The Los Lunas Decalogue Stone

The Ten Commandments in an old Hebrew script, cut into a New Mexico boulder

On the side of Hidden Mountain near Los Lunas, 35 miles south of Albuquerque, a boulder of more than 80 tons carries nine lines cut into a flat panel in an old Hebrew script: an abridged Ten Commandments. The first recorded sighting is 1933, by the University of New Mexico archaeologist Frank Hibben, who said his guide had seen it as a boy in the 1880s; Hibben was later accused of fabricating data at other sites. Cyrus Gordon argued it was a Samaritan mezuzah of the Byzantine period. Kenneth Feder calls it almost certainly a fake and Keith Fitzpatrick-Matthews a well made forgery: the text mixes letter forms from two alphabets, the script was known to scholars by 1870, and no ancient party left a single campfire, broken pot or trail on the way here. Visitors scrubbing the letters destroyed any patina worth testing, and vandals wiped out the first line in 2006. The New Mexico State Land Office requires a $35 Recreational Access Permit to visit.