User:Ecp7201/Bat Creek Inscription

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The Bat Creek inscription is an inscribed stone tablet found by John W. Emmert on February 14, 1889. Emmert claimed to have found the tablet in Tipton Mound 3 during an excavation of Hopewell mounds in Loundon County, Tennessee. This excavation was part of a larger series of excavations that aimed to clarify the controversy regarding who is responsible for building the mounds covering the Eastern United States.

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. This interpretation was accepted at the time. Still, it was contested nearly two centuries later when, in the 1970s, a scholar of Near Eastern Cultures and ancient languages, Cyrus H. Gordon, reexamined the tablet and proposed the inscription represented Paleo-Hebrew of the 1st or 2nd century. Although the consensus among archaeologists is that the tablet is a hoax, some individuals have argued that the ancient Hebrew text on the stone supports Pre-Columbian transoceanic contact theories. But despite this misappropriation of the tablet as evidence supporting Pre-Columbian transoceanic contact theories, archaeologists Robert Mainfort and Mary Kwas have clarified that the inscription is not a genuine paleo-Hebrew artifact but rather a 19th-century forgery. Furthermore, the conclusions drawn by Mainfort and Kwas have been accepted by other archaeologists and members of academic communities.

Today, the probable source used by the forger to create the inscription has been identified, yet the question of who made the tablet and why remains unanswered.

Physical Description of the Inscription

An 1890 lithograph of the tablet without the now present parallel markings.

The stone itself is 11.4 centimeters (4.5 in) long and 5.1 centimeters (2.0 in) wide. And the inscription consists of at least eight characters. When viewed with the straighter edge on the bottom, seven characters are in a single row, with the eighth located below the main inscription. These eight characters are, on average, 2-3 mm in depth.According to the American Petrographic Services' evaluation of the stone, the marks are characterized by smooth, "rounded grooves." This shape suggests the stone's creator used a rounded instrument to make the engraving. Additionally, the entire surface of the stone appears to be polished, which further contributes to the smooth, rounded edges of the markings. An unknown party added two nearly parallel vertical strokes while the stone was stored in the National Museum of Natural History from 1894 and 1970. This is evident by the lack of the markings in the first photograph of the stone, published in the 1890-1891 annual report of the Bureau of Ethnology, and their appearance in photos after 1970. Additionally, these markings are characterized by V shape carvings indicating they were created by a sharper tool than the initial eight characters

An image of the tablet where the parallel markings are present in the top left corner.

Context of the Excavation

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 . Part of this history remains embedded in the advanced architecture of the Adena and Hopewell people. The Adena and Hopewell peoples constructed significant earthworks and mounds, a "widespread practice throughout the American southeast, Midwest, and northern plains" .

However, "Despite the preponderance of archaeological evidence that these mound complexes were the work of sophisticated Native American civilizations," this fact has been "obscured by the Myth of the Mound Builders" . The "Myth of the Mound-builders" is a damaging belief that discredits Native American peoples by claiming they were not the creators of the phenomenal mounds, and another group of people, frequently referred to as a "Vanished Race," are responsible for their creation and persisting splendor. This belief was influential and "adopted by many Americans in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries" . The reasons are complicated for the popularity of this obfuscation of the facts of Native American societies, but it is clear that it reflects the sentiments of European settler colonialism. Historian Sarah E. Baires writes that the attribution of the mound builders to "any group—other than Native Americans" reflects the "practices" of American settlers that primarily "included the erasure of Native American ties to their cultural landscapes". The forced removal of Native peoples from their land and the severing of Native people from their heritage was partially enacted by "destroying indigenous pyramid mounds" and "The creation of the Myth of the Mounds" . 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'" .

When the Bat Creek Inscription was found, it entered into this important debate about who the mound builders were. Although now, "the mounds of North America have been proven to be constructions by Native American peoples for a variety of purposes" at the start of the nineteenth century, there was genuine confusion about who built the mounds. 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" . 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. More specifically, Thomas focused on assessing the connection between the mound-builders and the Indigenous communities who lived in the area before and during European colonization. Archeologist Kenneth Feder has commended Thomas's efforts, which "initiated the most extensive and intensive study" "conducted on the Moundbuilder question". Thomas's efforts were crucial because of their ability to destabilize the myth of the Mound Builders by providing irrefutable evidence that Indigenous Americans are responsible for constructing the mounds. 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".

Archaeological Excavation

Initial Excavation

Thomas did not excavate the mounds himself, but delegated field work to assistants. One such assistant was John Emmert, who performed the excavation of Bat Creek Mound 3. When he excavated the mound he did so "alone and in isolation". According to Emmert, the site consisted of one large mound (Mound 1) on the east bank of the creek and two smaller mounds (Mound 2 and Mound 3) on the west bank. Mound 1 had a diameter of 108 feet (33 m) and a height of 8 feet (2.4 m), and it was located on the first terrace above the river. Today, this mound is submerged by a reservoir. Mound 2 had a diameter of 44 feet (13 m) and height of 10 feet (3.0 m), and Mound 3 had a diameter of 28 feet (8.5 m) and height of 5 feet (1.5 m). Both Mound 2 and 3 were located higher than Mound 1. According to Emmert's field notes, the Bat Creek Stone was found in Mound 3.

