History

The Maltese Rosetta Stone

Posted on Author Antoine P Borg
A photo of one of the cippi of Melqart - Louvre, Paris, France

The Cippi of Melqart, discovered in Malta, are priceless because they were the key to deciphering Phoenician script.

This article explains who Melqart was, what cippi are and what this Maltese Rosetta Stone is all about.

Who was Melqart?

Melqart was a Phoenician god and patron deity of the Phoenician city of Tyre1. (Tyre is in present-day Lebanon). Even after defeating Phoenicia, Greece and Carthage still worshiped Melqart. This is how we know so much about him because there is little information from Phoenicia itself1.

As a deity Phoenicians associated him with1 2:

A photo of a statue of Malqart - Museo Barracco, Rome, Italy.
A statue of Melqart – Museo Barracco, Rome, Italy.
  • Life and death
  • Monarchy
  • The sea
  • Fishing
  • Colonisation
  • Commercial enterprise
  • The discoverer of purple dye from murex shellfish

All this makes him a skilful multitasker.

The name is derived from ‘Malek-qart’ meaning ‘Lord of the city’, or ‘lord of the land'3. This was also the name of the ruler of Tyre1. (The Roman Catholic Bible refers to this word play in the Book of Ezekiel. There, Ezekiel criticises the rulers of Tyre for considering themselves gods on earth)1.

The Greeks later appropriated his imagery and associated him with Hercules1. Still, temples to Melqart in the Mediterranean are signs of Phoenician colonies1.

Malta stamp showing a cippus, and the inscription

What are cippi?

A cippus is a small, low, ornamental pillar used in antiquity as a landmark or gravestone2 4. The top of the pillar is usually flat and used for incense, candles and other offerings2. The Maltese Cippi are white marble and measure:

  • 1.05 metres high (approx 3-and-a-half feet)
  • 0.34 metres wide (approximately 1 foot)
  • 0.31 metres thick (approximately 1 foot)

The plual is cippi, and Malta has two of these they are the Cippi of Melqart.

The Cippi are not the only items from antiquity discovered in Malta. The remains of the temple of Proserpina are another set of discoveries.

A photo of one of the cippi of Melqart - Louvre, Paris, France
One of the cippi of Melqart – Louvre, Paris, France

The cippi were discovered in the southern fishing village of Marsaxlokk2. There are two reasons that this location makes lots of sense. First, a sea-faring people like the Phoenicians would have arrived in Malta at a port. Second, Marsaxlokk means worshipping a deity associated with fishing is a natural choice.

The base of these cippi contains script in two forms of writing. One of them was Greek. In 1694 Canon Ignazio di Costanzo recognised the unusual script as being Phoenician5.

In 1801, the French discovered the Rosetta stone. This showed cryptographers how to decode ancient Egyptian because it had the same text in both Greek and Egyptian. Since the same message appeared twice the Rosetta stone was key to translating Egyptian hieroglypics. In Malta’s case, the two languages were Greek and the-as-yet-undeciphered Phoenician.

Costanzo sent copies of the inscriptions to Verona for translation5.

Apart from this, the inscription linked Melqart to the Greek god Hercules3.

Decoding

In 1758, French cryptographer Jean-Jacques Barthélemy started working on this. He almost translated the Phoenician script, but mistook 1 out of the 17 characters used6. This did not deter him, as he now had a better understanding of Phoenician grammar6. Scholars later built on his work to decipher Phoenician.

This is why the Cippi of Melqart are Maltese Rosetta stones. 

Today

Grand Master de Rohan presented one cippus to French King Louis XVI2 6. Louis placed it in the Académie des Inscriptions et des Belles Lettres but it now is in the Louvre2 6. The other is in Malta’s Archaeological Museum in Valletta2.

The Cippi are treasured symbols of Maltese history and have appeared on stamps. Models are often presented to foreign dignitaries.

Like all other ancient dieties, Melqart is no longer remembered as he once was. His lasting contribution is the interpretation of Phoenician through Malta’s cippi.

  1. Melqart; Mark Cartwright; World History Encyclopaedia; 2016-05-06[↩][↩][↩][↩][↩][↩][↩]
  2. The Rosetta Stone of Malta: Cippi of Malta Offers Key to Decoding the Phoenician Language; Kerry Sullivan; 2016-08-15[↩][↩][↩][↩][↩][↩][↩]
  3. Herakles, Melqart, the Greek façade of a Phoenician deity; Rodrigo Araújo de Lima; University of São Paulo/University of Bristol; May 2020[↩][↩]
  4. Cippus; Meriam Webster; (Retrieved 2023-01-11) [↩]
  5. Lettere Memorabili (Raccolta 4); Antonio Bulifon; 1698[↩][↩]
  6. Avant Champollion : le cippe de Malte et l’alphabet phénicien; Le Louvre; 2022-09-21[↩][↩][↩][↩]