The Baalshillem Temple Boy, or Ba'al Sillem Temple Boy, is a votive statue of a "temple boy" with a Phoenician inscription known as KAI 281. It was found along with a number of other votive statues of children near the canal in the

Temple of Eshmun The Temple of Eshmun () is an ancient place of worship dedicated to Eshmun, the Phoenician god of healing. It is located near the Awali (river), Awali river, northeast of Sidon in southwestern Lebanon. The site was occupied from the 7th cent ...

in 1963-64 by

Maurice Dunand Maurice Dunand (4 March 1898 – 23 March 1987) was a prominent French archaeologist specializing in the ancient Near East, who served as director of the Mission Archéologique Française in Lebanon. Dunand excavated Byblos from 1924 to 1975, and ...

, and is currently in the

National Museum of Beirut The National Museum of Beirut (, ''Matḥaf Bayrūt al-waṭanī'') is the principal museum of archaeology in Lebanon. The collection begun after World War I, and the museum was officially opened in 1942. The museum has collections totaling about ...

. The base of the statue was found separately; as late as 1974 Everett Mullen wrote that: "Only the base of the inscription was found; it has a large cavity at the top where the image of the squatting child would be expected on analogy with the other images which were found alongside this inscription." The inscription mentions four previously unknown names of

Kings of Sidon The King of Sidon was the ruler of Sidon, an ancient Phoenician city in what is now Lebanon. Scholars have pieced together the fragmented list from various archaeological finds since the 19th century. Egyptian period * c.1700s BC Zimrida * c. 13 ...

, which correspond exactly with those from known Sidonian coins. The inscription has been translated as follows:

This (is the) statue that Baalshillem, son of King Ba'na, king of the Sidonians, son of King Abdamun, king of the Sidonians, son of King Baalshillem, king of the Sidonians, gave to his lord Eshmun at the ''YDLL'' spring. May he bless him.

The inscription is dated from the end of the 5th century BCE. Nothing else is known about the kings mentioned in the inscription. According to Josette Elayi, the statue represents

Abdashtart I Abdashtart I (in Greek, Straton I) was a king of Sidon, king of the Phoenician city-state of Sidon who reigned from 365 BC to 352 BC following the death of his father, Baalshillem II. Reform His accession appears to have taken place in a pe ...

, who was the son of

Baalshillem II Baalshillem II was a Phoenician King of Sidon (reigned – ), and the great-grandson of Baalshillem I who founded the namesake dynasty. He succeeded Baana to the throne of Sidon, and was succeeded by his son Abdashtart I. The name ''Baal ...

.Elayi, J. (2006)
An updated chronology of the reigns of phoenician kings during the Persian period (539-333 BCE)
"This last king devoted to the god Eshmun a so-called “temple-boy” statue, representing his unnamed son, still a baby.... As has been shown, Abdashtart I was the baby represented by the temple-boy statue mentioned above." The statue is 35cm high.

Notes

{{reflist, 35em

References

* Editio princeps: Dunand, M., 1965 Nouvelles inscriptions pheniciennes du temple d'Echmoun a Bostan ech-Cheikh, pres Sidon. Bulletin du Musee de Beyrouth XVIII: 105-9 * Hadzisteliou-Price, T. (1969). The Type of the Crouching Child and the 'Temple Boys'. The Annual of the British School at Athens, 64, 95-111. Retrieved September 2, 2020, from http://www.jstor.org/stable/30103333 1963 archaeological discoveries Phoenician inscriptions Phoenician sculpture Collection of the National Museum of Beirut KAI inscriptions Temple of Eshmun Votive offering Archaeological discoveries in Lebanon 5th-century BC artifacts 5th-century BC sculptures Inscriptions of Lebanon