Verified 3,000 Years Ago In Clay and Stone

 Nadene Goldfoot                                           

Writing has been going on for over 4,000 years, making Moses's recording over his 40 year period believable.  He was raised as a prince, educated with the royal family children, so was literate.                             

Egypt had developed hieroglyphics for their writing and wrote on the walls of the pyramids.  "Ancient Egyptian writing is known as hieroglyphics ('sacred carvings') and developed at some point prior to the Early Dynastic Period (c. 3150 -2613 BCE). According to some scholars, the concept of the written word was first developed in Mesopotamia and came to Egypt through trade." This was a good 1,850 years before Moses, so their historical writing had been going on for a long time already.    

 Hieroglyphs were written on papyrus, carved in stone on tomb and temple walls, and used to decorate many objects of cultic and daily life use. Altogether there are over 700 different hieroglyphs, some of which represent sounds or syllables; others that serve as determinatives to clarify the meaning of a word. The hieroglyphic script originated shortly before 3100 B.C.E, at the very onset of pharaonic civilization. The last hieroglyphic inscription in Egypt was written in the 5th century CE., some 3500 years later. For almost 1500 years after that, the language was unable to be read. 

The Rosetta Stone:  An irregularly shaped stone of black granite 3 feet 9 inches (114 cm) long and 2 feet 4.5 inches (72 cm) wide, and broken in antiquity, it was found near the town of Rosetta (Rashīd), about 35 miles (56 km) northeast of Alexandria. It was discovered by a Frenchman named Bouchard or Boussard in August 1799. After the French surrender of Egypt in 1801, it passed into British hands and is now in the British Museum in London.

In 1799, the Rosetta Stone was discovered in Egypt by Napoleon's troops. The Rosetta Stone is a trilingual decree (written in hieroglyphs, Greek, and Demotic) dating to the time of Ptolemy V (205-180 B.C.E.). Its discovery proved to be a crucial link in unlocking the mysteries of Egyptian hieroglyphs and in 1822, enabling Jean-François Champollion to re-decipher the hieroglyphic signs, thereby allowing the modern study of Egyptian language to begin.                               

We're used to seeing them in modern-day Hebrew, but-perhaps they were in ancient Hebrew.  

  Paleo-Hebrew alphabet:  The Paleo-Hebrew script (Hebrew: הכתב העברי הקדום), also Palaeo-Hebrew, Proto-Hebrew or Old Hebrew, is the writing system found in Canaanite inscriptions from the region of biblical Israel and Judah.

In about 1,300 BCE, which was 3,322 years ago, Moses wrote the 10 Commandments on 2 stone tablets while on top of a mountain.  Etched in stone, they have lasted down to this very day, transferred to other materials.  "According to the Book of Exodus in the Torah, the Ten Commandments were revealed to Moses at Mount Sinai and inscribed by the finger of God on two tablets of stone kept in the Ark of the Covenant."

LACHISH, Israel (BP) — A written inscription spelling the biblical name “Jerubbaal” or “Yeruba’al,” has been found during an archaeological dig in a Southern District of Israel, according to media reports.

The five-letter inscription, written on a jug and dated around the 12^th or 11^th century B.C.E, was found by researchers at “Khirbat er-Ra‘I”, an archaeological site in Israel that has been excavated since 2015, according to The Jerusalem Post. Researchers cited by The Times Israel claim the inscription most likely reads as the biblical name “Jerubbaal” or “Yeruba’al.”

Dead Sea Scrolls: The Dead Sea Scrolls are ancient Jewish and Hebrew religious manuscripts discovered in 1946/47 at the Qumran Caves in what was then Mandatory Palestine, near Ein Feshkha in Judea Samaria, on the northern shore of the Dead Sea which is now in Jordan.  

They are approximately two thousand years old, dating from the third century BCE to the first century CE. Most of the scrolls were written in Hebrew, with a smaller number in Aramaic or Greek. Most of them were written on parchment, with the exception of a few written on papyrus.

