Freemasonry, ", McCulloch, J. Huston, "The Bat Creek Stone Revisted: Initially, the inscription was thought to be in the Cherokee alphabet, invented by Sequoyah around 1821. [1] The use of the stone as evidence for Pre-Columbian transatlantic contact theories was exacerbated in 1988 by J. Huston McCulloch, Economics professor at Ohio State University. 1914 The American Indian in the United States, Period 1850-1914. 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. George Barrie and Sons, Philadelphia. Independent scientific verification of an archaeologically excavated stone with ancient Hebrew inscribed into its surface has been completed in the Americas. American Anthropologist 12:337-343. 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. 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. Archaeology 41(5):62-70. 2, in the Bat Creek Mound, and on the Blankenship Place.". [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". It may require cleanup to comply with Wikipedia's content policies, particularly. Bat Creek Stone - Joseph Smith Foundation As we discuss below, the Bat Creek stone received scant attention from . The lone letter below the main line is problematic, but could Kirk, Lowell, 245-249. Dalton claims that the Sacred Stone is a revealed translation of the Rosetta Stone, even though the actual Egyptian translation of the stone into English is well known. [5] Mainfort and Kwas have identified the source of the inscription. because they seemed to provide conclusive proof not only of the contemporaneity of man and mammoth in the New World, but also of the existence of a highly civilized "lost race" of moundbuilders. Also relevant here is the. but as such is not well made, since in Paleo-Hebrew it should this affinity until it was pointed out by Mertz, Ayoob and [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]. Does Arnold Murray understand Hebrew? for $6.00 from the 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. 1988b Fantastic Messages From the Past. from Jersualem's City of David under the supervision New York: Basic Books. "Thomas also reports enclosed burial areas, vaguely similar to those described above, from Sullivan County. Atlantic,, Chicago, 1964. Photo copyright Warren W. Dexter, 1986. The match to Cherokee is no To my knowledge, nothing proves that the Bat Creek stone is Jewish and not Celtiberian. 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 inscribed signs generally penetrate through the patina, revealing the lighter interior matrix of the stone, but two signs (signs vi and vii on the left side of the stone as illustrated here) are noticeably shallower, as are portions of several others. Tennessee Anthropologist 1988(2), pp. In early 1889, Emmert resumed his excavations under Thomas' direction; by February 15 he had "found" the Bat Creek stone (Emmert to Thomas, 15 February 1889). 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. 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. Madoc was a Welsh prince who is reputed to have sailed to 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. The latter was inextricably linked to the Moundbuilder debate (Silverberg 1968). a little like the second letter (Q) on Bat Creek, but in 17-21. shells and large shell beads" was associated with one interment (Thomas 1894). [1][6] However, this initial identification as Cherokee was later proven to be flawed. 3-548. is known. "The Translation," Dr. Arnold Murray, Shepherd's Chapel - Facebook as well as a pleasant destination for hikers and boaters. See also comment in this alphabet, or what Welsh words they find there. Moorehead, Warren K. You decide. Smithsonian Institution, Bureau of American Ethnology, Bulletin No. have, in addition to a loop on the right, an arm to the left [1], In the late nineteenth century, when the tablet was found, Cyrus Thomas, the director of the mound excavations, concluded the inscription presented letters from the Cherokee alphabet. with details of their analysis, which I have not yet had time to critique. Printed by the author, Chicago. now a TVA From the epigraphic standpoint, there is no clear cut reason to conclude that the Bat Creek Stone is a fraud or that it proves an Israelite origin for the . In the newspaper article (our version is taken from the Nashville Tennessean, 19 October 1970, pp. 1964 The Mine Dark Sea. Pre-Mississippian artifacts dating to the Archaic and Woodland periods were also found. 1979 Canaanites in America: a New Scripture in Stone? 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. These signs have been identified by Gordon (1971, 1972, 1974; see Mahan [1971]) as Paleo-Hebrew letters of the period circa A.D. 100; McCulloch (1988) suggests the first century A.D. Whiteford, Andrew H. New York Graphic Society, Greenwich. Mound 2 was a burial mound approximately 3 m tall and 13 m in diameter. 1968 The Kensington Rune Stone: New Light on an Old Riddle. in the locality could recollect. Emmert, John W. that the first letter is a (reversed) resh. 1-2. 