Read the following allegory, which makes the point that proper Bible interpretation is necessary to understand the message of the Bible properly. Comments are welcome!
"What is Yemes?"
O’Brien-Kawaguchi, Hernando. “What is ‘[Y]EMES’?” Journal of Twenty-First Century Archaeology 256, no. 2 (Spring A.D. 3468): 417-19.
During a recent excavation near the ancient metropolis of Memphis, Tennessee, a graduate student unearthed a rather peculiar object that appears to originate from the Late Presidential Era of the Omirago (ancient spelling: America) Kingdom. Dated between 1957 and 2064, the rare find is composed of iron. It possesses a circumference of .7 meters, a thickness of 9 centimeters, and weighs approximately one stone. Although broken into pieces, four of the five fragments were recovered (see the artist’s rendering at right). Five characters are imprinted on the top of the disc, but only four are legible. The first letter of the inscription is only partially preserved because the missing portion of the disc has not yet been salvaged.
The markings on the disc are composed in the Roman script that the Omiragons utilized, and the inscription reads [?]EMES. Oddly enough, each “E” appears as a mirror image of its usual form, a detail which has led to a number of theories. Some, such as Stephven Smithez, Chairman of Ancient Dialects at the Oxford 3.1 University in New Mecksiko City, believes that retrograde “E’s” must be influenced by the Cyrillic letter Э. Others, such as linguist Skot Rimun, hold that the “E’s” are phonetic cues. At roughly the same time period as the disc’s composition, there was a phonetic symbol represented as ɘ. In my opinion, however, it appears that the English abecedary was more flexible than previously believed. Perhaps the Omiragons considered both ways of rendering “E” as perfectly good twenty-first century English.
As to the identity of the partial character, it is almost universally accepted to be “Y,” which leaves us with the reading “YEMES.” Who, or what, was Yemes? The English language of the twenty-first century has proven to be a conglomeration of tongues from all over the world of its day, which in effect deposited a number of borrowed words similar to the term “YEMES” into English. The following almost certainly are false etymologies:
1) Yama: A Vedic god that presided over the underworld.
2) Yamen: A residence or office belonging to a Chinese public official.
3) Yemen: An ancient country located in South Arabia.
4) Yima: A legendary Zoroastrian king.
5) Yom: A Hebrew term for "day."
6) Yuma: An ancient Native America tribe as well as a twenty-first century city
To my knowledge, no scholar of repute holds any of these theories, rather wishing to claim ignorance of the inscription’s meaning. The typical sentiment is that a future dig will unearth some scrap of information that may further illuminate the Yemes inscription. In my opinion, however, enough evidence already exists to unravel the heretofore unresolved mystery.
As a matter of fact, “YEMES” almost certainly is an alternate spelling of “Yam,” an ancient Canaanite god of the sea. At the time of discovery, the disc lay half buried in an irrigation canal that led to the Mississippi’s River’s onetime channel (before the earthquake of 2115 changed its course). The association of the “YEMES” inscription with water proves that the disc is dedicated to Yam. For this reason, I suspect that “Yemphis” or “Yamphis” was the original name of Memphis, and that the inhabitants modified its name after the decline of the Yam cult, which must have existed in the region. Perhaps the earthquake of 2115 disillusioned the participants of the religion.
Scholars inform us that at least 400 or so more years are necessary to excavate Memphis. For this reason, my contention is that more references to “YEMES” will be recovered in the future. Time will present a fuller, more colorful representation of this intriguing puzzle.
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Madden, Bobert. “A Note Concerning Hernando O’Brien-Kawaguchi’s Article on ‘Yemes.’” The New Newyork University Journal 782.5 (May A.D. 3468): 69.
O’Brien-Kawaguchi’s bold and speculative article concerning the large metallic disc uncovered within the perimeter of the ancient city of Memphis, Tennessee, demonstrates why he is one of the top archaeologists in the field. Most researchers do not possess the sufficient background in ancient cultures to have noticed the relationship of “YEMES” (pronounced either “Yaems,” “Yay-mays,” or “Yee-mees”) to Yam, the ancient Canaanite god. Now, however, there is no doubt that the god of the sea must have been the patron of Memphis (or “Yamphis” as O’Brien-Kawaguchi believes that it was originally named).
