Their homelands were the eastern shores of the Mediterranean, present-day Lebanon and Syria and Israel; but they were respected as traders on land and sea in most of the Old World. (3) They maintained their position as the foremost navigators from about 1200 to 146 B.C.E. when Rome sacked their colonial city of Carthage. By that year, Carthage was already cut off from the eastern Phoenician lands. (4)

			Like the Texas coast, much of the eastern Mediterranean shore— the earlier coast of Phoenicia—offers few good harbors.
The Red Sea has always been a passage between the Near East and Egypt and the lands bordering the Indian Ocean. This is the coast looking from the Egyptian Sinai north toward Eilat, Israel, in the distance.

Calling themselves “Canaanites,” a one-time Mediterranean synonym for “merchants,” the Phoenicians were known to have sailed on the Atlantic and Indian Oceans, as well as the Mediterranean and Red Seas. (5)) Although they operated extensive caravan routes overland to the east, they are remembered more often as sailors with style and skill all their own. They were well known as traders who could set up shop on any shore and trade with anyone. They were said to be able to navigate anywhere and were unafraid of the perils of exploration. And they were one of very few groups of seafaring men who allowed women on board merchant ships. (6)

Phoenician merchant ship Institute of Texan Cultures, 74-271

The Phoenicians also deliberately took cats aboard their trading ships to control rats. Now, this is not so different from mariners in other times, but the Phoenicians apparently also considered cats as trade items. They probably bred and distributed cats worldwide (in addition to cats’ own predilection for travel). The Phoenicians apparently liked orange-striped tomcats; traders living on the northwestern shores of Europe liked white. (7)

Most of the existing accounts of Phoenician voyages and overland travels were written by others—notably the Greeks (8)—for, even though the Phoenicians gave their alphabet to the western world, few of their own narratives apparently have survived. (9) Either they deliberately did not write of their voyages, perhaps to keep a monopoly on their routes, or modern archaeologists simply have not been lucky enough to find tablets bearing their stories. The Phoenicians are known to have made maps, but apparently none survived. (10) They also kept business records, some of which have been found, and did inscribe graffiti, formal notices of ownership and boundaries, religious inscriptions, and announcements of voyages (without noting routes) almost everywhere they went. (11)

The Mediterranean area is fairly well endowed with short Phoenician inscriptions. And inscriptions that may be Phoenician have been discovered elsewhere—but with little other evidence of Phoenician occupation.(12) As languages (and governments) changed in the Mediterranean area, Phoenician came to be written not only in Phoenician characters but also in early Greek characters (which were actually “modern” Phoenician) and Hebrew. Some writers even mixed alphabets in a single inscription, which gives pause to some modern scholars.

Variously written, Phoenician inscriptions are found most places they went. Old World inscriptions create no other trouble than occasional difficulty in transcription. Similar inscriptions in the New World usually give rise to one word: fake. A long inscription was found in Brazil a century ago, which, when allegedly translated, told the story of a voyage from the Red Sea to the Brazilian coast in the tenth century B.C.E. (13) Most scholars were not slow to label the original as fake and the translation a hoax. These authorities generally believe that sailors, before Columbus, were self-confined to sailing along coastlines. A few interpreters saw the story as a logical extension of the accepted Phoenician voyages.

Phoenician galley Institute of Texan Cultures, 74-225

Similar inscriptions have turned up on the east coast of North America, as well as inland. Two such inscriptions have been found in the drainage of the Rio Grande, one in New Mexico, the other in the Big Bend area of Texas. But even the few authorities who say the inscriptions are genuine ancient script disagree on what language is represented.

The New Mexico stone is inscribed in what appears to be early Hebrew in a Phoenician alphabet of a form used about 1000 B.C.E. in the eastern Mediterranean. The stone was discovered in a very remote place, which creates a puzzle. If it is a hoax, it is a well-hidden one. (14) If genuine, it means a Phoenician was exploring the Rio Grande some three thousand years ago.

Quite a way downriver, within the present boundaries of Big Bend National Park, a perhaps related find was made. (15) In January of 1962 Charles and Bernice Nickles and Reva and Donald Uzzell, related families, were vacationing together. Their tour took them to the Hot Springs area at the junction of Tornillo Creek and the Rio Grande upriver from Boquillas.

