The Bat Creek Stone

makes sense to me. Hebrews wouldn't write "KXENLY'P" on a rock and throw it into a river for no reason.

Now what does the carvings mean when translated into English? "Lost Tribe of Israel. If found please return to Jerusalem"?

Those markings look a bit like the Elder Futhark, but it is kind of hard to tell from the small picture.

The original article can be found here: http://www.ramtops.co.uk/bat2.html

Whoops! That link was to the second article, the first is: http://www.ramtops.co.uk/bat1.html

Carbon dating isn't accurate. Once, to test the process, scientists took brick pieces & mortar from a castle that they KNEW was 800 yrs old. When they tested it using the method, the returned result was that the items were 4,000 years old. Besides, I thought carbon dating was taking the dirt, & deciding how old it was to determine the age of the object, & in turn the object would say how old the dirt was. Sort of like a little circle. Never made sense to me.

Fay-Fay, according to the articles that Captain DaFt linked to, the markings mean 'For the Jews'.

And thanks for finding those articles, Captain DaFt. I've been trying to see if the most recent article in which they reveal the 'smoking gun' evidence of where the inscription came from is online, but haven't found it anywhere.

I, ignorantly I guess, thought that there were no written languages from the american indians. I guess that only applies to some of the tribes. This was useful in WW2, they used Navaho, I think to send radio messages. I had a discussion with a native american on a message board a while back, long story short he stated that white man never got their story right in any of the books, so I asked if there were any original books written in native language, He stated that there were no native american written languages back then, just books written after the tribes were taught french or some other language or phonetic writing. Anybody else know of any books written in native american languages?

In general, Native peoples of what is now the U.S. and Canada didn't have writing as we think of it before the European conquest, though some groups did have systems of pictorial symbols. Those don't qualify as full-fledged writing because it wasn't possible to fully write all sentences or words from their languages, as it is with modern writing systems. In the western half of the U.S., many natives did make "petrographs" (rock writing) in ancient times, but nobody now knows what most of these pictures and symbols were intended to mean, or indeed whether they were a kind of writing, religious iconography, or just doodling.
In Mexico, though, several of the indigenous nations did have sophisticated systems of writing. The Aztecs and the Maya and several of their neighbors and predecessors wrote stone inscriptions and many books and scrolls, thousands of which were burned by Spanish conquistadors who associated them with pagan religions.
Cherokee has a literary history, but it doesn't go back to pre-conquest times. In the early 19th century, a Cherokee man named Sequoyah developed an "alphabet" (actually a set of syllabic characters) for writing the Cherokee language. His system was a new invention, not an adaptation of other alphabets. Sequoyah's system was widely adopted among the Cherokees, and books and newspapers were published in Cherokee for many years, although I understand the system has fallen into relative disuse in the present generation. There was, and I suppose still is, a statue of Sequoyah in the U.S. Captiol building.

The Lenape (Delaware) Indians also had some kind of writing system, which was the inspiration for a hoax that I've described here:

http://www.museumofhoaxes.com/walamolum.html

The idea that ancient Hebrews or Europeans MUST have built things like the Mounds is just thinly-veiled racism. The underlying notion is that such marvels of architecture could only have been built by "superior" (wink wink) people, not "savages". 19th-century thinking.

Maegan, carbon-dating is more accurate than you think WHEN DONE PROPERLY by EXPERTS, you don't seem to have a full grasp of the underlying technology and physics involved. Questioning such established facts in public makes you sound like one of those dippy Creationist fools.

Ociyo! (Hello, in Cherokee)
The Cherokee Syllabary is most definitely still in wide use, and is actively taught today in many Native American language programmes. Our newspaper, Cherokee Observer, is written in both and English version, and a Tsa-La-Gi (Cherokee) version.
I love those old westerns where a flaming arrow flies into the fort with a 'note' on it, written in 'indian', and they have to call someone over to translate. Sometimes I think every print of those old films should just be burned. And while we're at it, most Pocahontas films, especially DISNEY!!!! They're perpetrating the lie that John Smith told time and again.

