ground storehouses, and rude semicircular arches. All the hills about are limestone, and there is no trace of any basalt but what has been brought here by man. Still there are many basaltic blocks among the ruins, dressed to be used in masonry.
It was among these ruins that the famous Moabite Stone was found in the year 1868. It is a block of basalt measuring about 3-1/2 feet by 2 feet, and has upon its face thirty-four lines of writing in the character known as Phœnician. As the language also is Phœnician—or probably Moabite, though closely related to Phœnician, and certainly closely related to Hebrew—there would have been no great difficulty in reading the inscription; but, unfortunately, when the Arabs found that the stone was valued by Europeans, they quarrelled about the possession of it and broke it up. About two-thirds of the fragments, however, were recovered and pieced together; besides which, a "squeeze" of the whole had been hurriedly taken before it was broken, and from this it was possible to fill in some of the gaps. The restored monument is now preserved in the Louvre at Paris, and a plaster cast is to be seen in the British Museum. The inscription shows that the monument was set up by Mesha, king of Moab (nearly nine hundred years before Christ), to record victories which he had gained and public works which he had accomplished. It would appear that after the allied armies retired from the siege of Kir-Haraseth, the fortune of war changed and went in Mesha's favour. The translation of the inscription is as follows:—
"I, Mesha, am the son of Chemosh-Gad, king of Moab, the Dibonite. My father reigned over Moab thirty years, and I reigned after my father. And I erected this stone to Chemosh at Korcha, a (stone of) salvation, for he saved me from all despoilers, and made me see my desire upon all my enemies, even upon Omri, king of Israel. Now they
