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December 2011, Daily News

Rare Cuneiform Script Found on Island of Malta

Thu, Dec 22, 2011

A small-sized find in an ancient megalithic temple stirs the imagination.

Rare Cuneiform Script Found on Island of Malta

Excavations among what many scholars consider to be the world's oldest monumental buildings on the island of Malta continue to unveil surprises and raise new questions about the significance of these megalithic structures and the people who built them. Not least is the latest find - a small but rare, crescent-moon shaped agate stone featuring a 13th-century B.C.E. cuneiform inscription, the likes of which would normally be found much farther east in Mesopotamia.

Led by palaeontology professor Alberto Cazzella of the University of Rome “La Sapienza”, the archaeological team found the inscribed stone in the sancturary site of Tas-Silg, a megalithic temple built during the late Neolithic period, and which has been used for various religious and ceremonial purposes by the ancients from the third millennium BC to the Byzantine era. The inscription was translated as a dedication to the Mesopotamian moon god Sin, who was a deity worshiped far to the east in the city of Nippur in Mesopotamia. Nippur was considered a holy city and a pilgrimage site with a scribal school that generated literary texts. 

The location of the find makes it the farthest west the ancient script has ever been discovered, raising questions about how it ended up in the remote location. Some scholars theorize that the inscribed stone was likely looted from the temple of Nippur during military conflict and then transported westward through an exchange of hands by Cypriot or Mycenaean merchants, thought to have had trading relations with the central Mediterranean at the time. 

Moreover, because cuneiform-inscribed agate would have been considered highly valued during the late Bronze Age, its presence within the Tas-Silg sanctuary, according to some scholars, suggests that the sanctuary had a much wider significance than for those who lived on Malta at this time. The sanctuary is already known to have been an important place of worship in the Mediterranean during the Phoenician and Roman eras. 

Cover Photo, Top Left: The cuneiform-inscribed agate stone. Credit: Cultura Italia

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Comments(3):

  1. East and west

    Saturday, December 24, 2011 Diana

    This is an exciting discovery and good coverage here, but Mesopotamia is EAST of Malta. Malta is WEST of Mesopotamia. So, the cuneiform inscription of Malta is the furthest WEST. But such inscriptions usually occur much further EAST.

  2. eest an weest

    Monday, December 26, 2011 Thomas

    I'm gonna have to disagree with you diane, this is GOOD n EXCITING coverage here. you understand.

  3. get your facts correct

    Monday, January 16, 2012 Roshan Mathew

    "Mesopotamian moon god Sin, the father of Ninurta " Sin or Nannar/Nanna, the Moon God is NOT the father of Ninurta. Sin is the father of Shamash. Ninruta is the son of Enlil and Ninlil. how can the author of such an important article commit such a gigantic blunder? other than that, the article is very interesting.