The Los Lunas Decalogue Stone is a hoax associated with a large boulder on the side of Hidden Mountain, near

Los Lunas, New Mexico Los Lunas is a village in Valencia County, New Mexico, Valencia County, New Mexico, United States. As of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, the village has a population of 17,242. It is the county seat of Valencia County. Los Lunas is pa ...

, about south of

Albuquerque Albuquerque ( ; ), also known as ABQ, Burque, the Duke City, and in the past 'the Q', is the List of municipalities in New Mexico, most populous city in the U.S. state of New Mexico, and the county seat of Bernalillo County, New Mexico, Bernal ...

, that bears a nine-line inscription carved into a flat panel. The stone is also known as the Los Lunas Mystery Stone or Commandment Rock. The stone has gained notoriety in that some claim the inscription is

Pre-Columbian In the history of the Americas, the pre-Columbian era, also known as the pre-contact era, or as the pre-Cabraline era specifically in Brazil, spans from the initial peopling of the Americas in the Upper Paleolithic to the onset of European col ...

, and therefore proof of early Semitic contact with the Americas. Standard archeological evidence contradicts this, however.

History

The first recorded mention of the stone is in 1933, when professor Frank Hibben (1910–2002), an

archaeologist Archaeology or archeology is the study of human activity through the recovery and analysis of material culture. The archaeological record consists of Artifact (archaeology), artifacts, architecture, biofact (archaeology), biofacts or ecofacts, ...

from the

University of New Mexico The University of New Mexico (UNM; ) is a public research university in Albuquerque, New Mexico, United States. Founded in 1889 by the New Mexico Territorial Legislature, it is the state's second oldest university, a flagship university in th ...

, saw it. According to a 1996 interview, Hibben was "convinced the inscription is ancient and thus authentic. He report dthat 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 The Clovis culture is an archaeological culture from the Paleoindian period of North America, spanning around 13,050 to 12,750 years Before Present (BP). The type site is Blackwater Draw locality No. 1 near Clovis, New Mexico, where stone tools ...

migration theory.Dalton (2003). The reported 1880s date of discovery is important to those who believe that the stone is pre-Columbian. However, the

Paleo-Hebrew script The Paleo-Hebrew script (), also Palaeo-Hebrew, Proto-Hebrew or Old Hebrew, is the writing system found in Canaanite and Aramaic inscriptions, including pre-Biblical and Biblical Hebrew, from southern Canaan, also known as the biblical kingdoms o ...

, which is closely related to the

Phoenician script The Phoenician alphabet is an abjad (consonantal alphabet) used across the Mediterranean civilization of Phoenicia for most of the 1st millennium BC. It was one of the first alphabets, attested in Canaanite and Aramaic inscriptions found ...

, 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 the stone inscriptions over the years, likely destroying any possibility for scientific analysis of the inscriptions'

patina Patina ( or ) is a thin layer that variously forms on the surface of copper, brass, bronze, and similar metals and metal alloys ( tarnish produced by oxidation or other chemical processes), or certain stones and wooden furniture (sheen prod ...

. Nevertheless, comparing it to a modern inscription nearby, geologist George E. Morehouse, a colleague of

Barry Fell Howard Barraclough Fell (June 6, 1917 – April 21, 1994), better known as Barry Fell, was a professor of invertebrate zoology at the Harvard Museum of Comparative Zoology. While his primary professional research included starfish and sea urchins ...

, 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, 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.

Controversy

Archaeolinguist

Cyrus Gordon Cyrus Herzl Gordon (June 29, 1908 – March 30, 2001) was an American scholar of Near Eastern cultures and ancient languages. Biography Gordon was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the son of Lithuanian emigrant and physician Benjamin Gordon. ...

has proposed that the Los Lunas Decalogue is a

Samaritan Samaritans (; ; ; ), are an ethnoreligious group originating from the Hebrews and Israelites of the ancient Near East. They are indigenous to Samaria, a historical region of History of ancient Israel and Judah, ancient Israel and Judah that ...

mezuzah A ''mezuzah'' ( "doorpost"; plural: ''mezuzot'') is a piece of parchment inscribed with specific Hebrew language, Hebrew verses from the Torah, which Jews affix in a small case to the doorposts of their homes. These verses are the Biblical pa ...