To this outstanding study I desire only to address the issue of the four small cavities in the disc, each with a diameter about the circumference of a thumb. The holes are original to the disc, which signifies that they must have served some special purpose for the object’s creator(s). O’Brien-Kawaguchi never addressed this aspect of the find, but this writer believes that the feature relates to the way that the Memphians understood the god Yam.
It is common knowledge that residents of earlier periods made a habit of using the phrase “the four corners of the world” well after Colombus’s discovery of the Omiragos demonstrated that the earth is round. Most likely, then, the four holes in the Yemes Disc represent the four corners of the sea, a detail that points to the Memphians’ belief that Yam was the supreme controller of all salty waters. Thus, another piece of evidence supports O’Brien-Kawaguchi’s ingenious hypothesis.
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Lewis, Ron. “The Yemes Disc Refers to ‘Kemes’! The Case for a Retrograde ‘K.’” Journal of Twenty-First Century Archaeology 257, no. 3 (Summer A.D. 3469): 756-7.
Last year, Dr. O’Brien-Kawaguchi hypothesized that the inscription on the “Yemes” Disc (in my opinion, inappropriately named) was a reference to the sea-god Yam. Although an intriguing suggestion, this analysis is dubious. I find the idea that the metallic object somehow is a carryover from Canaanite mythology to be a tremendous stretch since the religion went extinct two and a half thousand years before the construction of the “Yemes” disc. The evidence that links “Yemes” to “Yam” is at best circumstantial. Granted, the disc happened to be found near an ancient riverbed, but the Mississippi of course was a freshwater river unlike the saltwater domain of the god Yam.
At first blush, O’Brien-Kawaguchi’s supposition that the [?] of [?]EMES equals “Y” is attractive because “Y” appears to be the only character of the Omiragon alphabet that fits the missing portion of the inscription. But there is another possibility - - [?] undoubtedly is the letter “K” (see my depiction at the right). Lest the observant scholar protests my rendering due to the fact that the prongs of [?] are pointing in the wrong direction to be a “K,” allow me to present the evidence.
First, the inscription contains two E’s that are retrograde. Second, the “M,” based on the evidence of the E’s, also must be written in reverse. This detail of the inscription had not been realized earlier because a regular “M” and a backwards “M” look exactly the same. Therefore, this evidence means that the “S” also must be written in reverse although it appears to be normal. I suspect that at the time in which the inscription was composed that what we consider to be a retrograde “S” actually was the standard form, so a regular looking “S” actually would be the alternate form. Therefore, a backward “K” should be expected as the first letter of the inscription. This leaves us with the word “Kemes.”
I must admit that the significance of the term “Kemes” has alluded me, so I will leave this work to an expert of ancient English. For the present, however, I believe that I have demonstrated that the so-called “Yemes” Disc actually should be referred to as the “Kemes” Disc.” Perhaps this important clue will be the one that eventually helps to unravel the mystery of the object’s purpose.
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Monotoli, Richareaux. “‘Kemes,’ Certainly, Possibly ‘Kemes[?].” Ancient Scripts and Inscriptions 416 (October A.D. 3474): 514.
Since Professor Ron Lewis penned his controversial article in the Journal of Twenty-First Century Archaeology over five years ago, the battle has raged over whether the inscription should read “Yemes” or “Kemes.” Countless reports and papers have circulated since that time. My holofile contains all of sixty-two separate entries published by forty-seven authors. Now that the dust has settled, the majority of historians and scholars concede that the disc indeed reads “Kemes.” Interestingly, Dr. O’Brien-Kawaguchi himself shifted to this position last year. Researchers have made no progress in identifying the significance of “Kemes,” and I believe that I know why. Because of the disc’s extensive corrosion to the right of the letters, there is a possibility that an unknown letter should appear after the “S.” This addition would cause the mystery word to be read as “KEMES[?].” Thus, another wrinkle has been added to an already complicated issue.
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Sanchez, Yefim. “In Which Direction should the ‘Yemes’ Inscription be Read?” The New Newyork University Journal 791.9 (September A.D. 3477): 513.
