Kanaanäische und Aramäische Inschriften (in

English English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England ** English national ...

, Canaanite and Aramaic Inscriptions), or KAI, is the standard source for the original text of

Canaanite and Aramaic inscriptions The Canaanite and Aramaic inscriptions, also known as Northwest Semitic inscriptions, are the primary extra-Biblical source for understanding of the society and history of the ancient Phoenicians, Hebrews and Arameans. Semitic inscriptions may oc ...

not contained in the

Hebrew Bible The Hebrew Bible or Tanakh (;"Tanach"
'' Old Testament The Old Testament (often abbreviated OT) is the first division of the Christian biblical canon, which is based primarily upon the 24 books of the Hebrew Bible or Tanakh, a collection of ancient religious Hebrew writings by the Israelites. The ...

. It was first published from 1960 to 1964 in three volumes by the

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Orientalists Herbert Donner and Wolfgang Röllig, and has been updated in numerous subsequent editions. The work attempted to "integrate philology, palaeography and cultural history" in the commented re-editing of a selection of Canaanite and Aramaic Inscriptions, using the "pertinent source material for the Phoenician, Punic, Moabite, pre-exile-Hebrew and Ancient Aramaic cultures." Röllig and Donner had the support of William F. Albright in Baltimore, James Germain Février in Paris and Giorgio Levi Della Vida in Rome during the compilation of the first edition.

Editions

The 4th edition was published between 1966-69, and a 5th edition was published in 2002. However, the 5th edition only comprised the first volume (showing the texts in modern Hebrew script), expanding the previous edition by 40 texts. An updated version of the third volume (a brief bibliography of all the texts in Volume 1) was proposed. The first edition was intended to represent all the known texts of significant importance, but not to be a complete collection to replace the

Corpus Inscriptionum Semiticarum The ("Corpus of Semitic Inscriptions", abbreviated CIS) is a collection of ancient inscriptions in Semitic languages produced since the end of 2nd millennium BC until the rise of Islam. It was published in Latin. In a note recovered after his de ...

. With respect to Aramaic inscriptions, all stone inscriptions until the

Achaemenid Empire The Achaemenid Empire or Achaemenian Empire (; peo, 𐎧𐏁𐏂, , ), also called the First Persian Empire, was an ancient Iranian empire founded by Cyrus the Great in 550 BC. Based in Western Asia, it was contemporarily the largest em ...

were included, whereas

Imperial Aramaic Imperial Aramaic is a linguistic term, coined by modern scholars in order to designate a specific historical variety of Aramaic language. The term is polysemic, with two distinctive meanings, wider (sociolinguistic) and narrower (dialectologica ...

inscriptions are only partially represented. Less emphasis was put on Aramaic papyri, ostraca and clay tablets, as such collections either already existed or were being prepared elsewhere. The included papyri and ostraca were chosen in order to provide and objective rounding of the picture, such as if they were published in a remote location. Nabataean and Palmyrene inscriptions were excluded, as were most of the

Elephantine papyri The Elephantine Papyri and Ostraca consist of thousands of documents from the Egyptian border fortresses of Elephantine and Aswan, which yielded hundreds of papyri and ostraca in hieratic and demotic Egyptian, Aramaic, Koine Greek, Latin and Co ...

. The inscriptions were ordered geographically, and then chronologically within each geography; a division was made between “Punic” and “Neo Punic” that was acknowledged to be subjective. In the second edition, four new texts were added - the fourth of the Karatepe inscriptions (KAI 26), and the three new texts (KAI 277-279). In the fifth edition, 40 new texts were added, primarily because they were only discovered or published after the appearance of the original edition or - like the Agrigentum inscription (KAI 302) - were given a new relevance due to a recent interpretation. Two groups of new texts were not included in the fifth edition: new Hebrew inscriptions, which were considered to have been well summarized in J. Renz / W. Röllig, Handbuch der Althebraische Epigraphik (Darmstadt 1995-2002) and the Imperial Aramaic texts from Egypt, which were considered to have been well summarized in B. Porten / A Yardeni, Textbook of Aramaic documents from ancient Egypt Vol. 1-4 (1986-1999).

Phoenician inscriptions

A.I: From "the Motherland" (KAI 1-22, 280-286)

Byblos Byblos ( ; gr, Βύβλος), also known as Jbeil or Jubayl ( ar, جُبَيْل, Jubayl, locally ; phn, 𐤂𐤁𐤋, , probably ), is a city in the Keserwan-Jbeil Governorate of Lebanon. It is believed to have been first occupied between 8 ...

