Experts stumped by ancient Jerusalem markings

reply to post by PoeteMaudit


You say this with such certainty...

by the way W and V were one letter and it equals six!

www = 666
vvv = 666

Originally posted by thoughtsfull
Could be symbols for the Jebusites? or one of the other peoples that inhabited Jerusalem prior to the Conquest by King David.

Tho I had a quick peek at the Canaanite language of the age and it doesn't seems to contain any similar symbols but it does seem the Canaanites referred to their supreme god as the "bull god" so perhaps the bull was sacred? and thus kept indoors in a pen.

and then again I could be talking out my bottom.

thanks for the interesting link and pics

Which Canaanite language? People using the Phoenician script have inhabited the area of Jerusalem.

Their Aleph/Alpha/A symbol is similar to the newly found carvings shown by the OP:

Phoenician script - 1050BCE - 700 BCE


Several similar figures there.


The full alphabet:


www.ancientscripts.com...
phoenicia.org...

I'm no expert, so I can't vouch for this, but it matches information I've read elsewhere:

The original inhabitants of Jerusalem were Phoenician Canaanites. Jerusalem was originally a village built on a hill. The name "Urushalim is first found on Egyptian statues, circa 2500 B.C. "Urushalim", in fact is a word of Canaanite derivation; the prefix "uru", meaning "founded by", and the suffix "salem" or "Shalem," Phoenician Canaanite god of dusk. This evidence is reinforced by archaeology and by tablets found in Elba, Syria, dating back to 3000 B.C., on which the god Shalem being venerated in a city called Uruksalem is mentioned. The old name of the city Urushalim figures also in the Egyptian texts called Texts of Proscription of XII dynasty 'ws'mm pronounced in Akkadian language Urushalim city of god.

Another random thought:


Twenty-two foundation letters: He placed them in a circle…. He directed
them with the twelve constellations.
— Sefer Yetzirah (The Book of Creation)
en.wikipedia.org...

There are seven 'arms' here. The Ancient approximation for pi is 22 / 7 = 3.1428. There are 22 letters in the Phoenician alphabet
Did a search for "Phoenician "22/7"" and got this nice publication by Brian R. Pellar about astronomical/geometrical theories for the origin of alphabets.

.pdf link here:
www.sino-platonic.org...

Thesis
In 2003, completely unaware of Moran and the others’ work, I discovered that if you
rotate the Phoenician alphabet ninety degrees counter-clockwise, and join the twenty-two letters
into sequential couplets, a pattern appears that resembles the eleven constellations of the
Egyptian solar zodiac. The alphabet doesn’t follow a simple circular pattern, but instead follows
a more complex pattern that incorporates letter reversals at the solstices. It also forms two loops
that meet at the constellation Gemini. Furthermore, this astro-alphabetic pattern is not only found in Modern Hebrew, the Chinese Lunar Zodiac, Phoenician, Proto-Sinaitic, Egyptian Hieratic and Hieroglyphs, but, in accord with Petrie’s assertion, proto-astro-alphabetic glyphs also appear on a European stag bone from 3800 BC, and on a Karanovo Culture zodiac from 4800 BC

This is my addition to Brian Pellar's graphics (his pictures of alphabets are really worth looking at):

reply to post by yampa


Wow. I have never seen anything like what you just quoted. That is very interesting to say the least.
Mind = Blown. I wish I could do more than give you a star.

You have my vote for way above...oh, wait. We don't do that anymore.

Originally posted by yampa
Another random thought:


Twenty-two foundation letters: He placed them in a circle…. He directed
them with the twelve constellations.
— Sefer Yetzirah (The Book of Creation)
en.wikipedia.org...

There are seven 'arms' here. The Ancient approximation for pi is 22 / 7 = 3.1428. There are 22 letters in the Phoenician alphabet
Did a search for "Phoenician "22/7"" and got this nice publication by Brian R. Pellar about astronomical/geometrical theories for the origin of alphabets.

.pdf link here:
www.sino-platonic.org...

It's going to take me a while to get through the .pdf, but in the meantime I thought you'd find this interesting...

www.panoramio.com...

