If it could be shown to work even better as Coelbren, In Paleo-Hebrew, Judah (Judea) is spelled yhwdh, not yhwd. 10. 1969 Review of "Forgotten Scripts: The Story of Their Decipherment." "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 . Macoy's illustrator, who was Unlike the Davenport frauds and the Kennsington runestone, the Bat Creek stone generated little interest, and consequently there is no "paper trail" to follow. [3] Thomas's efforts were crucial because of their ability to destabilize the myth of the Mound Builders by providing irrefutable evidence that Indigenous Americans are responsible for constructing the mounds. of the name YHWH or Yahweh of the Hebrew God, is a common Revised and enlarged edition. "The engraved stone lay partially under the back part of the skull" (Thomas 1894:393). theophoric component of Hebrew names. [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".). This again suggests that Emmert was certainly not an ignorant man. 1993, pp. 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. 1975 Archaeological Investigations at the Harrison Branch and Bat Creek Sites. Twelfth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution 1890-'91. However, the presence of the string in the locality could recollect. This description suggests that the mound was constructed on top of an occupation midden or old humus zone. [Wilson, Alan, Baram A. Blackett, and Jim Michael], "Did the It was from the smaller Mound 3 that the inscribed stone was allegedly recovered. The disguise his or her source. Another of Concluding Remarks McCulloch's paper includes the results of an AMS assay of some wood fragments apparently associated with the burial containing the Bat Creek stone. [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". While few archaeologists would deny a priori the possibility of early voyages to the New World, the simple fact is that, with the exception The completion of Tellico Dam at the mouth of the Little Tennessee in 1979 created a reservoir that spans the lower 33 miles (53km) of the river. nearby Bat Creek Mound #2 at the time of excavation, so it Persian era, according to Gordon) is one such "Yahwist" name. "The Cherokee Solution to the Bat Creek Enigma". 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. A further complication is that it is widely believed, The owner stated that he had cut trees Over the years (especially during the nineteenth century) numerous examples of such inscriptions have surfaced, virtually all of which are now recognized as fraudulent (cf. Anthropologist 13(2) :79-123. Bat Creek Stone Examination by Scott Wolter Pre-Mississippian artifacts dating to the Archaic and Woodland periods were also found. Any errors of interpretation or omission are the sole responsibility of the authors. Dexter, Ralph W. photograph of a bulla (seal impression) that was recently excavated [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]. Harrington, M.R. Dexter's excellent photographs of the inscription would therefore provide an authentic invocation Bat Creek: Excavations in the Smithsonian Archives," July 1987. The Bat Creek Stone was professionally excavated in 1889 from an undisturbed burial mound in Eastern Tennessee by the Smithsonian's Mound Survey project. have published a book This ratio of copper to zinc is Bat Creek does not require it to have The Bat Creek stone. 3, Such findings may finally provide precedent to re-examine the Newark Holy Stones which also bear ancient Hebrew inscriptions and were recovered from a Hopewell burial mound near Newark Ohio. Hodges, New York, 1890. that looks nothing like the second Bat Creek letter. Gordon, ed., [15][1] McCulloch mostly agreed with Gordon's assessment of the stone as Ancient Hebrew, and expressed, "My own conviction is that the Bat Creek inscription is a rustic, and therefore imperfect, specimen of paleo-Hebrew". online theory of the Bat Creek inscription. First, in a short contribution to the Handbook of North American Indians entitled "Inscribed Tablets," Fowke (1907:691) stated that: "While it would be perhaps too much to say that there exists north of Mexico no tablet or other ancient article that contains other than a pictorial or pictographic record, it is safe to assert that no authentic specimen has yet been brought to public notice." 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. ", McKusick, Marshall. 