Actually, the markings read something like raq lihud[im], "only for the Jews". The late Cyrus Gordon, mentioned in the article, adopted Robert Stieglitz's proposal that the inscription read ziq lihudim, "a comet for the Jews," presumably in reference to some quasi-messianic figure believed to be the fulfillment to a prophecy(Gordon, who was a polymath and a particularly brilliant linguist, had a strong poetic streak).

Gordon was also known for his publication of the infamous Paraiba Text, aka the Phoenician Text from Brazil. Later in life (shortly before he passed away) he told me that he had come to believe that the text was a masonic forgery.

"raq lihud" literally means "only to the jews"

Only for the jews would literally be "raq bishvil hayehud"

Then again, i'm not so great at hebrew and prepositions don't translate directly. From looking at the picture, it must be really old hebrew because it doesn't even look familiar.

To Maegan :

Your story doesn't add up. Bricks and mortar CANNOT be carbon dated, carbon dating can ONLY happen on organic materials.
Hence the carbon dating of the stone is based on "artifacts found alongside", which I presume are made out of bone or something.
Lastly and most importantly : carbon dating is usually very accurate, so I'm afraid it's damning in this case.

I was going to ask, how does carbon dating a bit of rock tell you how old an inscription on the rock is, surely it's just gonna tell you how old the rock is.

I wasn't aware of the organics only rule that Nathan pointed out, but I guess you learn something new every day 😊

"Your story doesn't add up. Bricks and mortar CANNOT be carbon dated, carbon dating can ONLY happen on organic materials."
-Wasn't aware of the organic rule here....
*Main Entry: carbon dating
Function: noun
: the determination of the age of old material (as an archaeological or paleontological specimen) by means of the content of carbon 14.
*Main Entry: carbon 14
Pronunciation: see FOURTEEN
Function: noun
: a heavy radioactive isotope of carbon of mass number 14 used especially in tracer studies and in dating archaeological and geological materials.
-Geological is rock stuff right? Bricks are like rocks made up of mud. Mortar is...mud? (If this stuff was from the 1100's or 1200's I don't think the people who made the castle just ran up to the local Castle Depot & picked up from Quick-crete)

"carbon-dating is more accurate than you think WHEN DONE PROPERLY by EXPERTS"
-Yeah, I guess they would have not used experts to test this. Geeze, if I have to find the whole damn piece and post it, I will...but I used it in a particular curriculum that I no longer have (it burned in a house fire), & the teacher who created it was a microbiologist & researches her information before she give it to someone to use as a teaching tool. I taught her stuff 8 times, & still don't remember all of it...there was a lot of stuff. Here's her web page, I don't think she's got the info up on it...you've got to pay for the stuff..

http://www.catiefrates.com/ She used to live in my town...& taught at a homeschool conference I went to.

"dippy Creationist fools."
-That's open-minded of you.

I think you missed my point Meagan
If I inscribe a piece of rock that is 1500 years old does that mean the inscription must be 1500 years old?

If I build a castle out of bricks that were formed 4000 years ago, then the carbon dating might well claim the castle is 4000 years old even if I built it yesterday.

Remember stuff like concrete wasn't around 800 years ago, the bricks in castles were cut directly from a quarry as they are.

I think I did miss your point. ...But in now seeing your point...

If I dug a hole in my yard & used that dirt to make mud...that might be what? 20-30 years of deposit? I would have to go so deeply & dig for so long that I might as well live in the hole I dug, rather than a castle made from the mud. So I'd give about 50-100 yrs of error on either end...but not thousands.

I'm seeing your point in...the rock could very well be 1,000 yrs old...but the inscription would be 10 minutes old. Which means that the inscription would be fake.

So...how do you date an inscription? (Honest questions here...can anyone shed some light on this?)

Maegan, the only way you can date any kind of stone object (or inscribed stone object) is by looking at what you find around it. That's why archaeology is so full of hoaxes. It's easy to slip something into the ground when no one is looking.

So...if I DID find a 1,500 yr old stone, & wrote, "ALL HAIL FUTURE QUEEN MAEGAN!" Then, no one could really be able to prove me wrong?

