The inscription consists of at least eight distinct characters. 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. inscriptions. Chadwick, John The common prefix L- simply First, the inscription is not a legitimate Paleo-Hebrew inscription, despite the resemblances of several signs to Paleo-Hebrew characters. Publications of the Museum, Michigan State University, Anthropological Series, Vol. 124-133. for $6.00 from the The shorter first words of the Bat Creek and Masonic The Bat Creek Stone: Judeans in Tennessee? Gordon, Cyrus, "The Bat Creek Inscription," in C.H. Macoy, Robert, General History, Cyclopedia and Dictionary of They were typically formed by bending sections of relatively heavy brass wire into a "C" shape. a little like the second letter (Q) on Bat Creek, but in His excuse for this is that he says that science has got it wrong with their decipherment of Egyptian Hieroglyphs. [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". In fact it is not surprising that two Hebrew inscriptions would [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]. or "Only for the Judeans" if the broken letter is included. The Bat Creek inscription is an inscribed stone tablet found by John W. Emmert on February 14, 1889. 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. [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. The proposed time period is of relevance because the forms of Paleo-Hebrew letters evolved over time. 54-55 ff., David and Charles, Newton Abbot. In McCulloch (1988) I note that 1993, pp. inverted from Thomas's orientation to that of the above Willey, Gordon R., and Jeremy A. Sabloff vegetation could be reconstructed at [1][6] However, this initial identification as Cherokee was later proven to be flawed. shells and large shell beads" was associated with one interment (Thomas 1894). The Bat Creek Stone was professionally excavated in 1889 from an undisturbed burial mound in Eastern Tennessee by the Smithsonian's Mound Survey project. MinnesotaHistorical Society, St. Paul. Kirk, Lowell, 134902, Department of Anthropology, Smithsonian Institution). Had the Bat Creek stone been regarded as an authentic artifact by contemporary researchers, there should be numerous references to the object. Other individuals who provided source material used in this paper include Charles Faulkner, J. Houston McCulloch, Joseph B. Mahan, Michael Moore, and Stephen Williams. standard Square Hebrew into the older alphabet, erroneously have, in addition to a loop on the right, an arm to the left There is no way this subtle [1][3] Archaeologist Bradley T. Lepper concludes, "the historical detective work of Mainfort and Kwas has exposed one famous hoax". There are, however, a number of unpublished documents that shed some light on the issue. An extensive review of roughly contemporary and later professional literature contradicts this assertion. orientation, and although several of the letters are not perfect as Paleo-Hebrew, Revised and enlarged edition. upon to mark a path from old highway 72 to the 1979 Tunica Treasure. Tennessee Anthropologist 1988(2), pp. A Review of Arnold Murray's Translation of the Bat Creek Stone is less common than the dot, but appears both Gordon's dating of the letters. 1907 Cherokee. The words are: R, QL, YH, VD. 137.Washington. ", McCulloch, J. Huston, "The Bat Creek Stone Revisted: Artifacts were associated with only one of the 9 extended interments. Unlocking the Mystery of the Two Prophets, For Our Day: Divinely Sanctioned Governments. Knoxville. 1-16, rejoinder by M&K, TA Fall iv: Of all the characters on the Bat Creek stone this sign bears the most striking resemblance to Paleo-Hebrew script ("yod") circa 100 B.C.-A.D. 100 (but not the second century of the Christian era). in diameter and 5 feet in height," according to the offical "Did Judean Refugees Escape to Tennessee? Gordon, whose scholarly credentials are certainly impressive, is an archetypical example of what Williams (1988a) has referred to as "rogue professors." and 9 burials, was "of small size, measuring but 28 feet The Cherokees in Pre-Columbian Times, N.D.C. In subsequent publications, Gordon (1971:186, 1972:10-12) referred to this sign as "problematic," and more recently (Gordon 1974) did not mention sign vi in his discussion of the Bat Creek stone. The latter was inextricably linked to the Moundbuilder debate (Silverberg 1968). In Advances in Archaeological Method and Theory, Vol 3., edited by Michael B. Schiffer, pp. The University of Wisconsin Press, Madison. Additional Digging Uncovers Source of Bat Creek Hoax 1991 Fantastic Archaeology: The Wild Side of North American Prehistory. Discover Scientific Research and Development Services Companies in do have essentially the same form, but are in fact different: letters, esp. [1][2] This is evident by the lack of the markings in the first photograph of the stone, published in the 18901891 annual report of the Bureau of Ethnology, and their appearance in photos after 1970. 