Sefire Steles

The Sefire steles are three basalt monuments inscribed in Aramaic, dated to the eighth century BC and discovered near the village of As-Safira outside Aleppo, Syria, with the first two found in 1930 and the third in 1956. Catalogued as KAI 222 to 224, the inscriptions record a treaty between two minor Levantine rulers, Bar-Ga'yah and Matti'el, sworn on behalf of the kingdom of Arpad, and they are considered the best surviving source outside the Hebrew Bible for the West Semitic tradition of sealing a treaty with formal blessings and curses. A related fourth inscribed object, known as the Starcky Tablet (KAI 227), is held at the Louvre, while the first two steles are in the National Museum of Damascus and the third is in the National Museum of Beirut. This description is adapted from Wikipedia contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0; changes were made. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/