The Melqart stele, also known as the Ben-Hadad or Bir-Hadad stele, is an Aramaic stele which was created during the 9th century BCE and was discovered in 1939 in Roman ruins in Bureij Syria (7 km north of Aleppo). The Old Aramaic inscription is known as KAI 201; its five lines reads:
“The stele which Bar-Had- -ad, son of [...]
king of Aram, erected to his Lord Melqar-
-t, to whom he made a vow and who heard his voi- -ce.”
According to William Foxwell Albright, the stele should be attributed to Ben-Hadad I, an Aramean king mentioned in the First Book of Kings. However, Kenneth Kitchen disagrees and states that there is no actual evidence that connects the Melqart stele to Ben-Hadad I. a recent re-analysis of the stele indicated that the Ben-Hadad referred to is actually the king of Arpad.Jo Ann Hackett and Aren M. Wilson-Wright 2022, A Revised Interpretation of the Melqart Stele (KAI 201), in SAOC 73. "Like 'Ilu Are You Wise": Studies in Northwest Semitic Languages and Literatures in Honor of Dennis G. Pardee, Studies in Ancient Oriental Civilization 73. Chicago: The Oriental Institute, 2022, pp. 105-112.
Hackett and Wilson-Wright reconstitute the first two lines of the inscription as,
"1. The statue which Bir-Ha- 2. dad, son of ʕAttar-sumkī, Bir-Gūš,"
According to them,
"Attar-sumkī was a king from the line of Gūš, the founder of a dynasty originally from the tribe of Yaḫan in the early ninth century BCE."
See also Canaanite and Aramaic inscriptions List of Neo-Hittite kings List of artifacts significant to the Bible Melqart
Notes
Bibliography Maurice Dunand, Stèle araméenne dédiée à Melqart, Bulletin du Musée de Beyrouth III (1939), p. 65–76
Black, Matthew. "The Milqart Stele." In Documents from Old Testament Times. Edited by D. W. Thomas, 239-41. London: Thomas Nelson, 1958. Reprinted, Ancient Texts and Translations. Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2005.