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The Los Lunas Decalogue Stone is a large boulder on the side of Hidden Mountain, near Los Lunas, New Mexico, about south of Albuquerque, that bears a very regular inscription carved into a flat panel.〔NM State Land Office ''Mystery Stone'' webpage〕 The stone is also known as the Los Lunas Mystery Stone or Commandment Rock. The inscription is interpreted to be an abridged version of the Decalogue or Ten Commandments in a form of Paleo-Hebrew.〔 Deal (1999) provides a careful transcription and word-by-word translation. A similar online translation is provided by Neuhoff and Fox (1999).〕 A letter group resembling the tetragrammaton YHWH, or "Yahweh," makes three appearances. The stone is controversial in that some claim the inscription is Pre-Columbian, and therefore proof of early Semitic contact with the Americas.〔This claim is made, e.g., by Fell (1980, p. 167), Gordon (1995), Deal (1999) and Tabor (1997). 〕 ==History== The first recorded mention of the stone is in 1933, when the late professor Frank Hibben (1910-2002), an archaeologist from the University of New Mexico, saw it.〔Feder (2011, p. 160) states that the existence of the stone was reported in print in 1933, but gives no reference.〕 According to a 1996 interview, Hibben was "convinced the inscription is ancient and thus authentic. He report() that he first saw the text in 1933. At the time it was covered with lichen and patination and was hardly visible. He was taken to the site by a guide who had seen it as a boy, back in the 1880s."〔Tabor (1997). Tabor is a Professor in the Department of Religious Studies, University of North Carolina - Charlotte.〕 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 migration theory.〔Preston (1995).〕〔Bliss (1940).〕〔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, which is closely related to the Phoenician script, was well known by at least 1870, thus not precluding the possibility of a modern hoax.〔Webster (1870, pp. 1766-67) provides a fairly complete, though antiquated, table of the Phoenician, Old Hebrew, and Samaritan alphabets.〕 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 George E. Morehouse, a colleague of Barry Fell, 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.〔Morehouse, George E.; "The Los Lunas Inscriptions, a Geological Study," Epigraphic Society, Occasional Publications, 13:44, 1985.〕 In April of 2006, the first line of the unprotected inscription was obliterated by vandals. Visitors to the site are required to purchase a $25 Recreational Access Permit from the New Mexico State Land Office. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Los Lunas Decalogue Stone」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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