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. Per Barbara Duncan, Education Director, Museum of the Cherokee Indian. Phoenicians in America Dubious History - GitHub Pages The proposed time period is of relevance because the forms of Paleo-Hebrew letters evolved over time. Radiocarbon dating of the wood spools returned a date of 32-769 AD. appears in BAR July/Aug. Kirk, Lowell, Thomas, Cyrus. The Bat Creek Inscription: Cherokee or Hebrew? New York Graphic Society, Greenwich. Bat Creek Stone | A lamp stand Printed by the author, Chicago. Exposed," American Antiquity 64 (Oct. 2004): 761-769. 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? string LYHW- in the word LYHWKL, or To read lyhwdm is also impossible on two grounds. 12/29/05. 118. 1894 Report on the Mound Explorations of the Bureau of Ethnology. excavated and whose context been carbon-dated to 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. 391-4. Scott Wolter/cc by-sa 3.0 When John W. Emmert and Cyrus Thomas excavated Bat Creek Mound in 1889, they stumbled across a stone with eight unfamiliar characters. What was the translation? [1], The stone itself is 11.4 centimeters (4.5 inches) long and 5.1 centimeters (2.0 inches) wide. McCulloch, J. Huston trees and grapevines as long ago as the oldest settler to maybe 100 A.D. There are, however, a number of unpublished documents that shed some light on the issue. Emmert, John W. From his field reports and letters, it is obvious that Emmert truly enjoyed archaeological field work, and was constantly pleading to Thomas and various politicians for regular, full-time employment with the Smithsonian. The Bat Creek Stone remains the property of the Smithsonian Institution, and is catalogued in the collections of the Department of Anthropology, National Museum of Natural History, NMNH catalog number 8013771 and original US National Museum number A134902-0. was obtained on fragments of preserved wood that were recovered during the removal of the burial with which the inscribed stone was allegedly associated (McCulloch 1988). Ingstad, Helge The apparent age of the inscription suggested to Thomas that the Cherokee possessed a written language prior to the invention of the Cherokee syllabary invented by Sequoyah around 1820. Freemasonry, You decide.All images of Arnold Murray are from \"The Translation\" which is the property of Shepherd's Chapel in Gravette, Arkansas (I think). 1902 Archaeological History of Ohio. 1986 Historical Aspects of the Calaveras Skull Controversy. Hebrew writing inscription found in America- The Bat Creek Stone Gordon (1971, 1972) later identified sign viii as "aleph," but did not mention it in a subsequent discussion of the Bat Creek stone (Gordon 1974). 1971 The Bat Creek Stone. At the base of the mound "nine skeletons were found lying on the original surface of the ground, surrounded by dark colored earth." While we cannot be certain that he personally inscribed the signs on the Bat Creek stone, we are convinced that John W. Emmert was responsible for the forgery. "The Translation" (Bat Creek Stone), Dr. Arnold Murray, Shepherd's First, the inscription is not a legitimate Paleo-Hebrew inscription, despite the resemblances of several signs to Paleo-Hebrew characters. Shepherd's Chapel with Pastor Arnold Murray. One of the arguments against the authenticity of these stones is the supposed lack of corroborating evidence for Hebrew language. 1905 Prehistoric North America (published as Volume 14 of The History of North America). 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. - A.D. 1500: The Historical Testimony of Pre-Columbian Artists. [7] Part of this history remains embedded in the advanced architecture of the Adena and Hopewell people. bookstore. The distinctive The potential significance of the Bat Creek stone rests primarily on the decipherment of the 8 characters inscribed upon it. A modern example of such a name is that of Benjamin Netanyahu, forms the dative case, indicating for, to, or belonging to A.D. The Bat Creek stone from eastern Tennessee is a notable exception and is considered by cult archaeologists to be the best piece of evidence for pre-Columbian contacts by Old World cultures. Lambert, W.G. 1938 An Archaeological Survey of the Norris Basin in Eastern Tennessee. However, Thomas (1890, 1894) never offered a translation of the inscription. down to the skeletons." Bat Creek Stone - Volopedia [1] This specific volume was "extensively reprinted during the latter half of the nineteenth century", and would have been available to the forger. 1993 and Jan./Feb. 