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The Los Lunas Decalogue: Back Again!

3/1/2013

9 Comments

 
George Kelley points me to a news story by Batya Ungar-Sargon appearing in the Tablet online Jewish magazine about the Los Lunas Decalogue Stone, also called the Los Lunas Mystery Stone, a New Mexico rock carved with a mysterious inscription some think may be a pre-Columbian copy of the Ten Commandments.

The origins of the Los Lunas stone are a bit murky. According to most reports locals in New Mexico in the 1880s first saw the stone but it was not reported until archaeologist Frank Hibben himself saw it in 1933. There is no written evidence Hibben saw the stone, and it may be an apocryphal story. The claim derives from Jeffrey Tabor, a professor of religious studies, who stated that Hibben had told him the story in 1995. Hibben, however, was widely accused of faking archaeological evidence for peoples predating the famed Clovis culture (once thought to be America’s first) as part of his belief that Spaniards from the Solutrean culture (c. 20,000 BCE) sailed to America and taught the Paleoindians how to make spear points. Ironically, he needn’t have faked evidence since there really were pre-Clovis peoples, as demonstrated by the widely-accepted Monte Verde site. The Solutrean connection, however, is not widely accepted because of the extreme time difference between the end of the Solutrean in Europe and the start of Clovis 5,000 years later.

At any rate, the stone became known sometime in the late 1930s or early 1940s. Everyone who has seen the stone has had a different idea of what its text seems to say. Robert Hoath La Follette, a lawyer, claimed the text described a freak rainstorm in Phoenician, Etruscan, and Egyptian (hieratic or demotic?) characters, promiscuously mixed. Dixie L. Perkins, another non-specialist, claimed the text was “early” Greek and told how a man named Zakynerous engaged in cannibalism in the desert and felt very bad about it. In 1949, Harvard’s Robert Pfeiffer claimed the text was that of the Ten Commandments, written in a mixture Moabite, Greek, and ancient Phoenician—remarkably literate for a text that experts in those languages say is riddled with grammatical and orthographical errors, including the use of modern Hebrew punctuation and symbols in an “ancient” text. Of course Barry Fell weighed in as well, dismissing the grammar and orthography problems and claiming that the modern Hebrew punctuation was actually in use in antiquity. Cyrus Gordon, a believer in the Bat Creek Stone who also held that the Greeks descended from the ancestors of the Jews and that both groups colonized America, declared the stone genuine. Tabor today is the leading advocate for Gordon’s claims, though he retracted a paper on the stone, claiming that he didn’t want anyone to “misrepresent” him on the issue.

The question of why an important document would be created from multiple alphabets is puzzling: When is the last time you added some Cyrillic or Arabic letters to your tax returns just for fun? Nor am I sure what “early” Greek would be. Perkins can’t mean Linear B, so she must be thinking of the first written Greek inscriptions after the revival of writing around 800 BCE, but they look nothing like this. The mention of Moabite is very telling since it speaks to the extremely close similarity the Los Lunas stone bears to the published versions of the Moabite Stone (Mesha Stele), the first non-Jewish source to mention Yahweh. The forms of the letters are nearly the same, along with the odd spacing and use of word dividers. The Los Lunas inscription also contains a caret, a modern proofreading symbol, one not used before the modern era.

By most accounts, the text is meant to be Hebrew.

Geological analysis of the stone is impossible since it has been repeatedly cleaned and otherwise altered by visitors between the 1930s and today. In 2006, vandals destroyed one line of the text. Still visible is an apparent signature from “Eva and Hobe,” dated 3-13-30. (Some sources, such as Ancient Celtic America, misreport this as “Hobe Eva, March 1930.”) At the University of New Mexico, an oral tradition states that the named individuals were anthropology majors who had hoaxed the inscription but were found out. There is no proof the story is true, but many archaeologists working in the area are convinced that the two are the likely culprits.

What is fascinating is that the inscription remains fresh and sharp, as if it had only been carved in the 1930s. Archaeologist Ken Feder has examined the stone and determined the carvings are recent, and he is troubled by the fact that there is not a shred of evidence of any kind for any Hebrew presence in the area. Advocates of its antiquity counter that repeated cleanings and an infestation with lichen have given the stone the appearance of being new when it is in fact old. I am not sure how cleaning and rubbing down the edges of the inscriptions, or having a plant eating away at the surface, would somehow make their edges sharper rather than duller.

