500 B.C. Carbon dating was performed on wood fragments found in the inscription in 1988 which yielded a date between 32 A.D. and 769 A.D., a very significant correlation with the Book of Mormons Nephite time frames, which was roughly 600 B.C. have, in addition to a loop on the right, an arm to the left [4] Countering the notion of pre-Columbian transoceanic contact theories, archaeologists Robert Mainfort and Mary Kwas have concluded that the inscription is not a genuine paleo-Hebrew artifact but rather a 19th-century forgery. 1981 Radiocarbon Dating in Eastern Arctic Archaeology: a Flexible Approach. [1] The two bracelets found in the Mound were initially identified by both Emmert and Thomas as "copper", but a 1970 Smithsonian analysis concluded the bracelets were in fact heavily leaded yellow brass. The distinctive 134902, Department of Anthropology, Smithsonian Institution). as well as a pleasant destination for hikers and boaters. N.D.C. Whiteford (1952:207-225) summarizes some of these: "It is impossible to use the data presented by Thomas in the Twelfth Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology with any conviction that they present a complete or even, in some cases, an accurate picture of the material which Emmert excavated in the Tennessee Area" (1952:217) "Mound No. History of the Human Sciences, Vol.

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