Cippi of Melqart [SEP] material used
Cippi of Melqart
The Cippi of Melqart is the collective name for two Phoenician marble cippi that were unearthed in Malta under undocumented circumstances and dated to the 2nd century BC. These are votive offerings to the god Melqart, and are inscribed in two languages, Ancient Greek and Phoenician, and in the two corresponding scripts, the Greek and the Phoenician alphabet. They were discovered in the late 17th century, and the identification of their inscription in a letter dated 1694 made them the first Phoenician writing to be identified and published in
identified by Greeks with Cronus and by Romans with Saturn, or is simply used as a title.
Melqart protected the Punic areas of Sicily, such as Cefalù, which was known under Carthaginian rule as "Cape Melqart" (, ). Melqart's head, indistinguishable from a Heracles, appeared on its coins of the 4th century BCE.
The Cippi of Melqart, found on Malta and dedicated to the god as an ex voto offering, provided the key to understanding the Phoenician language, as the inscriptions on the