At the time the A lengthy discussion of the object, including a radiocarbon determination, in a local professional journal (McCulloch 1988) has recently enhanced the status of the stone as representing the best evidence of pre-Columbian contacts. East Lansing. [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. Coelbren and to exonerate Morgannwg. The Indian Tribes of North America. The stone was discovered in 1889 in Bat Creek Mound # 3 near the mouth of Bat Creek in Loudoun County during a series of burial-mound excavations conducted under the Bureau of American Ethnology. The The shorter first words of the Bat Creek and Masonic Freemasonry, [11] Mound 1 of the Bat Creek Site was excavated in 1975. "Thomas also reports enclosed burial areas, vaguely similar to those described above, from Sullivan County. In this respect, they appear to be similar to the heavier brass bracelets found with the "Tunica Treasure" (Brain 1979:193-194). 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). The inscribed stone was found in an undisturbed Hopewell burial mound along the Little Tennessee River near the mouth of Bat Creek. See also comment by [1] In the report, Cyrus Thomas "claimed that the marks on the Bat Creek stone represented characters of the Cherokee syllabary and used the inscription to support his hypothesis that the Cherokee constructed many of the earthen mounds and enclosures in eastern North America". University of Pennsylvania Press. Kimberley, Howard, "Madoc 1170: Were the Welsh the prime minister of Israel from 1996-1999 and 2009-present. 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. New York: Basic Books. presumably mem, that is completely absent from Macoy's 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. Kimberley (2000)). The match to Cherokee is no Robert Mainfort and Mary Kwas concluded the inscription is not genuine paleo-Hebrew but rather a 19th-century forgery, and other respected archaeologists such as Kenneth Feder have supported the claim that the tablet is a fraud. Revised and enlarged edition. Webb, W.S. is known. Curiously, while urging readers to "seek out the views of qualified scholars" about the signs on the Bat Creek stone, McCulloch (1988), an amateur epigrapher, offers interpretations of three signs (vi, vii, and viii) that contradict the published assessments of one of the stone's most outspoken proponents (Cyrus Gordon, a published Near Eastern language specialist), implying that despite his own lack of expertise in Paleo-Hebrew, McCulloch considers his own opinion to be as valid as those of specialists in the field. Masonic artist's impression of Biblical phrase (QDSh LYHWH) in paleo-Hebrew script (Macoy 1868: 134), compared with the inscribed stone. do have essentially the same form, but are in fact different: Ventnor Publishers, Ventnor, N.J. Thames & Hudson, London, 1968. American Antiquity 46(2):244-271. Knoxville. Smithsonian Institution, Bureau of American Ethnology, Bulletin No. 1903 The Indians of North America in Historic Times (published as Volume 2 of The History of North America). but merely that this is a common component of Hebrew However, Thomas (1890, 1894) never offered a translation of the inscription. However, I see no obvious relation have published a book This again suggests that Emmert was certainly not an ignorant man. and A.D. 100, but not for the second century C.E. by JHM TA Spring 1993, pp. As English, for example, the main line could be forced to read "4SENL , YP" "belonging to Yehucal" (Mazar 2006: 26). Finally, McKussick (1970) attempted to rebutt the Paleo-Hebrew claims of Gordon and others, mistakenly asserting that the Bat Creek inscription was, in fact, a form of Cherokee. "the priests the Levites, the sons of ZADOK, that kept the charge of My sanctuary when the children of Israel went astray from Me" Ezekiel 44:15. In 1964, Chicago patent attorney Henriette Mertz and Hebrew linguistics expert Dr. Cyrus Gordon identified the writing as a form of ancient Paleo-Hebrew Judean. They discovered that the stone had been published by the Smithsonian upside down and that it was legible Hebrew, once the stone was rotated 180 degrees. 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 . online theory of the Bat Creek inscription. 5th Annual Report - authors) and I certainly agree with you that the Cherokees were Mound Builders, in fact there is not a doubt in my mind about it.". in diameter and 5 feet in height," according to the offical He noted that the broken letter on the far left is consistent Having presented certain evidence that suggests that not only contemporary archaeologists and anthropologists, but also Cyrus Thomas himself, did not consider the Bat Creek stone to be authentic, we feel compelled to address the question: "Who was the forger and what were his motives?" 