© 2015 B. L. Freeborn

Smithsonian Photo of Newberry Tablet, compliments of Roger Jewell

To the first post on the tablet – To the previous post on the tablet.

In the last posts we looked at the overall layout of the Newberry Tablet and a few symbols.

In this post six symbols are studied: the glyphs found at the bottom corners, the cross, the symbol at 1, 3 and the similar symbol at 3,9. The last symbol to be studied combines the cup symbol found in the upper left corner with what looks like a bird foot print and is found at 10,10. There are two of the latter. The second is found at 14,5. It combines the idea of the cup with sound ‘ni’ with glyph #451 with sound ‘hur.’ This sounds remarkably like the word ‘hour’ and if the craters in Hudson Bay were used as the start line for longitude then the ‘hours’ of Earth’s rotation are marked off from this place. We should recall that the word ‘ni’ means ‘here, now, and/or upon us’ and is today spelled ‘nigh.’

This idea is repeated in the bottom left corner. There is a double loop with a line on top of it. It is a combination of glyphs #368 and #380 from the Luwian Glyph list. The double loop was determined to mean ‘evil’ which a double crater would certainly represent. This symbol would then repeat the idea of the line of longitude index point. It is used four times in the table.

Again the idea is reinforced by the symbol in the bottom right corner which is found in the glyph list at #17 and represents the ruler. This glyph is repeated five times in the table. So then the four corners, which should define the topic of the tablet, are: a cup (crater), an eye, a line at evil and the ruler.

The last three symbols are the cross which is used seven times and is found in the glyph list at #309. It likely represents the idea of ‘a place’ or ‘an intersection.’ The other two symbols are the upside down trident at 1, 3 and the related symbol that puts a hook on top of the glyph. The first symbol is #455 and has sound ‘la’ or we might say in both modern and old English it is the word ‘lay.’ The similar symbol combines this with the hook glyph #378. So, it expresses the idea of ‘laid with the hook’ or ‘at/by’.

The table is filling in!

The study will continue in the next post.

The Newberry Tablet’s decipherment continues in this image as six more glyphs are filled in.