Çebel Ires Daǧı inscription explained

Created:	650 BC
Discovered Date:	1980
Discovered Place:	Antalya, Turkey
Location:	Antalya, Antalya Province, Turkey
Discovered By:	James Russell
Language:	Phoenician

The Çebel Ires Daǧı inscription is a Phoenician legal inscription on a limestone block found in the ruins of Laertes (Cilicia), on Çebel Ires mountain in southern Turkey. The inscription is held at the Alanya Archaeological Museum.^{[1] [2]}

It was discovered in 1980 by James Russell (of the University of British Columbia,^[3] and Mustafa Gürdal, Director of the Alanya Museum, in a secondary context, and is the only inscription considered to date earlier than Roman times found at the site (on paleographic grounds it is thought to date to the second half of the 7th century BC)

The inscription mentions the intervention of a King Warika in a land dispute, a name also known (with slightly different spelling) in the Çineköy inscription and the Karatepe bilingual.

It measures 54 x 31 x 17 cm, likely a fragment of a prism shaped monument – on the three outer edges are 9 lines of Phoenician on two sides and 3 on the top side.

Bibliography

• Mosca, P. G. . J. Russell. A Phoenician Inscription from Cebel Ires Dağı in Rough Cilicia . Türk Tarih Kurumu . Epigraphica Anatolica . R. Habelt . 9–12 . 1987 . 0174-6545 . en. 1–28 . 2023-06-18.
• Lemaire . André . Une Inscription Phénicienne Découverte Récemment et le Mariage de Ruth la Moabite . Eretz-Israel: Archaeological, Historical and Geographical Studies . 1989 . 0071-108X . 23621934 . 124–129 . fr.
• Long, G. A. "A Kinsman-Redeemer in the Phoenician Inscription from Cebel Ires Dağı," ZAW 103, 1991: 421–24.
• Long, G. A. and D. Pardee. "Who Exiled whom? Another Interpretation of the Phoenician Inscription of Cebel Ires Dağı," Aula Orientalis 7, 1989: 207–14
• Margalit, B. "Philological Notes on a Recently Published Phoenician Inscription from Southern Anatolia," in Dort ziehen Schiffe dahin... ed. by M. Augustin, K.-D. Schunk, 1996: 119–29.

Notes and References

1. Book: Mosca, Paul G. . Linguistic Studies in Phoenician . 2. The Road Not Taken: An Independent Object Pronoun in Cebel Ires Dağı 7A–7B? . Penn State University Press . 2013-06-05 . 10.1515/9781575068558-005 . 30–46. 978-1-57506-855-8 .
2. Philip C. Schmitz, "Lexical Notes on the Phoenician Inscription from Cebel Ires Dagi (KAI 287)." In Robert M. Kerr, Robert Miller II, & Philip C. Schmitz, eds., "His Word Soars Above Him": Biblical and North-West Semitic Studies Presented to Professor Charles R. Krahmalkov. (Ann Arbor: 2018): 121-130.
3. Web site: James Russell .