Mesha Stele
The Mesha Stele (popularized in the 19th century as the "Moabite Stone") is a black basalt stone, bearing an inscription by King Mesha, discovered in 1868. It was 3 1/2 feet high and 2 in breadth and in thickness, and rounded at the top. The inscription of thirty-four lines, the most extensive inscription ever recovered from ancient Palestine, was written in Hebrew-Phoenician characters. It was set up by Mesha, about 850 BCE, as a record and memorial of his victories in his revolt against Israel, which he undertook after the death of his overlord, Ahab, recounting:
- Mesha's victories over Omri and his son (Ahab, not mentioned by name), over the men of Gad at Ataroth, and at Nebo and Jehaz;
- His public buildings, restoring the fortifications of his strong places and building a palace and reservoirs for water; and
- His wars against the Horonaim.
This inscription in a remarkable degree supplements and corroborates the history of King Mesha recorded in 2 Kings 3:4-27.
The stele was discovered at the ancient Dibon now Dhiban, Jordan, in August 1868, by Rev. F. A. Klein, a German missionary in Jerusalem. "The Arabs of the neighborhood, dreading the loss of such a talisman, broke the stone into pieces; but a squeeze had already been obtained by [Charles] Clermont-Ganneau, and most of the fragments were recovered and pieced together by him"[1]. A "squeeze" is a papier-mache impression. Squeeze and stele fragments are now in the Louvre Museum.
With the exception of a very few variations, such as -in for -im in plurals, the Moabite language of the inscription is identical with an early form of Hebrew. The Moabite alphabet, is the oldest Phoenician type of the Semitic alphabet. The form of the letters here used supplies very important and interesting information regarding the history of the formation of the alphabet, as well as, incidentally, regarding the arts of civilized life of those times in the land of Moab. This ancient monument, recording the heroic struggles of King Mesha with Omri and Ahab, was erected about 850 BCE. Here "we have the identical slab on which the workmen of the old world carved the history of their own times, and from which the eye of their contemporaries read thousands of years ago the record of events of which they themselves had been the witnesses."
In 1994 the French scholar Andre Lemaire reported in Biblical Archaeology Review that the Mesha Stele bears the phrase "House of David" Unlike the later mention of the "House of David" on the Tel Dan fragment, this inscription comes from an enemy of Israel boasting of a victory. Lemaire had to reconstruct a missing letter to decode the wording, but if he's right, there are now two 9th century references to David's dynasty (noted in Time Magazine, December 18, 1995).
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Referenced By
Moab | Moabite | Moabites | Moses Shapira
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