. 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 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 The Byzantine Empire, also known as the Eastern Roman Empire, was the continuation of the Roman Empire centred on Constantinople during late antiquity and the Middle Ages. Having survived the events that caused the fall of the Western Roman E ...

period as the most likely for the inscription. The

Samaritan alphabet The Samaritan Hebrew script, or simply Samaritan script, is used by the Samaritans for religious writings, including the Samaritan Pentateuch, writings in Samaritan Hebrew, and for commentaries and translations in Samaritan Aramaic and occasion ...

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 Epigraphy () is the study of inscriptions, or epigraphs, as writing; it is the science of identifying graphemes, clarifying their meanings, classifying their uses according to dates and cultural contexts, and drawing conclusions about the wr ...

argued that 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 Kenneth L. "Kenny" Feder (born August 1, 1952) is an emeritus professor of archaeology at Central Connecticut State University and the author of several books on archaeology and criticism of pseudoarchaeology such as '' Frauds, Myths, and Myster ...

, "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 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 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, 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 a passing U.S. Army battalion made up primarily of Mormon soldiers during the Mexican-American War carved the stone.

Similar landmarks

The Los Lunas Decalogue Stone is often grouped with the

Heavener Runestone A number of runestones have been found in Oklahoma. All of them are of modern origin dating to the 19th century "Viking revival" or were produced by 19th-century Scandinavian settlers. The oldest find is the "Heavener Runestone," first documented ...

Kensington Runestone The Kensington Runestone is a slab of greywacke stone covered in Runic alphabet, runes that was discovered in Western Minnesota, United States, in 1898. Olof Ohman, a Swedish emigration to the United States, Swedish immigrant, reported that h ...

Dighton Rock The Dighton Rock is a 40-ton boulder, originally located in the riverbed of the Taunton River at Berkley, Massachusetts (formerly part of the town of Dighton). The rock is noted for its petroglyphs ("primarily lines, geometric shapes, and schemat ...

, and the Newport Tower as examples of American landmarks with disputed provenances. Other disputed American Hebrew inscriptions include the

Smithsonian Institution The Smithsonian Institution ( ), or simply the Smithsonian, is a group of museums, Education center, education and Research institute, research centers, created by the Federal government of the United States, U.S. government "for the increase a ...

's Bat Creek Inscription and the Newark Ohio Decalogue Stone, Keystone, and Johnson-Bradner Stone.

Notes

References

*Bliss, Wesley L., "A Chronological Problem Presented by Sandia Cave, New Mexico." ''American Antiquity'', 1940a 5(3):200-201. *Dalton, Rex, . *{{cite book, last=Feder, first=Kenneth L. , authorlink=Kenneth Feder , title=Encyclopedia of Dubious Archaeology: From Atlantis to the Walam Olum, year=2011, publisher=ABC-CLIO/Greenwood, isbn=978-0-313-37918-5, url=https://books.google.com/books?id=xmDnhPNLwYwC&dq=Los+Lunas+Decalogue+Stone+feder&pg=PA159, pages=161–162. *Fell, Barry, ''Saga America'', Times Books, 1980. *Fell, Barry, "Ancient Punctuation and the Los Lunas Text," ''Epigraphic Society, Occasional Publications'', 13:35, 1985. *Gordon, Cyrus, "Diffusion of Near East Culture in Antiquity and in Byzantine Times," ''Orient'' 30-31 (1995), 69–81. *Neuhoff, Juergen, and Stan Fox
"Translation of the Los Lunas Inscription"
webspage dated 1999, accessed Jan. 28, 2013. *New Mexico State Land Office
''Mystery Stone''
webpage, accessed Jan. 26, 2013. *Preston, Douglas, "The Mystery of Sandia Cave," ''New Yorker'', 71 (16, June 12, 1995):66-83. *Tabor, James D

''United Israel Bulletin'', 59 (Summer 1997): 1–3. Web version crawled by

Wayback Machine The Wayback Machine is a digital archive of the World Wide Web founded by Internet Archive, an American nonprofit organization based in San Francisco, California. Launched for public access in 2001, the service allows users to go "back in ...

Dec. 2, 1998. *Webster, Noah, ''American Dictionary of the English Language'', G&C Merriam, 1870.

External links