Benutzer:Taliska~dewiki/Inschrift von Parahyba
In 1872, an unusual letter was sent to Cândido José de Araújo Viana (1793-1875), the Visconde (later Marqués) de Sapucahy, President of the Instituto Histórico e Geográfico Brasiliero in Rio de Janeiro (Brazil) in 1872.:
The text of the alleged Paraíba inscription sent to Visconde de Sapucahy in 1872
Der Präsident übergab den Brief und die Abschrift an Ladislau de Souza Mello Netto (1838-94), einen Botaniker, who was then the interim director of the Museu Nacional; er besaß Kenntnisse auf dem Gebiet der punischen Archäologie und der hebräischen Sprache und erkannte die Inschrift als phönizisch. He therefore sent a partial copy to his former tutor Joseph Ernest Renan (1823-1892), one of the foremost authorities on Semitic languages of his day (although probably now best remembered for his pioneering Vie de Jésus). Renan sah keinen Zweifel daran, dass die Inschrift eine Fälschung ist.
Die Inschrift war Thema eines kritischen paper des Epigraphikers Konstantin Schlottmann (1819-1887), "Die sogenannte Inschrift von Parahyba" in Zeitschriften der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft (28, 481-7). Der Orientalist Julius Euting (1839-1913) war ebenfalls unbeeindruckt und Netto, der ursprünglich an die Echtheit der Inschrift geglaubt hatte, war nun überzeugt that it was a forgery.
Versuch der Lokalisierung des Fundorts
In der Zwischenzeit hatte Netto versucht, to locate the original inscription and its alleged discoverer. The letter writer was one Joaquim Alves da Costa, who appeared to be a plantation owner from a place named Pouso Alto, near Paraíba; several places called Pouso Alto exist, while two places named Paraíba are known (one in the province of the same name, the other near Rio de Janeiro). So kamen Alves da Costa and his estate zu dem Schluss, dass die Lokalisierung des Fundorts unmöglich sei und Netto concluded that the whole affair was nothing more than a hoax, publishing a report as Lettre à Monsieur Ernest Renan à propos de l’Inscription Phénicienne Apocryphe soumise en 1872 à l’Institut historique, géographiqe et ethnographique du Brésil (“Letter to M Ernest Renan concerning the fake Phoenician inscription submitted in 1872 to the Historical, Geographical and Ethnographic Institute of Brasil”) in 1885. Netto blamed the hoax on foreigners who were trying to discredit Brazilian scientists.
Nevertheless, there does seem to have been a realJoachim Alves da Costa Freitas, who lived close to Pouso Alto in Minas Gerais province during the 1870s. Little appears to be known about him, but he was plausibly the person from whom the letter was supposed to have been sent (whether he sent it himself or it was sent by a third party in an attempt to implicate him in a hoax will probably never be known).
Wiederaufnahme der Forschungen
However, the story was revived more than eighty years after Netto’s debunking work was published in 1885, when Jules Piccus (1920-1997), professor of Romance languages at the University of Massachusetts (Amherst, USA), bought a scrapbook at a jumble sale in Providence (Rhode Island, USA) in 1967. It contained correspondence sent by Netto to Wilberforce Eames(1855-1937), a librarian at New York Public Library, which included a copy of the alleged inscription and the translation made in 1874.
There the story might have rested, had Piccus not sent a copy to Cyrus Herzl Gordon (1909-2001), head of the Department of Mediterranean Studies at Brandeis University in Waltham (Massachusetts, USA) and an expert in ancient Semitic languages. Unlike Renan, he thought the Paraíba inscription contained elements of Phoenician style that were unknown in the nineteenth century and concluded that it was genuine. His translation of the stone, which differs from Netto’s in a number of places, runs:
Despite Gordon’s certainty about the genuineness of the inscription, he failed to find support from colleagues and, notably, entered into a bitter dispute with Frank Moore Cross Jr (born 1921), Hancock Professor of Hebrew and Other Oriental Languages Emeritus at Harvard. Cross pointed to problems with the script, vocabulary and spelling (just about every aspect of the inscription, in fact) demonstrating conclusively that the text was a modern forgery. Gordon continued to assert the genuineness of this and other supposed Semitic inscriptions in the New World, against the consensus of other scholars, being a supporter of numerous supposed transaltantic contacts in Antiquity. He descended into seeing cryptograms in the text, a highly dubious activity similar to seeking coded hints that Francis Bacon was the “real’ author of Shakespeare!
Fazit
Attempts have been made to link the text with Brazilian freemasonry, but they are perhaps a little vague. Nevertheless, with no trace of the stone, its alleged discoverer or the place of discovery, it is difficult to accept this as anything other than a hoax. When the linguistic problems are taken into account, the inscription is quite clearly fraudulent. In a paper published in 1972, L’Inscription Phénicienne de Parahyba (Zeitschriften der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft 122, 22-36), Geraldo Irenêo Joffily accused Ladislau Netto of the forgery, claiming that his motive was to further his own career and to ingratiate himself with Emperor Dom Pedro II(1825-1891, Emperor 1831-89). Although Joffily makes an interesting case and cites a seventeenth-century text speculating that Phoenicians had reach the Rio Paraíba, it is unconvincing: the identity and purpose of the hoaxer remain unknown.
