Mesha Stele

The Mesha Stele is a stele set up around 840 BCE by King Mesha of Moab. Mesha tells how Kemosh, the God of Moab, had been angry with his people and had allowed them to be subjugated to Israel, but at length Kemosh returned and assisted Mesha to throw off the yoke of Israel and restore the lands of Moab. Mesha describes his many building projects. The stone was discovered intact by Frederick Augustus Klein, an Anglican missionary, at the site of ancient Dibon, in August 1868, who was led to it by a local Bedouin. Before it could be seen by another European, the next year it was smashed by local villagers during a dispute over its ownership. A "squeeze" had been obtained by a local Arab on behalf of Charles Simon Clermont-Ganneau, and fragments containing most of the inscription were later recovered and pieced together. The squeeze and the reassembled stele are now in the Louvre Museum. The Mesha stele is the longest Iron Age inscription ever found in the region, constitutes the major evidence for the Moabite language, and is a "corner-stone of Semitic epigraphy and Palestinian history".