29/9/2025
Today is MICHAELMAS, the Feast of Saint Michael the Archangel (together with the archangels Gabriel and Raphael), and it seems the right day for me to begin my "Michaelmas mass massacre". That shocking word "massacre" has its origins in Old French (a language I studied for my Arts degree at Sydney University in 1954-1957) and it seems to be connected with butchery, and the slaughter of a multitude of animals, particularly the human species of beast. This can happen in a battle, or informally in a game, signifying an overwhelming defeat of opponents. In my case, the warfare has been waged in the field of Biblical Archaeology, including West Semitic Epigraphy.
In 1988 I began to publish studies on the earliest writing systems (notably West Semitic scripts) that were involved in the origins of the Alphabet, in the Bronze Age, 5.000 years ago. I now know that the Protoalphabet was invented in Egypt in the time of the 12th Dynasty in the 19th Century before the current era (BCE). The tables of signs and sounds that I issued were blithely rejected in academia, or blissfully ignored, and scholars continued to use the old paradigm that was approved by the establishment for reading "Early Alphabet" inscriptions, constantly producing results that can be falsified by my new paradigm. A massive "paradigm shift" was in progress, but it was not noticed by the professional pundits. They continued their "mad tea-party", a cabalistic coterie of self-assured hatters, hare-brained hares, and dozy dormice, speaking in riddles (raving about ravens and writing) and spouting visceral and viscous nonsense (about treacle), and crying "No room! No room" if I approached them.
I think I hear them say: "Can any good thing come out of Noo Zealand?". Well, yes, Ernest Rutherford (1871-1937) who answered fundamental questions about the atom. My research focuses on the origin of the Alphabet, and I was happy to learn that he wrote his thoughts on scraps of paper with a stubby pencil, as I myself do (Brian Edric Colless, born 1936, Australian citizen, but New Zealand "denizen" enjoying citizenship rights since 1970, and connected with Massey University). My general area of study is what I call "Articultural Science".
Some thoughts for the day
"In New Zealand we don't have money, so we have to think." Ernest Rutherford
"I think that a strong claim can be made that the process of scientific discovery may be regarded as a form of art... The theory of relativity by Einstein quite apart from any question of its validity, cannot but be regarded as a magnificent work of art." Ernest Rutherford (1871-1937)
"The field in which I work, and play, is known as articultural science. My theory of the origin and evolution of the Alphabet is providentially, providently, and provisionally called the Quadrinity.
My equation-formula for the Early Evolution of the Alphabet is {E=(2M+2C)2}" Brian Edric Colless (1936 to infinity and beyond as stardust)
"There is always the possibility of proving any definite theory wrong, but notice that we can never prove it right." Richard Feynman
"Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts." Richard Feynman (Hail and Amen! I am also of Jewish descent)
"All human knowledge, created in the wondrous and fantastic human brain, is tentative, temporary, transitional, subject to alteration." Brian Colless
"A scientific theory must be paradoxical, contrary to common sense, and seemingly self-contradictory, a thesis in search of an antithesis, to form a synthesis, a new thesis, and so on, for ever and ever, in saecula saeculorum. Amen." Brian Colless
Michael "the great Prince" was said to be the protector and defender of the ancient children of Israel (Daniel 10:13, 12:1), in a context predicting that "knowledge shall be increased" (12:4). My life of searching has been devoted to many varied projects (linguistic, historical, geographical, religious, mystical in an endeavour to increase knowledge. I have investigated the quest for the Holy Grail, for example, and two enduring explorations are the origin of the Alphabet and the historicity of events and personages in the Bible; hence my involvement in Biblical Archaeology and West Semitic philology and epigraphy. In this regard, "the archangel Michael disputed with the Devil about the body of Moses" (Jude 1:9), and this directs our thoughts to the story of Moses and the Exodus from Egypt (Exodus 1-24) which is commonly dismissed as fiction.
I am hereby announcing a paradigm shift in the field of Biblical Archaeology, particularly the area of ancient West Semitic epigraphy. Actually this turnabout occurred in 1990, but nobody recognized it. Since then the evidence supporting it has grown gradually and greatly.
My paradigm, comprising tables of signs and sounds for the various West Semitic scripts of the Bronze Age (known by the neologies Protosyllabary, Protoconsonantary, Neoconsonanary, Neosyllabary) has now been verified and validated.
