The Kerak Inscription, also known as the Kemoshyat inscription, was discovered in 1958 in

Jordan Jordan, officially the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, is a country in the Southern Levant region of West Asia. Jordan is bordered by Syria to the north, Iraq to the east, Saudi Arabia to the south, and Israel and the occupied Palestinian ter ...

, near

Wadi Wadi ( ; ) is a river valley or a wet (ephemerality, ephemeral) Stream bed, riverbed that contains water only when heavy rain occurs. Wadis are located on gently sloping, nearly flat parts of deserts; commonly they begin on the distal portion ...

el-Kerak. It is a

basalt Basalt (; ) is an aphanite, aphanitic (fine-grained) extrusive igneous rock formed from the rapid cooling of low-viscosity lava rich in magnesium and iron (mafic lava) exposed at or very near the planetary surface, surface of a terrestrial ...

inscription fragment measuring high by wide. The inscription has been dated to the late ninth century BC. The inscription is known as KAI 306. The fragment shows a belt, a pleated skirt, and a navel; along the mid-line of the fragment are three lines of Canaanite inscription. The artifact is also known as the El-Kerak / Al-Karak / Karak Inscription.

Discovery

The stone was acquired by the Jordan Archaeological Museum in 1958. It was reportedly found by Falah Qaddur (or Fallah el-Baddour), a

bedouin The Bedouin, Beduin, or Bedu ( ; , singular ) are pastorally nomadic Arab tribes who have historically inhabited the desert regions in the Arabian Peninsula, North Africa, the Levant, and Mesopotamia (Iraq). The Bedouin originated in the Sy ...

from the Tafilah Governorate. According to Reed and Winnett, Qaddur stated that he had found the stone "in a foundation trench that had been cut for the construction of a new building in Al Karak." A letter from Awni Dajani, then the head of antiquities at the Jordan Archaeological Museum, stated that the stone was found by Odeh Subh el-Khwalideh (a relative of Qaddur) in the house of Suleiman el-Mubayyedin, near the Roman Pool east of Kerak.

Inscription

The inscription contains 3 incomplete lines, comprising 8 complete words and fragments of 5 more, all written in the " Moabite language" known primarily from another artifact - the

Mesha Stele The Mesha Stele, also known as the Moabite Stone, is a stele dated around 840 BCE containing a significant Canaanite and Aramaic inscriptions, Canaanite inscription in the name of King Mesha of Moab (a kingdom located in modern Jordan). Mesha tel ...

. The text of the inscription looks like that of the Mesha Stele, but there is one special feature: the letter ''He'' has four horizontal strokes going to the left from the vertical stroke, while a typical ''He'' in tenth to fifth century BC northwest Semitic inscriptions contains only three strokes to the left. This letter is present in the inscription at least 3 times, and each time it appears with 4 horizontal strokes. Another difference between the Mesha Stele and the Kerak inscription, is the separation between the words. In the Mesha Stele there are dots, and in the Kerak inscription there are small lines.

Transliteration and translation

Provided below is a transcription of the inscription, its transliteration in Hebrew letters, as well as an English translation."The El-Kerak Inscription"
at ''K. C. Hanson's Collection of West Semitic Documents'' website Words in brackets are not preserved in the inscription, but reconstructed, partly by comparison with the Mesha Stele.

References

{{reflist 9th-century BC inscriptions 1958 archaeological discoveries Moab Moabite inscriptions KAI inscriptions Archaeological artifacts Ancient Israel and Judah Archaeological discoveries in Jordan

Discovery

Inscription

Transliteration and translation

Further reading

References