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| Detail of a portion of lines 12–16 of the Mesha Stele, reconstructed from the squeeze |
The Mesha Stele, a basalt stone that contains chronicles by Mesha, King of Moab during the late 9th century BCE, was found in 1868 in Jordan, east of the Dead Sea and site of the ancient city of Dibon, capital of Moab.
Scholars had suspected that the writings, in the extinct language of the Moabites, describe events corresponding to the Book of Kings in the Tanach (Hebrew Bible, Prophets and Writings), including references to the Israelite god, the “House of David” and the “Altar of David.”
However, the section that included the historical account surrounding King David was damaged and therefore could not be verified – at least not until now.
A “squeeze” (papier-mâché impression) of the full stele had been obtained just prior to its destruction. Pieces of the original stele containing most of the inscription were later recovered and pieced together. The remainder of the stele was reconstructed from the squeeze
Thanks to photographic evidence, researchers have confirmed that the stone indeed does contain references to the biblical King David (2 Kings, Chapter 3), according to an article titled “Mesha’s Stele and the House of David” published recently in the Biblical Archaeology Review.
The Mesha Stele details the victories of King Mesha of Moab over the kingdoms of Israel and Judah, the magazine reports.
“In 2015, a team from the West Semitic Research Project of the University of Southern California took new digital photographs of both the restored stela and the paper squeeze. The team used a method called Reflectance Transformation Imaging… this method is especially valuable because the digital rendering allows researchers to control the lighting of an inscribed artifact, so that hidden, faint, or worn incisions become visible,” wrote researchers Andre Lemaire and Jean-Philippe Delorme.
The stele has been part of the collection of the Louvre Museum in Paris since 1873. In 2018, the Louvre projected light onto the high-resolution images, with the result being a much clearer image, enabling verification of the contents.
Linguists have also noted the strong similarity between the Moabite and Hebrew languages.
Must've been 35-40 years ago. My local PBS station ran a special program on "The Forefathers", basically a discussion on our Avos. They invited clergy from various religions including a Reform rabbi, historians and archeologists. All agreed that our Torah is just a bunch of stories to learn lessons from but that the events depicted in didn't actually happen, of course. Especially because there was no historical evidence that any of them ever existed. Heck, the Torah says Abraham used camels but there was no evidence of camels in Israel from that time period so that wasn't true!
ReplyDeleteWho was missing from that panel? An Orthodox Rabbi. Yeah, just the guy who could read the text in the original and also all its oldest commentaries. Wouldn't want to hear from a guy like that, you know, someone who actually believed in the stuff. All he would have had to say is "Wait".
Because eventually they did find camel bones dating back to Abraham's time. And multiple mentions of the House of David dating back to Biblical times. The more time goes on, the more evidence that our Bible is true.