The Tayma Stone
Unknown · Fifth century BC (c. 500-400 BC)
A tall sandstone stele with a rounded top carries twenty-three lines of Aramaic on its face and, on one narrow side, a relief of a standing man in a pointed cap and draped garment holding a staff. The lettering belongs to the imperial Aramaic used across the Persian empire, and the relief is in a stiff, formal style influenced by Mesopotamia. The stone is just over a metre high and has lost part of its surface. Look at the figure on the edge, probably the priest himself, and at the god's emblem carved above the text.
The inscription records the introduction of a new god, Salm of Hagam, into the oasis of Tayma in north-western Arabia, alongside the local gods Salm of Mahram, Shingala and Ashima, and the appointment of Salmshezeb son of Petosiris as his priest, with grants of palm groves to support the cult. It dates to the fifth century before Christ, when Tayma was a caravan station under Persian rule. The stone was found reused in a house and reached the Louvre in eighteen eighty-five after the expedition of Charles Huber and Julius Euting.
Did You Know? The priest named in the text, Salmshezeb, was the son of a man called Petosiris, an Egyptian name, in an oasis of north-western Arabia.
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