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A 2,800-year-old stone altar, discovered in a Moabite sanctuary in the ancient city of Ataroth, Jordan, may illuminate an ancient biblical war.
L & # 39; altar bears two inscriptions. The words are in the Moabite language and script, while the numbers in the inscriptions are in hieratic (an Egyptian writing system). The altar seems to date from an era after Mesha, King of Moab, rebelled successfully against the Kingdom Israel and conquered Ataroth (a city sometimes spelled Atarot), a city controlled by the Kingdom of Israel. At that time, Israel had split in two with a northern kingdom that retained the name of Israel and a southern kingdom called Judah.
The Hebrew Bible mentions the rebellion, saying that prior to Mesha's rebellion, Moab was to give Israel an annual tribute of thousands of lambs and a large amount of ram's wool. Rebellion is also described in the so-called Mesha Stele Discovered in 1868 in Dhiban, Jordan, claiming that Mesha conquered Ataroth and killed many residents.
Related: Biblical Battles: 12 Ancient Wars from the Bible
The altar was discovered during the excavation of the sanctuary, in 2010. The altar and shrine have recently been featured in the newspaper. Levant.
One of the two inscriptions written on the altar seems to describe a looted bronze after the capture of Ataroth. "One could assume that quantities of looted bronze in the conquered city of [Ataroth] at a later date were presented as an offering to the shrine and recorded on this altar, "the researchers wrote in a newspaper article.
The second inscription on the altar is fragmentary and difficult to understand. Part of it seems to indicate (in translation) that "4,000 foreign men were scattered and abandoned in large numbers", while another part of the inscription mentions "the sorry city".
"Many things are unclear about this inscription," the researchers wrote, pointing out that this inscription could evoke events that occurred during the Mesha rebellion against Israel and the capture of Ataroth.
Odorous substances like incense, woods and aromatic oils would have been burned on the altar, said senior author Adam Bean, PhD student at the Department of Middle East Studies. from Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.
Biblical Indices
The inscribed altar confirms that the Moabites succeeded in taking Ataroth, said co-author of the study, Christopher Rollston, professor of Northwestern Semitic languages and literatures at Washington's George Washington University, DC
The altar also shows that 2800 years ago the Moabites had skilled scribes who used their own script. The inscriptions on the altar "are the earliest evidence that we have up to here a distinctive Moabite script," Rollston told Live Science, pointing out that the discovery found in 1868 was using the Hebrew script to write the Moabite language.
"We often talk about the sophistication of the scribal education of ancient Israel, and rightly so, [but the inscriptions on the altar show] this ancient Moab also had gifted scribes, "said Rollston.
Today, Ataroth calls Khirbat Ataruz. The excavations on the site are led by Chang-Ho Ji, Dean of Education at La Sierra University in Riverside, California.
Originally published on Science live.
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