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The Mystic Symbol: Mark of the Michigan Mound Builders
An expanded edition of the original classic, long out-of-print, The Mystic Symbol describes thousands of Christian, inscribed tablets, unearthed across Michigan. The Michigan Mound Builders left behind 10,000 to 30,000 artifacts as a testament to their presence in North America. Mound burials have yielded evidence of a culture with Eastern Hemisphere influence in their spiritual and everyday life. Controversy has engulfed this find of artifacts mainly because they were here before Columbus of 1492 which is unacceptable to our academics today. Nevertheless, the Michigan artifacts continue to surface even today in the state of Michigan. This is fascinating look into North America’s diverse history.
Henriette Mertz has championed the cause for authenticity of these numerous and unusual tablets, tools and weapons of this mysterious people. Who they are and when they came is theorized by Mertz with a companion addendum of the current supporters to her original work.
Henriette Mertz has championed the cause for authenticity of these numerous and unusual tablets, tools and weapons of this mysterious people. Who they are and when they came is theorized by Mertz with a companion addendum of the current supporters to her original work.
- GenresHistory
278 pages, Paperback
First published October 1, 2004
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
January 4, 2017
What happened to history?
When you read about the Egyptians, you learn about Egyptians, Babylonians, Syrians, Greeks, Romans, etc.
Except for when you turn the page to America. For all anyone knows, America was populated by nothing but a bunch of wild, bloodthirsty, illiterate, technologically retarded savages.
Thanks to the Smithsonian and an explorer turned bureaucrat named John Wesley Powell that's all you'll ever know: that there were a couple of tribes running around half naked killing pioneers. It's called the Powell Doctrine, and has been U.S. policy since the post-Civil War Indian Wars to discourage sympathy and guilt for these people. That's the background.
In this book Henriette Mertz proves that the Powell Doctrine is totally false. But in doing so opens a bigger can of worms: who has been living in America for the past thousands of years? She discusses the tens of thousands of 'Mound Builder' settlements which were discovered and excavated during the westward expansion.
The cultures were separated into two groups, Adena and Hopewell, which spread from around 1800BC to about 800BC for the Adena, with the Hopewell following up (although not ethnically related) from around 700BC to 420AD.
While discussing the Adena, Mertz focuses on the copper trade people that were generally referred to in later Algonquin legend as 'Men of the Sea', the Greeks described a people called 'Phoniki' or Red, as did the Egyptians 'Keftiu'. These Red Men came from afar, though mysterious their origin, their visits would take three years.
And what did the Red Man bear?
Copper. And lots of it. Thousands of tons, mined in the North Americas specifically around the Michigan area where tens of thousands of copper mines bearing some of the richest reserves exist.
But, that was 1800BC and later, what about the Michigan relics?
Farmers have always - ALWAYS - found heaps of bones, stone and metal relics depicting a very advanced society. One that used great beasts we would call Mammoths to perform much work, as inscribed on the older relics, and more. They wrote on tablets of slate, copper, and clay in various and often combined languages. And among the relics found in Michigan almost without fail was a symbol IHS --The Mystic Symbol which she interprets as Jesus, or, Yod He Wah from Cherokee.
The Hopewell took up residence after the Adena obviously destroyed themselves in a series of genocidal wars, in their old mound constructions, built them up, and reinforced them with walls and fort like towers.
This story begins at the destruction of the Hopewell culture around 350-420AD. American settlers had no idea what there relics were and often found themselves in controversy as authorities immediately denounced them as ‘forgeries’. This is where Mertz was called in, to investigate this charge of forgery.
The findings, where Mertz was called to inspect, were called the Soper Savage collection. Excavated from about 500 mounds near Detroit, this curious collection was written mostly on copper, slate and clay. The writings were an odd mix of Egyptian, Phoenician, Greek, and Hebrew (with a few others scattered about).
Her findings were compelling and dizzying. Once the sanction of the Powell Doctrine was pushed aside and an honest study of what had been discovered was published the academic world was set on fire. It was war as accusations flew trying to denounce any relevance to these finds.
But, was there forgery? What was forged from what? Each find was unique and required a deep understanding of various ancient languages and their cultures. By farmers?
Turns out that most of the relics were of the latter time, around 420AD, and probably came from the most unlikely group imaginable: Coptic Christians who fled Egypt to avoid persecution and established a home in the war torn ruins of Michigan. The findings are vast and show tremendous interactions with other cultures here and in the old world.