According to Ungar-Sargon, most of the visitors to the stone are Young Earth Creationists, who see the stone as evidence of a young earth, the Lost Tribes of Israel, and the inerrancy of the Bible. Another group very excited by the stone are the Mormons, whose holy book states that Hebrews were in America at the time, eventually giving rise to the Native Americans when God cursed some of their number with red skin for being sinners. However, even many Mormon archaeologists concluded that the stone is a fraud. Today, the most visible proponents of the stone’s authenticity are religious extremists and extreme proponents of diffusionism.

I give Ungar-Sargon credit for asking an actual Native American, Martin Abeita, for an opinion about the stone: “It’s a pain in my ass is what it is. It’s a money-maker for the state.” Abeita explains that the stone sits on land the state put in trust due to water rights issues, and the Natives would like the land back. That won’t happen so long as tourists want to come to see where the Hebrews inscribed the Ten Commandments (at a state-ordered fee of $25 each) and the state can use that to keep control of the water.

9 Comments
Aaron Adair link
3/1/2013 12:23:22 pm

Had me do a double-take when you mentioned Jeffrey Tabor. At first I thought you were referring to James Tabor, another Bible scholars who has connections to another artifact that many find dubious, the James ossuary. But no, there are more Tabors out there than I realized.

Reply
George Kelley link
3/1/2013 01:11:22 pm

Thank you for writing about this. I read Tablet and was surprised by this story. Oh and watching Ancient Aliens and David Icke is on...this is going to be a good one. :)

Reply
Jason Colavito link
3/1/2013 01:21:45 pm

I hope you enjoy it. The episode is a repeat, and I reviewed it somewhere in my blog archive.

Reply
phillip
3/1/2013 06:03:44 pm

Cool story, I hadnt heard this one yet. Cant wait for the "Unearthed" review. I forced my wife to watch it tonight. I did not realize this episode had no new Anglo/Euro artifacts, this was a new angle for AU. Scott just made some sh*t up and found someone to listen to him. I will leave it at that . Like I said , cant wait for the review.
cheers
p.

Reply
cora
3/2/2013 05:05:38 pm

One of my hobbies is looking for traces of "ancients"and 'hidden history" and evidence for such, such as old inscriptions or something more substantial. I am not an artifact hunter, but when it comes to
"ancients" my question is..where are the artifacts.

In the area of this stone, the most I've ever found have been some scribbles in rock that resemble middle eastern early script..but nothing definite. (According to a reliable early language expert.)

Just because it looks like it, does not make it so. The "letters" I found I know were used by more modern visitors to the southwest too.

I've seen that the Spanish defaced many many things in their quest to wipe out the pagan.

IF this was an old stone, it would have been defaced by those who came after. First candidate to do so would be the Spanish. One reason being that taking possession of these lands depended partially on the condition they were not already Christian lands.

There are quite a few more typical Native signs around the Decalogue stone. In other words, it is not in a hidden place, but a place where at least Natives visited many times, over a long period of time. The Natives too, at times took pains to wipe out traces of European visitation. They would also have a reason to wipe out the writing.

Yet it sits, not defaced or disguised, in an accessible place that has been visited by many for hundreds of years. I say hoax.

I have found some interesting things in my investigations, horse head boats carved on bluffs for example, a strange bust of a man in the middle of nowhere, but nothing definitive nor providing hard evidence that early middle eastern cultures visited here.

Its fun to look though!

Reply
Donovan
11/3/2013 05:00:25 am

What gets me is every tom dick and harry suddenly knows ancient Hebrew! LOL! Call it the way you see it. All the letters fit the Moabite stone to a tee! This stone is put there as a colonization of the Hebrew tribes known today as the North American Indians. Instead of being neurotic over history being a hoax, you should concentrate on the truth of the Holy Bible. The LORD scattered the Hebrews to the four corners of the earth. You cannot put God in a box and think that the creator was only aware of the Mid East, He definately knew about the Americas, because He created this land. This is God's Country, so get over it!

