Stelae of Nahr el-Kalb

Commemorative stelae of Nahr el-Kalb
A group of the inscriptions as depicted by Louis-François Cassas in 1799
Material	Limestone
Writing	Egyptian hieroglyphs, Assyrian cuneiform, Latin, Greek, Arabic, French and English
Created	c.1500 BC – AD 1946
Present location	in situ
class=notpageimage| Location in Lebanon

33°57′20″N 35°35′48″E / 33.955530°N 35.596696°E / 33.955530; 35.596696 The commemorative stelae of Nahr el-Kalb are a group of over 20 inscriptions and rock reliefs carved into the limestone rocks around the estuary of the Nahr al-Kalb (Dog River) in Lebanon, just north of Beirut.

The inscriptions include three Egyptian hieroglyphic stelae from pharaohs including Ramesses II,^[1] six cuneiform inscriptions^[1] from Neo-Assyrian and Neo-Babylonian kings including Esarhaddon^[1] and Nebuchadnezzar II,^[1] Roman, Latin and Greek inscriptions, ^[1] Arabic inscriptions from the Egyptian Mamluk sultan Barquq^[2] and the Druze prince Fakhr-al-Din II,^[3] a memorial to Napoleon III's 1860 intervention in Lebanon^[4] and a dedication to the 1943 independence of Lebanon from France.^[4] As such, the site has been said to summarise all of Lebanon's history in one place.^[5]

The earliest European to identify the site was the 17th-century traveller Henry Maundrell in 1697,^[6][7] and Franz Heinrich Weissbach [de] was the first editor of the inscriptions in 1922.^[1]

In 2005, the stelae at the river were listed in the UNESCO Memory of the World initiative.^[5]