Not wishing to nit-pick Sharruna, but concrete has been around for at least 2,000 years. The Pantheon in Rome (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pantheon,_Rome), for example, has a concrete dome, and it's 2nd Century. Sorry - nothing to do with the debate, I just thought I'd mention it

Are you sure?
I'm not a fountain of all knowledge and wisdom, even if I like to think I am at times.
but I understood Concrete to be a very recent invention
1756 by John Smeaton to be more precise

Mainfort and Kwas are criticised very effectively as a lot of biased emotional handwaving here:
http://www.econ.ohio-state.edu/jhm/arch/AmerAntiq.pdf

My favorite part is #4 (p. 12), where J. Huston McCulloch points out that if Emmerts wanted to impress his employer, who believed the mounds were Cherokee, the last thing he would do is forge a Hebrew inscription, especially since he knew many Cherokee who could have helped him with their script.

Whether the inscription is real or not, I don't know. But after reading the Ohio State paper, I'm inclined to believe that Mainfort and Kwas are about as reliable as they accuse the stone's Emmerts of being.. Their arguments show nothing but their own bias.

For a better view of the stone:
http://www.econ.ohio-state.edu/jhm/arch/batcrk.html

The stone referred to here is just one of the many artifacts that prove that the natives of the continents we now call North and South America are Hebrews. 12 tribes make up the nation of Israel, 10 of them seemed to have vanished from the middle east after the reign of the Assyrians over the land of Palestine. The reason that the script on this particular stone looks different from the Hebrew script people are acustomed to seeing today is because it is different. This is how the original language was written. The Hebrew you will find today dates back only to the time of Ezra the prophet and priest of the tribe of Levi who was one of the men who published the new form of Hebrew script. All of the ancient scrolls that predate Ezra and some of the scrolls found written after his time were written in this ancient Hebrew script. The name "Indian" applied to Native Americans is broadly excepted even though most people would not argue against the fact that the natives are not from India. The name "Israelite" applied to the natives of America will continue to be scorned although there are many things that prove that is the true ethnicity.

How exactly does that prove Native Americans are Hebrews, and not that some small number of ancient Hebrews visited North America? Sorry, that's actually the more like choice of the two*.

Of course, the most likely choice is that it's simply a hoax, but that wouldn't be any fun at all, would it?


*yes I'm well aware that this is an incredibly unlikely scenario, I'm only using it as an example

That alone doesn't prove it. But we will consider this artifact with many others and important documents including accounts given by the early European settlers in the Americas. I know that many people don't believe the Bible to be a divinely inspired book or an accurate account of history as true as it is... All races of people living today come from Noah and his 3 sons. This is because the flood covered the entire earth killing all people and land animals except for those preserved in the ark Noah built. How does this relate to our topic? The natives of America must descend from either Shem and/or Ham and/or Japeth (the 3 sons of Noah). Following the history recorded in the bible the land first inhabited was Asia, Africa, and Europe. The descendants of Japheth settled in Europe for the most part and the nearby islands. The descendants of Ham settled in Africa and parts of the Middle East. The descendants of Shem settled in the Middle East and parts of northern Africa. When the continents later to be called the Americas were to be found and inhabited the people referred to it as a "new found land" because thats exactly what it was. If you read 2nd Esdras 13:39-45 (Esdras is Ezra in the bible) you can see that 10 tribes out of the 12 tribes nation of Israel, after leaving Assyrian captivity journed to a land called Arzareth from the Hebrew words (אַחֶרֶת אֶרֶץ) (Deuteronomy 29:28) The meaning of that is another land, implying a land besides the land that was known and inhabited. This land most definitely could have been the 'Americas'. Another important book to consider is James Adair's History of the American Indians written in the 1700s, also Lost Tribes and Promise Land, just to name a couple. The fringes wore on the clothes of many of the native tribes (often laced with a border of blue wampum beads or blue dye) is a custom kept by the Israelites as a law given to them through Moses (Numbers 15:37-40). There is a cave in New Mexico where in the 10 commandments had been written in ancient Hebrew ("Los Lunas Hebrew Inscription").
http://www.ancient-hebrew.org/15_home.html

The Wampanoag tribe as well as several other tribes used the shield of David (6 point star) as a common emblem. There have been found coins buried with Hebrew inscriptions. Circumcision was practiced among many tribes before the Europeans ever came. The name used by many tribes for the "One God" in many of the ancient native dialects is the same as the tetragram YHWH (the Hebrew name for God). There are countless other clues that prove that the native Americans are descendents of the lost tribes of Israel. But if any of the readers here can argue against this, offer also some "proof" that what I am saying is incorrect.

