Is the Mesha Stele Also a Forgery?

Two famous cases of forgery are associated with the figure of Moses Shapira, an antiquities dealer: the Moabite sherds sold to the Berlin Museum in 1872, and the pseudo-scroll of Deuteronomy written in ancient Hebrew in 1883. These two episodes were preceded by the discovery of the Mesha Stele, attributed to Mesha, king of Moab (1868), with which Shapira is also indirectly associated. A reassessment of this stele, based on archival material from the time, leads me to believe that the authenticity of the inscription it bears must now be called into question.

The Discovery of the Stele

A large basalt block, inscribed with characters resembling ancient Hebrew, was discovered in 1868 in the city of Dhiban (Dibon), south of the eastern bank of the Jordan River. The discovery was initially presented to the Alsatian orientalist Friedrich August Klein on August 19. The surprise was immense when it was realized that the inscription mentioned Omri, king of Israel, and his relations with Mesha, king of Moab, as recounted in the Book of Kings. The emergence of an external source confirming a biblical text generated great excitement among scholars. This discovery took place within the context of the early German-led critical studies of the Bible, notably those of Wilhelm De Wette and Julius Wellhausen.

In the middle of the night, the Bedouin emir Sattam al-Fayez (1830–1891) presented the stone to Klein in Dhiban. Although Klein was unable to decipher the script, he managed to copy several lines and to sketch the shape of the stele, which lay on its back, recording its dimensions: 113 cm in height, 70 cm in width, and 35 cm in thickness, comprising 34 lines. Moved by the discovery, Klein informed the Prussian consul in Jerusalem, the philologist Julius Petermann, to whom he disclosed its existence; the two agreed to keep the matter secret until Germany decided to finance the acquisition. The Bedouins initially demanded about 400 dollars, but soon raised the price to more than ten times that amount. In response to this inflation, Petermann sought the assistance of Ottoman authorities in Jerusalem, Nablus, and Damascus to support the purchase — a move that angered the Bani Sakhr tribe, already at odds with the Bani Hamida. On November 8, 1869, an agreement was signed with Sheikh Fendi al-Fayez, Sattam’s father, in the presence of four witnesses, including Matthias and Jacob Karavaca. The agreement stipulated that the stele would be transported from Dhiban to Jerusalem, from where it would be shipped to the Berlin Museum. However, tribal rivalries prevented the transfer.

In January 1869, the British officer Charles Warren learned of the affair. In February, the young French archaeologist Charles Simon Clermont-Ganneau, then 23 years old and stationed at the French consulate in Jerusalem, entered the scene. He requested a meeting with Petermann, who declined. Clermont-Ganneau then decided to send his agent Sālim al-Qārī — associated with the antiquities dealer Moses Shapira — to Moab, accompanied by Jacob Karavaca and two horsemen from the Bani Sakhr tribe. Al-Qārī succeeded in copying approximately eight lines (lines 13 to 20) of the inscription, although the stele, having been moved, was now resting on its left side — making the operation particularly difficult. A month later, he produced a second copy outside of Dhiban: thirteen lines on one sheet, and three on another. Already at this stage, Clermont-Ganneau expressed doubts about al-Qārī’s reliability, suspecting that he had concealed the stele’s actual location at Khirbat Dhiban. Approximately three years later, al-Qārī confessed to Clermont-Ganneau that he had personally forged the sherds and statuettes sold to the Berlin Museum.

Dissatisfied with the copies, Clermont-Ganneau sent a second expedition in December, led by Karavaca and Sheikh Jamil, with the goal of producing a papier-mâché impression of the inscription. However, while the paste was drying, a violent clash erupted between tribes: several Bedouins were killed, Karavaca was seriously injured, and the impression was torn to pieces. Sheikh Jamil nevertheless managed to conceal some damp, crumpled fragments beneath his clothing.

Two weeks later, for unclear reasons, the Bedouins of the Bani Hamida tribe moved the stele, heated it in a fire, and then doused it with cold water, causing it to shatter. The fragments were distributed among the tribes. The Bedouins prevented any transport, and although Clermont-Ganneau had made payment, he eventually recovered his money. Several hypotheses were offered to explain the stele’s destruction. Petermann suggested that the fragments had been used as talismans, buried in fields to promote fertility. Others believed the Bedouins were searching for gold inside. In my view, they broke the stele to sell the fragments separately, but also to prevent it from falling into Ottoman hands.

