Los Lunas Decalogue Stone

The Los Lunas Decalogue Stone is a large boulder on the side of Hidden Mountain, near Los Lunas, New Mexico, about 35 miles south of Albuquerque, that bears a very regular inscription carved into a flat panel. The stone is also known as the Los Lunas Mystery Stone or Commandment Rock. The inscription is interpreted by some to be an abridged version of the Decalogue or Ten Commandments in a form of Paleo-Hebrew. A letter group resembling the tetragrammaton YHWH, or "Yahweh," makes four appearances. The stone is controversial in that some claim the inscription is Pre-Columbian, and therefore proof of early Semitic contact with the Americas.

The first recorded mention of the stone is in 1933, when professor Frank Hibben, an archaeologist from the University of New Mexico, saw it. Hibben was led to the stone by an unnamed guide who claimed to have found it as a boy in the 1880s. The 1880s date of discovery is important to those who believe that the stone was inscribed by a lost tribe of Israel. The Paleo-Hebrew script was unknown to scholars in the 1880s, making a forgery at that time unlikely, and thus allegedly proving the stone's antiquity. Fact|date=February 2007 However, the Paleo-Hebrew script is practically identical to the Phoenician script, which was known at the time, thus not precluding the possibility of fraud. One argument against the stone's antiquity is its apparent use of modern Hebrew punctuation, though amateur epigrapher Barry Fell argued that the punctuation is consistent with antiquity. [Fell, Barry; "Ancient Punctuation and the Los Lunas Text," Epigraphic Society, Occasional Publications, 13:35, 1985.] Other researchers dismiss the inscription based on the numerous stylistic and grammatical errors that appear in the inscription.

Most modern scholars question much of Hibben's research today because of his work with alleged pre-Clovis sites. In at least two separate incidents, Hibbens fabricated some or all of his archaeological data to support his pre-Clovis migration theory. [The Mystery of Sandia Cave, New Yorker, 71(16):66-83.] [ A Chronological Problem Presented by Sandia Cave, New Mexico. American Antiquity, 1940a 5(3):200-201.] These missteps call the rest of his work into question, and, for many, undermine the validity of his claims about the Los Lunas Decalogue Stone. [Nature 426, 374 (27 November 2003) | doi:10.1038/426374a]

Archaeolinguist Cyrus Gordon once proposed that the Los Lunas Decalogue is in fact a Samaritan mezuzah, though this is hotly contested. [Gordon, Cyrus, "Diffusion of Near East Culture in Antiquity and in Byzantine Times," Orient 30-31 (1995), 69-81.]

Though the stone is sometimes cited by Latter Day Saint laypeople as evidence that supports the existence of the Nephites in Mormon archaeology, FARMS, a scholarly group associated with BYU, has no scholarship dealing with the site and does not make any evidentiary use of it.

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. Nevertheless, comparing it to a modern inscription nearby, geologist G. E. Morehouse, a colleague of Barry Fell, estimated that the inscription could be between 500 and 2000 years old. [Morehouse, George E.; "The Los Lunas Inscriptions, a Geological Study," Epigraphic Society, Occasional Publications, 13:44, 1985.]

The stone is accessible to visitors by purchasing a $25 Recreational Access Permit from the New Mexico State Land Office.

The Los Lunas Decalogue Stone is often grouped with the Kensington Runestone, Dighton Rock, and the Newport Tower as examples of American landmarks with disputed provenances.

ee also

*Diffusionism
*Archaeology and the Book of Mormon
*Pseudoarchaeology
*Newark Decalogue Stone

References

External links

* [http://www.gregoryprimo.org/Pages/Decalogue.php The Los Lunas Decalogue Stone Gallery] A comprehensive gallery of photos showing the entire site with high resolution photos. Close-ups of the inscriptions and nearby petroglyphs.
* [http://www.econ.ohio-state.edu/jhm/arch/loslunas.html Los Lunas Decalogue Stone] (picture)
* [http://www.webcom.com/mhc/archaeology/decalogue-introduction.html Illustrated site]
* [http://www.ancient-hebrew.org/15_home.html The Los Lunas Inscription of New Mexico] at Ancient Hebrew Research Center