150 years ago, in 1868, an Alsatian missionary by the name of Frederick Klein discovered a 120 cm-high black basalt stele in the land of the ancient Kingdom of Moab, in present-day Jordan. The discovery caused quite a stir, and the Bedouins ended up smashing the monument. It was thanks to the insight of Ch. Clermont-Ganneau, who later became a professor at the Collège de France, that the stele was rebuilt.
To mark the 150th anniversary of this discovery, the Collège de France, in collaboration with the Deutscher Palästina-Verein and the Musée du Louvre, is organizing a scientific symposium to highlight the importance of this stele, "the queen of West-Semitic inscriptions" according to Ernest Renan.
The various papers to be presented at this meeting will first retrace the story of the discovery of the Mesha stele and its arrival at the Louvre.
They will then examine the content of the inscription, the problems of deciphering and dating the stele. The religious universe reflected in the story of Mesha will also be discussed, and compared with the biblical account in 2 Kings 3.
Other speakers will trace the history of the land of Moab and its complicated relationship with the kingdoms of Israel and Judah. The geography of the ancient Levant will also be discussed, as will new theories concerning the interactions of the Levantine kingdoms in the first millennium.
The colloquium will thus offer a panorama of possible historical reconstructions of which the Mesha stele is at the origin.
Deutscher Palästina-Verein