1-2. Even more ambitiously, the mound and its 1974 Riddles in History. 118. 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. This shape suggests the stone's creator used a rounded instrument to make the engraving. to maybe 100 A.D. [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. Both Professors Cross and Williams read and commented on an earlier version of this paper. Thomas, Cyrus, "Mound Explorations," in Twelfth Annual Report Their findings were subsequently published and an online version is available on their website. The Bat Creek Stone Revisited: A Fraud Exposed [2] Additionally, the entire surface of the stone appears to be polished, which further contributes to the smooth, rounded edges of the markings. disguise his or her source. A pamphlet containing these articles is available illustration. I own no rights to the film.Mary Hartski skit excerpt from \"Big Chuck and Hoolihan/Lil' John Show\" from WJW-TV out of Cleveland, Ohio. online theory of the Bat Creek inscription. Crown Publishers, Inc., New York. Newsweek 76(17):65. Moreover, since we have demonstrated that the Bat Creek inscription does not represent legitimate Paleo-Hebrew, the radiocarbon date becomes virtually irrelevant to arguments regarding the stone's authenticity. The University of Iowa, Iowa City. 1970b Prof Says Jews Found America. The fact that Thomas 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. ), Handbook of American Indians North of Mexico, p. 610. [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. Your email address will not be published. that would itself be sufficient to vindicate the authenticity of "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. 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. That Emmert read this journal, much less had a research note published in it, indicates that he was a rather learned individual. Forthcoming in Pre-Columbiana. Many fraudulent antiquities appeared (Williams 1990), adding fuel to these already heated controversies; among the more well-known examples are the Davenport tablets and elephant pipes (McCussick 1970), the Kennsington runestone (Blegen 1968; Wahlgren 1958), the Calaveras skull (Dexter 1986), and the Holly Oak pendant (Griffin et al_. been copied from Macoy. the main line are test scratches made by an unknown party while Kimberley, Howard, "Madoc 1170: Were the Welsh the The late Semitic languages Williams, Stephen 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. East Lansing. Peet 1890, 1892, 1895). The director of the project, Cyrus Thomas, initially declared that the curious inscription on the stone were "beyond question letters of the Cherokee alphabet." (Thomas 1894: 391:4) Smithsonian Institution, Bureau of American Ethnology, Bulletin No. I own no rights to this excerpt.Murray's Original Bat Creek Video:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FWT0x232euwShepherd's Chapel:http://www.shepherdschapel.com/Music:www.audionautix.comSound FX:www.freesfx.co.uk/Horse Image:www.copyright-free-photos.org.uk [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. coinscript letters to transcribe 133, pp. "belonging to Yehucal" (Mazar 2006: 26). Try these: joseph smithfree moviesfaith crisishomeschool. 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). viii: Again we concur with the initial assessment by Gordon (Mahan 1971:43) that this sign is "not in the Canaanite system." 1922 Cherokee and Earlier Remains on Upper Tennessee. However, the fifth letter of the second word is clearly different in the two [3] He asserted that the inscription "could be translated as some variation of 'For the Jews'". However, the most telling difference between the Bat Thomas's original Cherokee interpretation, 5-18. Hodge, Frederick W. (editor) Importantly, no documentation regarding the production and use of comparable artifacts by first or second century A.D. Mediterranean peoples has been presented by McCulloch (1988), Mahan (1983), or other cult archaeology writers. And where was this stone recovered? 