Moabite Stone

noun

1. a slab of black basalt bearing an inscription recording the victory of Mesha, the king of Moab, over the Israelites, about 860 b.c.

Word History and Origins

Origin of Moabite Stone¹

First recorded in 1865–70

Example Sentences

The first big prize, discovered in 1868, was the so-called Moabite Stone, a three-foot black basalt stele with a 9th-century BCE, 34-line paleo-Hebrew inscription celebrating the Moabite King Mesha’s rebellion against the Israelites.

From New York Times

The drawings and script charts made by Ginsburg and other scholars who examined the original fragments, Rollston said, show “clear anomalies” in the way the Hebrew letters are formed, compared with authentic script from the period, including that on the Moabite Stone.

From New York Times

The Mesha Stele, which is also known as the Moabite Stone, is an inscribed tablet that dates back to 840 B.C. and was discovered in 1868 by researcher Frederick Augustus Klein.

From Fox News

The "Moabite Stone" has yielded the honor of being the most ancient of alphabetic records to the bronze plates found in Lebanon in 1872, fixed as of the tenth or eleventh century, and therefore the earliest extant monuments of the Semitic alphabet.

From Project Gutenberg

It is true that when we are told of the forty years' wandering in the desert, the word “forty” is used, as it is elsewhere in the Old Testament, as well as upon the Moabite Stone, to denote an indeterminate period of time.

From Project Gutenberg