Calalus

The following is the substance of an address delivered by Robert F. Gilder, archeologist of the University of Nebraska in Omaha telling of the ancient fortress on the Desert Laboratory hill just west of Tucson.

The Old Pueblo Chronicle: A 75-Year History of the Old Pueblo Club (1907-1982), April 12, 1934

Aboriginal Workman Not Revealed In Artifacts Found On Silverbell Road

Quetzalcoatl, “the bearded white man” whom the Toltec Indians of Mexico worshipped as their god, may have been Israel III

Imbedded in caliche and gravel that apparently had been undisturbed for hundreds of years, two fragments of a leaden spear-shaft were found at the third lime kiln on the Silverbell road, seven and a half miles from Stone avenue and Congress street by university scientists yesterday.

An agreement whereby the archaeology department of the university will immediately take over the work of excavation where the leaden crosses and swords were unearthed on the Silverbell road in 1925, and which provides for the payment of $15,000 to Thomas W. Bent and Charles Manier, discoverers, as compensation for their previous expenditures and claims providing that future explorations prove conclusively that the artifacts are pre-Columbian, was reached by the board of regents at its meeting Monday

Dr. Fowler, Professor of Classical Languages for the University of Arizona, continues to insist that the Latin phrases on the crosses are copied by an individual who was ignorant of Latin, and copied phrases from several Latin textbooks.

The fact that these crosses contain the names of “kings” such as Jacobus, Israel the first, second and third, Benjamin, and James, has caused considerable stir among scientists and Hebrew scholars. The latter invariably brand these relics as forgeries.

The theory that the leaden relics excavated on the desert in the Santa Cruz River Valley, seven miles from here, indicated that an expedition of Roman Jews came to America seven centuries before Columbus was finally exploded today by a statement from Dr. Frank Fowler, Professor of Classical Literature at the University of Arizona.