This Leviathan Splashed

This is one of my first fun findings. Yet while I call it a finding, there is enough reaching in here that I expect ridicule. So I will lay out what I see and you decide if it sounds correct. In the image, it looks like a whale jumping out of the water and is completely airborne, something you might see at Sea World if they ever get the Orca’s to jump that high.

John White Collection Image 1010.

First I show the image unmarked in higher resolution.

Line 1: The top right corner is a circle with a plus sign. This is the local insignia of this people.

Line 2: From right to left, the first symbol is very faint. It could be Zayin. It might be Yod. If it is a Zayin, Zayin means “This” according to the Zellig Harris book on Phoenician Grammer. This is followed by L V. As I see the image it is a whale, it reminds me of the Biblical word Leviathan – the monster of the sea. I actually believe that this is what it is. Line 2 translates to “This Leviathan”.

To justify the latin letters of L and V, keep in mind the the Phoenician L has variants very similar and this same L is used in the Los Lunas Decalogue Stone. For the V, my only justification is that it is a match to the top portion of the Phoenician Vaw / Waw. In time with more samples, I will know better if this is correct or if it must be reexamined.

Line 3:The Nun and Taw are perfect matches to the transliteration chart for those two letters. The last letter may be a Zayin. If it is any other letter, the theory fails. If it is a Zayin, then it is spelled the Hebrew word “splashed”.

Ben Yehuda’s English-Hebrew Hebrew-English Dictionary

Translation: “This Leviathan Splashed.”

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