Dating and Origins of the B-Cave Complex
by Dr. Victor Kachur
Exerpted from Midwestern Epigraphic Journal volume 7 pages 23-26
April 25, 1993
Coins and Cartouches
In dealing with the B-Cave complex as remains of antiquity, the first order of the day is chronology. Coin hoards, common in Eastern Europe, are helpful in establishing the chronology of their associated sites. The B-Cave complex includes several Cartouches -- official signatures or names of the ruling Pharaoh, done in hieroglyphics and surrounded by an oval border. A maze of scattered details clicked into a pattern when Russell Burrows confirmed the identity of a key Cartouche as that of Merenptah seems to be from the age when royal minted coins were coming into practice but were not yet widely adopted..................................
The late John Ward, in his epigraphic studies of the B-Cave complex emphasized copper trade and Phoenician shipping. The Phoenicians of that era were mainly those associated with Tyre (Tsur) as a commercial city-state in Lebanon since Carthage in the northwest of Africa was yet a minor colony struggling for survival. The merchants of Tyre at first Grew rich in trading with both sides of the imperial war. Once the Babylonian armies invaded Lebanon, the ruler of Tyre refused to surrender his naval fleet and move his nobles to the island fortress off the coast of Lebanon relying on support from Egypt. When Egypt fell, the island fortress held out but the fleet was scattered into the Western Mediterranean. These ships were available for hire especially to sail to the distant lands of the American continent for trade.
The kingdom of Libya westward from Egypt acknowledged the nominal supremacy of Babylonia but retained a measure of independent action and home dynasty rule. The Babylonian armies were unwilling to cross the desert for a massive attack on distant Libya. Libyan inscriptions are scattered around the world by association with the Phoenician trade voyages.
Copper trade from distant America was feasible provided the sailing procedure was adapted for a turnaround voyage. As explained by John Ward, the seagoing ships sailed as far as the delta of the Mississippi River where they picked up the copper ore brought downstream from the regions associated with the B-Cave complex. The main assembly site for ore was Poverty Point in Louisiana in cooperation with friendly tribes.
Was B-Cave an Egyptian Colony?
Briefly, based on the identification of Merenptah, the answer is NO. Egyptian nobles of even royal rank were present along with a small retinue of Cimmerian mercenaries but they had lost the backing of their shattered empire. Their main concern was safety and this required friendly relations with the local Amerind natives. Even after the distant Babylonian Empire fell to conquest by the Persian Empire, the return prospects were bleak.
The choice of Cimmerian mercenaries (instead of, say, Greek) proved to be fortuitous in the long run. The Cimmerians found some Amerind tribes who were distant relatives by descent and were probably shipped in from Thrakia a thousand years earlier when that region of Eastern Europe had been briefly conquered by Egypt in the days of Sesostris the Third. This promoted safety for the ruling nobles from Egypt -- more specifically, from the Delta region where the ancient Egyptian nobility was whiter than in the rest of the Empire lands to the south. Nubians were black-skinned and Ethiopians were dark-skinned with long hair in the south.......................
Such a configuration of related tribes serves to explain the stability of the B-Cave complex over a span of some 500 or more years. By comparison, the Norsemenn in New England and eastern Canada were not able to retain their colonial foothold for more that 100-200 years despite the possibility of resupply from the homeland with well-armed warriors and settlers.
The inherent diversity associated with the B-Cave complex also explains why epigraphic decipherments have not been made on any major scale. Most of the artwork seems to be associated with the need for agriculture. The use of stone artifacts points to long-range needs measured in multiple generations. Wooden boards were preferred for immediate use and were easier to work with for recording of text............................
Reference List:
Rock Art Pieces from Burrows Cave by Burrows and Scherz
The Mystery Cave of Many Faces by Burrows and Rydholm
"Burrows Cave Fraud or Find...?" by Dr. White III and Bev. Moseley
Ancient Archives Among the Cornstalks by John Ward
The concerned party might note how close certain scholars like Dr. Kachur came to interpreting the cave even though they were unable to read the script. Their deductions were derived following intensive study of the symbols and visual descriptions alone. It would have been impossible to accurately determine the entire contents of the "B-Cave complex" with so many shapes, symbols, peoples, animals etc. without knowledge of the scripts and missing bodies. This article was first published over a year before the decipherments were made. Dr. Kachur has easy access to several hundred tablets from which he was able to study for a number of years.