Los Lunas Decalogue Stone

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The Los Lunas Decalogue Stone bears a very regular inscription 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 inscription appears 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.^{[citation needed]} 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 use of modern Hebrew punctuation. Fringe epigraphist Barry Fell argues that the punctuation is consistent with antiquity.^[1]

Controversial archaeolinguist Cyrus Gordon once proposed that the Los Lunas Decalogue is in fact a Samaritan mezuzah.^[2]

Though the stone is sometimes cited as evidence for the existence of the Nephites in Mormon archaeology, FARMS appears to have no scholarship dealing with the site.

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's patina. Nevertheless, comparing it to a modern inscription nearby, geologist G. E. Morehouse estimates that the inscription could be between 500 and 2000 years old. ^[3]

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.

[edit] References

^ Fell, Barry; "Ancient Punctuation and the Los Lunas Text," Epigraphic Society, Occasional Publications, 13:35, 1985. It should be noted that Fell's Epigraphic Society is considered to be highly questionable by professional archaeologists, such as the members of the West Virginia Archaeology Society, among others.
^ Gordon, Cyrus, "Diffusion of Near East Culture in Antiquity and in Byzantine Times," Orient 30-31 (1995), 69-81.
^ Morehouse, George E.; "The Los Lunas Inscriptions, a Geological Study," Epigraphic Society, Occasional Publications, 13:44, 1985.