Fortunately we don't have to rely on the Bible or doubtful 'artifacts' as our sources - we have modern science.

A simple DNA test would show how closely related Native Americans are to modern Jews. I find it hard to believe such a thing hasn't already occurred, many groups are involved in DNA mapping humans across the world. The people who believe they've found a genetic marker from Ghengis Khan made international headlines, you'd think proving conclusively that Native Americans were ancient Hebrews would be even bigger news, yet I haven't heard anything about it.

Oh, and lets not forget the simple fact that there were people in North and South America millenia before the first Hebrews appeared. In fact, millenia before the Bible states the world was created, which puts something of a shadow on the Bible's claim to authenticity.

The DNA test to show how closely related the "modern Jews" are to the Native Americans as you stated...??? A DNA test would also show how unrelated the "modern Jews" are to the actual ethnic tribes of Israel (the sons of Jacob). Concerning these "modern Jews" as you called them, the mass majority of them are in no way physically related to the original tribe of Judah. Ask any "rabbi" who is knowledgable enough and honest enough to tell you the facts and he will admit that most of the European Jews are Jewish by religion because they converted to Judaism between the 8th and 9th century. There are several documents to prove this but a good book that consolodates this information was written by a very knowledgable "modern Jew" Arthur Koestler.
http://198.62.75.1/www2/koestler/
As to your last comment, ..."In fact, millenia before the Bible states the world was created, which puts something of a shadow on the Bible's claim to authenticity." What year did the Bible say that the world was created? If you have seen this somewhere in the Bible I would like to know which bible you are referring to. IT'S NOT IN THERE! What it does say is, "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth..." "In the beginning" doesn't tell you exactly when.

The general consensus among creationists is that the world is c. 6000 years old. It's not my number, but it's the one I hear thrown at me the most.

You still haven't addressed the fact that Native Americans were here long before the ancient Hebrews ever entered the scene, and in far greater numbers (having a much vaster area to populate). To say that modern Native Americans are the lost tribes of Israel isn't born out by the facts. At the very best it's possible that some ancient peoples intermingled with the natives already here, whether from Europe, Africa, or Asia. There has never been any concrete evidence of this happening before the Europeans started moving colonizing here.

But even if a million 'Lost Israelites' did settle in the New World, they're lost to antiquity. They were swallowed up and lost their own culture, completely assimilating into the native one. And in fact, that's exactly what happened to them - only they were lost to the cultures of Asia, not the Americas.

It's much more logical to assume they were absorbed locally rather than somehow traveling to the other side of the world. A mass relocation project of that scale would have been hard to ignore. The manufacture of the boats alone would have required entire cities to be founded on the coast somewhere, and nothing like this has ever turned up. Such a project would have left some traces, some records... yet nothing exists. Especially not a landing site in the new world. Where are their buildings, their temples? They wouldn't have 'gone native' immediately, yet there's nothing but a few controversial artifacts.

I will respond to your each of your comments. I did not respond to that "'fact' that Native Americans were here long before the ancient Hebrews ever entered the scene, and in far greater numbers (having a much vaster area to populate)." Because that isn't a fact at all. A vaster area doesn't always imply a far greater population. New York City, Los Angeles, Mexico City, Moscow, Chicago, Manila: relatively small areas in comparison to vast areas such as the several provinces of scarce populations in Canada, United States, South America and all over the world. The fact of the matter is populations usually grow faster where people are more consolidated in small areas. As to the first part of your statement that Native Americans were here "long" before the Hebrews ever entered the scene, that is just another fable that if spoken enough by enough different people it becomes a "fact" to the gullible misinformed people as it did to you in this case. The Native Americans settled here no earlier than the 7th century B.C. Whether or not this land had visitors prior to that time can be only speculated. The 10 to 12 thousand years ago theory is only a theory.