* KAI 1:

Ahiram Sarcophagus The Ahiram sarcophagus (also spelled Ahirom, in Phoenician) was the sarcophagus of a Phoenician King of Byblos (c. 850 BC), discovered in 1923 by the French excavator Pierre Montet in tomb V of the royal necropolis of Byblos. The sarcophagus ...

* KAI 4: Yehimilk inscription * KAI 5: Abiba’l inscription (RES 505) * KAI 6: Osorkon Bust * KAI 7:

Safatba'al inscription The Safatba'al inscription or the Shipitbaal inscription is a Phoenician inscription (KAI 7, TSSI III 9) found in Byblos in 1936, published in 1945. It is at the National Museum of Beirut. Text of the inscription The inscription reads: :: Bi ...

* KAI 9: Son of Shipitbaal inscription * KAI 10: Yehawmilk Stele (CIS I 1) * KAI 11: Batnoam inscription * KAI 12: Byblos altar inscription

Sidon Sidon ( ; he, צִידוֹן, ''Ṣīḏōn'') known locally as Sayda or Saida ( ar, صيدا ''Ṣaydā''), is the third-largest city in Lebanon. It is located in the South Governorate, of which it is the capital, on the Mediterranean coast. ...

* KAI 13:

Tabnit sarcophagus The Tabnit sarcophagus is the sarcophagus of the Phoenician King of Sidon Tabnit I (ruled c. 549–539 BC), the father of King Eshmunazar II. The sarcophagus is decorated with two separate and unrelated inscriptions – one in Egyptian hieroglyph ...

(RES 1202) * KAI 14: Eshmunazar II sarcophagus (CIS I 3) * KAI 15-16:

Bodashtart inscriptions The Bodashtart inscriptions are a well-known group of between 22–24 Phoenician inscriptions from the 6th century BC referring to King Bodashtart.Bordreuil, 1990, "L'exemple le plus impressionnant est certainement celui des nombreuses dedicaces d ...

(RES 766-767) Tyre * KAI 17: Throne of Astarte Umm al-Amad * KAI 18: Baalshamin inscription (CIS I 7) Masub * KAI 19: Masub inscription (RES 1205) Tel Miqne * KAI 286: Ekron Royal Dedicatory Inscription

A.II: From Syria and Asia Minor (KAI 23-29, 287)

Sam'al * KAI 24:

Kilamuwa Stela The Kilamuwa Stele is a 9th-century BC stele of King Kilamuwa, from the Kingdom of Bit-Gabbari. He claims to have succeeded where his ancestors had failed, in providing for his kingdom. The inscription is known as KAI 24. The Kilamuwa Stele ...

Karatepe Karatepe ( Turkish, 'Black Hill'; Hittite: ''Azatiwataya'') is a late Hittite fortress and open-air museum in Osmaniye Province in southern Turkey lying at a distance of about 23 km from the district center of Kadirli. It is sited in the ...

* KAI 26: Karatepe bilingual Çebel Ires Daǧı * KAI 287: Çebel Ires Daǧı inscription

A.III: From the islands (KAI 30-47, 288-292)

Cyprus Cyprus ; tr, Kıbrıs (), officially the Republic of Cyprus,, , lit: Republic of Cyprus is an island country located south of the Anatolian Peninsula in the eastern Mediterranean Sea. Its continental position is disputed; while it is ...

Inscriptiones Citienses - Pococke Richard - 1745

* KAI 30: Archaic Cyprus inscription (origin unknown)Honeyman, A. (1939)
The Phoenician Inscriptions of the Cyprus Museum
Iraq, 6(2), 104-108. doi:10.2307/4241651 * KAI 31: Baal Lebanon inscription (

Limassol Limassol (; el, Λεμεσός, Lemesós ; tr, Limasol or ) is a city on the southern coast of Cyprus and capital of the district with the same name. Limassol is the second largest urban area in Cyprus after Nicosia, with an urban populatio ...

) (CIS I 5) * KAI 33 and 35: Pococke Kition inscriptions (CIS I 11 and CIS I 46) * KAI 32, 34, 36, 37, 288-290: Later

Kition Kition ( Egyptian: ; Phoenician: , , or , ; Ancient Greek: , ; Latin: ) was a city-kingdom on the southern coast of Cyprus (in present-day Larnaca). According to the text on the plaque closest to the excavation pit of the Kathari site (as of ...

inscriptions * KAI 38-40:

Idalium Idalion or Idalium ( el, Ιδάλιον, ''Idalion'') was an ancient city in Cyprus, in modern Dali, Nicosia District. The city was founded on the copper trade in the 3rd millennium BC. Its name in the 8th century BC was "Ed-di-al" as it appear ...

