KAI 201

General Notes

This basalt dedicatory stela measures 43 cm by 115 cm and was discovered in 1939 among Roman ruins 7 km north of Aleppo, Syria (Dunand 1939). It is today housed in the National Museum of Aleppo. It is dedicated to Melqart, the patron god of Tyre (Donner & Röllig 1964, 203). The name of the king has generated a lot of scholarly discussion. Although the reading of br hdd (typically glossed as Bir-Hadad) is clear enough, the identity of this figure is less than certain. Until the 1980s, scholars were united in viewing the figure as one of the rulers of Damascus named in biblical or extra-biblical sources. In the most recent treatment, however, Hackett & Wilson-Wright (2022) argue that the king hailed from Arpad, not Damascus, and identify the name with a figure known from Neo-Assyrian inscriptions: Bir-Hadad son of ˤAttar-sumkī, Bir-Gūš, based on their reading of line 1 and line 2 as: br h{d}dd br ˤtrsmk br gš. They conclude, “In fact, the Bir-Hadad of the Melqart stele was not from Damascus but was in the line of ˤAttar-sumkī of Arpad in Bīt Agūsi, not far from Aleppo, and in an area known to have a Phoenician presence. We should, then, not be surprised that a king from Arpad would make a vow to a Phoenician deity and erect a stele memorializing the vow and its success” (Hackett & Wilson-Wright 2022, 111).