To your next statement, "But even if a million 'Lost Israelites' did settle in the New World, they're lost to antiquity"... you are 100% correct. This is exactly what the holy prophets in the Bible prophesied would happened. This is why Israelites became known as "the lost sheep of Israel": because the Israelites lost their identity. They were not "swallowed up" by other people until the European invaders came here. But the Israelites did loose their antiquity and fell into the darkness of the madness of the desires of the flesh and the worshiping of false gods before the Europeans came. This is also why the Great Spirit, the Eternal True God punished us by sending the Europeans here to overcome us by war, trickery, disease (germ warfare), and lies just like YOU are here trying to lie to the readers of this page.
In your next statement you said that they were lost to the cultures of Asia. This is true, there were several Israelites that remained in Asia and took on the cultures of the heathen living near them. However this is not exclusively what happened. The bible says that the Israelites would be scattered throughout all nations of the earth (Deuteronomy 28:64), this does include the Americas; other scriptures showing that America would be the main place the Israelites would come to. In other words, the Israelites would be scattered throughout all nations, but particularly in America (would a very large population of Israelites be).
Your next statement, "It's much more logical to assume they were absorbed locally rather than somehow traveling to the other side of the world."
Why is that??? It is a known fact that the first people did not come from the Americas. It has been said Africa and it has been said the Middle East is the first place humans lived. So if its not logical to think that somehow a people could travel to the other side of the earth, what logical explanation can you give concerning how the first Native Americans came here? Did they just pop up here like magic??? Of course, they migrated. So if they migrated here, how is it impossible to think that they could have been the descendants of Shem, Eber, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and not the descendants of Ham, or Japheth for example. You also underestimate the power of the ancient peoples of the world and in particular the power the GOD of the Hebrews. Reflect on the pyramids both in Egypt and in the Americas... such wonders that some scientist even propose, "maybe some aliens came down from outer space and built them". HAHAHA.

Your next statement, "A mass relocation project of that scale would have been hard to ignore. The manufacture of the boats alone would have required entire cities to be founded on the coast somewhere, and nothing like this has ever turned up. Such a project would have left some traces, some records... yet nothing exists. Especially not a landing site in the new world. Where are their buildings, their temples?"
There was a mass relocation of project. How else could this land have become populated? People didn't fall here from outer space in ancient times or pop out of chicken eggs or clam shells.
There was also a well documented mass relocation from Egypt to Israel called the "exodus" where Moses led the children of Israel A MASS POPULATION of people through the wilderness of Zin... for 40 years the people migrated. Where are the "traces"??? There aren't any. This is because the ancient Hebrew Israelites were not wasteful as the people today are. They lived off the land, lived in tents, used what they could use and left the area virtually without a trace. The Bible says in 2 Esdras 13:39-45, particularly in verses 44 and 45 that the most High then ("then" being at the time of the Israelites migration to "Arsareth" which is the Americas) showed signs for them, and held still the flood, till they were passed over. For through that country was a great way to go, namely of a year and a half..."
There were several temples here when the European invaders / destroyers arrived but the Europeans destroyed them. You should have done some more research before you assumed that there were none. The ancient Hebrews lived in tents when they were migrating and built houses of stone and simple wooden houses when they were settled. This is the same way the Natives here always lived, so your last few statements were also invalid. "gone native" I'm not sure of what you mean by that. The ancient Israelites lived the same way the Natives here lived before the Europeans came.

The fact of the matter is populations usually grow faster where people are more consolidated in small areas.

This is true only with an agricultural base that can supply such a city with food. 3000 years ago neither the Israelites nor the Native Americans had the capability to supply cities even 1/10 the size of the ones you cited. They were agrarian societies, not industrial.

The native population of the Americas at the time of European colonization was anywhere from 10 - 112 million - the estimates vary widely, unfortunately. But even the lowball estimate of 10 million is more than the 7.1 million Jews living in Israel today. I stand by my statement that Native Americans were far, far more numerous than the Hebrews of the time.

