The Candler Scribe's Tablet Interpreted by Tom Cox ====================================== My interest in history extends to historic properties. In the 1990’s we acquired the 1903 home of Asa Candler, the Founder of The Coca-Cola Company located in Atlanta’s first subdivision, Inman Park. Exploring this wonderful 12,000 square foot home with 26 stained glass windows and nine fireplaces kept me busy. However, an unexpected discovery in the attic excited me more than finding old ads from 1916 to 1920. It was a greenish/gray clay tablet with writing on it. The writing, at first glance, had what appeared to be a number “2501”. My first thought was that this was a piece of slate, which had been etched with the number. My out-of-the-box curiosity got the better of me and I began to learn more about this enigmatic tablet. The tablet is about 8” x 14” x 1”. It has cleanly cut or sawed edges. The etching appeared to be drawn with a stylus, not carved, and that would mean the drawing was done when the tablet was wet and soft when the image was made into it. The color of the tablet has various shades of green, black and blue-green. Then, with all these observations whirling around in my mind, I remembered that before paper and ink came around (The Egyptians were first with papyrus), that scribes responsible for keeping records in the Mediterranean carried with them a quick drying clay dust, a tray and stylus to record events, accounts decrees, etc. When preparing to write, the scribe would mix some of the clay dust with water and pour it onto the tablet, which was flat and had a short border all around. Once the mixture reached a workable consistency, the scribe could begin “writing” onto the surface, which dried to permanent status soon after the information was recorded producing a permanent record. This appeared to be the case with this tablet. I was curious why Asa Candler would keep such an apparently insignificant object. I knew Candler loved history and had seen articles about his interests and artifacts finds. Then, by accident, I found a newspaper article describing his finding of the very tablet I now have. He told the reporter that he had been walking on his property near the confluence of Peavine Creek and Peachtree Creek. (This is now part of the land he donated for the campus of Emory University-Atlanta). He found the tablet jutting out of a bank on the creek. Now, my interest increased and I began to look more closely at the tablet and try to understand its reason for existence. I was turning it around in my hands. When I turned it upside down it shocked me and made me laugh out loud. What I was now looking at was the Old Lybian phrase used when consecrating an object to Baal. The tablet upside down read: “Dedicated to Baal”. Now, I have an ancient scribe’s stylus-written tablet with a Mediterranean sun God dedication memorial found in a creek bank in Atlanta, Georgia, by the Founder of the Coca-Cola Company. Asa knew he had something, just like he knew he had something in the marketing of a soft drink. I wish I could tell him what he found. ============================== Copyright © 2015 Thomas D. Cox, Sr. All Rights Reserved.No information illustrations, photographs or any other part of this paper may be reproduced in any form without the expressed, written permission of the author. |
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