2013 Gregory . [6] Additionally, his excavation revealed nine skeletons, seven of which were laid out in a row with their heads facing north, and two more skeletons laid out nearby, one with its head facing north and the other with its head facing south. My reply to the new Mainfort from the mound 40 years before the excavation and that it [6] Additionally, these markings are characterized by V shape carvings indicating they were created by a sharper tool than the initial eight characters. 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. The BatCreek Stone [1] Emmert claimed to have found the tablet in Tipton Mound 3 during an excavation of Hopewell mounds in Loudon County, Tennessee. Antiquity 43(170):150-51. Had the Bat Creek stone been regarded as an authentic artifact by contemporary researchers, there should be numerous references to the object. the inscription matches Hebrew much better than Cherokee. 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. separated by a dot or short diagonal stroke These are therefore different letters as well. Thames & Hudson, London, 1968. (By Cyrus H. Gordon). 1978 The Composition of the Copper Alloys Used by the Greek, Etruscan, and Roman Civilizations. However this accord was broken in the 1970s when the Bat Creek Inscription was adopted by proponents of Pre-Columbian transatlantic contact theories. [1], In 1967, the Tennessee Valley Authority announced plans to build Tellico Dam at the mouth of the Little Tennessee River and asked the University of Tennessee Department of Anthropology to conduct salvage excavations in the Little Tennessee Valley. The University of Tennessee excavators didn't investigate Mound 2 or Mound 3, both of which no longer existed. originally proposed by Mertz. 1922 Cherokee and Earlier Remains on Upper Tennessee. In fact, however, we have located only 6 references to the Bat Creek stone in contemporary and more recent mainstream professional literature. Smithsonian Institution, Bureau of American Ethnology, Bulletin No. abilities per se. 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. authoritative source for the Coelbren alphabet, and give no The Bat Creek Stone comes from a sealed context. Please feel free to contact us with any questions or comments you have about our organization. Required fields are marked *. The University of Iowa, Iowa City. Masonic artist's impression of Biblical phrase (QDSh LYHWH) in paleo-Hebrew script (Macoy 1868: 134), compared with the inscribed stone. at the approximate site of the mound 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). 1979 Tunica Treasure. 3 (part Since, as discussed below, no contemporary Cherokee authorities seem to have regarded the inscription as genuine, McCulloch's conclusion does not represent a significant new interpretation. The Bat Creek Stone was recovered during a professional archaeological dig by John W. Emmert of the Smithsonian Institution's Bureau of Ethnology in 1889, during its Mound Survey Project. [7] To clarify the debate, entomologist Cyrus Thomas was "given the job of Director of the Division of Mound Exploration within the federal bureau of the study of Ethnology". Kimberley, Howard, "Madoc 1170: Were the Welsh the The Brass Bracelets Specimens similar (albeit not necessarily identical) to the Bat Creek bracelets are we! Pre-Columbiana, and a PDF of the draft is online at the stone was at the Smithsonian, sometime between 1894 and 1971. inscription, in Old Hebrew letters closely related to those in ; For the Judeans, or For Judea, a clear reference to ancient Israel. Ingstad, Helge A modern example of such a name is that of Benjamin Netanyahu, Ohio Archaeological and Historical Society, Columbus. Cherokee in either photograph, instead appeared to be ancient Semitic. [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. Finally, if we focus exclusively on signs i through v, and accept Gordon's values, the text does not make sense as Paleo-Hebrew. However, the most telling difference between the Bat 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. this alternate form of Q is already present on Bat Creek, 1969 Review of "Forgotten Scripts: The Story of Their Decipherment." American Antiquity 53(3)-.578-582. on the second Bat Creek letter, Following McCulloch (1988), the signs are numbered i - viii from left to right, with viii appearing below the other signs. [1] Additional Digging Uncovers Source of Bat Creek Hoax 1987 Fantastic Archaeology: What Should We Do About It? 1896 Stone Art. [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'". 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. Masonic Publishing Co., New York, 3rd ed., 1868, p. 134. 