(KAI 39 = Idalion bilingual) (CIS I 89, 90, 93) * KAI 41:

Tamassos Tamassos ( Greek: Ταμασσός) or Tamasos (Greek: Τἀμασος) – names Latinized as Tamassus or Tamasus – was a city-kingdom in ancient Cyprus, one of the ten kingdoms of Cyprus. It was situated in the great central plain of the is ...

trilingual * KAI 42-43: Lapathus (CIS I 95)

Rhodes Rhodes (; el, Ρόδος , translit=Ródos ) is the largest and the historical capital of the Dodecanese islands of Greece. Administratively, the island forms a separate municipality within the Rhodes regional unit, which is part of the S ...

* KAI 44-45: Rhodes inscriptions

Sardinia Sardinia ( ; it, Sardegna, label=Italian, Corsican and Tabarchino ; sc, Sardigna , sdc, Sardhigna; french: Sardaigne; sdn, Saldigna; ca, Sardenya, label= Algherese and Catalan) is the second-largest island in the Mediterranean Sea, aft ...

* KAI 46: Nora Stone

Malta Malta ( , , ), officially the Republic of Malta ( mt, Repubblika ta' Malta ), is an island country in the Mediterranean Sea. It consists of an archipelago, between Italy and Libya, and is often considered a part of Southern Europe. It lies ...

* KAI 47: Cippi of Melqart

Crete Crete ( el, Κρήτη, translit=, Modern: , Ancient: ) is the largest and most populous of the Greek islands, the 88th largest island in the world and the fifth largest island in the Mediterranean Sea, after Sicily, Sardinia, Cyprus, ...

* KAI 291: Tekke Bowl Inscription (

Knossos Knossos (also Cnossos, both pronounced ; grc, Κνωσός, Knōsós, ; Linear B: ''Ko-no-so'') is the largest Bronze Age archaeological site on Crete and has been called Europe's oldest city. Settled as early as the Neolithic period, the na ...

) Kos * KAI 292: Hellenistic Greek-Phoenician bilingual

A.IV: From Egypt (KAI 48-52)

* KAI 48: Memphis inscription (RES 1) * KAI 49: Abydos inscription (CIS I 99-110) * KAI 50: Saqqara inscription * KAI 51-52 (origin unknown)

A.V: From Greece (KAI 53-60, 293)

* KAI 53-55: Athens inscriptions (CIS I 115-117) * KAI 56-60:

Piraeus Piraeus ( ; el, Πειραιάς ; grc, Πειραιεύς ) is a port city within the Athens urban area ("Greater Athens"), in the Attica region of Greece. It is located southwest of Athens' city centre, along the east coast of the Saro ...

inscriptions (CIS I 118-120) * KAI 293: Demetrias inscription

A.Addition: From mainland Europe (KAI 277, 294)

* KAI 277:

Pyrgi Tablets The Pyrgi Tablets (dated ) are three golden plates inscribed with a bilingual Phoenician– Etruscan dedicatory text. They are the oldest historical source documents from pre-Roman Italy and are rare examples of texts in these languages. They w ...

* KAI 294: Seville statue of Astarte

Punic inscriptions

B.I: From the islands (KAI 61-68, 295-301)

B.II. From mainland Europe (KAI 69-72)

B.III. From Africa (KAI 73-116, 302-305)

Carthage Carthage was the capital city of Ancient Carthage, on the eastern side of the Lake of Tunis in what is now Tunisia. Carthage was one of the most important trading hubs of the Ancient Mediterranean and one of the most affluent cities of the classi ...

* KAI 74

Neopunic inscriptions

C.I: From Africa (KAI 117-171)

* KAI 137: Baal Hammon inscription ( Sanctuaire de Thinissut)

C.II: From Sardinia (KAI 172-173)

D. Moabite and Ammonite inscriptions (KAI 181, 306, 307-308)

* KAI 181:

Mesha Stele The Mesha Stele, also known as the Moabite Stone, is a stele dated around 840 BCE containing a significant Canaanite inscription in the name of King Mesha of Moab (a kingdom located in modern Jordan). Mesha tells how Chemosh, the god of Moab, ...

