Cippi of Melqart

The Cippi of Melqart

The Louvre Cippus
Material	White marble
Size	1.05m x 0.34m x 0.31m
Writing	Greek script and ancient Phoenician alphabet
Created	Early Roman era (2nd century BC)
Discovered	17th century, undocumented circumstances
Present location	National Museum of Archaeology (Malta Cippus) and, Sully wing, Ground floor, Mediterranean world, Room 18b, at the Louvre Museum(Louvre Cippus)
Registration	CIS I, 122/122 bis or KAI 47 (Malta Cippus), AO 4818 (Louvre Cippus)

The Cippi of Melqart is the collective name for two Phoenician marble cippi that were unearthed in Malta under undocumented circumstances and dated to the 2nd century BC. These are votive offerings to the god Melqart, and are inscribed in two languages, Ancient Greek and Phoenician, and in the two corresponding scripts, the Greek and the Phoenician alphabet. They were discovered in the late 17th century, and the identification of their inscription in a letter dated 1694 made them the first Phoenician writing to be identified and published in modern times. Because they present essentially the same text (with some minor differences), the cippi provided the key to the modern understanding of the Phoenician language. In 1764, the French scholar Jean-Jacques Barthélémy relied on their inscription, which used 17 of the 22 letters of the Phoenician alphabet, to decipher the unknown language.

The tradition that the cippi were found in Marsaxlokk was only inferred by their dedication to Heracles, whose temple in Malta had long been identified with the remains at Tas-Silġ. The Grand Master of the Order of the Knights Hospitaller, Fra Emmanuel de Rohan-Polduc, presented one of the cippi to Louis XVI in 1782. This cippus is currently in the Louvre Museum in Paris, while the other rests in the National Museum of Archaeology in Valletta, Malta.