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soo is a forger can know everything 1
do. or anyone else. But a forger cannot
know what's going ro be discovered in
the next century."
Gordon rranslated the script as fol–
lows: "We are Sidonian Canaanites
from the city of the Mercantile King. We
were cast up on this distant shore. a
land of mountains. We sacrificad a
youth to the celestial gods and god–
desses in the nineteenth year of our
mighty King Hiram and embarked from
Etion-g6ber into the Red Sea. We
voy–
aged with ten ships and were at se'a
together for two years around Africa.
Then we were separated by the hand of
Baal and were no longer with our com–
panions. So we have come here, twelve
men and three women, into New Shore.
Am
1,
the Admiral, a man who would
flee? Nayl May the celestial gods and
goddesses favor uswel ll''
The
Bat
Cteek
Stone.
In 1885 Smithsonian lnstitution ar–
cliaeologists found an inscribed stone
tablet in an undisturbed tomb near Bat
Creek. Tennessee . The finders believed
it was a Cherokee tablet , and in 1894
published it -
upside down. Until
1970, the stone was ignorad. lying un–
noticed at the Smithsonian lnstitution in
Washington, D.C.
Dr. Joseph Mahan happened to see a
photograph of the stone and became
int erested. He copied the inscrip)ion
and sent it to Gvrus Gordon. To Gordon,
the message on the stone was
immedi~
ately éreár. He
r~lated,
"''lt
tumed out to
be straight Hebréw, of the lioman
period, roughly 100 A.O." Five letters
on the stone, says Gordon, clearly mean
"for Judah."
The stone is about four and one hall
inches long and two inches wide, and
composed of brownish ironstone with
beautifully carved letters. The tomb
from which it carne was 28 feet across
and lield nine skeletons. Says Gordon,
" Neither 1, nor anyone else, can say
that it was possibly a forgery. ·'
In addition to the Bat Creek stone,
more recently cóins of the' Bar Kokhba
rebellion in Judea (A.O. 132-1 35) .were
foond by farmers near Louisville, Hop–
kinsville, and Clay City, Kentucky.
The
Metcalf Stone
In 1968 at the U.S. military reserva–
tion at Fort Benning, Georgia. Manfred
Metcalf was looking for sfabs to build a
barbecue pit. Several strange-looking
flat stones caught his eye. Metcalf
. picked up a large flat piece of sandstone
about nine inches long and whi le brush–
ing it off noticed
~dd
markings. He gave
the stone to Joseph B. Mahan, Jr..
O~
rector of· Education and Research at t he
nearby Columbus Museum of Arts ·and
Crafts at Columbus, Georgia.
Dr. Mahan is an
e~pert
on '"American
l ndian ethnology and archaeology. He
is a specialist on the Yuchis, a tribe that
once inhabited the area and had been
resettle.d in 'Oklahoma in 1836.
lnterestingly, Mahan had
~oticed
that
one of the Yuchi agricult ura! festivals
had too many resemblances to the He–
brew Feast of Booths or Tabernacles de–
scribed in the biblical book of Leviticus
to be merely "accidental " or sheer
coincidence. FOr
e~mples,
the Yuchis
WEEK ENDING 1ULY 12, 1975
celebrate (1) an eight-day festival
(2)
that starts on the flheenth day or full
moon ot-the holy harvest month '(3) and
live in "booths" throughout the festival
(4) at the religious center for the tribe
(5) and nurture
a
sacred fire.
To this very day. some Jews observe
the first three of these same features.
Neither Mahan nor Gordon believe
the Yuchis to be one of the so-called lost
ten tribes of Israel. However, they both
believe that the evidence shows that
both the Yuchis and Hebrews shar& cer–
tain cultural features rooted in the
an–
cient East and Mediterranean of the
BromeAge.
Mahan sent a copy of the stone dis–
covered
by
Metcalf to
Cyrus
Gordon in
May 1968. Gordon published an article
on the stone in
Manvscripts,
a quarterly
of the Manuscript SocietY. in the sum–
mer of 1969. Gordon reponed: "Alter
studying the inscription,
it
was apparent
to me that the affinities of the script
were wit h the Aegean syllabary. whose
two best known forms are Minoan
linear A and Mycenaean Linear B. The
double-axe in the lower left corner is. of
course. reminiscent of Minoan civ–
ilízation ...
.··
Concludes Gordon, "We therefore
have American inscriptional coritacts
wit h the Aegean of the 8ronze Agé,
near the south, west, and north shores
of the Gulf of Mexico. This can hardly
be accidental; ancient Aegean writing
· near
t~ree
different sectors of the Gulf
re!lects . Bronze Age transatlantic com–
munication between the Mediterranea"n
and the New World around the middle
of the second millennium B.C."
(/vlanv–
scripts,
summer 1969).
In fact, Gordon offers the intriguing
(ContinvtJd on next page)
SIX EXAMPLES of Cavcasian and NtJ–
groid c/ay scv/ptvres, found in Ecuador
andMexico during preciassic and c/assic
periods ranglng from 1500 B.
C.
to A.D:
900.
The photos on the left are from
Ecuador in the late preclassic
(300 8.
C.
to
A.
D. 300). Note the Cavcaslan fea–
tutes. To the right are three Afrlcan·
types discovered in Mexico: a Negroid
,
(above), an
Egypti~n
prlncess (above
right), and a Ubangi tn'besman (below
right).
9