The sarcophagus ofEshmunazar II is a 6th-century BC sarcophagus unearthed in 1855 in the grounds of an ancient necropolis southeast of the city of Sidon, in modern-day Lebanon, that contained the body of Eshmunazar II, Phoenician King of Sidon. One of only three Ancient Egyptian sarcophagi found outside Egypt, with the other two belonging to Eshmunazar's father King Tabnit and to a woman, possibly Eshmunazar's mother Queen Amoashtart, it was likely carved in Egypt from local amphibolite, and captured as booty by the Sidonians during their participation in Cambyses II's conquest of Egypt in 525 BC. The sarcophagus has two sets of Phoenician inscriptions, one on its lid and a partial copy of it on the sarcophagus trough, around the curvature of the head. The lid inscription was of great significance upon its discovery as it was the first Phoenician language inscription to be discovered in Phoenicia proper and the most detailed Phoenician text ever found anywhere up to that point, and is today the second longest extant Phoenician inscription, after the Karatepe bilingual.
Eshmunazar II was the Phoenician king of Sidon. He was the grandson of Eshmunazar I, and a vassal king of the Persian Achaemenid Empire. Eshmunazar II succeeded his father Tabnit I who ruled for a short time and died before the birth of his son. Tabnit I was succeeded by his sister-wife Amoashtart who ruled alone until Eshmunazar II's birth, and then acted as his regent until the time he would have reached majority. Eshmunazar II died prematurely at the age of 14. He was succeeded by his cousin Bodashtart.
Bodashtart was a Phoenician ruler, who reigned as King of Sidon, the grandson of King Eshmunazar I, and a vassal of the Achaemenid Empire. He succeeded his cousin Eshmunazar II to the throne of Sidon, and scholars believe that he was succeeded by his son and proclaimed heir Yatonmilk.
M'hamed Hassine Fantar is a professor of Ancient History of Archeology and History of Religion at Tunis University.
The Assyrian lion weights are a group of bronze statues of lions, discovered in archaeological excavations in or adjacent to ancient Assyria.
Dominique Briquel is a French scholar, a specialist of archaeology and etruscology. Briquel studied at the École Normale Supérieure from 1964 to 1969 and was a member of the École française de Rome from 1971 to 1974. Since 1974 he taught Latin at the École Normale Supérieure. From 1984 to 1996 he was a professor of Latin at the University of Burgundy in Dijon. Since 1992, he has been Director of studies at the École pratique des hautes études, in the department of historical and philological sciences and since 1996, professor of Latin at the Université de Paris-Sorbonne.
Alain Desreumaux is a French historian of religion, specializing on Syrian and Aramaic christo-palestinian communities. He has uncovered manuscripts and inscriptions and published works on codicology and epigraphy.
The Byblos figurines or Phoenician statuettes are approximately 1,500–2,000 ex-voto statuettes found in ancient Phoenician temples in Lebanon, primarily in Byblos, but also in Kamid al lawz. The statuettes date to the second millennium BC and are made of bronze, silver, or copper alloy. The Byblos figurines are considered to represent the best example of their kind across the Levant.
The Yehawmilk stele, de Clercq stele, or Byblos stele, also known as KAI 10 and CIS I 1, is a Phoenician inscription from c.450 BC found in Byblos at the end of Ernest Renan's Mission de Phénicie. Yehawmilk, king of Byblos, dedicated the stele to the city’s protective goddess Ba'alat Gebal.
Josette Elayi-Escaich is a French antiquity historian, Phoenician and Near-Eastern history specialist, and honorary scholar at the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS). Elayi authored numerous archaeology and history works, and literary novels. She is well known to the French public through her novels and for her calls for reform and activism against the CNRS research policy bias. In 2007 Elayi was decorated Knight of the Legion of Honor by the French state.
The Neirab steles are two 8th-century BC steles with Aramaic inscriptions found in 1891 in Al-Nayrab near Aleppo, Syria. They are currently in the Louvre. They were discovered in 1891 and acquired by Charles Simon Clermont-Ganneau for the Louvre on behalf of the Commission of the Corpus Inscriptionum Semiticarum. The steles are made of black basalt, and the inscriptions note that they were funerary steles. The inscriptions are known as KAI 225 and KAI 226.
The Athenian Greek-Phoenician inscriptions are 18 ancient Phoenician inscriptions found in the region of Athens, Greece. They represent the second largest group of foreign inscriptions in the region after the Thracians. 9 of the inscriptions are bilingual Phoenician-Greek and written on steles. Almost all of them bear the indication of the deceased's city of origin, not just the more general designation of their ethnicity, like most other non-Greek inscriptions in the region.
Baalshillem I was a Phoenician King of Sidon, and a vassal of the Achaemenid Empire. He was succeeded by his son Abdamon to the throne of Sidon.
Baalshillem II was a Phoenician King of Sidon, and the great-grandson of Baalshillem I who founded the namesake dynasty. He succeeded Baana to the throne of Sidon, and was succeeded by his son Abdashtart I. The name Baalshillem means "recompense of Baal" in Phoenician.
The Abdmiskar cippus is a white marble cippus in obelisk form discovered in Sidon, Lebanon, dated to 300 BCE. Discovered in 1890 by Joseph-Ange Durighello.
The Tyre Cistern inscription is a Phoenician inscription on a white marble block discovered in the castle-palace of the Old City of Tyre, Lebanon in 1885 and acquired by Peter Julius Löytved, the Danish vice-consul in Beirut. It was the first Phoenician inscription discovered in modern times from Tyre.
Françoise Briquel-Chatonnet is a French historian and research director. She is a doctor in history, research director at the CNRS, at the Orient and Mediterranean laboratory and a member of the Académie des inscriptions et belles-lettres. In 2016, she was awarded the Irène-Joliot-Curie Prize for Woman Scientist of the Year.
The Phoenician sundial is a 2,000 year old scaphe sundial discovered in Umm al-Amad, Lebanon.
The Phoenician sanctuary of Kharayeb is a historic temple in the hinterland of Tyre, Southern Lebanon, that was excavated in three stages. In 1946, Maurice Chehab, head of Lebanon's Directorate General of Antiquities, led the first mission that revealed a Hellenistic period temple and thousands of clay figurines dating from the sixth-to-first centuries BC. Excavations in 1969 by Lebanese archaeologist Brahim Kaoukabani and in 2009 by the Government of Italy yielded evidence of cultic practices, and produced a detailed reconstruction of the sanctuary's architecture.
The Carthage tophet, is an ancient sacred area dedicated to the Phoenician deities Tanit and Baal, located in the Carthaginian district of Salammbô, Tunisia, near the Punic ports. This tophet, a "hybrid of sanctuary and necropolis", contains a large number of children's tombs which, according to some interpretations, were sacrificed or buried here after their untimely death. The area is part of the Carthage archaeological site, a UNESCO World Heritage site.