In the last nine years, scholars have put forth three options for the reading of the circular iron object discovered in the ancient city of Memphis, Tennessee. Originally, Dr. O’Brien-Kawaguchi suggested that the inscription contains the term “Yemes” before making an abrupt turn-around. Professor Ron Lewis popularized the theory that “Kemes” is the correct reading of the inscription, and most scholars agree with him. Richareaux Monotoli argued that another, unidentifiable letter appears at the end of “Kemes,” but his hypothesis never has enjoyed widespread support.
My question to my fellow researchers is: Why must we read the inscription from left to right? The speakers of several languages of the twenty-first century read from right to left. The most well-known examples include Hebrew, Arabic, and Yiddish. Chinese and Japanese could be written in either direction. If I am correct, “Kemes” actually should be rendered “Semek,” and is a variation of the Hebrew letter samek.
In Hebrew, letters also possess numerical values, and samek represents the number “sixty.” As anticlimactic as it may sound, “sixty” appears to be shorthand for the year A.D. 1960, which was the year that the metallic disc likely was created. The “Yemes” Disc evidently was part of a larger monument that may have commemorated either a celebrated leader or a historic event. I believe that the “Yemes” Disc memorializes one of the two events: 1) the election of President Kennedy in Omirago; or 2) “the Year of Africa,” as 1960 was known (Memphis was named after an African city in Egypt). My soon to be published dissertation will explore these theories in more detail.
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Oliver, Stanley. “Topsy-Turvy: The Tale of the Upside-Down Inscription.” Tokyo Journal of Western History 93.1 (February A.D. 3480): 9.
Centuries ago, the sagacious poets of Engle-Land composed the gripping tragedy of Höm-tömptî, a great man who fell from a turret and found himself shattered to pieces. The healers of the realm sought to restore him, but to no avail. Unlike the ill-fated noble in the legend of Höm-tömptî, archaeologists were able to reassemble the shattered pieces of the “Yemes” Disc (except for one unrecovered segment). Questions still persist, however, regarding the ancient metallic object. In this brief article, I mean to solve the enigma.
The confusion that surrounds the “Yemes” Disc is the result of an almost laughable mistake that occurred twelve years ago when a graduate student discovered the item in a centuries-old drainage ditch. The error was an understandable one given the more limited technology available at the time, but recent advances in the field have shown that scholars were reading the “Yemes” Disc upside-down all along! “Yemes” actually is “Sewek,” and experts of the era are researching the languages of Memphis in order to discover what the term means.
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Leonard, Pradeep. “The ‘Yemes’ Disc—Its Missing Piece Found!” Journal of Twenty-First Century Archaeology 271, no. 2 (Summer A.D. 3483): 383-4.
Several weeks ago, the unbelievable occurred. Against all odds, an archaeological team painstakingly unearthing layer by layer the ancient city of Memphis, Tennessee stumbled upon an amazing discovery. Fifteen years ago, the “Yemes” Disc, as it came to be called, saw the light of day for the first time after being buried in the ground for centuries.
At the time, archaeologists recovered only four of the five pieces of the object, and the missing portion affected the readability of the inscription. Scholars suggested a number of alternate readings, all of which have proven to be wrong. The discovery of the wayward segment in May turned our understanding of Omiragon archaeology on its head. The heretofore illegible letter now is known to be an “R,” meaning that the “Yemes” Disc contains the unexpected word “SEWER.”
Once more, archaeologists have learned the all-to-important lesson of jumping to conclusions based on too little evidence. As a result of shoddy scholarship, the Omiragon period has been greatly misunderstood during the last decade and a half. Thankfully, the recent find has ensured that misinterpretation of the “Yemes” Disc will not continue for another fifteen years. We are now certain of the intention for which this ancient iron object was created.
Near the site at which archaeologists came upon the “Yemes” Disc, two similar metallic objects were unearthed. While one reads “Water Line” the other contains the word “Electric.” When one considers these three items together, the conclusion is unquestionable: the owners of the “Yemes” Disc used the object to serve food on special occasions because: 1) “Water Line” represents the cleaning and preparation of food; and 2) “Electric” refers to the cooking of said food. The four cavities, in the disc, therefore, must originally have held candles in order to spruce up the meal. I will discuss all of these details in more depth in my soon to be published book, Sewer: The Eating Practices of Ancient Memphis.
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