The Tabnit sarcophagus is the sarcophagus of the

Phoenicia Phoenicians were an Ancient Semitic-speaking peoples, ancient Semitic group of people who lived in the Phoenician city-states along a coastal strip in the Levant region of the eastern Mediterranean, primarily modern Lebanon and the Syria, Syrian ...

n King of Sidon Tabnit (ruled c. 549–539 BC), the father of King Eshmunazar II. It is decorated with two separate and unrelated inscriptions – one in

Egyptian hieroglyphs Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs ( ) were the formal writing system used in Ancient Egypt for writing the Egyptian language. Hieroglyphs combined Ideogram, ideographic, logographic, syllabic and alphabetic elements, with more than 1,000 distinct char ...

and one in the

Phoenician alphabet The Phoenician alphabet is an abjad (consonantal alphabet) used across the Mediterranean civilization of Phoenicia for most of the 1st millennium BC. It was one of the first alphabets, attested in Canaanite and Aramaic inscriptions fo ...

. The latter contains a curse for those who open the tomb, promising impotency and loss of an afterlife. It has been dated to early fifth century BC, and was unearthed in 1887 by

Osman Hamdi Bey Osman Hamdi Bey (30 December 1842 – 24 February 1910) was an Ottoman Turkish administrator, intellectual, art expert and also a prominent and pioneering painter. He was the Ottoman Empire's first modern archaeologist, and is regarded as the ...

at the

Royal necropolis of Ayaa The royal necropolis of Ayaa (; also romanized as "Ayaʿa") was a group of two Hypogeum, ''hypogea'' housing a total of 21 Sarcophagus, sarcophagi of King of Sidon, kings and nobles of the city of Sidon (modern Sidon, Saida), a coastal city in Leb ...

east of

Sidon Sidon ( ) or better known as Saida ( ; ) is the third-largest city in Lebanon. It is located on the Mediterranean Sea, Mediterranean coast in the South Governorate, Lebanon, South Governorate, of which it is the capital. Tyre, Lebanon, Tyre, t ...

together with the

Alexander Sarcophagus The Alexander Sarcophagus is a late 4th century BC Hellenistic stone sarcophagus from the Royal necropolis of Ayaa near Sidon, Lebanon. It is adorned with high relief carvings of Alexander the Great and scrolling historical and mythological na ...

and other related sarcophagi. Tabnit's body was found floating perfectly preserved in the original embalming fluid. Both the sarcophagus and Tabnit's decomposed skeleton are now in the Istanbul Archaeology Museums. The sarcophagus, together with the Sarcophagus of Eshmunazar II, were possibly acquired by the Sidonians following their participation in the Battle of Pelusium during the First Achaemenid conquest of Egypt, and served as models for later Phoenician sarcophagi. The Phoenician text is considered to have a "remarkable" similarity to that of the Shebna inscription from

Jerusalem Jerusalem is a city in the Southern Levant, on a plateau in the Judaean Mountains between the Mediterranean Sea, Mediterranean and the Dead Sea. It is one of the List of oldest continuously inhabited cities, oldest cities in the world, and ...

Discovery

At the beginning of 1887, Mehmed Sherif Effendi, the owner of a piece of land known as Ayaa, obtained a permit from the local authorities to quarry stone for the construction of a new building. On 2 March 1887, Cherif reported to the

Kaymakam Kaymakam, also known by #Names, many other romanizations, was a title used by various officials of the Ottoman Empire, including acting grand viziers, governors of provincial sanjaks, and administrators of district kazas. The title has been reta ...

of Sidon, Sadik Bey, that he had discovered a well at the bottom of which there might be tombs. Sadik Bey examined the site and spotted a vault containing two sarcophagi through a hole in the eastern wall of the well. He escalated the matter to the Vali of the Syria vilayet, Rashid Nashid Pasha, and the Governor of Beirut Nassouhi Bey, and entrusted the well to the care of Essad Effendi from the

gendarmerie A gendarmerie () is a paramilitary or military force with law enforcement duties among the civilian population. The term ''gendarme'' () is derived from the medieval French expression ', which translates to " men-at-arms" (). In France and so ...

of Sidon. According to the American missionary narrative, the tombs were discovered in 1887 by the American

Presbyterian Presbyterianism is a historically Reformed Protestant tradition named for its form of church government by representative assemblies of elders, known as "presbyters". Though other Reformed churches are structurally similar, the word ''Pr ...

minister William King Eddy (the father of William A. Eddy). William Wright sent a letter to ''

The Times ''The Times'' is a British Newspaper#Daily, daily Newspaper#National, national newspaper based in London. It began in 1785 under the title ''The Daily Universal Register'', adopting its modern name on 1 January 1788. ''The Times'' and its si ...

