Cippi of Melqart

For an architectural definition, see Cippus.
The Cippi of Melqart
The two Cippi of Melqart, reunited in Doha in 2023.
MaterialWhite marble
Size1.05m x 0.34m x 0.31m
WritingGreek script and ancient Phoenician alphabet
CreatedEarly Roman era (2nd century BC)
Discovered17th century, undocumented circumstances
Present locationNational Museum of Archaeology (Malta Cippus) and, Sully wing, Ground floor, Mediterranean world, Room 18b, at the Louvre Museum[1][2] (Louvre Cippus)
RegistrationCIS I, 122/122 bis or KAI 47 (Malta Cippus), AO 4818 (Louvre Cippus)
This article contains text in the Phoenician alphabet. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols.

The Cippi of Melqart are a pair of Phoenician marble cippi that were unearthed in Malta under undocumented circumstances and dated to the 2nd century BC. These are votive offerings to the god Melqart, and are inscribed in two languages, Ancient Greek and Phoenician, and in the two corresponding scripts, the Greek and the Phoenician alphabet. They were discovered in the late 17th century, and the identification of their inscription in a letter dated 1694 made them the first Phoenician writing to be identified and published in modern times.[3] Because they present essentially the same text (with some minor differences), the cippi provided the key to the modern understanding of the Phoenician language. In 1758, the French scholar Jean-Jacques Barthélémy relied on their inscription, which used 17[n 1] of the 22 letters of the Phoenician alphabet, to decipher the unknown language.

The tradition that the cippi were found in Marsaxlokk was only inferred by their dedication to Heracles,[n 2] whose temple in Malta had long been identified with the remains at Tas-Silġ.[n 3] The Grand Master of the Order of the Knights Hospitaller, Fra Emmanuel de Rohan-Polduc, presented one of the cippi to the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres in 1782.[6] This cippus is currently in the Louvre Museum in Paris, while the other rests in the National Museum of Archaeology in Valletta, Malta. The inscription is known as KAI 47.

  1. ^ AO 4818: Room 18b. Mattmann, Philippe (2013). Near Eastern Antiquities. Visit the Louvre With the Bible. www.louvrebible.org. ISBN 979-10-92487-05-3.[permanent dead link] At Google Books.
  2. ^ a b "Cippus from Malta". Louvre Museum. Retrieved 15 February 2014.
  3. ^ Lehmann, p210 and 257, quote: "Soon thereafter, at the end of the 17th century, the abovementioned Ignazio di Costanzo was the first to report a Phoenician inscription and to consciously recognize Phoenician characters proper... And just as the Melitensis prima inscription played a prominent part as the first-ever published Phoenician inscription... and remained the number-one-inscription in the Monumenta (fig. 8), it now became the specimen of authentic Phoenician script par excellence... The Melitensis prima inscription of Marsa Scirocco (Marsaxlokk) had its lasting prominence as the palaeographic benchmark for the assumed, or rather deduced "classical" Phoenician ("echtphönikische") script."
  4. ^ Cite error: The named reference Lehmann was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  5. ^ Cite error: The named reference MH was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  6. ^ Berger, Philippe (1888). "L'histoire d'une inscription. Une rectification au Corpus inscriptionum semiticarum, 1ère partie, n°122". Comptes rendus des séances de l'Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres (in French). 32 (6). PERSEE Program: 494–500. doi:10.3406/crai.1888.69568. ISSN 0065-0536.


Cite error: There are <ref group=n> tags on this page, but the references will not show without a {{reflist|group=n}} template (see the help page).