Akkadian Cuniform:  

                                                    

Early Writing Tablet recording the allocation of beer, 3100-3000 B.C.E,  Late Prehistoric period, clay, probably from southern Iraq.
© Trustees of the British Museum. The symbol for beer, an upright jar with pointed base, appears three times on the tablet. Beer was the most popular drink in Mesopotamia and was issued as rations to workers. Alongside the pictographs are five different shaped impressions, representing numerical symbols. Over time these signs became more abstract and wedge-like, or “cuneiform.” The signs are grouped into boxes and, at this early date, are usually read from right to left and top to bottom. One sign, in the bottom row on the left, shows a bowl tipped towards a schematic human head. This is the sign for “to eat.”

Hammurabi, King of Babylon reunited Mesopotamia and instituted the Code of Hammurabi, a comprehensive set of laws addressing nearly all aspects of both civil and criminal offenses. Hammurabi is portrayed receiving the laws directly from Shamash the sun god. (a parallel to Moses can be made here).  

The Code of Hammurabi is a Babylonian legal text composed c. 1755–1750 BCE. It is the longest, best-organized, and best-preserved legal text from the ancient Near East. It is written in the Old Babylonian dialect of Akkadian, purportedly by Hammurabi, sixth king of the First Dynasty of Babylon.  This happened about 455 years before the 10 Commandments from Moses.  

Cuneiform as a robust writing tradition endured 3,000 years. The script—not itself a language—was used by scribes of multiple cultures over that time to write a number of languages other than Sumerian, most notably Akkadian, a Semitic language that was the lingua franca of the Assyrian and Babylonian Empires.

The Ebla tablets are a collection of as many as 1,800 complete clay tablets, 4,700 fragments, and many thousands of minor chips found in the palace archives of the ancient city of Ebla, Syria. The tablets were discovered by Italian archaeologist Paolo Matthiae and his team in 1974–75 during their excavations at the ancient city at Tell Mardikh. The tablets, which were found in situ on collapsed shelves, retained many of their contemporary clay tags to help reference them.  Now Ebla's tablets, says Dr. Pettinato, reveal that a city named Ur existed in Syria in the area of Haran (and Ebla). If true, this may show that the two cities mentioned in Genesis are actually one, and finally clear up the contradiction.

                  Abram and his father, Terah

As for the general relevance of Ebla for understanding Abraham, it will ultimately depend on when you think he lived.  Some scholars date him as early as the 3rd millennium BCE; others as late as the late 2nd millennium BCE. Some doubt his historical existence altogether, but most scholars gravitate to a date around 1800 BCE. Our Jewish historians have 1391 BCE for his birth and 1271 BCE for his death at age 120 years.  

They all date to the period between c. 2500 BCE and the destruction of the city c. 2250 BCE. Today, the tablets are held in museums in the Syrian cities of Aleppo, Damascus, and Idlib. Above is part of the excavation.  

Life in the Middle East was recorded for posterity.  There is no reason to think that it wasn't.  Like today, the heads of state had their history recorded and what they wanted remembered was usually all the good things about themselves.  Egyptian history is noted for this.  Little was said about their slaves, the Israelites.  It was up to Moses to record those things.

 A difference in Hebrew ancient literature is that it tells the bad along with the good.  David's mistakes are recorded.  The same goes for others, like his son, Solomon taxing people past their limit, Samson falling for Delilah who was of the enemy of Israel.  

The invention of the alphabet took place in Canaan around the 18th century BCE.  The story in (Judg. 8:14) shows that boys were taught about the Gezer Calendar in about 1,000 BCE.  which may have been a school exercise.  Personal seals usually had picture identification on them.  Most Hebrew seals contained the owner's name.  It's figured that the ordinary man should be able to read.  Reading was important to carry out business.  

Resource:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleo-Hebrew_alphabet

https://www.baptistpress.com/resource-library/news/3000-year-old-inscription-could-be-oldest-discovered-evidence-of-hebrew-language/

https://www.archaeology.org/issues/213-1605/features/4326-cuneiform-the-world-s-oldest-writing#:~:text=Cuneiform%20as%20a%20robust%20writing,the%20Assyrian%20and%20Babylonian%20Empires.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_of_Hammurabi#:~:text=The%20Code%20of%20Hammurabi%20is,the%20First%20Dynasty%20of%20Babylon.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ebla_tablets

https://www.afhu.org/2017/01/09/bringing-life-to-the-dead-sea-scrolls/?

https://www.imj.org.il/en/wings/shrine-book/dead-sea-scrolls#:~:text=They%20are%20approximately%20two%20thousand,a%20few%20written%20on%20papyrus.

