Cippi des Melqart
Two Phoenician steles from the 2nd century BC are known as the Cippi des Melqart or Cippi of Malta . From alabaster , bearing bilingual Phoenician-Greek inscriptions. One of the two Cippi is now kept in the Louvre in Paris , the other is in the National Museum of Archeology in Valletta , Malta .
When the Greek inscription was published in Volume 3 of Corpus Inscriptionum Graecarum in 1853 , it was described that they were found in Marsaxlokk . This site was not mentioned before, and more than a century later the claim was refuted. The assignment was possibly found by inference, because it was assumed with some plausibility that the Cippi were dedicated to Herakles and were placed in his temple.
The two pieces were first mentioned in 1694 in a letter from Ignazio Constanzo to Antonio Bulifon , which he published in 1697. At the end of the 17th century they were in the collection of Giovanfrancesco Abela in Malta. In 1735 JC Guyot de la Marne published an illustration of the inscription for the first time. Jean-Jacques Barthélémy (1716–1795) was able to read the inscriptions in 1758 using a cast and begin deciphering the Phoenician-Punic language . In 1782, Emmanuel de Rohan-Polduc , the Grand Master of the Order of St. John, gave one of the Cippi Louis XVI to commemorate this achievement . In Paris it was initially kept in the Académie des Inscriptions et des Belles Lettres , and in 1796 it came to the Bibliothèque Mazarine . In 1864 it was given to the Louvre at the suggestion of the orientalist Antoine-Isaac Silvestre de Sacy (inventory no. AO 4818).
The term Cippus is used in Phoenician context (unlike in Etruscan Sh. Cippus ) for a small column with or without a capital, which was used as a milestone, boundary stone or monument. Both Maltese cippi are unusual in that they are in two parts, with the base designed as a rectangular block in the shape of a votive altar with Greek and Phoenician inscriptions on it. Both blocks support a column that represents a "candlestick", the lower part of which is decorated in bas-relief with acanthus leaves. The copy in the Louvre is broken off at the top. The bilingual inscription is on the base, consisting of three lines in Greek and four in Phoenician. Relations between Malta and the Phoenicians began in the 8th century BC. The inscription dates from the 2nd century BC. When the Maltese islands were occupied by the Romans.
Inscriptions
The text of the inscriptions on both cippi is identical, only the division between the lines varies slightly; The text of the stele in the Louvre is reproduced below:
| Transcription of the Phoenician text | translation |
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| Greek text | translation |
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It is a consecration of two brothers from Tire to the god Melqart , who is equated with Heracles .
With this inscription, which contains 18 of the 22 letters of the Phoenician script , Jean-Jacques Barthélémy was able to begin deciphering the language. In the tableau by Barthélémy, published in 1764, only the letters "tet" and "pe" are missing.
literature
- Maurice Sznycer : Antiquités et épigraphie nord-sémitiques. In: Annuaire École pratique des hautes études. 4e section, Sc. hist. et philol. 1974-75, pp. 191-208 full text .