The Mesha inscription and relations with Moab and Edom

Abstract

The Mesha Inscription, or Moabite Stone, is an inscribed black basalt stone (a stele) dating to the ninth century BCE and now exhibited in the Musee du Louvre, Paris (fig. 36.1). It was found in 1868 in Dhiban (ancient Dibon), a village located in central Transjordan east of the Dead Sea, an area known in biblical times as the land of Moab. The surviving fragments of the stele, some original and others reconstructed from a squeeze made at the time of the discovery, contain at least thirty-four lines written in Moabite, a language very close to Biblical Hebrew, using the Phoenician alphabetic script...