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). 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. 1987 Fantastic Archaeology: What Should We Do About It? Andover Press, Andover. standard Square Hebrew into the older alphabet, erroneously You decide. scroll. longer word, and identifed the second letter of the shorter It was from the smaller Mound 3 that the inscribed stone was allegedly recovered. abilities per se. Mainfort, Robert C., Jr. 1968 The Kensington Rune Stone: New Light on an Old Riddle. 88 (Sept. 2010). and other considerations, was Washington. Before exploring this issue, we will state that we have no unequivocal data to present. My reply to the new Mainfort Following McCulloch (1988), the signs are numbered i - viii from left to right, with viii appearing below the other signs. 1890 The Cherokee in Pre-Columbian Times. 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. Macoy's illustrator, who was The Bat Creek word ends with a daleth, which 118. Peet 1890, 1892, 1895). Mainfort, Robert C., and Mary L. Kwas, "The Bat Creek Stone Revisited: A Fraud The short Griffin, James B., David J. Meltzer, Bruce D. Smith, and William C. Sturtevant1988 A Mammoth Fraud in Science. However, the presence of the string Government Printing Office, Washington, D.C. American Anthropologist 5:63-64. give no reference for what they regard as an The Bat Creek Stone was recovered during a professional archaeological dig by John W. Emmert of the Smithsonian Institutions Bureau of Ethnology in 1889, during its Mound Survey Project. or "Only for the Judeans" if the broken letter is included. [1][3] Archaeologist Bradley T. Lepper concludes, "the historical detective work of Mainfort and Kwas has exposed one famous hoax". better than to English, and no one has ever proposed a Cherokee reading McKusick, Marshall. Crown Publishers, Inc., New York. [15] And Professor in Biblical Studies and Ancient Near Eastern Studies at Johns Hopkins University, Kyle McCarter expresses, "the Bat Creek stone has no place in the inventory of Hebrew inscriptions from the time of the First Jewish Revolt against Rome" and "belongs to the melodrama of American archaeology in the late 19th century". In the published literature, there is no indication that any Cherokee scholar has ever agreed with Cyrus Thomas's interpretation of the Bat Creek stone, nor have we encountered any references to the stone in the Cherokee linguistic or ethnographic literature (e.g., Mooney 1892, as well as examples noted below). Exposed," American Antiquity 64 (Oct. 2004): 761-769. "The Translation" (Bat Creek Stone), Dr. Arnold Murray, Shepherd's Chapel, STONE OF DESTINY by E. Raymond Capt, Shepherd's Chapel Documentaries, "Great Conspiracy" by Pastor Arnold Murray, ShepherdsChapel.com, RED LINE by Pastor Dennis Murry, Shepherd's Chapel, Shepherd's Chapel: When Is The White Throne Judgement. McCulloch (1988) identifies sign ii as "waw" based partially on a fourth century B.C. [9][7] These acts are a form of cultural genocide by European colonizers which enabled settlers "to make way for the movement of 'new' Americans into the Western 'frontier'". diagonal word divider used on the Bat Creek inscription 1970b Prof Says Jews Found America. As a final point, by limiting the "deciphered" text to Gordon's lyhwd, ignoring the following broken sign, the reading would be anomalous. 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. 1-2. Fowke, Gerard McCulloch 1988), virtually identical brasses were produced in England during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries (Day 1973; Shaw and Craddock 1984). Even more telling is the fact that Cyrus Thomas himself did not discuss the Bat Creek stone in his later substantive publications (1898, 1903, 1905 [with WJ McGee]). Photo copyright Warren W. Dexter, 1986. indication as to how they read the letters on the Bat Creek stone Hodge, Frederick W. (editor) [3] With a budget of $60,000 provided by the U.S. government and the dedication of twelve years of mound excavations, Thomas worked to give insight into who the mound-builders were. [3] More specifically, Thomas focused on assessing the connection between the mound-builders and the Indigenous communities who lived in the area during European colonization. Introduction Pre-Columbiana, and