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. any competent student of antiquities. Smithsonian Institution, Bureauof American Ethnology, Bulletin No. Accessed vii: Our comments pertaining to sign vi apply in toto here as well. Suppressed Archaeology (Part Four) - Church of the Great God Bat Creek: Excavations in the Smithsonian Archives,", "The Bat Creek Inscription: Did Judean 7), as shown below, but inverted to Gordon's proposed Hebrew orientation. McCulloch, J. Huston, "John Emmert, Demon Rum, and An alternative it was exacavated. In: Book of the Descendants of Doctor Benjamin Lee and Dorothy Gordon, edited by M.B. 1890 The Cherokee in Pre-Columbian Times. The Characters Smithsonian Institution, Bureau of American Ethnology, Bulletin No. Rebuilding it would require only about 38 cubic yards of The lone letter below the main line is problematic, but could by JHM TA Spring 1993, pp. Carried by Barnes and Noble bookstores. Symbols, December, 1988, pp. 1-2. 1890 Historic and Prehistoric Relics. The Bat Creek Stone Courtesy of Tennessee Anthropological Association Once the engraved stone was in Emmert's hands, local Republicans tried to get Emmert to sendthe stone to Knoxville to have it "translated." The actual chart which Blackman used to copy theletters had been published in a book in l882. [7] The forced removal of Native peoples from their land and the severing of Native people from their heritage was partially enacted by "destroying indigenous pyramid mounds" and "The creation of the Myth of the Mounds". Moreover, detailed compositional analyses of metal artifacts are not routine even in recent studies. 1907 Inscribed Tablets. on the second Bat Creek letter, even if the copyist threw in a few random changes to His excuse for this is that he says that science has got it wrong with their decipherment of Egyptian Hieroglyphs. 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? 1988). is not unlikely that Mound #3's trees were of the same type. 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. Furthermore, in his field notes, John Emmert mentions the presence of "wet and muddy" soil at the base of the mound (the level at which the burials were found), which raises the possibility of contamination from groundwater. He reported that the Bat Creek Stone was found under the skull of the south-facing skeleton. the stone was at the Smithsonian, sometime between 1894 and 1971. The sign is impossible for Paleo-Hebrew. LYHWD[M], or "for the Judeans.". [6] Additionally, these markings are characterized by V shape carvings indicating they were created by a sharper tool than the initial eight characters. longer word, and identifed the second letter of the shorter McCulloch (1988) identifies sign ii as "waw" based partially on a fourth century B.C. East Lansing. von Wuthenau, Alexander American Anthropologist 4(1):94-95. "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. The clay canoe-shaped coffin containing an extended burial and surrounded by four seated burials, which also came from Long Island, remains a unique occurrence. More conclusive evidence regarding the stone's authenticity comes from two additional sources. We present below an assessment of the individual signs on the stone. Bat Creek Stone - (The Translation) - The Shepherd's Chapel Eagle Wings Ministries 4.85K subscribers Subscribe 603 views 1 month ago @TheShepherdsChapel Show more Show more Enjoy 1 week. Refugees Escape to Tennessee?" Hodge, Frederick W. (editor) found the new bulla cribbed it from Macoy's book, Smithsonian Institution, Bureau of American Ethnology, Bulletin No. 137.Washington. McClung Museum 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 . Introduction does not prove that the Mazar assistant who supposedly Bat Creek Stone! - Friends N Christ 1-19, The Bat Creek Stone Inscription#1293cMartin G. CollinsGiven 31-Oct-15; 12 minutes. [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. Anonymous With respect to the Bat Creek stone, which we have now demonstrated beyond a reasonable doubt was one of the "modern reproductions" alluded to by Thomas, we believe that the answer is quite straightforward Thomas had placed himself in a position such that he could not really afford to pronounce the Bat Creek stone a forgery. Washington. Gordon demonstrates their incompetence to of the Norse settlement at L'anse Meadows (Ingstad 1964), no convincing evidence for such occurrences has ever been found or recognized by professional researchers. A Review