Mdina steles

Phoenician inscriptions found in Malta

The Mdina steles are two Phoenician language inscriptions found near the city of Mdina (ancient Maleth), Malta, in 1816. The findspot is disputed; the oldest known description places it near the Tal-Virtù Church. The surviving stele is currently in the National Museum of Archaeology, Malta; the other stele has been considered lost for more than a century.^[1]

They were widely publicized by Wilhelm Gesenius as Melitensia Tertia and Melitensia Quarta ("Maltese 3rd" and "Maltese 4th"). They are also known as KAI 61A,B or CIS i 123A,B.

Stele 61B has been dated to the sixth century BCE on the basis of letter forms.^[2]

Text of the inscriptions

The two inscriptions read:^[3][4]

A "molkomor" (as in B) was a "substitute" sacrificial offering to Ba‘al of a lamb instead of a child. The word is a composite of molk or Moloch, traditionally the Punic god Ba‘al but more probably meaning "(human) sacrifice (of a child)",^[5] and ’MR (cf. Hebrew ’immēr), "lamb".^[6] Another possible reading is "MLK’SR", meaning Moloch-Osiris, who was also worshiped by the Phoenicians.^[7]

It is not clear whether molk-Ba‘al in A is a variant of molkomor,^[8] or that 61A refers to a real child sacrifice, while 61B refers to a substitute offering.^[9]

Gallery

• 
  Close up of the surviving stele
• 
  Close up of the surviving stele
• 
  The inscriptions in Hamaker's 1828 Miscellanea Phoenicia
• 
  Two versions of Melitensia Tertia and of Melitensia Quarta, in Gesenius's 1837 Scripturae Linguaeque Phoeniciae Monumenta

References

1. Vella, Nicholas C, Vases, bones and two Phoenician inscriptions : an assessment of a discovery made in Malta in 1816, Ritual, religion and reason : studies in the ancient world in honour of Paolo Xella / edited by Oswald Loretz ... [et al.]. Münster: Ugarit-Verlag, 2013. p. 589-605. ISBN 9783868350876
2. Dussaud, René (1946). "Précisions épigraphiques sur les sacrifices puniques d'enfants". Comptes rendus des séances de l'Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres. 90 (3): 371-387: pp. 377-378. Retrieved 21 May 2022. (Persée)
3. Donner, Herbert; Rölig, Wolfgang (2002). Kanaanäische und aramäische Inschriften (5 ed.). Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz. p. I, 17.
4. Krahmalkov, Charles R. (2000). Phoenician-Punic Dictionary. Leuven: Peeters / Departement Oosterse Studies. ISBN 90-429-0770-3.
5. Dussaud (1946).
6. García y Bellido, Antonio (1967). Les religions orientales dans l'Espagne romaine. Leiden: Brill. p. 4. ISBN 978-90-04-30826-8.
7. Slouschz, Nahoum (1942). Thesaurus of Phoenician Inscriptions. Dvir. pp. 125–127.
8. Krahmalkov (2000).
9. Dussaud (1946)