Los Lunas Decalogue Stone

The ancient Samaritan mezuzah, on the other hand, was commonly a large stone slab placed by the gateway to a property or synagogue, and bearing an abridged version of the Decalogue.

He points out that "the flat face of the stone shows a very sharp, crisp inscription..." His main concern however is the lack of any archaeological context.

He argues that to get to the location of the stone would have required whoever inscribed it to have "stopped along the way, encamped, eaten food, broken things, disposed of trash, performed rituals, and so on.

"[14] British archaeologist Keith Fitzpatrick-Matthews has concluded that "Viewed dispassionately, the Los Lunas inscription is a clear, but well constructed forgery (for its day).

Despite the claims of high antiquity, there are features of the text (such as the mixing of letter forms between two separate alphabets) that are much more likely to derive from the work of a modern forger than from an ancient Hebrew or Samaritan scribe."

Other speculative origin myths include the idea that members of a passing U.S. Army battalion made up primarily of Mormon soldiers during the Mexican-American War carved the stone.