Sarcophagus of Eshmunazar II

Below the collar, twenty-two lines of Phoenician letters run across the chest. It is the longest Phoenician inscription of the Persian period and the reason the sarcophagus is famous. Eshmunazar the Second, son of King Tabnit, tells us he died young, an orphan and the son of a widow, after reigning fourteen years. He lists the temples he and his mother built for the god Eshmun and the goddess Astarte, records that the Lord of Kings, the Persian ruler, gave Sidon the towns of Dor and Joppa in the plain of Sharon, and curses anyone who disturbs his rest. A shorter text at the head shows where the scribe first began before running out of room.

The stone itself came from quarries in the Wadi Hammamat in Egypt, and the sarcophagus was almost certainly made there in the late sixth century and reused a generation later for a Sidonian king. It was found in eighteen fifty-five in the necropolis of Magharat Abloun near Sidon, bought by the Duc de Luynes and presented by him to the Louvre the same year. Its arrival launched the study of Phoenician archaeology in France and helped scholars confirm the reading of the Phoenician alphabet.

Did You Know? Eshmunazar's epitaph threatens anyone who opens the coffin with having no resting place among the dead, no descendants and no seed, a curse that did not stop the diggers of eighteen fifty-five.