1981 Radiocarbon Dating in Eastern Arctic Archaeology: a Flexible Approach. In: F.W. in diameter and 5 feet in height," according to the offical 1907 Inscribed Tablets. The Bat Creek Stone Inscription#1293cMartin G. CollinsGiven 31-Oct-15; 12 minutes. To our knowledge no recent investigation has uncovered anything resembling the stone domed vaults or 'stone hives' which he describes" (1952:218-219). Bat Creek Mound #3, with the inscription For example, Stone's (1974) magnum opus on Fort Michilimackinac does not discuss the chemical composition of any of the thousands of artifacts recovered, and misidentifies as "copper" a number of kettle lugs (pp. and specifically Radiocarbon dating of the wood spools returned a date of 32-769 AD. word divider read, from right to left, LYHWD, or "for Judea." In fact it is not surprising that two Hebrew inscriptions would A.M. Kelley, New York. This shape suggests the stone's creator used a rounded instrument to make the engraving. Ventnor Publishers, Ventnor, N.J., 1972. Creek and Masonic inscriptions is in the different ways the two vii: Our comments pertaining to sign vi apply in toto here as well. [1], The stone itself is 11.4 centimeters (4.5 inches) long and 5.1 centimeters (2.0 inches) wide. History of the Human Sciences, Vol. East Lansing. American Antiquity 46(2):244-271. The mound itself has been To read lyhwdm is also impossible on two grounds. The Translation (Bat Creek Stone) - YouTube even if the copyist threw in a few random changes to Used by permission. better than to English, and no one has ever proposed a Cherokee reading It is for this reason that we consider it important to bring the Bat Creek controversy to the attention of professional archaeologists; many of us are likely to be questioned by journalists and the general public about this issue in the future. 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_. trees and grapevines as long ago as the oldest settler theophoric component of Hebrew names. A further complication is that it is widely believed, Refugees Escape to Tennessee? Introduction McClung Museum 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. In fact, it seems all too likely that the Bat Creek stone may be only the single most notorious example of misrepresentation on the part of Emmert during his association with the Bureau of American Ethnology. 6, respectively, of some era. 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. Shepherd's Chapel with Pastor Arnold Murray. A Reply to Mainfort and Kwas in, http://druidry.org/obod/lore/coelbren/coelbren.html, http://www.ampetrographic.com/files/BatCreekStone.pdf. "The Bat Creek Stone: Judeans in Tennessee?". "The engraved stone lay partially under the back part of the skull" (Thomas 1894:393). Bat Creek does not require it to have Dated 2004, accessed 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). that this affinity should have been recognized already in 1889 by Unlocking the Mystery of the Two Prophets, For Our Day: Divinely Sanctioned Governments. [2], North America has a vast and significant history, a "rich history" that belongs to "sophisticated Native American civilizations" and pre-dates the introduction of European settler colonialism. or any other alphabet, the Hebrew reading would have to However, the fifth letter of the second word is clearly different in the two If reversed, the sign would represent a passable Cherokee "gun.". Per Barbara Duncan, Education Director, Museum of the Cherokee Indian. McCulloch (1988) identifies sign ii as "waw" based partially on a fourth century B.C. scholar Cyrus Gordon (1971a, 1971b, 1972) confirmed that it is Semitic, 1890 The Cherokee in Pre-Columbian Times. 1898 Introduction to the Study of North American Archaeology. Persian era, according to Gordon) is one such "Yahwist" name. 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. Per Timothy E. Baumann, Curator of Archaeology, McClung Museum. 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. MinnesotaHistorical Society, St. Paul. 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. indication as to how they read the letters on the Bat Creek stone Institution, 1890-91 (Washington, GPO, 1894), pp. (Same illustration is on p. 169 of 1870 edition The Bat Creek stone is a relatively flat, thin piece of ferruginous siltstone, approximately 11.4 cm long and 5.1 cm wide. Newsweek 76(17):65. "Report of Archaeopetrography Investigation on the Bat Creek Stone of 1889," July 14, 2010, http://www.ampetrographic.com/files/BatCreekStone.pdf. 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 . the top, the roots of which ran Fowke, Gerard The Epigraphic Society Occasional Publications, vol. "Canaanites in America: A New Scripture in Stone?". The Bat Creek Stone found in a burial mound in Tennessee is dated to about 46 B.C. orientation, and although several of the letters are not perfect as Paleo-Hebrew, 145. reply by JHM BAR Nov./Dec. the Bat Creek inscription works much better than Bat Creek stone - Michael Ruark 1980 Cult Archaeology and Unscientific Method and Theory. noticed that the inscription, when A cluster of black oak and sassafras trees, along with some In this respect, they appear to be similar to the heavier brass bracelets found with the "Tunica Treasure" (Brain 1979:193-194). prime minister of Israel from 1996-1999 and 2009-present. Webb, W.S. Moreover, Cyrus Thomas, director of the Mound Survey, claimed that the marks on the stone represented characters of the Cherokee syllabary and used the Bat Creek stone to support his hypothesis that the Cherokee were responsible for many of the mounds and embankments in eastern North America (Thomas 1890).
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