The witnesses whose testimonies I am invoking are Bible characters, and their extant inscriptions and images also prove that they are historical personages:
Y`QB YShR'L, together with the name 'BRHM and other inscriptions, in the Makpela cave at Hebron (Genesis 50: 12-13);
Yosep (alias Ankh-ib, Montuhotep, Sobekemhat) WR GShN PQD (ruler of Goshen, supervisor, referring to the maintenance of granaries), and his sons and brothers;
MSh NB (Prophet Moses);
'HRN KHN (Priest Aaron); MRYM (Miriam); YHSh` (Joshua);
with the blessing of divine YAHAWA, YAHAWI, YHW (memorialised in inscriptions by the children of Israel on their expeditions to America, three thousand years before Columbus)..
The names Y`QB YShR'L, MSh, YHSh`, GShN, and the words PQD ("0verseer"), QDSh (holy) can only be read by using the Colless table (P as Pu, mouth; Q as Qaw. cord on stick. D as Dalt, door, Sh as Shimsh, sun-disk with serpent, G as Gaml, throw stick). The Albright chart, the most commonly employed table of signs, has 10 correct identifications, and 17 mistakes. Its promulgation to the unsuspecting scholars in the field has led them into a deep morass, in a valley of the shadow of death, where they have produced a massive abomination of desolation (to quote the Bible, which is liable to be reliable).
https://cryptcracker.blogspot.com/2007/10/gordon-hamiltons-early-alphabet-thesis.html
Nevertheless, we are now able to see our way out of the dark tunnel of ignorance and prejudice.
Richard Dawkins, an eminent scientist making a dogmatic pronouncement about a subject outside his own field of expertise:
“virtually nothing in the Old Testament has any evidential support at all … no evidence that there was a Jewish captivity in Egypt, for example”. (New Scientist, 21 September 2019) 39
Israel Finkelstein, Israeli archaeologist:
"The idea that a single, spectacular finding can reverse the course of modern research and save the literal reading of the biblical text ... from critical scholarship" has its roots "in W. F. Albright's assault on the Wellhausen school in the early 20th century.... Khirbet Qeiyafa is the latest case in this genre of craving a cataclysmic defeat of critical modern scholarship by a miraculous archaeological discovery".
Well, the Qeiyafa ostracon informs us, in the Neo-syllabic script, that Guliyut the `Anaq (giant) is dead, and Dawid (the servant of Yahu Elohim) has prevailed. That should have made a dent in the denialism.
Here is an optimistic prediction offered to us by William Foxwell Albright (1891-1971), in his role as the world's greatest biblical archaeologist:
"As critical study of the Bible is more and more influenced by the rich new material from the ancient Near East we shall see a steady rise in respect for the historical significance of now neglected or despised passages and details in the Old and New Testaments." (1957).
Surely the time has finally arrived for this outcome, in the light of the archaeological evidence we have amassed, and especially the hoard of luminous and illuminating discoveries from the ancient land of Midian in Arabia.
https://cryptcracker.blogspot.com/2012/02/mountain-of-yahweh-in-israel-elsewhere.html
And also this:
https://cryptcracker.blogspot.com/2025/05/israel-in-egypt.htmll
We do not have voice-recordings of Moses and all the others, but we have documents from them in their various "early alphabetic" scripts, which I call "the Quadrinity (E=[2M+2C]2). This means that they can speak to us with a full range of consonants (but no vowels) throughout the period of their sojourn in Egypt,; but we can also see the language of ancient Israel in two forms of syllabic writing.
https://cryptcracker.blogspot.com/2021/04/another-lakish-inscription.html
My junior colleagues, your books and peer-reviewed articles on "early alphabet" inscriptions are now invalidated. I have done the sort of archaeological spade-work that I am capable of performing at my age (born in 1936): the texts and the keys to decipherment are freely available on my websites for you to work and play with, and to get them published properly.
Does anyone know how to contact Simon Schama?
He needs to revise his history of Israel in the light of this ancient information.
Yours faithfully and sincerely
Brian Edric Colless BA (Syd) BD (Lond) MA PhD (Melb) ThD (ACTh)
https://massey.academia.edu/BrianColless