being held at Alamo Village,
and it was briefly opened to the
public for the first time since
2009. My wife and I picked up
two cameras and headed
straight to Brackettville, figur-
ing this was going to be my last
chance to document this
strange artifact. There were
well over 1,000 people there for
the sale. They had come to buy
wagons, stage coaches and
Rock around 2010. He took a
much different approach to his
research than I would have, but
his writing inspired me to
research something that I
would not have considered
before reading his well-written
paper. Cuatro had searched out
the history of the words and
phrases carved on the rock and
come up with some fascinating
stuff. For instance, the word
CONI” that was also inscribed
on the rock. History had taken
him all the way back to ancient
Israel in 597 BC. I wanted to
know what it meant around
1168. Turns out PhCONI
refers to some islands off the
Western coast of Akarnania,
Greece. The people there were
known as Phians. So I typed in
Phian to see what the meaning
was and with the click of a
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Photo courtesy of Howdy-Nocona Fowler and C uatro C oates
other western movie memora-
bilia. Knowing I am a collector,
folks asked me what I had
come to buy. They were
shocked when I told them that
I was not there for the sale at
all, but I had came to photo-
graph a rock!
A sale official from
Rocksprings, Texas by the
name of John Baker was a great
help in me finally getting to
photograph Esau’s Rock. He
made sure I got access into the
back room where Esau’s Rock
was stored. He made numerous
trips back to the museum with
me to secure more photos and
to help me in my search for
information. I cannot thank
him enough for his help.
On Sunday, the last day of
the sale, I was introduced to
Cuatro Coates, who had also
done some research on Esau’s
D.’AVE as it is carved dates
back to the 1500s and was first
used by the French, then the
English. Rarely is it used in any
of the more modern forms of
Spanish. It is also a salutation
meaning “Farewell.”
The intertwined numerals
for the year date really had me
stumped. But they did to my
untrained eye look Celtic, like
the endless knots in that style
of art. I have pored over a few
thousand examples of ancient
Celtic and Gaelic rock carv-
ings. I have seen almost every
style of endless knot known to
mankind, but not one ancient
example of lettering or numer-
als like the one carved on Esau’s
Rock. Having hit a wall, I had
to trash the possible Irish/Scot
connection.
Cuatro Coates had explored
the “Ph CONI” or “Phi
button I was back in Ireland.
Turns out “Phian” is the Gaelic
equivalent of our English word
“Pain”! Trying to find an Italian
explorer from 1168 and I am
stuck in Ireland again.
My brain was fried after six
days of eating, breathing and
losing sleep over Esau’s Rock.
So I decided to call in some
bigger, more educated guns on
this project. I threw it out to a
group on the internet. They
were stumped to say the least.
No luck there. So then I turned
to a well-known archeologist,
he admitted he had never seen
anything like it. That left me
with only one more card to
play. If it didn’t work I was
going to fold my cards and quit
continued on page 27
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