Experts are still puzzling over a basalt stone tablet more than three years after discovering it near Lake Bashplemi in Georgia. According to their recent study published in the Journal of Ancient History and Archeology, the book-sized artifact excavated in 2021 features 60 etched symbols, 39 of which differ from one another. And while some of the characters resemble those present in other ancient scripts, the team is still unsure what the author’s writing actually says.
As Arkeonews explained on December 5th, Lake Bashplemi is fed through tributaries leading to the Mashavera River, and is situated on a volcanic plateau bordered by hills. The area has yielded many archeological finds in the past, such as 1.8 million-year-old hominid skull fragments uncovered in 1999 and 2000. Although archeologists have yet to precisely date the tablet, related items including pottery shards and a stone mortar also found nearby indicate it probably originated around the 1st millennium BCE in either the Late Bronze or Early Iron Age.
The tablet, referred to as the Bashplemi inscription, includes seven horizontal lines containing the 60 characters, some of which may be numbers or punctuation marks due to their frequency of use. The details also display a level of crafting sophistication that is notable for the region and time. Basalt, the researchers explained, is a particularly hard rock that is difficult to engrave and cut. The archeologists believe the scribe likely first drew notched contours of each character using a conic drill, then connected them with lines using “some smooth and round-head tool.”
The Bashplemi inscription’s mystery language also appears to share similarities with possibly over 20 writing systems so far, although the message can’t be directly tied to any one culture. Researchers noted potential overlap with pre-Christian Georgia seals dating back to the fourth millennium BCE, while other shapes resemble both early Caucasian, Phoenician, and Proto-Sinaitic languages. Because no immediate link has been established, experts think the inscription may include a much more regionally specific, previously undocumented script.
[Related: 6,000-year-old Mesopotamian artifacts linked to the dawn of writing.]
Whether or not archeologists and linguists will ever decode the Bashplemi tablet remains to be seen, but until then, its context may hint at its translated contents.
“Given that the inscription is made on hard-to-work material, and that some frequently repeated symbols may be numbers, [the text] may represent military spoils, an important construction project, or an offering to a deity,” researchers theorized in their paper.
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