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Tyre Cistern inscription

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Tyre Cistern inscription (close up)
The cistern and inscription from various angles

The Tyre Cistern inscription is a Phoenician inscription on a white marble block discovered in the castle-palace of the Old City of Tyre, Lebanon in 1885 and acquired by Peter Julius Löytved, the Danish vice-consul in Beirut.[1] It was the first Phoenician inscription discovered in modern times from Tyre.

One side of the parallelepiped-shaped cistern contains a Phoenician inscription which is broken and includes nine incomplete lines; it has been dated on paleographic grounds to the middle of the 3rd century BCE. The cistern (water outlet) likely part of a naos; according to the inscription it was donated by a man named Adonibaal.

It is currently kept in the Louvre (AO 1441).[2]

Bibliography

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References

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  1. ^ Françoise Briquel Chatonnet, Tyr et les inscriptions phéniciennes d’époque hellénistique, in Pierre-Louis Gatier, Julien Aliquot, Lévon Nordiguian, Sources de l'histoire de Tyr: textes de l'Antiquité et du Moyen Âge. Beyrouth: Presses de l'IFPO; Presses de l'Université Saint-Joseph, 2011. 303. ISBN 9782351591840
  2. ^ AO 1441