"Spading Up Ancient words"
 
ILLUSTRATIONS #2

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Figure #11
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 (11) Dr. Paolo Matthiae, discoverer of the fabulous Ebla tablets, poses at the ruins where the finds were made. Shown here is the "Creation Tablet", the only account outside the Bible which describes a creation ex nihilo (out of nothing). Experts disagree violently on translations offered for some of the tablets, including this one.
Figure #12
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 (12) One of the three Davenport (Iowa) Tablets found in 1877 and 1878, a prime example of how authorities take sides. Barry Fell sees here a message in three ancient languages; others with some good reason have cried "fraud" from the time the finds were made.
Figure #13
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 (13) "Send me archers!" begs a king in Canaan of Pharaoh Akhenaten in this famous Tell el-Amarna Tablet. Conventional interpretation places these tablets before the Children of Israel entered Canaan. Velikovsky offers interesting evidence that the tablets date to the time of the Divided Kingdoms of Israel and Judah. As with many controversies, chronology is the key to the problem, and conventional ancient chronology rests on shaky foundations. A convincing solution to placing the Tell el-Amarna tablet events into Old Testament history still eludes us.
Figure #14
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 (14) The Grave Creek inscription found in a West Virginia Indian mound around 1838, an apparent hoax inspired by an incident in Dicken's Pickwick Papers. A printer, Andrew Price, was able to show recently that the text read in well-disguised English: "Bil Stumps Stone Oct 14 1838," the same name used for a fake inscription in Dicken's novel published in 1836.
Figure #15
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 (15) Pieces of the 4,000-year-old King Lipit-Ishtar law code found at Nippur and dated about 150 years earlier than the accompanying example shown here of the much more famous and extensive code of Hammurabi. The dust has not yet fully settled on dating Hammurabi.
Figure #16
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 (16) One of the many attempts to relate languages found among widely separated civilizations. In this example symbols from the Minoans in the Mediterranean, the Chinese, and a Middle American culture are compared. There is no way to prove such assertions at present, but scholars of the stature of William F. Albright were convinced that some day such links between ancient cultures would be verified.
Figure #17
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 (17) Dr. Henriette Mertz cites inscriptions such as these (including the Grave Creek Stone) as evidences for ancient transoceanic travel.
Figure #18
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 (18) Window into the distant past, an inscription and a cylinder seal impression from Ebla, where the finds of inscriptions will occupy scholars for many decades to come.
Figure #19
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 (19) Ancient baked clay tokens probably used for an accounting system, a forerunner of the abacus, trademarks, tally systems, and widespread modern use of symbols and tokens. The most ignorant and forgetful can still count sheep or metal ingots by means of tokens.
Figure #20
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 (20) A tantalizing mystery, the Phaistos Disk has never been deciphered, but one good possibility is that it may have been a set of cues for navigation to a "top secret" destination. The ancient traders were most secretive about choice distant trading ports. The spiral design is linked in ancient times with both navigation and astronomy.


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