The Native Americans settled here no earlier than the 7th century B.C.

Please cite some references for this. The archaeological evidence disproves this.

The 10 to 12 thousand years ago theory is only a theory.

A theory backup up with vast amounts of physical evidence, of which your theory seems to have none. Also, the 10-12 thousand year mark is controversial, some evidence indicates it might have been much earlier.

Did they (Native Americans) just pop up here like magic???

No, they crossed over by a land bridge during the last ice-age. This land bridge did not exist during Biblical times, it predates them. The natives walked. Maybe the Jews used magic in your world.

Reflect on the pyramids both in Egypt and in the Americas... such wonders that some scientist even propose, "maybe some aliens came down from outer space and built them". HAHAHA.

No scientist proposes this - crackpots do, though.

There's nothing special about pyramids. A pyramid is simply far easier to build when working on such a grand scale. Even so the pyramids of the Americas are far different from the Egyptian pyramids.

I should probably also point out that Egyptians are not Jews. Their great pyramids were built years before the Jews appeared. I'm confused why you feel the Lost Tribes would have mimicked the buildings of their one-time masters.

The Jews didn't build the pyramids. The Bible is not a valid scientific reference.

The Jews wandered for 40 years just getting from Egypt to Israel, but we're to believe (from a book even the Jews consider apocryphal) that they made it from the Euphrates to the New World in a year and a half? Unless God magically transported them, which you might think was important enough to write about, they couldn't have done it - their own history bears out how incapable they were of moving vast numbers of people quickly.

There were temples in the Americas, and there still are. Unfortunately for your argument they're about as different from the ancient temples of the Israelites as you can get - and as different from each other. The native of these continents weren't one people, they were many. Many civilizations rose and fell in the Americas without interference from the rest of the world.

I'm sorry, there is simply no evidence whatsoever for your claims. Even the Bible doesn't really back it up, you have to interpret it in your own special way just to get it to fit. There is no known correlation for Arsareth but that doesn't automatically make it America, the similarity in look notwithstanding. And even that similarity might not stand up when written in Hebrew, though that's beyond my means. Besides, would the European 'destroyers' have actually named the new world after an apocryphal Hebrew text?

First of all, I never said that America was named after Arsareth. The fact is America was named after an Itallian explorer Amerigo Vespucci who lived during the 15th and 16th centuries. What I originally said was Arzareth comes from the Hebrew words (אַחֶרֶת אֶרֶץ) (Deuteronomy 29:28) The meaning of that is another land, implying a land besides the land that was known and inhabited. This land called Arsareth is not being identified as America because it also starts with the letter "A", but because the etymology of the word fits the desciption of these 2 continents North and South America, and because the people who first settle in the Americas also fit the description of the lost tribes of Israel.
The bible DOES back up this fact, the problem with you is that your only knowledge of the bible seems to be the understanding of what place you are in (according to your screen name here. As I said earlier, let me quote from Deuteronomy 28:64 (THE MOST HIGH SAID THIS CONCERNING THE CHILDREN OF ISRAEL:) "And the LORD shall scatter thee among all people, from the one end of the earth even unto the other..."; (Ezekiel 12:15, Ezekiel 20:23, Deuteronomy 4:27, Deuteronomy 30:3, Jeremiah 23:3-8, Jeremiah 32:37, Ezekiel 36:24) There are many scriptures in the bible that show that the children of Israel would be scattered amongst all nations of the earth. This does include the Americas. It also states in the bible, in most of the chapters just mentioned, that the children of Israel would be slaves, would be oppressed, massacred, their lands taken unrighteously by the foreign nations, etc. in the lands where they had been driven. In America, who did this happen to? The dark-skinned slaves the Europeans brought from Africa (and parts of Europe" and the Native Americans who also happened to be dark-skinned... (the Europeans having a superiority complex over people of color)
Christopher Colombus (without the use of any modern technology) sailed from Spain to the Americas, stopping once on the way in the Canary Islands, in less than 3 months. However, you say that it is would have to be magic for the children of Israel to travel in a year and a half from the Middle East to the Americas. Whether or not our forefathers travelled through the Beiring Strait or through some other route is not the arguement.
God does not work magic, He works miracles that people cannot explain or do by their ownselves.