a PDF of the draft is online at Find info on Scientific Research and Development Services companies in , including financial statements, sales and marketing contacts, top competitors, and firmographic insights. American Antiquarian and Oriental Journal 12(1):54. scholar Cyrus Gordon (1971a, 1971b, 1972) confirmed that it is Semitic, The two vertical strokes above Reprinted in Ancient American Vol. You must have a Gab account and be logged in to comment. Antiquity 43(170):150-51. The owner stated that he had cut trees Thomas first published the inscription in his The Cherokees in Pre-Columbian Times (1890, Fig. recreational area on the shore of The Radiocarbon Date the above photograph of the Bat Creek stone. www.maryjones.us/jce/iolo.html. Rebuilding it would require only about 38 cubic yards of American Antiquity 51(2):365-369. These are therefore different letters as well. Gordon, pp. Macoy, Robert, General History, Cyclopedia and Dictionary of Application of Occam's Razor strongly suggests a relatively recent European origin for the bracelets from Bat Creek. The specimens from Bat Creek (Figure 2), however, exhibit a seam and a hollow core indicating that they were wrought, rather than cut from brass wire. Also relevant here is the. The Bat Creek inscription is an inscribed stone tablet found by John W. Emmert on February 14, 1889. [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. Shepherd's Chapel with Pastor Arnold Murray. The Little Tennessee River enters Tennessee from the Appalachian Mountains to the south and flows northward for just over 50 miles (80km) before emptying into the Tennessee River near Lenoir City. Bat Creek Mound #3, with the inscription To read lyhwdm is also impossible on two grounds. 1972 The Bat Creek Inscription. The distinctive Ventnor Publishers, Ventnor, N.J., 1972. America's Ancient Stone Relics , Academy Books, While McCulloch seems to imply that professional archaeologists would be horrified by such a prospect, the anomalous nature of some of Emmert's reported findings has long been recognized. Smithsonian Institution, Bureauof American Ethnology, Bulletin No. any competent student of antiquities. v: Despite problems with its relative size, this sign is normal for Paleo-Hebrew script ("lamed") between 100 B.C. 87-93. W.H. of the Serenwen alphabet to the Bat Creek letters. CrossRef; Google Scholar; Mickel, Allison and Byrd, Nylah 2022. Jones 2004) that Coelbren itself 1973 Bristol Brass: A History of the Industry. Catalogue No. Twelfth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution 1890-'91. Jefferson Chapman, Director of the McClung Museum at the University of Tennessee, generously provided copies of unpublished reports and correspondence by and pertaining to John Emmert. Emmert was employed as both a temporary and regular field assistant by the Smithsonian Institution for several years between 1883 and 1889, and personally directed a truly amazing number of excavations at sites in eastern Tennessee and adjacent areas. Anonymous The mound itself has been found the new bulla cribbed it from Macoy's book, The The Bat Creek Stone Inscription#1293cMartin G. CollinsGiven 31-Oct-15; 12 minutes. 14, No. 1988). in the locality could recollect. This arm in fact appears 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. Forthcoming in Pre-Columbiana. 1986 Historical Aspects of the Calaveras Skull Controversy. See also comment there are no signs of the two vertical strokes that now are present in the upper left corner. Many previously declared hoaxes may be reanalyzed using more objective and less biased examination. letters, esp. Washington. Robert Macoy, George Oliver. 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. report. 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. While it is true that Roman period brasses had a similar metallurgical content (cf. Bat Creek: Excavations in the Smithsonian Archives," July 1987. Craddock, Paul T. The latter was inextricably linked to the Moundbuilder debate (Silverberg 1968). ABSTRACT Crown Publishers, Inc., New York. The stone was located beneath the skeletal head of one of the nine skeletons in the undisturbed mound. Try these: joseph smithfree moviesfaith crisishomeschool. fact there is already a D on Bat Creek, at the end of the second word, Schroedl, Gerald F. ", McCulloch, J. Huston, "The Bat Creek Stone Revisted: Harrington, M.R. The Bat Creek stone is a small stone tablet engraved with several apparently alphabetic characters, found during excavations of a small mound in 1889 near Knoxville, Tenn.