The Paraiba Inscriptions and the Two South America Islands of Antiquity, Part II

Continuing with the previous article about the shipwrecked Sidonian sailors that supposed landed on an island along what is now the east coast of South America. 
    However, Venice Priddis designed her map with information available to her at the time in 1975, but with modern knowledge, based on the past more than 40 years of study and work in South America, we have a better grasp of the geology of the area, ancient seabeds, and much else to paint a more accurate picture. No doubt, as the years progress, and geological work improves even more, we will know more.  

Modern geologists claim this is what the continent looked like in ages past, with the green areas above water. Therefore, if the Sidonian sailors approached from the area #1, which is where the currents would have brought a drifting vessel from across the South Atlantic, they could have seen two large islands (Red Arrows), but not the far (yellow arrow) West Island (Land of Promise). And in landing, they could have moved south along the coast to (maroon arrow) where the Paraiba River is located 100 miles north of Rio de Juneiro and the location of the inscription          

    What we do know with some confidence, is a report that was filed by returning sailors to Spain in the latter half of the fifth century B.C. Whether the story is true or not is unknown, but it was dutifully reported at the time and some have written extensively about it, especially in the 18^th and 19^th centuries when Ezra Stiles, then president of Yale College claimed the writing to be Hebrew. In his 1871 book, Ancient America, John Denison Baldwin said that “the known enterprise of the Phoenician race, and this ancient knowledge of America, so variously expressed, strongly encourage the hypothesis that the people called Phoenicians came to this continent, established colonies in the region where ruined cities are found, and filled it with civilized life. It is argued that they made voyages on the “great exterior ocean,” and that such navigators must have crossed the Atlantic; and it is added that symbolic devices similar to those of the Phoenicians are found in the American ruins, and that an old tradition of the native Mexicans and Central Americans described the first civilizers as “bearded white men,” who “came from the East in ships.”

The Inga Stone inscriptions on a wall about 12 feet high and 150 feet long in Paraiba, Brazil. No one knows how, by whom or for what reasons the inscriptions on the rock were made. One of the many inscriptions talks about a “borders war” in Mesopotamia—According to Gabriele Baraldi archaeologist, epigraphist and Italian-Brazilian alternative researcher, known as the “last atlantologist,” American proto-Hittite controlled geothermal energy and apparently did hieroglyphics with mold by applying high mechanical and thermal stress on the rock from the lava conduit of an extinct volcano. Various theories claim the signs were carved by ancient Indian cultures, while others suggested it was done by an unknown ancient civilization that visited this region in the past

    Another stone, this one in Brazil, is referred to as the Paraiba Inscription and supposedly found along the Paraiba (Parahyba) river near the coast, which has a very interesting story that involves mystery, gullibility, deceit and, perhaps forgery or even truth. The inscription itself is lost, and all that exists (if there ever was a stone) is a transcription of the text. A text which tells of “Sidonian Canaanites” who set sail around Africa and wound up on the shores of Brazil during the nineteenth year of the reign of a king named Hiram (III), some 500 years BC. History tells us that this Hiram restored the monarchy after it was overthrown and replaced by an oligarchic government established by softim (judges) in Carthage.

The inscription reads: “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 [Ham]. 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 favor us well!”
    In looking at this closely:

1. Sidonian. No doubt meaning people of Sidon who were Phoenicians;
2. Canaanites. Phoenicians would have been called Canaanites;
3. Mercantile King. During the Phoenician period, which would have included 350 B.C. at the very tail end of the Phoenician period, Phoenicia, or Tyre, as well as Carthage, controlled the mercantile business throughout the Meditrranean Sea, especially in 500 B.C.;

4. Mighty King Hiram. There were three kings of Sidon named Hiram. Hiram I was the son Abibaal (“Baal is my father”), and his son was Baal-Eser I. During his reign, Tyre grew from a satellite of Sidon into the most important of Phoenician cities, and the holder of a large trading empire. Hiram I allied himself with King David of the United Kingdom of Israel.
There was another King Hiram (II), this one reigned from 737-729 BC. Between these two kings was one named Pygmalion of Tyre (Pummay) who in his days the Phoenician trade empire shifted from the Middle East (land routes) to the Mediterranean (sea routes from trading settlement to trading settlement). Hiram III was king from 551 to 532 B.C., and Tyre then fell under Persian controls in 539 to 411 B.C.
    Problems with this storyline:
• Why take ten ships around Africa? These were Phoenician traders—there was no known trade in Africa other than the slave trade and no slaver sailed around the Cape of Storms (tip of Africa) in search of slaves—the trade consisted of areas along the Gold Coast, a British Colony in the Gulf of Guinea in West Africa (today’s Ghana) and Somalia coast in the Sea of Arabia—there simply was no need to go around Africa to be involved in it; however, the slave trade as we know of it today really did not take place until around 1200 A.D. when Portuguese and Spaniards began exploring along the west African coast and the more that is known, the less blame we have to put on the Western Hemisphere nations for the slave trade with black Africa, since it was pioneered by the Arabs, its economic mechanism was invented by the Italians and the Portuguese, it was mostly run by western Europeans, and it was conducted with the full cooperation of many African kings—it should also be understood that in the early days (17,000,000 black African slaves were sold prior to 1750 by black Africans to the Europeans, and was a  huge business for different African kingdoms;

2. Phoenicia or any other country was not capable of building deep ocean vessels in B.C. times and none are known to have existed except in speculative writing—whether or not a coastal ship blown off course might have survived the journey from the south of Africa to the east coast of South America, particularly around Touros or Natal at the point of Brazil, is certainly questionable—and if it did, it would not have been under its own power, which leads to the understanding of ocean currents. 
    The Egyptians, with access to the Mediterranean, also used larger seagoing vessels, called a “Byblos” boat and crossed to the eastern coast of the Mediterranean in order to obtain wood from Lebanon since wood was very scarce in Egypt; however, these were keel-less, flat-bottomed boats where stepped masts could not be used. One of the earliest known ship to sail the Mediterranean was built in 2500 B.C., and by 1100 B.C., the Egyptians were masters of the Mediterranean, though their ships were far inferior to those built by other peoples around them—their own ships were originally made up bundled reeds.
(See the next post, “The Paraiba Inscriptions and the Two South America Islands of Antiquity, Part III,” for more on this incident of the Paraiba Inscriptions and the two islands reported by ancient shipwrecked sailors)