Thursday, December 11, 2014

The Three Tablets

Page 14 shows three tablets with writing on them, and two figures standing among them.


Delia Huegel takes this to be Moses, Aaron, and the tables of the law, but she notes the odd fact that there are three tables instead of two.

The text on the second and third tablets begins with the formulae I I CQ IGV and I I I CQ IGV, which I expect probably means something like "the second X" and "the third X". Since the first tablet has Q1C in the place of the number "one", I expect Q1C probably represents a word that is semantically equivalent to "first", but etymologically unrelated to the number "one" (e.g. English first, Latin primus, etc.)

Since the tables are numbered one, two and three, I don't think they represent the tables of the law, but rather a set of three things or ideas. The obvious candidate is the holy trinity.

The usual order of the three persons (or hypostases) of the trinity are established in Matthew 28:19 as the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, in which case the third tablet would represent the Holy Spirit.

The text of the third tablet contains the glyph RT, which I have previously read as "saint". In a number of languages, the word for "saint" is just a nominal form of the adjective "holy", as it is in Latin: Spiritus Sanctus. This suggests that the word either before or after RT on the third tablet might be "spirit", forming the phrase "holy spirit".

The glyphs of the first and third tablets could be nearly the same, though in a different order, up until the final phrase:

First: Q1C CQ IGV [?] K1A1A I I RAA O X2 O C I RAA C F O R CO [?]
Third: I I I CQ IGV O IGDA O O X2 O K1A1A I I RAA C I RAA RT CUNSAR I IX O O

The word C.F.O.R.CO is interesting because one of my earlier algorithms (about which I did not write) identified it as a likely alphabetic word. Is it possible to read C.F.O.R.CO as "father", and RT CUNSAR.I.IX.O.O as "holy spirit"? If so, how do I test that reading?

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