Wednesday, March 16, 2011

Tablets Found In Ransacked Egypt Museum May Be Original Ten Commandments

 (Happy Purim to all of our Jewish Humor Central readers.  We hope you enjoy this special Purim spoof from the Purim 2011 issue of The Kustanowitz Kronikle.  You can download the PDF by clicking HERE.  Print it and share it at your Purim Seudah.)

TABLETS FOUND IN RANSACKED EGYPT MUSEUM;
MAY BE ORIGINAL TEN COMMANDMENTS

Scholars Close to Deciphering Mysterious Pictograms;
May Predate Cuneiform, Hebrew, Aramaic, and Chinese Ideograms

Special to The Kustanowitz Kronikle

     FAIR LAWN, March 19 – Shock waves reverberated throughout the western world today with the announcement that a collection of stone fragments found among the rubble in the ransacked Egyptian Museum in Cairo’s Tahrir Square may be the orginal Ten Commandments.

    The tablets were previously thought to have been destroyed by Moses when he descended from Mount Sinai and found the Israelites worshipping a golden calf. But they were carefully pieced together by a team of international Bible scholars to reveal a puzzling set of inscriptions that resembled a rebus with ten messages.

    Seemingly a blend of characters representing a bird, an Amish buggy, and a collection of what appear to be letters of the English alphabet, the symbols are thought to predate any known language including hieroglyphics, cuneiform, Hebrew, Aramaic, and Chinese ideograms.

    The scholars believe that they have deciphered most of the symbols but remain baffled by the amazing resemblance of these three-thousand-year-old symbols to the shapes of some of the states in the United States of America. Also, combinations of the symbols can be interpreted as references to 21st century objects and concepts such as Twitter, Kindle, Nook, and Disney World.

    Even more peculiar is that almost every symbol has embedded within it what looks like the letter K of the English alphabet.
 
    The precise meaning of the letter K, when it appears by itself and in combinations, is still under investigation.

    The team of scholars is not certain of the absolute accuracy of their translation, and is open to suggestions from the archaeological and linguistic community for alternate interpretations.

    What troubles them most is that God appears to have had a finely developed sense of humor in formulating this original grouping of the sayings, compared with the much more serious and solemn tone expressed in the final set of Ten Commandments that Moses presented to the Israelites when he descended from Mount Sinai.

    For example, the first commandment, if the interpreters’ conclusions are to be accepted, says, “Oh you should travel from New Jersey to Florida. Okay?”  This would seem to be a folksy imperative for snowbound northeasterners to make the annual winter journey to a warmer climate, or even migrate to a permanent home there.  That sets quite a different tone from the traditional “I am the Lord your God who took you out of slavery in Egypt.”

    So far, more than 100 unique symbols have been found. Their meanings are being consolidated into a few web sites where erudite readers can find the details they need to verify that the translations meet their high standards.  For a more complete analysis of these meanings, visit hanefesh.com and kosherquest.com.

    All ten commandments are shown below, with a preliminary translation of each one.


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