Reply
Laura
11/15/2014 09:08:10 am

Real or fraud, the text is definitely early Hebrew/Phoenician, going back to around 1,000 BCE. I can make out almost all the letters and just a few words. The first few words read "Ahnochi YHWH Eloheycha..." "I am YHWH your Elohim." I can also make out several other places where the tetragrammaton is written, the word "Lo" ("No") in the latter lines, and "Zachor et Yom Ha Shabbat, L'Kadsho." "Remember/Act on Behalf of the day of the Sabbath to keep it holy." There is no question in my mind that the Los Lunas Stone contains the Ten Commandments. The stone contains ancient semitic letters. Call it Hebrew, Midianite or Phoenician--the letters share a common ancestry. Early Greek adopted the letters: alpha came from aleph, beta came from bet, gamma came from gimmel, delta came from dalet, etc.... As to who carved the thing and when, that is currently debatable. But somebody had an understanding of Paleo-Hebrew and thought it important to record the Word of YHWH in it's original language on that rock at some point in time. I agree with Donovan above, that your article's focus is off. I suspect that there was a Hebrew presence centuries ago on this continent, but that is not something I care to debate. The Los Lunas stone contains the Creator's words in the language it was given at Mt. Sinai (though may have originally used the earlier proto-Canaanite characters) and that makes it important to those who worship YHWH.

Reply
Matt
2/10/2015 01:45:51 pm

One of my interests is the history of various scientific disciplines. With little effort one finds how hotly disputed have been almost all theories and discoveries. When it comes to "discovered" artifacts, writings, paintings, and the like, there are almost always charges of fraud, bad interpretation, artificial limits on the lines of investigation, etc. at least at the time of "discovery". Most archeological "facts" and "frauds" have intelligent and stupid proponents and opponents. Often the "fact" or "fraud" of the majority of one generation of experts is debunked by a majority of a later generation's experts. The modern "science" of previous generations is regularly mocked by the current generation, just to be mocked by a succeeding generation. That ought to make us all a little less cocksure of ourselves, whether of a minority or a majority party. Think Galileo or think Columbus. Even the general low level of knowledge about these two brilliant fellows has to acknowledge that they were as wrong about some things as they were right, and also has to acknowledge that they were significantly right when the majority of experts were very wrong. Stories like theirs are the norm, not the exception in every field of knowledge.
Somebody went to considerable trouble to inscribe this rock. It doesn't look old but it is in a dry climate. It does look like ancient Hebrew. Spaces between letters and any form of punctuation is hard to believe in for very old inscriptions, but there are rare evidences of such that today's experts accept dating back 2500 years in greek writings, so why is it not possible for Hebrew at perhaps a little more recent date? The purported lack of similar evidences of early Hebrew culture in the area does look suspicious, but what about the exception to the rule? Or what about the idea that conversos fleeing Spain in the 1500's may have wanted a monument to their persecuted faith? There are lots of possibilities and lines of argument.
I personally think it highly likely that the ancient world had more contact between the continents than is commonly accepted. There are hints of this in the Bible and other ancient documents and oral histories. But I do doubt that there was any large amount of contact.
Without a lot more information I don't have a strong opinion about this particular rock, but I would like more information and hope I can find out some more about it. I look forward to trying out my rather basic Hebrew skills on translating the rock, but that will hardly provide proof (or even evidence) of the origin of the writing. But I think that proof is usually an illusion. People live by faith, whether properly placed or improperly placed, in almost all the moments of our lives.

Reply
david coy
4/12/2016 09:44:37 pm

I hate to burst peoples bubble but this has been there for a long time. I use to live near there and one day I rode my horse to the top of ll mountain. something strange came over me and I then was plagued by the thought that something was up here for me to find. that was this stone. there also was a alter to Yahweh at the top of the mountain. the old Isleta Indians that I knew said it had been up there as long as the tribe could remember and that it had been covered with likens. it wasn't until the university of New Mexico students came out and cleaned it that the full extent was known. I do believe that at that time they couldn't even read Phoenician Hebrew. To say frank Hibbon faked this is a joke. IT is quite possible that this may have been put there by Jews traveling with Coronado as he passed very close to there on the Rio Grande .Any ways it surely was there in the late 60s.

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