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27-496: Decalogue Stone may refer to: Los Lunas Decalogue Stone , a large boulder on the side of Hidden Mountain, near Los Lunas, New Mexico, that bears a Hebrew inscription of unknown provenance Newark Holy Stones , a set of artifacts, including a Decalogue and stone box, allegedly discovered within a cluster of ancient Indian burial mounds near Newark, Ohio. See also [ edit ] Decalogue (disambiguation) Topics referred to by

54-552: A 1996 interview, Hibben was "convinced the inscription is ancient and thus authentic. He report[ed] that he first saw the text in 1933. At the time it was covered with lichen and patination and was hardly visible. He claimed he was taken to the site by a guide who claimed he had seen it as a boy, back in the 1880s." However, Hibben's testimony is tainted by charges that in at least two separate incidents, he fabricated some or all of his archaeological data to support his pre-Clovis migration theory. The reported 1880s date of discovery

81-459: A demonstrably ancient Hebrew material culture..." and states that "There are no pre-Columbian ancient Hebrew settlements, no sites containing the everyday detritus of a band of ancient Hebrews, nothing that even a cursory knowledge of how the archaeological record forms would demand there would be. From an archaeological standpoint, that's plainly impossible." British archaeologist Keith Fitzpatrick-Matthews has concluded that "Viewed dispassionately,

108-680: A passing U.S. Army battalion made up primarily of Mormon soldiers during the Mexican-American War carved the stone. The Los Lunas Decalogue Stone is often grouped with the Heavener Runestone , Kensington Runestone , Dighton Rock , and the Newport Tower as examples of American landmarks with disputed provenances. Other disputed American Hebrew inscriptions include the Smithsonian Institution 's Bat Creek Inscription and

135-459: A scholar he followed an education track typical of elite European philological scholars: Gordon began studying Hebrew at age five and became interested in both Greek and Latin as a young child. Gordon took his B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. at the University of Pennsylvania , and also took courses at both nearby Gratz College and Dropsie College . These three institutions had specialized programs in

162-413: Is different from Wikidata All article disambiguation pages All disambiguation pages Los Lunas Decalogue Stone The Los Lunas Decalogue Stone is a hoax associated with a large boulder on the side of Hidden Mountain, near Los Lunas, New Mexico , about 35 miles (56 km) south of Albuquerque , that bears a nine-line inscription carved into a flat panel. The stone is also known as

189-506: Is important to those who believe that the stone is pre-Columbian. However, the Paleo-Hebrew script , which is closely related to the Phoenician script , was known to scholars by at least 1870 - thus not precluding the possibility of a modern hoax. Because of the stone's weight of over 80 tons, it was never moved to a museum or laboratory for study and safekeeping. Many visitors have cleaned

216-535: Is well known for his books on Ugaritic, the ancient language of 14th century (BC/BCE) coastal Syria , which were first published 1940 and he played a key role in deciphering that language. For teaching purposes, his three volume set, Ugaritic Textbook and the works of the Hungarian scholar, Joseph Aistleitner, were for a long time the only worthy works available. He asserted that Syrian literature reflects frequent contact between ancient Syrians and speakers of Hebrew in

243-776: The Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey . During World War II , Gordon served in the U.S. military, volunteering for the Army in 1942, at the age of 33. As the head of a new cryptanalysis team, Gordon and other linguists used their collective skills in deciphering and analyzing encrypted messages. The Nazis and the Japanese sent coded messages, not just in German and Japanese, but also in such languages as Arabic , Turkish , and Persian . Gordon later remarked that his cryptography work for

270-557: The Los Lunas Mystery Stone or Commandment Rock . The stone has gained notoriety in that some claim the inscription is Pre-Columbian , and therefore proof of early Semitic contact with the Americas . Standard archeological evidence contradicts this, however. The first recorded mention of the stone is in 1933, when professor Frank Hibben (1910–2002), an archaeologist from the University of New Mexico , saw it. According to

297-683: The Newark Ohio Decalogue Stone, Keystone, and Johnson-Bradner Stone . Cyrus Gordon Cyrus Herzl Gordon (June 29, 1908 – March 30, 2001) was an American scholar of Near Eastern cultures and ancient languages. Gordon was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania , the son of Lithuanian emigrant and physician Benjamin Gordon. He was raised in an upper class Jewish family with a particular emphasis on devotion to Jewish learning, rational thinking, as well as an openness to secular learning. As

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324-794: The Bible, classics, and ancient Near East, all of which contributed to Gordon's historical-philological bent. At these universities, Gordon studied Old Persian and Sanskrit as well. As an American Schools of Oriental Research (ASOR) fellow, Gordon spent the first half of the 1930s in the Near East working out of both the Baghdad and Jerusalem centers. Gordon dug with Leonard Woolley at Ur , and worked with Flinders Petrie at Tell el-'Ajjul . He worked with W. F. Albright at Tell Beit Mirsim , and accompanied Nelson Glueck on his explorations in Transjordan. He

351-634: The Center for Ebla Research, spearheading work on that ancient Syrian city. During his career, he taught classes and seminars and published work in a wide range of fields. These include: field archaeology , glyphic art, cuneiform law, the Amarna letters , the Bible , Hebrew language, Ugaritic , Aramaic magic bowls, Nuzi tablets, Minoan Linear A , Homer , Egyptology , Coptic , Hittite , Hurrian , Sumerian , and Classical Arabic . He retired from NYU in 1989. Gordon

