Year: 2002
Type: conference-paper
Abstract: It was in a mosque in the southern Syrian region of Hauran, where in the late 19 th century an Egyptian royal stela was identified for the first time in Western Asia.GOTTLIEB SCHUMACHER, a prominent member of the German "Templer" community from Haifa, recognized by 1891 in the village of Sheikh Sa‛ad, that an almost 2 m tall standing basalt monolith in the centre of a local shrine, related by tradition to the Qur'anic and Biblical Nabi Ayyūb/Job 2 , was in fact a badly eroded pharaonic monument (Fig. 5; Schumacher 1891; KRI II: 223).The faint traces of relief and hieroglyphs permitted to attribute it safely to Ramesses II, who is depicted vis-à-vis a Canaanite deity.3 Less than 20 km to the south of Sheikh Sa‛ad, the upper half of a second stela, showing Sethos I with Amun-Ra and Mut, was noticed in 1901, built in the wall of a house in the village of Tell esh-Shihab (Fig. 3; Smith 1901: 344-349; Müller 1904; KRI I: 17; Brand 2000: 123-124).Three more monumental stelae, again of Sethos I and Ramesses II, were unearthed in the 1920s at archaeological excavations at Beisan (Beth Shean) in northern Palestine.4 At Tell el-1 I am obliged to the director of the ROYAL JORDANIAN DEPARTMENT OF ANTIQUITIES, DR.FAWWAZ AL-KHRAYSHEH, for authorizing this presentation of the new discovery.2The so-called saxrat Ayyūb, "the stone of Job".For a description of the village and its various sites cf.Schumacher 1886: 187-198.3 The identity of the deity has been much debated.He is depicted en face with horns protruding from an atefcrown.His composite name has not been satisfactorily explained, but it seems to contain the elements "El" and "Saphon".
Author: Wimmer, Stefan Jakob
Language: English
Subfield: Archeology (arts and humanities)
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W1670254058