The Melqart stele, also known as the Ben-Hadad or Bir-Hadad stele is an Aramaic

stele A stele ( ) or stela ( )The plural in English is sometimes stelai ( ) based on direct transliteration of the Greek, sometimes stelae or stelæ ( ) based on the inflection of Greek nouns in Latin, and sometimes anglicized to steles ( ) or stela ...

which was created during the 9th century BCE and was discovered in 1939 in Roman ruins in Bureij

Syria Syria, officially the Syrian Arab Republic, is a country in West Asia located in the Eastern Mediterranean and the Levant. It borders the Mediterranean Sea to the west, Turkey to Syria–Turkey border, the north, Iraq to Iraq–Syria border, t ...

(7 km north of Aleppo). The

Old Aramaic Old Aramaic refers to the earliest stage of the Aramaic language, known from the Aramaic inscriptions discovered since the 19th century. Emerging as the language of the city-states of the Arameans in the Fertile Crescent in the Early Iron Age, ...

inscription is known as KAI 201; its five lines reads:

“The stele which Bar-Had- -ad, son of .. king of Aram, erected to his Lord Melqar- - t, to whom he made a vow and who heard his voi- -ce.”

According to

William Foxwell Albright William Foxwell Albright (May 24, 1891 – September 19, 1971) was an American archaeologist, biblical scholar, philologist, and expert on ceramics. He is considered "one of the twentieth century's most influential American biblical scholars," h ...

, the stele should be attributed to

Ben-Hadad I Ben-Hadad I (), son of Tabrimmon and grandson of Hezion, was king of Aram-Damascus between 885 BCE and 865 BCE. Ben-Hadad I was reportedly a contemporary of kings Baasha of the Kingdom of Israel and Asa of the Kingdom of Judah. According to ...

, an Aramean king mentioned in the

First Book of Kings The Book of Kings (, '' Sēfer Məlāḵīm'') is a book in the Hebrew Bible, found as two books (1–2 Kings) in the Old Testament of the Christian Bible. It concludes the Deuteronomistic history, a history of ancient Israel also including ...

. However,

Kenneth Kitchen Kenneth Anderson Kitchen (1932 – 6 February 2025) was a British biblical scholar, Ancient Near Eastern historian, and Personal and Brunner Professor Emeritus of Egyptology and honorary research fellow at the School of Archaeology, Classics and ...

disagrees and states that there is no actual evidence that connects the Melqart stele to Ben-Hadad I. a recent re-analysis of the stele indicated that the Ben-Hadad referred to is actually the king of Arpad.Jo Ann Hackett and Aren M. Wilson-Wright 2022
A Revised Interpretation of the Melqart Stele (KAI 201)
in SAOC 73. ''"Like 'Ilu Are You Wise"'': Studies in Northwest Semitic Languages and Literatures in Honor of Dennis G. Pardee, Studies in Ancient Oriental Civilization 73. Chicago: The Oriental Institute, 2022, pp. 105-112. Hackett and Wilson-Wright reconstitute the first two lines of the inscription as, "1. The statue which Bir-Ha-
2. dad, son of ʕAttar-sumkī, Bir-Gūš," According to them, " Attar-sumkī was a king from the line of Gūš, the founder of a dynasty originally from the tribe of Yaḫan in the early ninth century BCE."

Notes

Bibliography

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 ...

, Stèle araméenne dédiée à Melqart, Bulletin du Musée de Beyrouth III (1939), p. 65–76 * * * * * * Black, Matthew. "The Milqart Stele." In Documents from Old Testament Times. Edited by D. W. Thomas, 239-41. London: Thomas Nelson, 1958. Reprinted, Ancient Texts and Translations. Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2005. * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Melqart stele 9th-century BC steles 1939 archaeological discoveries Ancient Near East steles Aramaic inscriptions Archaeological discoveries in Syria KAI inscriptions Aram-Damascus Melqart

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