The Çebel Ires Daǧı inscription is a Phoenician legal inscription on a limestone block found in the ruins of
Laertes (Cilicia)
Laertes () was a town of ancient Cilicia. Some have supposed that the philosopher Diogenes Laërtius was from this town. Strabo called it a stronghold.
Its site is located near Cebelires in Antalya
Antalya is the fifth-most populous city i ...
, on Çebel Ires mountain in southern Turkey. The inscription is held at the
Alanya Archaeological Museum.
It was discovered in 1980 by James Russell (of the
University of British Columbia
The University of British Columbia (UBC) is a Public university, public research university with campuses near University of British Columbia Vancouver, Vancouver and University of British Columbia Okanagan, Kelowna, in British Columbia, Canada ...
,
and Mustafa Gürdal, Director of the Alanya Museum, in a secondary context, and is the only inscription considered to date earlier than Roman times found at the site (on paleographic grounds it is thought to date to the second half of the 7th century BC)
The inscription mentions the intervention of a King Warika in a land dispute, a name also known (with slightly different spelling) in the
Çineköy inscription and the
Karatepe bilingual.
It measures 54 x 31 x 17 cm, likely a fragment of a prism shaped monument – on the three outer edges are 9 lines of
Phoenician on two sides and 3 on the top side.
References
Bibliography
*
* {{cite journal , last1=Lemaire , first1=André , title=Une Inscription Phénicienne Découverte Récemment et le Mariage de Ruth la Moabite , journal=Eretz-Israel: Archaeological, Historical and Geographical Studies , year=1989 , issn=0071-108X , jstor=23621934 , pages=124–129 , language=fr
* Long, G. A. "A Kinsman-Redeemer in the Phoenician Inscription from Cebel Ires Dağı," ZAW 103, 1991: 421–24.
* Long, G. A. and D. Pardee. "Who Exiled whom? Another Interpretation of the Phoenician Inscription of Cebel Ires Dağı," Aula Orientalis 7, 1989: 207–14
* Margalit, B. "Philological Notes on a Recently Published Phoenician Inscription from Southern Anatolia," in Dort ziehen Schiffe dahin... ed. by M. Augustin, K.-D. Schunk, 1996: 119–29.
Phoenician inscriptions
KAI inscriptions
Archaeological discoveries in Turkey
1980 archaeological discoveries
7th-century BC inscriptions
Ancient Cilicia