Ezekiel saw the wheels....so did others . . . . Honoring Black HIStory '23

Ezekiel saw the wheels and so did others. In fact, the traditions says that many Africans who were taken from West Africa and enslaved in MD . . . in fact near the birthplace of Frederick Douglass!

At the site of a plantation where abolitionist Frederick Douglass once lived, University of Maryland (UMD) archaeologists have uncovered striking evidence of how African and Christian religious beliefs blended and merged in the 19th century. The team dug up an intact set of objects that they interpret as religious symbols—traditional ones from Africa, but mixed with what they believe to be a Biblical image: a representation of Ezekiel’s Wheel.

“No one has found this combination before. It may give us a snapshot of the blending of religious symbols of a tenant farmer after 1865,” says University of Maryland archaeologist Mark P. Leone, who led the team. “Christianity had not erased traditional African spirit practices; it had merged with them to form a potent blend that still thrives today.” (https://bsos.umd.edu/featured-content/ezekiels-wheel-ties-african)

 I looked, and I saw beside the cherubim four wheels, one beside each of the cherubim; the wheels sparkled like topaz. As for their appearance, the four of them looked alike; each was like a wheel intersecting a wheel. (Ezekiel 10"9-10)