'' with news of Eddy's discovery and imploring the

British Museum The British Museum is a Museum, public museum dedicated to human history, art and culture located in the Bloomsbury area of London. Its permanent collection of eight million works is the largest in the world. It documents the story of human cu ...

to "take immediate measures to secure these treasures and prevent their falling into the hands of the vandal Turk". This alerted the new curator of the fledgling Istanbul Archaeological Museum,

, who arranged for a full excavation and the transfer of the sarcophagi to Istanbul. During the excavation, the workmen opened the Tabnit sarcophagus and found "a human body floating in perfect preservation in a peculiar fluid". Whilst Hamdi Bey was at lunch, the workmen overturned the sarcophagus and poured the fluid out, such that the "secret of the wonderful fluid was again hidden in the Sidon sand". Notably, after the "peculiar fluid" left the sarcophagus, the body started to become un-preservable. Hamdi Bey noted in 1892 that he had kept a portion of the sludge that remained in the bottom of the sarcophagus. File:Sidon and Ayaa Necropolis (marked 1).jpg, Sidon and Ayaa Necropolis (marked "1" in the top right corner) File:Ayaa Necropolis in Sidon, 1892.jpg, Plan of Ayaa Necropolis File:Ayaa Necropolis, Sidon.png, Cross-section of the Ayaa Necropolis. The Tabnit sarcophagus is at the bottom left. File:Tabnit sarcophagus (front and side).jpg, Tabnit sarcophagus (front and side)

Inscription

The inscription is known as KAI 13. The Egyptian hieroglyphic inscription shows that the sarcophagus was originally intended for an Egyptian general named "Pen-Ptah" (pꜣ-n-pth). Transcribed in equivalent Hebrew letters, the Phoenician text is readable by a modern Hebrew speaker, with a few distinctions: as is customary in Phoenician, the direct object marker is written אית (ʾyt) instead of את (ʾt) in Hebrew, and relative clauses ('which', 'who') are introduced with אש (ʾš) instead of אשר (ʾšr) in Hebrew. Among less common words in modern Hebrew, the inscription uses חרץ for gold (Biblical ‏חָרוּץ) and אר for the verb 'to gather' (אָרוּ 'they gathered', Biblical ‏אָרָה).

Dating

Both the Tabnit sarcophagus and the Sarcophagus of Eshmunazar II are thought to originally date from the

Twenty-sixth Dynasty of Egypt The Twenty-sixth Dynasty of Egypt (notated Dynasty XXVI, alternatively 26th Dynasty or Dynasty 26) was the last native dynasty of ancient Egypt before the Persian conquest in 525 BC (although other brief periods of rule by Egyptians followed). T ...

, which had its capital at

Sais Sais (, ) was an ancient Egyptian city in the Western Nile Delta on the Canopic branch of the Nile,Mish, Frederick C., Editor in Chief. "Saïs." '' Webster's Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary''. 9th ed. Springfield, MA: Merriam-Webster Inc., 19 ...

. This is partially due to their resemblance to similar sarcophagi such as the Psamtik II-era Horkhebit sarcophagus from

Saqqara Saqqara ( : saqqāra ), also spelled Sakkara or Saccara in English , is an Egyptian village in the markaz (county) of Badrashin in the Giza Governorate, that contains ancient burial grounds of Egyptian royalty, serving as the necropolis for ...

, now in the

Metropolitan Museum of Art The Metropolitan Museum of Art, colloquially referred to as the Met, is an Encyclopedic museum, encyclopedic art museum in New York City. By floor area, it is the List of largest museums, third-largest museum in the world and the List of larg ...

Notes

References

* (

editio princeps In Textual scholarship, textual and classical scholarship, the ''editio princeps'' (plural: ''editiones principes'') of a work is the first printed edition of the work, that previously had existed only in manuscripts. These had to be copied by han ...

) * ( Plates) * * * * * * {{Istanbul Archaeology Museums 5th-century BC inscriptions 1887 archaeological discoveries Phoenician inscriptions KAI inscriptions Kings of Sidon Multilingual texts Phoenician sarcophagi 5th-century BC artifacts Royal necropolis of Ayaa Archaeological discoveries in Lebanon Tabnit Inscriptions of Lebanon