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The Bat Creek stone, found in Tennessee in 1889, measures about 4.5 inches long and 1.75 inches wide and bears eight inscribed characters in two lines. Traces of a ninth character appear at the broken left end of the top line. The two vertical scratches at upper left were added to the stone for test purposes sometime between 1894 and 1970 (they do not appear in the original publication of the inscription). The characters generally penetrate a dark brown crust of iron oxide to expose the underlying, light tan siltstone, most visible where the stone is chipped, at right.