Pricot de Sainte-Marie steles

rdf:langString Pricot de Sainte-Marie steles

rdf:langString The Pricot de Sainte-Marie steles are almost more than 2,000 Punic funerary steles found in Carthage (modern Tunisia) near the ancient forum by French diplomat Jean-Baptiste Evariste Charles Pricot de Sainte-Marie in the late 19th century. The find was dramatic both in the scale—the largest single discovery of Canaanite and Aramaic inscriptions—and also due to the finds almost being lost in the sinking of the French ironclad Magenta at Toulon. The steles were found in their secondary location, having been re-used as building material for a wall in a structure erected after the city had been destroyed by the Romans. The steles provide evidence of Carthaginian religion prior to the Roman occupation. Pricot de Sainte-Marie obtained financial support from the French Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres to create a complication for publication in the Corpus Inscriptionum Semiticarum. He took stampings of all the 2,170 steles he excavated, and had sent these to France prior to the sinking of the Magenta. They were later compiled and published in the Corpus Inscriptionum Semiticarum. After the sinking of the Magenta, a large number of the steles were recovered. They now reside at the Bibliothèque nationale de France and the Louvre.