Biblical Archaeology Review

Robert N. Anderson of the San Jose State University Materials Engineering Department has developed a nondestructive method of dating copper alloys by means of their electrical conductivity. If this method proves reliable, it may be possible to directly date the bracelets themselves. Gisela M. A. Richter, Greek, Etruscan and Roman Bronzes (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1915), pp. 336–339, shows examples of similar bracelets, but notes that these simple types were in use for long periods of time.

Smithsonian Anthropology Department, “The Bat Creek Stone.” The allusion to the “early Semitic period,” which must refer to the Akkadian takeover of Mesopotamia from Sumer in the third millennium B.C., is mystifying.

Smithsonian Conservation-Analytic Laboratory Report #1069, November 30, 1970.

Two other artifacts, a silver brooch and a buckle in the shape of a shield, have sometimes been mistakenly associated with the Bat Creek inscription. These items were found in an intrusive burial in a different burial mound (#2), and so clearly have no connection with the inscription (Thomas, “Mound Explorations,” p. 392).

Glyn Daniel, “Editorial,” Antiquity 46 (1972), pp. 1–7. In a letter to the author dated Dec. 1, 1981, Daniel indicated that he was relying on Marshall McKusick’s analysis of the inscription.

See McCulloch, “The Bat Creek Inscription,” pp. 88–97 for detailed discussion of each letter as Hebrew.

Robert R. Stieglitz, “An Ancient Judean Inscription from Tennessee,” New World Antiquity 21 (Mar./Apr. 1974), pp. 23–31, and “Did Ancient Jews Reach America?” The New Diffusionist 5 (Apr./Jul. 1975), pp. 54–59.

Examples of mem that would fit the broken letter are abundant in the Qumran manuscript 11Q paleo Lev, cited in endnote 14, which is believed to date to approximately 100 B.C.