Unusual piece of stone found in Arkansas.

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Smee

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My wife paints rocks, unusual rocks which she sees the shapes of animals in. A friend of hers, an elderly lady, will pick up any rock she thinks is interesting and give it to my wife to paint. While she doesn't understand the concept, today she gave my wife a rock that I find amazing. This rock appears to have been broken off the corner of some sort of larger item made of stone. The rock measures 1 7/8" long by 1/2" thick by 7/8" tall. There is some more carving on the top, but I didn't get a picture of it. What is amazing is the writing along the edge. Take a look, and hopefully someone will recognize what language this is. I did find what appear to be two Hebrew characters that I am familiar with, but I really don't think the writing is Hebrew. Any ideas?

chalkedrock01.jpg

The rock has a carved area just above the lettering, and at the far right end there is a definite corner with the text continuing to wrap. The rock was broken off of something.

I was hoping to learn something about this rock's carvings, and what it would be doing on the ground in Arkansas. I seriously doubt it is Native American as most of us did not have a written alphabet.
 

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Pretty sure it's writing. No repeating forms to my eye. Of course, this piece is less than 2" long, so a repeating pattern is a possibility. However, a repeating pattern would normally cover a much smaller distance before repeating.
 

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I know very little about rocks, and even less about defferent types of scripts, but it defintely looks like some sort of script to me. The rock looks to have been worked by hand as well... The edge where the script? is placed seems to protrude outward from the rest of it...

I would say it's defintely worth investigating... Hopfully someone here with more knowledge about it can help. If not I think I would take it to a musium, or some place else to have it checked...
 

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You really really need to have that looked at by an expert. It could be natural but I don't think so. If you draw square blocks around each "letter" you will see a pattern. Please let us know what you find out.
 

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The thing that will help the most initially is to try to find the rest of the rock! Where was it found? When? What kind of stone is it? How heavy is it? Is that stone native to that area? Is it in an area where this could have been part of a larger stone that was buried? Could the rest of it still be buried? What is the history of the area? Inhabitants? Answer these questions first and then the decipherment/interpretation can begin.

Yep, my thesis was in rock carvings!

Cavers5
 

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It's dicey because if it's made of sandstone those could be worm crawls when it was sand.
 

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Old_Okie said:
Could be a Viking Rune stone. One of the best known is the Heavner Rune Stone found not far from Ark in OK.

Old_Okie

http://members.aol.com/Okback/rune.htm
Click to expand...

That's a distinct possibility. But, one of the characters on the right half looks quite Oriental. The Chinese are known for some pretty small carvings and scrimshaw; as well as carving gaming pieces such as Mahjong ---or whatever the name of that game is. Were there any settlements in the area where this piece was found that had (or has) a Chinese population?
 

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This has to be script !! Man made > you need to take this to your local museum :) I think you have a winner here and please take a pic of the top of the stone if possible :)
 

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Looks like script to me too.
Very neat piece. Hopefully you can find out more about it.
-MM-
 

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Leon said:
The rock looks to have been worked by hand as well... The edge where the script? is placed seems to protrude outward from the rest of it...
Click to expand...

Yes, it has been worked by hand. There is actually a bevel above the text in the picture. Above that, there appears to be parts of a design. The stone appears to have been broken off of something larger, but some of those edges have been smothed off --- either by time or by someone.

Here is a picture of the end where the design turns (and yes, the script is on a raised part of the stone:

end_corner_crop.jpg

The profile of the bevel (running the entire length of the piece)

bevel_profile_crop.jpg

and the back of the stone . . .

back of stone_crop.jpg
 

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Look man, I've collected and or studied rocks/artifacts in one shape or another for a LONG time. After seeing these additional scans I can guarentee you that what you have is nothing more than your average sedimentary rock!! It's layered and those layers are not always the same consistancey so they wear away at different rates thus leaving your ancient writings. Good luck on future finds but I wouldn't waste anymore time on this one. :'(
 

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BTW, this was found in Ashley County, Arkansas. We had at least two internment camps for U.S. citizens of Japanese descent. They worked in the fields here on occasion. This was found in a field not far from Jerome, Arkansas, one of the larger camps.

kit0021a.jpg
 

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What you have there is a piece of rock that has Japanese Kanji symbols. Each symbol characterizing a complete writing or just symbols depicting love, Honor, Sacrifice, loyalty
 

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Although a very good magnified close up is needed. It's appears from your second(golden set of photos) set of photos that there is crystalline material inside the grooves. Would you not expect to see clean lines if the stone had been chiseled?

I vote for natural occurrence.
George
 

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