Los Lunas Decalogue Stone
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The Los Lunas Decalogue Stone bears a very regular inscription that is read by its partisans as an abridged version of the Decalogue or Ten Commandments, carved into the flat face of a large boulder on the side of Hidden Mountain, near Los Lunas, New Mexico, about 35 miles south of Albuquerque. The language, according to some, is Hebrew, and moreover the script is Paleo-Hebrew— with a few Greek letters mixed in. The tetragrammaton YHWH, or "Yahweh," makes four appearances.
The first recorded mention of the stone is in 1933, where professor Frank Hibben, an archaeologist from the University of New Mexico, first saw it. The professor was brought to the stone by an unnamed guide who claimed to have found the stone as a boy in the 1880s.
The 1880s date of discovery is important to many people who believe that the stone was inscribed by a "lost tribe" of Israel. The Paleo-Hebrew script was not known amongst scholars in the 1880s, making a forgery impossible, thus proving the stone's antiquity.
Others, however, have disputed the translation of the stone offering non-Biblical translations. But with the discovery and subsequent study of Paleo-Hebrew writing, including the style of the tetragrammaton in the Dead Sea Scrolls, these alternative translations have been discounted.
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 stone's patina. Indeed, the stone is still accessible to visitors by purchasing a $25 Recreational Access Permit from the New Mexico State Land Office.
If it were more widely known, the Los Lunas Decalogue Stone might take its rightful place among the North American contested classics of pseudoarchaeology, along with the Kensington Runestone, Dighton Rock, and the Newport Tower, "There it is" one partisan claims, "an undeniable witness from an ancient past telling its history..."
External link
- The Los Lunas Decalogue Stone (http://www.econ.ohio-state.edu/jhm/arch/loslunas.html) (picture)
- Illustrated site (http://www.webcom.com/mhc/archaeology/decalogue-introduction.html)
- New Mexico State Land Office - Mystery Stone (http://www.nmstatelands.org/GetPage.aspx?sectionID=39&PagID=186)da:Los Lunas dekalog stenen