In January 1870, Clermont-Ganneau dispatched a third mission, led by Sheikh Jamil, to create a new impression from the fragments. He managed to acquire two major pieces and to locate other elements. In total, he assembled 57 fragments and reconstructed the inscription, relying primarily on the papier-mâché impressions. In 1873, France paid 27,000 francs for the complete collection.

Authenticity and Questions

A contemporary epigraphist examining the stele displayed at the Louvre would notice that the letters carved into the original fragments are extremely difficult to read. Their decipherment was only made possible through the use of paper impressions and specialized optical instruments. According to Sālim al-Qārī, he copied the inscription in Dhiban while the stele lay on its side, which greatly complicated the task. Even today, the ancient characters remain almost impossible to distinguish, despite thorough cleaning before the object’s exhibition. How, then, can we explain that the two copies made by al-Qārī — under such unfavorable conditions — are so precise, drawn with a confident hand, and show no paleographic hesitation?

The quality of his drawings, when compared to the original, raises serious questions. Could al-Qārī himself have engraved the inscription on the stele? For despite its 35 cm thickness, the stele currently displayed shows no visible signs of fracture or burning. In fact, the object shown at the Louvre is a reconstruction, which makes it impossible to determine whether the inscription was originally carved into the stone or merely applied to its surface.

In 1872 — only four years after the stele’s discovery — hundreds of sherds and figurines representing kings of Israel, accompanied by inscriptions in ancient Hebrew, were reported as also coming from the land of Moab. They were quickly acquired by the Berlin Museum before Britain or France could intervene. Another discovery in 1883, likewise attributed to the Moab region, consisted of fifteen purportedly ancient parchment scrolls containing the speech of Moses in an archaic version of Deuteronomy. Scholars, convinced of their authenticity, engaged in a frantic race to prove it. Soon thereafter, experts were forced to admit that both the sherds and the manuscripts were forgeries created by Moses Shapira, who eventually took his own life.

These three cases are all linked to discoveries made in Moabite territory, near Dhiban, and they all involve Sālim al-Qārī, an associate of Shapira. They reflect the obsession of German, British, and French scholars with proving the veracity of biblical texts through archaeological discoveries.

Later, the scholar Abraham Shalom Yahuda (1877–1951) met with al-Qārī and came to understand the roots of this obsession with authentication: “It is the passion of European scholars for antiquities that drove al-Qārī to forge them. As long as there are people willing to believe in these fakes for fundamentalist reasons, forgers will thrive. The public dreams of discovering ancient archives, a pure gold Ark of the Covenant like something out of Indiana Jones, and they rush toward each new ‘find’ before learning that it is a fraud.”

Available Models Prior to 1868

A crucial question then arises: which ancient Hebrew inscriptions could have served as models for the forgers? At least six inscriptions published prior to 1868 could have, from a paleographic perspective, served as references for the forgery of the sherds (1872) and the scrolls (1883). Among them: the Nora stele from Sardinia (1773), containing 38 letters over eight lines; a Phoenician inscription found in Marseille (1844), composed of 21 lines engraved on stone; the Eshmunazar stele, king of Sidon (1855), engraved on basalt with 22 lines; a two-line inscription on an octagonal incense burner discovered 16 km north of Dhiban; two inscriptions of unknown archaeological provenance and thus of doubtful authenticity; a three-line Moabite wall inscription discovered in 1958; and a royal victory stele from Moab with seven lines. It is likely that the Eshmunazar stele served as the primary model for the forgers. What remains to be determined is whether these models had already inspired the authors of the Mesha inscription.