It is interesting on a number of levels, it is 12th to 14th century, the outer symbols are the 13 signs of the zodiac, the third, I think, are the Hebrew letters, another row are the labours of the months, not sure about the rest. But I immediately thought of it when I read your post. Perhaps once I've read the .pdf I might comprehend why.

reply to post by yampa


Obviously not the one you found thus demonstrating my quick peek was off track and perahps a bit to far North into what is now Syria thanks for that so perhaps I was on the right track for once

and if you managed to find it out then I do wonder why any expert would be stumped by this amazing find..
cheers

Originally posted by thoughtsfull
reply to post by yampa

 

Obviously not the one you found

thus demonstrating my quick peek was off track and perahps a bit to far North into what is now Syria

thanks for that

so perhaps I was on the right track for once

and if you managed to find it out then I do wonder why any expert would be stumped by this amazing find..

"it does seem the Canaanites referred to their supreme god as the "bull god" so perhaps the bull was sacred" - that seems like a good intuition to me! (if indeed these letters are an Aleph symbol). The bull is the constellation associated with the Aleph by Pellar in that article.

It does seem a bit odd that they didn't even suggest anything Phoenician, even as a guess. Perhaps the archaeologists aren't as mystified as they make out. Journalists do have a habit of trying to make things sound more mysterious than they are.

I like how people try to get these things to mean something in an alphabet, however, their location and depth suggest that they are not writing of any kind. And so folks come up with something profound, when the marks may be nothing more than grooves meant to catch and collect chicken poop.

reply to post by yampa


Cool

It does seem a bit odd that they didn't even suggest anything Phoenician, even as a guess. Perhaps the archaeologists aren't as mystified as they make out. Journalists do have a habit of trying to make things sound more mysterious than they are.

I wouldn't be surprised if this was either journalistic license, or the archaeologists are reluctant for some reason to disclose what they know at this point. (perhaps a bigger find?)

I know archaeologists who have been working by me on a hill figure (chalk) have found Roman pottery/bricks/roof tiles in layers above the first carvings of the figure demonstrating the Romans (for some reason) covered it over, which would prove the figure is much older than reported. But for some reason (politics for all I know?) they are reluctant to prove it.. Perhaps we have a similar thing here?

Originally posted by Blue Shift
I like how people try to get these things to mean something in an alphabet, however, their location and depth suggest that they are not writing of any kind. And so folks come up with something profound, when the marks may be nothing more than grooves meant to catch and collect chicken poop.

I like how 'skeptics' will post the same 'nothing means anything!' comment over and over, despite the fact it has already been acknowledged there is a high probability of the subject being nothing more than a coincidence/something boring.

Personally, I am perfectly capable of simultaneously accepting this is either a receptacle for chicken #, or a piece of esoteric graffiti.

Point is, I and others who bothered to look at the history have learnt something, whereas you've probably learnt nothing.

Originally posted by yampa

"it does seem the Canaanites referred to their supreme god as the "bull god" so perhaps the bull was sacred" - that seems like a good intuition to me! (if indeed these letters are an Aleph symbol). The bull is the constellation associated with the Aleph by Pellar in that article.

It does seem a bit odd that they didn't even suggest anything Phoenician, even as a guess. Perhaps the archaeologists aren't as mystified as they make out. Journalists do have a habit of trying to make things sound more mysterious than they are.

This is evidently a very contentious issue. Some schools subscribe to the belief that the Canaanites were the descendents of those that were displaced by the Thera eruption, and are therefore descendants of the Minoan culture. Given the Phoenicians similarity to the Minoan culture, including the significance of the Bull to them, it does seems like a common sense hypothesis. Some, I have read, won't even discuss the possibility.

Originally posted by Omphale
This is evidently a very contentious issue. Some schools subscribe to the belief that the Canaanites were the descendents of those that were displaced by the Thera eruption, and are therefore descendants of the Minoan culture. Given the Phoenicians similarity to the Minoan culture, including the significance of the Bull to them, it does seems like a common sense hypothesis. Some, I have read, won't even discuss the possibility.

I don't think it's contentious that there was a region (including what is now Israel) which was named Canaan and that these people helped create the Phoenician and Hebrew alphabets.

en.wikipedia.org...

"Wells identified the haplogroup of the Canaanites as haplogroup J2.[16] The National Geographic Genographic Project linked haplogroup J2 to the site of Jericho, Tel el-Sultan, ca. 8500 BCE and indicated that in modern populations, haplogroup J2 is found in North Africa, Southern Europe, and the Middle East, with especially high distribution among present-day Jewish populations (30%), Southern Italians (20%), and lower frequencies in Southern Spain (10%) "

Jericho is about 15 miles from Jerusalem.

