There are so many side theories!
While this particular group of experts debated the nature of the Newton Stone inscription and which of the five proposed languages was used to create the cryptic message, another group of researchers More eccentric researchers continue to come up with new ideas. Mr. George Moore, for example, has proposed a ‘Hebrew-Bactrian’ translation, while others have likened it to Sinaitic, a form of ancient Canaanite.
Lieutenant Colonel Laurence Austine Waddell was a British explorer, Professor of Tibet, Professor of Chemistry and Pathology, and an amateur archaeologist who studied Sumerian and Sanskrit. In 1924, Waddell published his ‘Out of India’ idea offering another radical decoding – ‘Hitto-Phoenician’. Waddell’s books on the history of civilization were extremely popular with the public because they were controversial, and today he is considered by some to be the real-life predecessor of the fictional archaeological explorer Indiana Jones. , but his work earned him little academic respect as an archaeological researcher. The Assyrians studied seriously.
Laurence Austine Waddell. (Public domain)
Although Waddell’s ‘Hitto-Phoenician’ interpretation was built on thin ice, it was exactly what Dr. Mill needed to hear as it supported his idea that the script was written in ‘Phoenician’ form. . Agreeing with Waddell, Dr. Mill stated that “the inscription contained Phoenician characters,” which inspired Colonel Sykes to review the writing and he began to see a connection with “the ancient alphabet of Buddhists”.
A group of 19th century scholars were so convinced of the Buddhist origin of the Newton Stone script that they debated ‘which’ of the many and varied Brahmi script derivatives was used. used to create it, however, one critic argued:
“I find it difficult to reconcile in my mind the possibility of Buddhist monks coming from the far east to the far west, to the cold and almost uninhabited wastelands of northern Scotland, and note inscribed Hebrew words in the Ogham script of Gaedhil of Erinn.”
Notes on the Ogham inscription on the Newton stone. ( William Forbes Skene )
Skeptical argument
In 1935, RA Stewart Macalister proposed that the “unknown script” was a modern forgery and said: “There has never been a controversy about the ‘Newton Stone’; the literature of the subject, like the ‘Number of the Beast’, like a series of disconnected, runaway knocks, made by street urchins at the door of a tempting corner house.” However, in 1956, archaeologist CA Gordon countered Macalister’s skepticism by stating:
“After careful consideration […] I now feel certain that this inscription is a genuine work of antiquity […] On the whole, the evidence, both technical and petrographic, seems support the authenticity of the inscription so clearly”. it can be considered with confidence by scholars.”
Ogham—Newton Stone inscription diagram . (Yes, the Earl of Southesk)
The debate simmered in the mid-20th century until 1984, when Anthony Jackson, Senior Lecturer in Social Anthropology at the University of Edinburgh, tackled the problem of “unknown writing” from a new angle. . Jackson, thinking outside the box, called for abandoning linguistic approaches for numerical explanation:
“…there are some advantages in abandoning the strictly linguistic approach to Newton’s stone in favor of a numerical solution. Naturally, this method cannot produce translations of unknown scripts more than the Ogham or symbolic method, but it does suggest that the Picts were acutely aware of the properties of numbers, especially if they had mystical significance.”
I illustrate the inscriptions on the Newton Stone from ‘Sculptured Stones of Scotland’ by John Stuart (1856). (Public domain)