Proving yet another group, the Coptics, is going to be fierce. This story is far from being told, but this book can be called a solid foundation upon which much independent research has been built.
I need another copy already; this one is all marked up. It’s that good.
When you read about the Egyptians, you learn about Egyptians, Babylonians, Syrians, Greeks, Romans, etc.
Except for when you turn the page to America. For all anyone knows, America was populated by nothing but a bunch of wild, bloodthirsty, illiterate, technologically retarded savages.
Thanks to the Smithsonian and an explorer turned bureaucrat named John Wesley Powell that's all you'll ever know: that there were a couple of tribes running around half naked killing pioneers. It's called the Powell Doctrine, and has been U.S. policy since the post-Civil War Indian Wars to discourage sympathy and guilt for these people. That's the background.
In this book Henriette Mertz proves that the Powell Doctrine is totally false. But in doing so opens a bigger can of worms: who has been living in America for the past thousands of years? She discusses the tens of thousands of 'Mound Builder' settlements which were discovered and excavated during the westward expansion.
The cultures were separated into two groups, Adena and Hopewell, which spread from around 1800BC to about 800BC for the Adena, with the Hopewell following up (although not ethnically related) from around 700BC to 420AD.
While discussing the Adena, Mertz focuses on the copper trade people that were generally referred to in later Algonquin legend as 'Men of the Sea', the Greeks described a people called 'Phoniki' or Red, as did the Egyptians 'Keftiu'. These Red Men came from afar, though mysterious their origin, their visits would take three years.
And what did the Red Man bear?
Copper. And lots of it. Thousands of tons, mined in the North Americas specifically around the Michigan area where tens of thousands of copper mines bearing some of the richest reserves exist.
But, that was 1800BC and later, what about the Michigan relics?
Farmers have always - ALWAYS - found heaps of bones, stone and metal relics depicting a very advanced society. One that used great beasts we would call Mammoths to perform much work, as inscribed on the older relics, and more. They wrote on tablets of slate, copper, and clay in various and often combined languages. And among the relics found in Michigan almost without fail was a symbol IHS --The Mystic Symbol which she interprets as Jesus, or, Yod He Wah from Cherokee.
The Hopewell took up residence after the Adena obviously destroyed themselves in a series of genocidal wars, in their old mound constructions, built them up, and reinforced them with walls and fort like towers.
This story begins at the destruction of the Hopewell culture around 350-420AD. American settlers had no idea what there relics were and often found themselves in controversy as authorities immediately denounced them as ‘forgeries’. This is where Mertz was called in, to investigate this charge of forgery.
The findings, where Mertz was called to inspect, were called the Soper Savage collection. Excavated from about 500 mounds near Detroit, this curious collection was written mostly on copper, slate and clay. The writings were an odd mix of Egyptian, Phoenician, Greek, and Hebrew (with a few others scattered about).
Her findings were compelling and dizzying. Once the sanction of the Powell Doctrine was pushed aside and an honest study of what had been discovered was published the academic world was set on fire. It was war as accusations flew trying to denounce any relevance to these finds.
But, was there forgery? What was forged from what? Each find was unique and required a deep understanding of various ancient languages and their cultures. By farmers?
Turns out that most of the relics were of the latter time, around 420AD, and probably came from the most unlikely group imaginable: Coptic Christians who fled Egypt to avoid persecution and established a home in the war torn ruins of Michigan. The findings are vast and show tremendous interactions with other cultures here and in the old world.
Proving yet another group, the Coptics, is going to be fierce. This story is far from being told, but this book can be called a solid foundation upon which much independent research has been built.
I need another copy already; this one is all marked up. It’s that good.
October 18, 2009
Excellent book! Hariette Mertz was an expert in forgery. She was asked by a judge to determine, (using methods applied to legally determine whether or not something is a forgery for court purposes), whether or not the Michigan tablets that contain Hebrew, Phoenician and Greek hieroglyphics, and Biblical images were forgeries or truly antiquated artifacts. Each tablet also had a cuneiform symbol (the Mystic Symbol) that represents The Creator. She takes the reader through her logical and very clear process of analysis, and includes photos and diagrams of the tablets. Ten thousand tablets were discovered in Indian mounds in over 30 counties across the state of Michigan beginning in about 1850 or 1870, if I remember correctly, and continuing through the early 1900s. Archeologists and anthropologists disclaimed them as frauds with very little study since they are pre-Columbian artifacts, which doesn't fit their tradition of no one coming to America before Columbus.