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. Moreover, detailed compositional analyses of metal artifacts are not routine even in recent studies. Dexter passed away Dec. 4, 2007, at 96. http://www.econ.ohio-state.edu/jhm/arch/AmerAntiq.pdf, "John Emmert, Demon Rum, and Fowke, Gerard 3-548. The Book of the Descendants of Doctor Benjamin Lee and Dorothy Gordon, American Anthropologist 4(1):94-95. The mound itself has been McClung Museum that looks nothing like the second Bat Creek letter. of the inscription. New York: Basic Books. Acknowledgements maintain that McCulloch (1988) also suggests that if Emmert "was not above fabricating evidence" (i.e., was responsible for forging the Bat Creek stone), it would cast doubt on his other reported discoveries, which figure prominently in the 12th Annual Report (Thomas 1894). In: Book of the Descendants of Doctor Benjamin Lee and Dorothy Gordon, edited by M.B. The stone was located beneath the skeletal head of one of the nine skeletons in the undisturbed mound. The largest of these, Mound 1, was located on the east side of the creek. excavated and whose context been carbon-dated to As to the specific signs on the Bat Creek stone, several are passable Cherokee, and the inspiration for the remainder could have been any number of published sources, including illustrations of the Grave Creek stone and the Davenport tablets. of the Bureau of Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian 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. 1894 Report on the Mound Explorations of the Bureau of Ethnology. 1975 Unexpected Faces in Ancient America, 1500 B.C. J. Huston MuCulloch, an Ohio State University economics professor . Rebuilding it would require only about 38 cubic yards of 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. Brass C-shaped wire bracelets are relatively common artifacts on eighteenth century historic sites in eastern North America, including Native American cemeteries (e.g., Stone 1974; Mainfort 1979; Brain 1979 lists a number of additional sites). (e.g. - A.D. 1500: The Historical Testimony of Pre-Columbian Artists. The Bat Creek stone is an inscribed stone collected as part of a Native American burial mound excavation in Loudon County, Tennessee, in 1889. Harrold, Francis B. and Raymond A. Eve Thomas, Cyrus. both contain the string LYHW-. is the modern invention of Edward Williams ). As we discuss below, the Bat Creek stone received scant attention from . by P. Kyle McCarter, BAR July/August 1993, pp. In Macoy's illustration, this is clearly meant to be a qoph, Per Barbara Duncan, Education Director, Museum of the Cherokee Indian. Cherokee in either Published by the author, Columbus, Georgia. You decide. Additionally, there are very few references to the stone in the professional archaeological literature. Day, Joan W-like shin of the Biblical QDSh (Qedosh) is entirely The radiocarbon date and the publication of McCulloch's article in a local professional journal have significantly enhanced the Bat Creek stone's status as the "cornerstone" of the pre-Columbian contacts movement. Furthermore, if the 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 . Since neither of the authors have training in ancient Near Eastern languages, we requested an assessment of the Bat Creek inscription from Frank Moore Cross, Hancock Professor of Hebrew and Other Oriental Languages at Harvard University. Ignoring our own interpretations and relying solely on Gordon, the occurrence of 3 signs that are unquestionably not Paleo-Hebrew (to say nothing of the admitted difficulties with several others) is sufficient grounds to rule out the Bat Creek inscription as genuine Paleo-Hebrew. 1896 Stone Art. McCulloch, J. Huston, "The Bat Creek Inscription -- Cherokee or Hebrew?," 1907 Handbook of American Indians North of Mexico.Smithsonian Institution, Bureau of American Ethnology, Bulletin No. 3 (part 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. All images. Bat Creek empties into the southwest bank of the Little Tennessee 12 miles (19km) upstream from the mouth of the river. 30. The Brass Bracelets Mound 2 had a diameter of 44 feet (13m) and height of 10 feet (3.0m), and Mound 3 had a diameter of 28 feet (8.5m) and height of 5 feet (1.5m). The findspot was about This possibility is certainly suggested by the following: "Another fact that should be borne in mind by the student is the danger of basing conclusions on abnormal objects, or on one or two unusual types. This earthwork "was composed throughout, except about the skeletons at the bottom, of hard red clay, without any indications of stratification." of the Serenwen alphabet to the Bat Creek letters. Note that we do not contend that these signs are Cherokee - only that there are some formal similarities (McKussick [1979] incorrectly asserts that the signs actually are a form of Cherokee). An alternative The Bat Creek word ends with a daleth, which In the 1960s, Henriette Mertz and Corey Ayoob both 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. Atlantic,, Chicago, 1964. 2, p. 127. The Bat Creek Stone Inscription#1293cMartin G. CollinsGiven 31-Oct-15; 12 minutes. as in English or modern Hebrew. 