A copy of the text of the Paraíba Stone sent to Ladislau Netto in 1872

In 1966, Jules Piccus, professor of Romance languages at the University of Massachusetts (Amherst, USA), bought an old scrapbook at a jumble sale at Rhode Island (New York, USA), which contained correspondence dating from 1872 between Ladislau Netto (1838-94, interim director of the Museum Nacional of Brazil from its foundation in 1868, promoted to director in 1876) and Wilberforce Eames, librarian of New York Public Library. The papers included his translations of the markings on the stone and a tracing of the original copy he had received. According to the correspondence, the stone had been found at Pouso Alto in Brazil by a slave belonging to Joaquin Alves da Costa. He wrote to the president of the Instítuto Historico in Rio de Janeiro (Brazil) on 11 September 1872 and included a drawing made by his son. They were given to Ladislau Netto to study and he recognised script as Phoenician. Being unable to decipher the text, he then sent copies of sections of it to the French philosopher and linguist Ernest Renan (1823-1892), who declared it a fake. Despite attempts to track down the original stone, Netto was unable to locate Pouso Alto, Paraíbas or da Costa, the names being relatively common in nineteenth-century Brazil.

There the story might have rested, had Piccus not sent a copy to Cyrus H 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 runs:

We are Sidonian Canaanites from the city of the Mercantile King. We were cast up on this distant shore, a land of mountains. We sacrificed a youth to the celestial gods and goddesses in the nineteenth year of our mighty King Hiram and embarked from Ezion-geber into the Red Sea. We voyaged with ten ships and were at sea together for two years around Africa. Then we were separated by the hand of Baal and were no longer with our companions. So we have come here, twelve men and three women, into New Shore. Am I, the Admiral, a man who would flee? Nay! May the celestial gods and goddesses favour us well!

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. 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.