The junction of Tornjillo Creek and the Rio Grande near the ruins of the former Hot Springs spa, Big Bend National Park. The foreground ruin is the old bath house at Hot Springs. One can still feel one of the mineral hot springs here, not quite silted by the Rio Grande. Photography by Two Dog Woman Graphics

In 1962, twenty years after the land, bought by the State of Texas, had been presented to the national government as a park, Hot Springs was a collection of abandoned buildings. Just after the turn of the century, however, it was a flourishing, privately owned spa. At its height, this was a small settlement of a few families; a trading post and post office serving settlers in the states of Texas, Coahuila, and Chihuahua; a motor court; campground; and bathhouse.

The abandoned post office and general store, former Hot Springs spa, Big Bend National Park. Photography by Two Dog Woman Graphics

Other than groceries and mail, the main attraction was the natural mineral waters that come to the surface at a comfortable 105^o F. Today the bathhouse and the main spring are almost gone, swept away and covered by the Rio Grande.

The area has been known at least since local Indians scraped out depressions to catch the restorative waters. Many later travelers stopped to refresh themselves—whether accidentally passing or deliberately visiting the area. (16)

The cliff across Tornillo Creek from Hot Springs, Big Bend National Park. Photography by Two Dog Woman Graphics

When the Nickles and Uzzell families visited Hot Springs, Donald Uzzell climbed the cliffs on the side of Tornillo Creek across from the old settlement. He was something of an explorer himself; most tourists visit the cliffs just behind the old motel buildings which are noted for pictographs. Some thirty feet above the creek bed, he found a fragmented clay tablet protected in a small niche. The pieces were neatly stacked and bore strange, incised characters. Scrambling down the cliff, he reassembled the tablet, and Charles Nickles took photographs of the curious writing. Unable to decipher the markings, the group took the artifact to park headquarters and left it with a ranger for safekeeping and further study. The families were curious about the inscription, however, and offered photographs to several authorities including Dr. Cyclone Covey of Wake Forest University and Dr. Cyrus Gordon of Brandeis University.

At first no one could decipher the markings, although the most favorable opinions classified it as a phonetic language, at least related to early Greek, written in a blend of Judean Hebrew and Sidonian Phoenician alphabets. Such strange combinations are found in Europe but are not exactly common in Texas. The least complimentary comments called the markings those of a Mexican goatherd. Yet the marks do include Phoenician characters that such a person would probably neither have known nor made up by chance.

One theory, suggested by Covey, is that a party of Phoenicians might have descended the Rio Grande (leaving the New Mexico and Texas inscriptions near the waterway). In the face of a lack of supporting evidence, this is hard to believe. In any case, Phoenicians would not have been confined to the waterway, since they were also experienced overland navigators; but the route would have been a logical one to or from the sea. The Rio Grande provides a supply of water and is beautiful.

So far, only one scholar has offered a complete transcription of the tablet: Dr. Barry Fell claims that the script and language are very grammatical, centuries-old Iberian, not Phoenician, and that the message is a supplication to Ahura-Mazda to protect a small group of Iberian Zoroastrians during a plague. (17) Such opinions are questioned—or ignored by most scholars.

Abandoned tourist quarters for the spa at Hot Springs. Photograph courtesy of Two Dog Woman Graphics.

Yet, again, the motive for a hoax seems thin indeed. The Tornillo cliff at the Rio Grande is an unlikely place for someone to hide something that was intended to be found—particularly on the wrong side of the creek from the former spa. And the recent finders had no apparent motive for a hoax.

The lack of agreement concerning the language of the inscription may not be evidence of a hoax. In fact, most hoax languages are much more easily read.

But the original tablet is no longer in existence. It was said to have disintegrated. The ranger, to whom the find was first presented, later said—in contrast to others—that the inscription was not on clay but appeared to be on recent mud such as that which forms along Tornillo Creek after every heavy rain. He and other park personnel agreed that the tablet showed no signs of age, again, unlike others who saw the tablet and the photographs.

So the story goes.