The opening formula of the Mesha stele — “I am Mesha, son of Chemoshyat, king of Moab, the Dibonite” — is characteristic of royal inscriptions from kingdoms in the region. The Eshmunazar stele also begins with: “I am Eshmunazar, king of the Sidonians, son of King Tabnit, king of Sidon” (1855). Other royal inscriptions follow a similar formula: “I am Bar-Rakab, son of Panamu, king of Shamal” (1902), “I am Kilamuwa, son of Haya, I succeeded my father on the throne” (1902), “I am Azitawadu, king of the Dananeans” (1946), “I am Zakir, king of Hamath and Laash” (1903), “I am Yehimilk, king of Byblos” (1920). Surprisingly, the Moabite wall inscription — not discovered in an archaeological context — also begins with: “I am Mesha, son of Chemoshyat, king of Moab, the Dibonite,” a text identical to that of the stele. Thus, Mesha, king of Moab, is attributed two royal inscriptions — a situation without parallel in the region. Do these two inscriptions concerning Mesha not raise serious questions about their authenticity?

Except for this opening formula, the text of the stele differs from other royal inscriptions: it adopts a style and content close to biblical texts. For the first time in epigraphy, one encounters the names of Yahweh, Chemosh, Baal, Astarte, Ariel, Omri, Balak? Israel and Moab, along with an impressive array of fifteen biblical place names: Dibon, Madaba, Baal-Meon, Qiryatayim, Atarot, Qerayot, Sharon, Arnon, Nebo, Yahatz, Aroer, Beit-Diblathaim, Bozrah, Horonaim, Qerhoh, as well as two extra-biblical names: Beit-Bamot and Maharat. The length of the text led scholars to postulate the existence of a distinct “Moabite language.”

The inscription notably reports that Mesha seized, as war booty, the “vessels of Yahweh,” which would symbolize the submission of Israel’s god to Chemosh in his temple at Dibon. This rare expression — “vessels of Yahweh” — is suspicious. It appears in the Bible only in late texts, beginning with the reformist writings of the time of Josiah. It is absent from writings prior to the 7th century BCE, and is only found in Jeremiah, Deutero-Isaiah, Ezra, and Chronicles. Its appearance in an inscription supposedly dating from the 9th century BCE is therefore a troubling anachronism.

The Absence of Comparable Discoveries

Today, research has sufficient historical distance to assess the Mesha stele in light of all the inscriptions found in the region. Since its discovery in 1868, one might have expected it to pave the way for the unearthing of many other royal steles — not only in Moab, but also in Assyria, Aram, Israel, and Judah — celebrating kings such as Omri, Ahab, Jeroboam, Jehu, Jehoshaphat, Manasseh, or Josiah. Yet no such steles have been discovered.

Moreover, no other royal inscription as lengthy — 33 lines, approximately 282 words — has been found. The Hazael inscription (1983) contains only 13 lines and about 50 words. No other inscription in ancient Hebrew of comparable scope has come to light — not on stone, not on parchment, not on any other medium. Nowhere else is there a historical inscription written in such a strikingly biblical style. The Mesha inscription is so singular — paleographically, epigraphically, geographically, and stylistically — that one cannot avoid the question: how can such an impressive testimony come from a kingdom as marginal as Moab?

Considering the dubious circumstances surrounding the stele’s discovery, it is impossible to ignore the other cases of forgery involving al-Qārī and Shapira. If we examine the exceptionally precise copies made by al-Qārī, it is not implausible that he himself engraved the inscription, with expert assistance. Should we then reconsider the entire body of so-called “Moabite” artifacts that emerged from the antiquities trade? Is it not striking that such extraordinary discoveries are all linked to Bedouins and antiquities dealers operating on the other side of the Jordan? How can we explain that no comparable royal inscription has ever been found in Israel or Judah? Why would a monumental vertical stele have been preserved intact in Moab? And how is it that its existence remained unnoticed for generations, despite its large dimensions (one meter high by 60 cm wide)? In truth, we were captivated by its biblical style and seduced by the mention of the Davidic dynasty, the vessels of Yahweh, Omri and the kings of Israel, as well as the abundance of biblical place names.

Although it was discovered in a minor kingdom, scholars long avoided asking the most obvious questions about the strangeness of this testimony. They likely imagined it was only the first of many comparable royal steles to be found in Israel and Judah, thereby confirming the biblical accounts. Yet this never happened. The obsession with proving the historical truth of biblical texts has compromised our scholarly responsibility: to critically examine suspicious discoveries and to ask the questions they raise. In my view, a thorough reexamination is essential. Challenging the authenticity of this inscription would no doubt provoke a veritable earthquake in the historiography of the Bible.