Originally posted by yampa

Originally posted by Omphale
This is evidently a very contentious issue. Some schools subscribe to the belief that the Canaanites were the descendents of those that were displaced by the Thera eruption, and are therefore descendants of the Minoan culture. Given the Phoenicians similarity to the Minoan culture, including the significance of the Bull to them, it does seems like a common sense hypothesis. Some, I have read, won't even discuss the possibility.

I don't think it's contentious that there was a region (including what is now Israel) which was named Canaan and that these people helped create the Phoenician and Hebrew alphabets.

en.wikipedia.org...

"Wells identified the haplogroup of the Canaanites as haplogroup J2.[16] The National Geographic Genographic Project linked haplogroup J2 to the site of Jericho, Tel el-Sultan, ca. 8500 BCE and indicated that in modern populations, haplogroup J2 is found in North Africa, Southern Europe, and the Middle East, with especially high distribution among present-day Jewish populations (30%), Southern Italians (20%), and lower frequencies in Southern Spain (10%) "

Jericho is about 15 miles from Jerusalem.

No, what is contentious is the origin of the culture, not the genetics. The debate being around whether the Canaanites represent colonies or trading groups that following the Thera eruption assumed greater dominance, culturally, over the 'native' population that they previously only traded with. Thera would have caused a scarcity of basic provisions, and a vacuum in leadership, and as importantly, administration. It has been concluded that given the ample warnings that Thera provided, that many of the elite and wealthy evacuated well in advance of the actual eruption. It therefore stands to reason that they would evacuate to regions where they already had established ties to. They may not have mixed sufficiently to have had an impact on the overall genetic make up of the area.

Originally posted by Omphale
No, what is contentious is the origin of the culture, not the genetics.

I think it would be quite speculative to say that Crete could be the origin of written language in the Jerusalem area, but I'm sure there was much overlap of cultures of the Fertile Crescent and surrounding areas. You would also have to recognise Akkadian, Egyptian and Sumerian as potential influences too.

I think astronomy, mathematics and human intuition about which are the 'right' sounds to vocalise and symbolise have existed since before any of these cultures. That's why I like Pellar's paper, it suggests we are all drawing from the same influences.

Might have been something put up to aid in construction. Or maybe some workers said "you wanna screw with the future people some more"

Originally posted by yampa
I think it would be quite speculative to say that Crete could be the origin of written language in the Jerusalem area, but I'm sure there was much overlap of cultures of the Fertile Crescent and surrounding areas. You would also have to recognise Akkadian, Egyptian and Sumerian as potential influences too.

At the point the Thera eruption occurred all those empires, including Minoa, would have had trade relations with each other. To some extent. Influence, in that respect, is therefore moot. Written communication, for the purpose of trade, was established by that point we can safely assume. All these empires show evidence of a written communication system, including accounting systems, they would have surely have placed written orders, and created written invoices. The Tartaria tablets suggest that a pictorial system of writing, for trade purposes, had been in use since 4000 BC. Or it could be something else entirely, so yes speculation is involved, but that is why I am here and not on some archaelogical website. I like speculating. It's fun.

Originally posted by yampa
I think astronomy, mathematics and human intuition about which are the 'right' sounds to vocalise and symbolise have existed since before any of these cultures. That's why I like Pellar's paper, it suggests we are all drawing from the same influences.

I like Pellar's paper too. We all come from a common source, as a species, for simplicities sake. That is our nature. A child left in the middle of the wild, will learn to communicate with it's environment, and can survive. It may learn the languages of animals and successful intergrate into animal groups. However, if that child is not reached before the age of ten years old, it will never have the ability to learn a human language. It could learn words, even how to construct simple sentences, but after ten, a human cannot be taught the meaning of words or the way in which inflection affects meaning and implication, and how this influences 'feeling'. And I think that this applies to all the modern languages. I doubt the data exists on other languages and 'wild children'. Of course, once you have learnt one language structure you are, theoretically, able to learn another, at any age. A fundamental part of being human is a desire to communicate, and to express our environment and experiences. That need starts early and if not given an outlet will turn to madness. I think it is one of the reasons for our survival as a species. I think we often spent a lot of time alone. Anyway...'Ma'...'Pa'...'Ss'...'Th'...'C'...represent an escalating complexity of sound control, and this is what I do find particularly interesting about Hebrew because there is something very....linguistic, that I can't quite put my finger on...it's all about frontal plosives and upper fricatives I think...

But I am, in all honesty, speculating...but only to keep the contents of the pot moving....