The Mesha Inscription and Relations with Moab and Edom

Abstract

The Mesha Inscription (MI) or Moabite Stone is an inscribed black basalt stone (a stela) dating to the ninth century BCE and now exhibited in the Musée du Louvre, Paris. It was found in 1868 in Dhiban (the 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 stela, 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. According to the inscription, the stela was made by Moabite king Mesha (ca. 850 BCE) for the purpose of recording his reign´s accomplishments, such as the erecting of a temple and the rebuilding of cities and, most particularly, the defeat of the Israelites occupying part of Moab. As an external witness to the Hebrew Bible, the MI constitutes one of the most important textual sources for studying the history of the ancient Israelite kingdoms and their relationships with their Transjordanian neighbors. It provides the earliest extra-biblical attestation of Yahweh as Israel´s god, mentions for the first time the kingdom of Israel´s house of Omri and probably Judah´s house of David. Also, twelve of the seventeen place names present in the MI are also mentioned in the biblical text, which makes it a good source for biblical geography.