Very interesting book, and captivating reading. I highly recommend it to anyone interested in learning more about North American antiquity.
Very interesting book, and captivating reading. I highly recommend it to anyone interested in learning more about North American antiquity.
January 15, 2018
So the preponderance of the evidence (the REAL evidence, not purblind anti-diffusionists' crazy theories about forgery) seems to point to a large colony of Gnostic Christians from Egypt or Mesopotamia who fled Orthodox Christianity's persecutions in the 4th century, crossed the Atlantic, landed on the East Coast and settled predominantly in Michigan, where they fought and blended with the Chippewa Indians and left in mounds scattered all over the peninsula 10,000 to 30,000 archeological artifacts that have come to light since 1850, many of them tablets with unidentified writing and Biblical scenes on them. All objects, whether they are axes or cups or pendants bear the "mystic symbol," which seems to be a cuneiform version of the Greek abbreviation for Iesos or Jesus, IHS. Henriette Mertz deserves large credit for investigating and bringing this colony to wide notice. It was so threatening to status quo beliefs 100 years ago that a syndicate was formed to persecute believers and "expose" them in newspaper ads across the country. All the museums that were gifted with Michigan Relics threw them away or otherwise disposed of them, including the University of Notre Dame, where they were taking up valuable storage space under the football field, and the Mormons in Salt Lake City, where no one would touch them with a ten foot pole. A small collection ended up in a Michigan museum, where the curator holds his nose and apologizes for the quaint forgeries of the state's pioneer past. Wayne May, the editor of Ancient American, who republished the work with updated information with the permission of Mertz's nephew and literary heir, calls the affair the biggest scandal in American historical research. It's pretty sure, as Mertz points out, that forgers could not have been active for seventy years and covered the state, every single county in it, sometimes sneaking out into places with old mounds that didn't even have roads to them to plant copper, clay and slate artifacts inscribed and illustrated in various hands with an unknown alphabet. So we are left with the fact of their authenticity, which few seem to want to deal with. This book covers just about all aspects of the scandal in an even-handed and learned fashion. Deal and May's updates in a series of articles from Ancient American are, to my mind, forced and of limited usefulness. I am not persuaded Deal's astronomical data are pertinent. I think Mertz was on the right track when she suggested the purpose of the "mystic mark" was like a passport to heaven. One should compare the absolutely insane iconography with the Nag Hamadi Library, which my wife suggested I look at. Woah! I had to put all my books on this subject somewhere I can't find them for a while. My mind just can't take it.
March 12, 2018
The definitive book on the Michigan tablets. Erudite scholar Henriette Mertz' was requested by a judge to analyze the tablets and for proof of fraud or authenticity. "The Mystic Symbol" was the result of that investigation.
Well written, easy to read, and informative, this is a must-read book for anyone interested in the Michigan tablets, diffusionism, and Pre-Columbian North America.
We appear to be in a time period when people are re-awakening to the vast body of evidence indicating intercourse between the old world and the new in antiquity, and the realization of the pig-headedness and dogmatic positions of acedemics whose framework was set down by industrialist-funded eugenicists for political reasons in the 19th century. Unfortunately, we are still living with the consequences of this great academic fraud to this day.
Henriette Mertz' important book gives the Michigan tablets the fair treatment the academics will not.
Well written, easy to read, and informative, this is a must-read book for anyone interested in the Michigan tablets, diffusionism, and Pre-Columbian North America.
We appear to be in a time period when people are re-awakening to the vast body of evidence indicating intercourse between the old world and the new in antiquity, and the realization of the pig-headedness and dogmatic positions of acedemics whose framework was set down by industrialist-funded eugenicists for political reasons in the 19th century. Unfortunately, we are still living with the consequences of this great academic fraud to this day.
Henriette Mertz' important book gives the Michigan tablets the fair treatment the academics will not.
November 17, 2017
Very interesting book about the possible inhabitants of the now US lands in pre-columbian times. I say possible, because most all the evidence has been denounced as fraudulent by the archeological and ancient historical establishment. However, the book does a pretty great job of completely verifying the authenticity of the tablets, copper pieces and slate pieces unearthed in the "Michigan Mounds" and other surrounding areas. Lots of parallels to the Book of Mormon Jeredite societies and even possibly Nephite. As I say, a pretty interesting read for you hard core ancient America theorists!
July 6, 2025
Clearly a fresh look is needed.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews