Inscription of the Day: Yehimilk

The Yehimilk inscription dating to the mid-tenth century B.C.E. was discovered in 1929. It consists of seven lines of text inscribed over the top of a previous pseudo-hieroglypic inscription that was written within registers dividing the lines (Gibson 1982, 17). The language of the inscription is Old Byblian, an early Phoenician dialect used primarily in the city of Byblos.

The text is a royal dedicatory inscription by a king of Byblos. Several similar inscriptions also dating to the tenth century B.C.E. have been found at Byblos – Abibaal, Elibaal, and Shiptibaal. The basic pattern throughout these inscriptions is:

The object which PN king of Byblos, son of PN, king of Byblos built/brought for DN. May DN prolong the days of PN and his years over Byblos. (PN = proper name; DN = deity name)

This pattern was not limited to the inscriptions from Byblos but should be seen as a common formula for dedicatory inscriptions in the Canaanite dialects. The formula has even been found in a seventh century BCE inscription from Ekron, a prominent Philistine city (Gitin 1997).



Translation:

¹ (This is the) temple which Yehimilk king of Byblos rebuilt. ² He restored all the ruins of ³ these temples. May Ba’al-shamem and Ba’alat ⁴ of Byblos and the assembly of the ⁵ holy gods of Byblos prolong the days of Yehimilk and his years ⁶ over Byblos. For [he is] a legitimate king and a ⁷ good king  before the h[oly] gods of Byblos.

The fact that Yehimilk doesn’t give us his lineage (i.e., I am Yehimilk, son of Abibaal, son of . . . ) but stresses that he is a good and legitimate king of Byblos suggests that he is a usurper (like Zakkur in an Aramaic inscription that we’ll get to later).

References:
Gibson, John C. L. 1982. Textbook of Syrian Semitic inscriptions: Volume III: Phoenician Inscriptions. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Gitin, Seymour, Trude Dothan, and Joseph Naveh. 1997. A royal dedicatory inscription from Ekron. Israel Exploration Journal 47, : 1-16.