Your sarcasm in saying "Unless God magically transported them..." only shows your disbelief in God's word and your leaning upon a "science"... the same science fiction that also holds the principle that states that God did not create everything in His power, but that the world as we see it was created through a big explosion. I've never seen an explosion create anything.
The Israelites did not wander the wilderness for 40 years to travel for Egypt to Palestine due to their incapability to move vast numbers of people as you have said. The real reason that they wandered for 40 years in the wilderness is because of their disbelief in God. God punished them so that the entire generation that came out of Egypt except for Joshua and Caleb died in the wilderness, and only thier children were allowed to enter the promised land.
You said the Jews did not build the pyramids... The truth is the Israelites were slaves in Egypt for 80 years before the Most High delivered them out by the hand of Moses. While they were slaves they built the buildings that the Egyptians ordered them to build. Before they were slaves, they ruled Egypt (starting from the time Joseph sat on the throne) up until the time of Ramses the 1st. During the time of their rulership, they became exceeding great as the bible says. Pyramids were built by the Israelites using Egyptians as slaves and pyramids were built by the Egyptians using Israelites and other people as slaves.

Amazing how these comments traveled to the bible and population growth. Regardless, the evidence of this artifact doesn't prove that it was buried at the same time of the artifacts found around it. Which goes along with the fact that it's founder was not considered trust worthy during this time period either, so basically it's void of positive proof of it even being Hebrew at all. There appears to be more evidence of it not being legitimate, than it being legit! When it comes to most of the arguments on this subject, everyone leads to the bible. Well my twist would be, what if they weren't Hebrew. What if they were Atlantians, long before Hebrews on an island in the Atlantic? What if the island sank and the survivors spread out across the world to Israel, the Americas,etc. and the language mutated over time as did their knowledge. Just a thought...lol!

Well, that's a fantastic idea but if you can read the ancient Hebrew you would know that the phrase written on the stone is spelling out "to Juda(h)" which is a common hebrew name and the name of one of the 12 tribes of Israel.

why didn't anyone mention that it's a stone axehead,
which were used by native americans?

If you look up the story of Luther Blackman you might find the answer. Luther owned the property where the stone was found. He was very highly educated -- considered brilliant. Blackman was also A HIGHLY SKILLED STONE ENGRAVER who had purchased the Bat Creek Property in 1857 to set up his Monument and Stone Engraving business. He was also a Republican Union Army Officer with a hatred for Confederate Democrats such as Emmert, who was relatively uneducated. In l888 East Tennessee Republicans got Emmert fired from his job and now Blackman was determined to have him fired a second time from his job at the Smithsonian. Emmert was disabled. He did no actual digging himself. Instead he hired local teenage boys to dig, including Blackman's own son and the son of his next door neighbor, Jim Lawson. It was one of the boys who "found" the stone and gave it to Emmert, but Emmert claimed to have found it personally. Blackman was also a Mason. The engraving on the stone is virtually identical to an example of ancient Hebrew writing that was published in a Masonic reference book in 1870.

Smell anything? Anything like maybe.... someone delivering an artifact to the Smithsonian that they claimed to have found that turned out to be a forgery might get them fired?

Here's a side-by-side of the Stone and the illustration from the Masonic guide published nearly 30 years prior:



As you can see, the inscription and the illustration are so similar that any reasonable person should become immediately suspicious. The stone was reported found February l4, l889 and delivered to Cyrus Thomas, director of archaeology for the Smithsonian at the time. Thomas recognized it as a fake but before it became an issue, on March 4, 1889 Benjamin Harrison was inaugurated president. Harrison immediately began the process of removing all Democrats from Federal patronage jobs, so Emmert lost his job anyway. With no one to condemn for the forgery, Thomas simply put the stone in one of the drawers of the archive where it remained forgotten until 1960 when Hebrew scholars learned of it and tried desperately to prove that it was a 2000 year old artifact.

The whole story has nothing to do with religion, nothing to do with Mormons and nothing to do with Hebrews. The stone was faked solely for political reasons.