Note 32 — Chapter I

Dr. Daniel Wilson’s Pre-Historic Man, 3d ed., 1876, vol. i, pp. 274–5. The following description is given in Squier and Davis’s Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi Valley: “The material is fine-grained, compact sandstone of a light-brown color. It measures five inches in length, three in breadth at the ends, and two and six-tenths at the middle, and is about half an inch in thickness. The sculptured face varies very slightly from a perfect plane. The figures are cut in low relief (the lines being not more than one-twentieth of an inch in depth), and occupy a rectangular space four inches and two-tenths long by two and one-tenth wide. The sides of the stone, it will be observed, are slightly concave. Right lines are drawn across the face near the ends, at right angles, and exterior to these are notches, twenty-five at one end and twenty-four at the other. The back of the stone has three deep longitudinal grooves, and several depressions, evidently caused by rubbing—probably produced by sharpening the instrument used in the sculpture.” [Mr. Gest, however, does not regard these as tool marks, but thinks they are of peculiar significance.] “Without discussing the singular resemblance which the relic bears to the Egyptian Cartouch, it will be sufficient to direct attention to the reduplication of the figures, those upon one side corresponding with those upon the other, and the two central ones being also alike. It will be observed that there are but three scrolls or figures—four of one and two of each of the others. Probably no serious discussion of the question whether or not these figures are hieroglyphical is needed. They more resemble the stalk and flowers of a plant than anything else in nature. What significance, if any, may attach to the peculiar markings or graduations at the end, it is not undertaken to say. The sum of the products of the longer and shorter lines (24 × 7 + 25 × 8) is 368, three more than the number of days in the year; from which circumstance the suggestion has been advanced that the tablet had an astronomical origin, and constituted some sort of a calendar.” We may here add that Col. Chas. Whittlesey published at Cleveland, Ohio, in Historical and Archæological Tract No. 9 (Feb. 1872) of the Western Reserve Historical Society, a statement that the “Cincinnati Tablet” was a fraud. But we are informed that he is since convinced of its genuineness.