378-453: The Los Lunas inscription is a clear, but well constructed forgery (for its day). Despite the claims of high antiquity, there are features of the text (such as the mixing of letter forms between two separate alphabets) that are much more likely to derive from the work of a modern forger than from an ancient Hebrew or Samaritan scribe." Other speculative origin myths include the idea that members of

405-561: The Minoan era. Gordon's student, Michael Astour, published the most comprehensive treatment of this controversial thesis in his monumental Helleno-Semitica: An Ethnic and Cultural Study in West Semitic Impact on Mycenaean Greece (1965). Gordon also held that Jews, Phoenicians , and others crossed the Atlantic in antiquity, ultimately arriving in both North and South America. This opinion

432-698: The U.S. Army provided him with the tools he later used in his work with the Minoan script designated Minoan Linear A . Later in the war, Lieutenant Gordon was assigned to the Middle East, serving in the Mediterranean, Egypt , Palestine , Iraq , and eventually in Iran . There he learned to speak Modern Persian. He had various duties in Iran, including serving as interpreter or intermediary with local officials and rulers. He also found

459-578: The eastern Mediterranean . Aside from Gordon's technical work as a philologist and Semiticist, particularly his work in Ugaritic (above), Gordon was one of the greatest synthesizers of biblical studies with the study of the ancient Near East, one of the final products of which was his 1997 tome, co-authored with Gary Rendsburg , The Bible and the Ancient Near East . This work constituted a follow-on to his earlier (1965) book, The Ancient Near East , which

486-574: The first line of the unprotected inscription was obliterated by vandals. Visitors to the site are required to purchase a $ 35 Recreational Access Permit from the New Mexico State Land Office. Archaeolinguist Cyrus Gordon has proposed that the Los Lunas Decalogue is a Samaritan mezuzah . The familiar Jewish mezuzah is a tiny scroll placed in a small container mounted by the entrance to a house. The ancient Samaritan mezuzah, on

513-457: The location of the stone would have required whoever inscribed it to have "stopped along the way, encamped, eaten food, broken things, disposed of trash, performed rituals, and so on. And those actions should have left a trail of physical archaeological evidence across the greater American Southwest, discovery of which would undeniably prove the existence of foreigners in New Mexico in antiquity with

540-442: The occasion of his sixty-fifth birthday . Not afraid of scholarly controversy, Gordon challenged traditional theories about Greek and Hebrew cultures. In the 1960s, he declared his examination of Cretan texts in the Minoan language corroborated his long-held theory that Greek and Hebrew cultures stemmed from a common Semitic heritage. He asserted that this culture spanned the eastern Mediterranean from Greece to Palestine during

567-673: The other hand, was commonly a large stone slab placed by the gateway to a property or synagogue, and bearing an abridged version of the Decalogue. On historical and epigraphic grounds, Gordon regards the Byzantine period as the most likely for the inscription. The Samaritan alphabet is a direct descendant of the Paleo-Hebrew alphabet. One argument against the stone's antiquity is its apparent use of modern Hebrew (or otherwise atypical) punctuation, though amateur epigrapher Barry Fell argued that

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594-445: The punctuation is consistent with antiquity. Other researchers dismiss the inscription based on the numerous stylistic and grammatical errors that appear in the inscription. According to archaeologist Kenneth Feder , "the stone is almost certainly a fake." He points out that "the flat face of the stone shows a very sharp, crisp inscription..." His main concern however is the lack of any archaeological context. He argues that to get to

621-426: The same term [REDACTED] This disambiguation page lists articles associated with the title Decalogue Stone . If an internal link led you here, you may wish to change the link to point directly to the intended article. Retrieved from " https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Decalogue_Stone&oldid=488346350 " Category : Disambiguation pages Hidden categories: Short description

648-444: The stone inscriptions over the years, likely destroying any possibility for scientific analysis of the inscriptions' patina . Nevertheless, comparing it to a modern inscription nearby, geologist George E. Morehouse, a colleague of Barry Fell , estimated that the inscription could be between 500 and 2000 years old and explaining its freshness and lack of patina as being due to frequent scrubbing to make it more visible. In April 2006,

675-509: The time to engage in scholarship. He visited major archaeological sites of ancient Persia, and published a treatise on a number of Aramaic Incantation bowls from the collection of the Teheran Museum . After the war, Gordon took a full tenured position at Philadelphia's Dropsie College in 1946. He taught at Dropsie through 1956, then at Brandeis for eighteen years. He came to New York University (NYU) in 1973, and served as director of

702-580: Was involved in the examination and translation of the Egyptian Tell el-Amarna tablets while with the J.D.S. Pendlebury expedition. Despite this impressive pedigree, when Gordon returned to the U.S. in 1935, he was unable to find a permanent academic position, primarily due to the Depression but also because of academic antisemitism . Therefore, he took a series of temporary positions at Johns Hopkins University (under Albright), at Smith College , and at

729-505: Was itself a revision of The World of the Old Testament: An introduction to Old Testament Times (1953). Gordon's autobiography , A Scholar's Odyssey , won a National Jewish Book Award in 2000. His work has been carried forward in part by his student and Rutgers University professor Gary A. Rendsburg. In 1973, a Festschrift was published in his honor, called Orient and Occident. : Essays presented to Cyrus H. Gordon on

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