Shihan Stela
From ArchaeoWiki
The Shihan Stela is the name given to a large basalt stela discovered in 1851 as a surface find at Rujm el-ʿAbd, between Shihan and Dhiban in the Transjordan.
Musée du Louvre Département des Antiquités orientales AO 5055
Basalt: height 1.03 m, width 0.58 m.
The stela is broken on all four sides, yet nonetheless largely preserves the raised relief depiction of a male figure holding a spear upright with the blade pointing to the ground. The stela combines a number of iconographic traditions, including an Egyptianising motif: the figure is dressed only in a short Egyptian style kilt with a wavy design.
As a surface find, of course, the stela possesses no readily ascertainable archaeological context. Indeed, the find spot of the stele may not reflect its originally intended location. No excavation has as yet been undertaken at the site of Rujm el-ʿAbd, providing little data for comparison or dating.
A suggested dating of the thirteenth-twelfth centuries BCE remains somewhat speculative and is based partly on an association of the Shihan Stela with the Baluʿa Stela. The simplistic and somewhat tenuous nature of this association becomes apparent when the far more strongly Egyptianising character of the latter is contrasted against the Shihan Stela's sole Egyptian motif in the figure's kilt. Scholars have suggested a range of possible dates from the mid-third millennium BCE through to the eighth century BCE.
The Shihan Stela is associated with ancient Moab.
Bibliography
- Worschech, Udo [1994], "Der Gott Kemosch. Eine Charakterisierung", UF 24 (1994), pp.393-401.