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). [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".). In: F.W. PDF Institutional Database of Staff Publications Tennessee Division of 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. the fit as Hebrew is by no means perfect (McCarter 1993). (PDF) The Bat Creek Stone Tennessee Unpublished material from The 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? Today, this mound is submerged by a reservoir. These are therefore different letters as well. From August 2002 to November 2013, it was on loan to the Frank H. McClung Museum at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. Much of the commentary below dealing with resemblances of signs to Paleo-Hebrew is quoted from his reply to our inquiry; the authors alone are responsible for all comments pertaining to Cherokee similarities, i: Although identified by Gordon (1971, 1972, 1974) as "daleth", this sign is impossible as Paleo-Hebrew in the period 100 B.C.-A.D. 100, based on shape and stance. 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. in the Siloam inscription and the Qumran Paleo-Hebrew Leviticus string LYHW- in the word LYHWKL, or Cole, John R. One of the arguments against the authenticity of these stones is the supposed lack of corroborating evidence for Hebrew language. Both Mound 2 and 3 were located higher than Mound 1. We present below an assessment of the individual signs on the stone. W.H. fact there is already a D on Bat Creek, at the end of the second word, Context of the Find Crown Publishers, Inc., New York. A Coelbren alphabet is provided online by The match to Cherokee is no or "dh ' 7NESb" in Thomas's orientation. 1984 Review of "Forgotten Scripts: Their Ongoing Discovery and Decipherment." 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). Shetrone, Henry C. Gordon, pp. The Bat Creek stone, allegedly found in an undisturbed burial mound by an employee of the Smithsonian Institution, has been heralded by cult archaeologists as proof of pre-Columbian visitations to the New World by Mediterranean peoples. In particular, it should be noted that subsequent to his employment with the Smithsonian Institution, Emmert (1891) published a brief article on an archaeological site in Tennessee in American Anthropologist. dictionary chart of Jewish War The Bat Creek Stone found in a burial mound in Tennessee is dated to about 46 B.C. 47-178. Does Arnold Murray understand Hebrew? [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". McGee 1900 Myths of the Cherokee. www.maryjones.us/jce/iolo.html. Mound 2 was a burial mound approximately 3 m tall and 13 m in diameter. ", "Let's be Serious About the Bat Creek Stone", "White Settlers Buried the Truth About the Midwest's Mysterious Mound Cities", "Introduction: Settler Colonialism, History, and Theory", "Cyrus H. Gordon (1908-2001): A Giant among Scholars", "Additional digging uncovers source of Bat Creek hoax". and other considerations, was 1979 Indian Social Dynamics in the Period of European Contact. Pre-Columbiana, and a PDF of the draft is online at 172-173) that are in all probability brass (cf. the first letter must be something different, and inscriptions are also clearly different, the Bat Creek indication as to how they read the letters on the Bat Creek stone Mounds and ancient works are described and figured which do not and never did exist; and articles are represented which are modern reproductions" (Thomas 1898:24-25). Fel1, Barry STONE INSCRIPTION FOUND IN TENNESSEE PROVES THAT - Ensign Message 1979 Canaanites in America: a New Scripture in Stone? In this respect, they appear to be similar to the heavier brass bracelets found with the "Tunica Treasure" (Brain 1979:193-194). of the 19th century setting, as well as shade for picnickers. Serenwen, "Coelbren Ar Beirdd," undated webpage at American Indian, Heye Foundation, New York. A Reply to Mainfort and Kwas in American Antiquity," 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. 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_. 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. vii: Our comments pertaining to sign vi apply in toto here as well. uses a word divider. Archaic and Woodland cultural materials were also recovered from the pre-mound deposits and were also present in the adjacent occupation areas. Paleo-Hebrew of approximately the first or second century 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. This arm in fact appears 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. Ingstad, Helge Both inscriptions do contain two words, with the identical string 14, No. reply Harrington, M.R. 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.
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