DICT.TW Dictionary Taiwan

 Mo·ab·ite stone Archaeol. A block of black basalt, found at Dibon in Moab by Rev. F. A. Klein, Aug. 19, 1868, which bears an inscription of thirty-four lines, dating from the 9th century b. c., and written in the Moabite alphabet, the oldest Phoenician type of the Semitic alphabet.  It records the victories of Mesha, king of Moab, esp. those over Israel (--2 Kings iii. 4, 5, 27).
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 Moabite Stone
    a basalt stone, bearing an inscription by King Mesha, which was
    discovered at Dibon by Klein, a German missionary at Jerusalem,
    in 1868. It was 3 1/2 feet high and 2 in breadth and in
    thickness, rounded at the top. It consisted of thirty-four
    lines, written in Hebrew-Phoenician characters. It was set up by
    Mesha as a record and memorial of his victories. It records (1)
    Mesha's wars with Omri, (2) his public buildings, and (3) his
    wars against Horonaim. This inscription in a remarkable degree
    supplements and corroborates the history of King Mesha recorded
    in 2 Kings 3:4-27.
      With the exception of a very few variations, the Moabite
    language in which the inscription is written is identical with
    the Hebrew. The form of the letters here used supplies very
    important and interesting information regarding the history of
    the formation of the alphabet, as well as, incidentally,
    regarding the arts of civilized life of those times in the land
    of Moab.
      This ancient monument, recording the heroic struggles of King
    Mesha with Omri and Ahab, was erected about B.C. 900. Here "we
    have the identical slab on which the workmen of the old world
    carved the history of their own times, and from which the eye of
    their contemporaries read thousands of years ago the record of
    events of which they themselves had been the witnesses." It is
    the oldest inscription written in alphabetic characters, and
    hence is, apart from its value in the domain of Hebrew
    antiquities, of great linguistic importance.