Background

The Sefire Treaties are one of the most important witnesses to the Aramaic language in the first half of the first millennium bc. They were discovered in the late 1920s at the site of Sefire, just 16 mi (25 km) southeast of Aleppo, Syria, and were eventually purchased by the Damascus Museum and the Beirut Museum. Since the inscriptions were found by local citizens rather than during an official excavation, their archaeological context is uncertain. Stele I is in the best condition—a 51.6 in (131 cm) basalt rectangle inscribed on three sides with moderate damage to the text. Stele II likely resembled Stele I originally, but is now a partial reconstruction from 12 fragments. Stele III is also a partial reconstruction, but is a basalt slab, rather than a rectangle, written on only one side.

The fragmentary nature of the inscriptions makes it difficult to determine whether this is a collection of treaties or one detailed treaty spanning three steles, and what the relationship is between all three in terms of dating and sequence (Fitzmyer, Aramaic Inscriptions of Sefire, 18–20). These uncertainties are complicated by evidence that all three steles were inscribed by the same scribe (Fitzmyer, “Sefire Aramaic Inscriptions”).