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Back to the Past: A Part of Our Genealogy

Nadene Goldfoot                                         
                                                                           

Sumer is the earliest known civilization in the historical region of southern Mesopotamia, emerging during the Chalcolithic and early Bronze Ages between the sixth and fifth millennium BCE or 5000-4000 BCE.  Terah and Abram left Ur because of idolatry and the practice of human sacrifice.  Human sacrifice was a rare practice among the cultures of ancient Mesopotamia. Our best-sourced occurrences are the archaeological remains from the royal death pits at Early Dynastic Ur (c. 2600–2450 BCE) and textual records of the substitute king ritual that was practised at least from the early second millennium BCE down to the time of Alexander the Great.   Abram was from the second millennium BCE. It is also recorded in Genesis about the sacrifice of Isaac that was prevented so as never to be done again.                                               

In tracing our roots before such times as living in Ur, which only goes back to 5,000 BCE, one remembers the stories of Atlantis, a country 9,000 years before Plato's days.  Atlantis is a fictional island mentioned in an allegory on the hubris of nations in Plato's works Timaeus and Critias, where it represents the antagonist naval power that besieges "Ancient Athens", the pseudo-historic embodiment of Plato's ideal state in The Republic.  Plato lived from (424-348 BCE).  Athens is the capital of Greece. It was also at the heart of Ancient Greece, a powerful civilization and empire. The city is still dominated by 5th-century BCE landmarks, including the Acropolis, a hilltop citadel topped with ancient buildings like the colonnaded Parthenon temple. The Acropolis Museum, along with the National Archaeological Museum, preserves sculptures, vases, jewelry and more from Ancient Greece.

" The founders of Atlantis  were half god and half human. They created a utopian civilization and became a great naval power. Their home was made up of concentric islands separated by wide moats and linked by a canal that penetrated to the center. The lush islands contained gold, silver, and other precious metals and supported an abundance of rare, exotic wildlife. There was a great capital city on the central island."

In the story, Athens repels the Atlantean attack unlike any other nation of the known world, supposedly bearing witness to the superiority of Plato's concept of a state. The story concludes with Atlantis falling out of favor with the deities and submerging into the Atlantic Ocean. 

A number of scholars investigated the possible inspiration of Atlantis from Egyptian records of the Thera eruption, the Sea Peoples invasion, or the Trojan War. Others have rejected this chain of tradition as implausible and insist that Plato created an entirely fictional account, drawing loose inspiration from contemporary events such as the failed Athenian invasion of Sicily in 415–413 BCE or the destruction of Helike in 373 BCE. Plato's vague indications of the time of the events—more than 9,000 years before his time—and the alleged location of Atlantis—"beyond the Pillars of Hercules"—has led to much pseudoscientific speculation. As a consequence, Atlantis has become a byword for any and all supposed advanced prehistoric lost civilizations and continues to inspire contemporary fiction, from comic books to films.

During the early first century, the Hellenistic Jewish philosopher Philo wrote about the destruction of Atlantis in his On the Eternity of the World, xxvi. 141, in a longer passage allegedly citing Aristotle's successor Theophrastus:

... And the island of Atalantes [translator's spelling; original: "Ἀτλαντίς"] which was greater than Africa and Asia, as Plato says in the Timaeus, in one day and night was overwhelmed beneath the sea in consequence of an extraordinary earthquake and inundation and suddenly disappeared, becoming sea, not indeed navigable, but full of gulfs and eddies.

The clairvoyant Edgar Cayce spoke frequently of Atlantis and during his "life readings" he claimed that many of his subjects were reincarnations of people who had lived there. By tapping into their collective consciousness, the "Akashic Records" (a term borrowed from Theosophy), he declared that he was able to give detailed descriptions of the lost continent. He also asserted that Atlantis would "rise" again in the 1960s (sparking much popularity of the myth in that decade) and that there is a "Hall of Records" beneath the Egyptian Sphinx which holds the historical texts of Atlantis.
                                                      

Santorini is a huge volcanic caldera (Credit: Nikos Pavlakis/Alamy Stock Photo)