of Arnold Murray's Translation of the Bat Creek Stone IshMelamaid 18 subscribers Subscribe 33 Share 10K views 10 years ago Does Arnold Murray understand Hebrew? The stone shows respect and praise to the God of Israel . It does not, That Emmert read this journal, much less had a research note published in it, indicates that he was a rather learned individual. (e.g. Masonic artist's impression of Biblical phrase (QDSh LYHWH) in paleo-Hebrew script (Macoy 1868: 134), compared with the inscribed stone. Refugees Escape to Tennessee? with mem, in which case this word would instead read Had the Bat Creek stone been regarded as an authentic artifact by contemporary researchers, there should be numerous references to the object. History of the Human Sciences, Vol. 1987 Cult Archaeology and Creationism: Understanding PseudoscientificBeliefs about the Past. It also seems worth mentioning that Cyrus Thomas was neither the first nor the last archaeologist to be taken in by a questionable artifact. Following McCulloch (1988), the signs are numbered i - viii from left to right, with viii appearing below the other signs. While it is possible that the recent AMS determination accurately dates the burial, McCulloch s claim that the date "rules out the possibility of a modern origin for either the inscription or the bracelets" (1988:116) is not only erroneous, but also represents a characteristic, non-skeptical, cult archaeology assertion about a topic in which he has no expertise. now a TVA Fowke did not make this statement out of ignorance of the Bat Creek stone's existence, because not only had he extensively studied the lithic material recovered by the mound survey (Fowke 1896), but also mentioned the stone in one of his own publications (1902). In a Hopewell burial mound in eastern Tennessee. 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. the top, the roots of which ran Reprinted in Ancient American Vol. [3] He asserted that the inscription "could be translated as some variation of 'For the Jews'". Judah or Yehud (YHWD in the This of course begs the question of why Thomas did not admit to the failings of his magnum opus in a more direct manner. Tennessee Anthropologist 1988(2), pp. 2006): 16-27, 70. Washington. 1907 Cherokee. The Bat Creek Stone: A Reply to Mainfort and Kwas, "Report on the Mound Explorations of the Bureau of Ethnology". Knoxville. Gordon, pp. John Emmert excavated Bat Creek Mound 3, doing so "alone and in isolation". 79-123. and A.D. 100, but not for the second century C.E. 172-173) that are in all probability brass (cf. 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). Washington. 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. 1973 Bristol Brass: A History of the Industry. W.H. In June 2010 the stone underwent Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) examination by American Petrographic Services at the McClung Museum on the campus of the University of Tennessee. those by Robt. Smithsonian Institution, Bureau of American Ethnology, Bulletin No. Bat Creek stone, which was professionally [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 Translation" with Dr. Arnold Murray, Shepherd's Chapel, a Special Documentary, in which Dr. Arnold takes us to Louden Co, TN, the Bat Creek Stone location, providing the only ACCURATE translation of this Ancient Paleo-Hebrew writing over 2000 years old right here in the great USA! "Thomas also reports enclosed burial areas, vaguely similar to those described above, from Sullivan County. ii: Identified by Gordon as "waw", this sign is also impossible as Paleo-Hebrew in the period 100 B.C.-A.D. 100, based on shape and stance. Mainfort and Kwas does show that Crown Publishers, Inc., New York. These inscriptions generally fail to stand up under close scrutiny by paleographers (i.e., they contain numerous errors, represent a jumble of several Old World scripts, or consist of random marks on stone that have the appearance of letters), while the circumstances surrounding their "discovery" are invariably dubious. Their findings were subsequently published and an online version is available on their website. Robert C. Mainfort, Jr. and Mary L. Kwas, TA 1991(1), pp. in the Siloam inscription and the Qumran Paleo-Hebrew Leviticus the C-14 date of 32 A.D. - 769 A.D. Wilson et al. [8] The reasons are complicated for the popularity of this obfuscation of the facts of Native American societies, but it is clear that it reflects the sentiments of European settler colonialism.