* KAI 306:

El-Kerak Inscription The Kerak Inscription, also known as the Kemoshyat inscription, was discovered in 1958 in Jordan, near Wadi el-Kerak. It is a basalt inscription fragment measuring high by wide. The inscription has been dated to the late ninth century BC. The i ...

* KAI 307: Amman Citadel Inscription * KAI 308:

Tel Siran inscription The Tel Siran inscription is an inscription on a bronze bottle (or "situla") found at Tel Siran on the campus of the University of Jordan in Amman). It was first published on 27 April 1972. It is considered the first complete inscription in the " ...

E. Hebrew inscriptions (KAI 182-200)

* KAI 182: Gezer calendar * KAI 183-188: Samaria Ostraca * KAI 189: Siloam inscription * KAI 190: Ophel ostracon * KAI 191: Shebna inscription * KAI 192-199:

Lachish letters The Lachish Letters or ''Lachish Ostraca'', sometimes called ''Hoshaiah Letters'', are a series of letters written in carbon ink containing Canaanite inscriptions in Ancient Hebrew on clay ostraca. The letters were discovered at the excavations at ...

* KAI 200: Yavne-Yam ostracon

F. Aramaic inscriptions

F.I: From Syria, Palestine and the Arabian Desert (KAI 201-230, 309-317)

Bureij * KAI 201:

Melqart stele The Melqart stele, also known as the Ben-Hadad or Bir-Hadad stele is an Aramaic stele which was created during the 9th century BCE and was discovered in 1939 in Roman ruins in Bureij Syria (7 km north of Aleppo). The Old Aramaic inscription is kn ...

Tell Afis * KAI 202:

Stele of Zakkur The Stele of Zakkur (or ''Zakir'') is a royal stele of King Zakkur of Hamath and Luhuti (or Lu'aš) in the province Nuhašše of Syria, who ruled around 785 BC. Description The inscription was on the lower part of the original stele. The upper ...

Sam'al * KAI 214–215: Panamuwa inscriptions — in a distinctive language now known as Samalian. As-Safira * KAI 222-224: Sefire steles

Al-Nayrab Al-Nayrab ( ar, النيرب) is a town in Syria, to the south-east of the city of Aleppo in northern Syria. With the urban development, the village was gradually absorbed by the city of Aleppo thus becoming part of it as a district. Al-Nayrab i ...

* KAI 225-226: Sin zir Ibni inscription and Si Gabbor stele Tell Fekheriye * KAI 309: Tell Fekheriye bilingual inscription

Tel Dan Dan ( he, דן) is an ancient city mentioned in the Hebrew Bible, described as the northernmost city of the Kingdom of Israel, and belonging to the tribe of Dan. The city is identified with a tell located in Upper Galilee, northern Israel, kno ...

* KAI 310: Tel Dan Stele

Deir Alla Deir Alla (Arabic: دير علا) is the site of an ancient Near Eastern town in Balqa Governorate, Jordan. The Deir Alla Inscription, datable to ca. 840–760 BCE, was found here. On 20 August 2010, it recorded a scorching temperature of 51 ...

* KAI 312:

Deir Alla Inscription The Deir 'Alla Inscription (or Bal'am Son of Be'or Inscription), known as KAI 312, was discovered during a 1967 excavation in Deir 'Alla, Jordan. It is currently at the Jordan Archaeological Museum. It is written in a peculiar Northwest Semitic d ...

— not generally accepted as Aramaic.

F.II: From Assyria (KAI 231-257)

F.III: From Asia Minor (KAI 258-265, 278, 318-319)

F.IV: From Egypt (KAI 266-272)

* KAI 269: Carpentras Stela

F.V: From the outlying areas (KAI 273-276, 279, 320)

* KAI 273:

Aramaic Inscription of Taxila The Aramaic Inscription of Taxila is an inscription on a piece of marble, originally belonging to an octagonal column, discovered by Sir John Marshall in 1915 at Taxila, British India. The inscription is written in Aramaic, probably by the Indian ...

* KAI 276: Stele of Serapit * KAI 279: Kandahar Bilingual Rock Inscription

Appendices

Appendix I. Phoenician and Punic inscriptions in Greek script (KAI 174-177)

Appendix II. Latin-Libyan inscriptions (KAI 178-180)

References

Bibliography

* * * W. Röllig (1995)
Phoenician and the Phoenicians in the context of the Ancient Near East
in S. Moscati (ed.), I Fenici ieri oggi domani : ricerche, scoperte, progetti, Roma, p. 203-214