In Mound 3, Emmert reported finding "two copper bracelets, an engraved stone, a small drilled fossil, a copper bead, a bone implement, and some small pieces of polished wood soft and colored green by contact with the copper bracelet". 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. He reported that the Bat Creek Stone was found under the skull of the south-facing skeleton.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.

Recent Excavation

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. Litigation and environmental concerns stalled the dam's completion until 1979, allowing extensive excavations at multiple sites throughout the valley. In the late 1960s and 1970s, the Tellico Archaeological Project, conducted by the University of Tennessee Department of Anthropology investigated over two dozen sites and uncovered evidence of substantial habitation in the valley during the Archaic (8000–1000 BC), Woodland (1000 BC – 1000 AD), Mississippian (900-1600 AD), and Cherokee (c. 1600-1838) periods.Mound 1 of the Bat Creek Site was excavated in 1975. Investigators concluded that the mound was a "platform" mound typical of the Mississippian period. Pre-Mississippian artifacts dating to the Archaic and Woodland periods were also found. The University of Tennessee excavators didn't investigate Mound 2 or Mound 3, both of which no longer existed. 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.

Conversation and Debate

In the 1894 Report on the Mound Explorations of the Bureau of Ethnology the finding of the inscription was mentioned along with other artifacts recovered from the Bat Creek Mound excavations . 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

The Cherokee syllabary, initially identified by Cyrus Thomas (1890, 1894) as the source of the letters on the Bat Creek stone.

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".)

Coin of the First Jewish War, with Paleo-Hebrew letters similar to those Gordon (1971) claimed are present on the Bat Creek inscription.

Cherokee constructed many of the earthen mounds and enclosures in eastern North America" . However, this identification as Cherokee was flawed. The "Cherokee writing system was

Masonic artist's impression of Biblical phrase 𐤒𐤃𐤔 𐤋𐤉𐤄𐤅𐤄 (QDSh LYHWH) in paleo-Hebrew script (Macoy 1868: 134), compared with the inscribed stone.

invented in 1819," and If the tablet were inscribed with Cherokee, this would suggest the mound is much younger than "the solid archaeological data" that identified it as much older . As Feder explains, "The Bat Creek Stone was an outlier, impossible to put into genuine historical context, and though few said it out loud, it was assumed by many that the artifact had been faked" . Yet despite this incongruity, at the time of its finding, there was little controversy regarding the inscription, and "Thomas did not discuss the Bat Creek stone in any of his later substantive publications" .

However, "during the last 30 years the assertion that the Americas were regularly visited, if not colonized, by Old World seafarers has seen a major resurgence" . And the Bat Creek Inscription has been referenced by proponents of the Pre-Colombian transatlantic contact theory as "representing the most convincing evidence" for such claims . In 1970, the stone was examined by professor Dr. Cyrus Gordon, scholar of "Biblical and Near Eastern studies" and "proponent of Precolumbian contacts between the old and new worlds" . Gordon concluded that Thomas had been viewing the inscription "upside down," and when re-read in its proper orientation, the inscription represented "ancient Hebrew" . He asserted that the inscription "could be translated as some variation of 'For the Jews'" . The use of the stone as evidence for Pre-Colombian transatlantic contact theories was continued in 1988 by J. Huston McCulloch, Economics professor at Ohio State University . McCulloch mostly agreed with Gordon's assessment of the stone is as Ancient Hebrew, and expressed, "My own conviction is that the Bat Creek inscription is a rustic, and therefore imperfect, specimen of paleo-Hebrew" . He went on to claim, "it does not by itself indicate anything more than a minimal contact with the New World by a few Hebrew sailors" . But the claims of Gordon and McCulloh have been silenced and archeologists "have rejected the Bat Creek stone as a fake".

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 . Mainfort and Kwas have identified the source of the inscription. It was copied from the General History, Cyclopedia, and Dictionary of Freemasonry. This volume was "extensively reprinted during the latter half of the nineteenth century," and would have been available to the forger . Archaeologist Bradley T. Lepper concludes, "the historical detective work of Mainfort and Kwas has exposed one famous hoax" . And Professor in Biblical Studies and Ancient Near Eastern Studies at Johns Hopkins University, Kyle McCarter expresses, "the Bat Creek stone has no place in the inventory of Hebrew inscriptions from the time of the First Jewish Revolt against Rome" and "belongs to the melodrama of American archaeology in the late 19th century" .

McCarter concluded, "It seems probable that we are dealing here not with a coincidental similarity but with a fraud". In 2004, further contributing to the growing evidence that the inscription is a hoax, Mainfort and Kwas published an article that included an illustration from an 1870 Masonic reference book with striking similarities to the Bat Creek inscription. The article provides evidence for their argument that the tablet is an attempted copy of the phrase "holy Yahweh" from a freemason book readily accessible at the time the inscription was originally found.  

For example, in a 1993 article in Biblical Archaeology Review, P. Kyle McCarter, Jr stated that although the inscription "is not an authentic paleo-Hebrew inscription," it "clearly imitates one in certain features" .