Most of the historically proposed locations are in or near the Mediterranean Sea: islands such as Sardinia, Crete, Santorini (Thera), Sicily, Cyprus, and Malta; land-based cities or states such as Troy, Tartessos, and Tantalis (in the province of Manisa, Turkey); Israel-Sinai or Canaan; and northwestern Africa. 
Atlantis could have been based on another event.  "About 3,600 years ago, a massive volcanic eruption devastated the island of Santorini in the Aegean Sea near Greece. "Myths are largely event-based, in that they are triggered to a large part by an event, or combination of events, that catastrophically impact society," says Bruce Masse, an environmental archaeologist.  "If you are talking about 10,000 years you are really talking about 300 to 400 generations,"  Nicholas Reid,  a linguist at the University of New England in Australia. says. "The idea that you can transmit anything over 400 generations is extraordinary."
                                               

At the time, a highly advanced society of Minoans lived on Santorini. The Minoan civilization disappeared suddenly at about the same time as the volcanic eruption."  The Minoan civilization was a Bronze Age Aegean civilization on the island of Crete and other Aegean Islands, flourishing from c. 3000 BC to c. 1450 BC until a late period of decline, finally ending around 1100 BC.  Abraham lived in the 2nd millennium BCE or c.1948 BCE.  

The Early Bronze Age (3500 to 2100 BCE) has been described as indicating a "promise of greatness" in light of later developments on the island. The Bronze Age began on Crete around 3200 BC. In the late third millennium BC, several locations on the island developed into centers of commerce and handiwork, enabling the upper classes to exercise leadership and expand their influence. It is likely that the original hierarchies of the local elites were replaced by monarchies, a precondition for the palaces.

The days of Atlantis were to happen before known civilizations.  Going back further, we come to the Copper Age.  The Chalcolithic period, or Copper Age, was an era of transition between the stone tool-using farmers of the Neolithic and the metal-obsessed civilizations of the Bronze Age. The Copper Age was really a phenomenon of the eastern Mediterranean regions, and occurred from roughly 3500 to 2300 BCE.
                                                                

I must go back to the Stone Age.  The Stone Age was a broad prehistoric period during which stone was widely used to make tools with an edge, a point, or a percussion surface. The period lasted for roughly 3.4 million years, and ended between 8700 BCE and 2000 BCE, with the advent of metalworking.

"The oldest indirect evidence found of stone tool use is fossilised animal bones with tool marks; these are 3.4 million years old and were found in the Lower Awash Valley in Ethiopia. Archaeological discoveries in Kenya in 2015, identifying what may be the oldest evidence of hominin use of tools known to date, have indicated that Kenyanthropus platyops (a 3.2 to 3.5-million-year-old Pliocene hominin fossil discovered in Lake Turkana, Kenya in 1999) may have been the earliest tool-users known."
                                                      
We humans (homo sapiens)  "used fire and occupied much of Eurasia. Homo sapiens (sometimes also known as "modern humans") are thought to have diverged in Africa from an earlier hominin around 300,000 years ago, with the earliest fossil evidence of Homo sapiens also appearing around 300,000 years ago in Africa. Humans began to exhibit evidence of behavioral modernity at least by about 100,000–70,000 years ago."  Abram lived only about 4,000 years ago or in 1948 BCE.  He was like a modern man as far as time goes. Our Biblical records go back to the year 5781 which today is 2020 or 3761 BCE to a time we can say that homo sapiens were more cognizant like they are today, with better developed brains.  
                                                 

   

"As with the wheel, cities and law codes, the earliest examples of written literature appear to have originated in ancient Mesopotamia. The Sumerian civilization first developed writing around 3400 BCE., when they began making markings on clay tablets in a script known as cuneiform.  From this I deduce that it's possible that Moses was keeping track of the Exodus on that 40 year trek using a form of Egyptian cuniform or maybe even the Sumerian style.  At any rate it was an early form of Hebrew."  The alphabet came out of the cuniform.  

Resource:
http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20160118-the-atlantis-style-myths-of-sunken-lands-that-are-really-true
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/archaeology/atlantis/#close
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantis
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stone_Age
https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/cambridge-world-history-of-violence/ritual-killing-and-human-sacrifice-in-the-ancient-near-east/15D2059982C482750124293D29EF55BA#:~:text=However%2C%20the%20ritualised%20killing%20of,the%20Early%20Dynastic%20period%3B%20and
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZVermu8wixE&pp=wgIECgIIAQ%3D%3D&feature=push-fr&attr_tag=CzmczbY6uytQ-96B%3A6