What was found. On 19 August 1868 a German missionary, F. A. Klein, was shown a black basalt stele standing at Dhiban (biblical Dibon) in Moab, east of the Dead Sea, about 3 ft 10 in high and 2 ft broad, with a rounded top, inscribed in thirty-four lines of early alphabetic script. Before it could be bought, in 1869 local Bedouin heated the stone and doused it with cold water, shattering it; the French scholar Charles Clermont-Ganneau had already taken a paper "squeeze," and from that, plus the recovered fragments, most of the text was restored. The pieces are now in the Louvre.
What it says. It is the war-memorial of Mesha, king of Moab, in his own voice and his own god's name: "I (am) Mesha, son of Chemosh-melech, king of Moab, the Dibonite… he saved me from all invaders." Mesha records that "Omri was king of Israel, and he oppressed Moab many days, for Chemosh was angry with his land," and then how he threw off Israel's rule and retook town after town, naming places the Bible also names (Nebo, Baal-Meon, Kiriathaim, Ataroth, Aroer).
The biblical connection. This is the other side of 2 Kings 3:4–5, which introduces "Mesha king of Moab" and his rebellion against Israel after Ahab's death, a foreign king confirming, and complicating, a biblical episode from his own angle. (One disputed line near the end has been read by some, notably André Lemaire, as containing the words "house of David"; the reading is uncertain and contested, so it is offered only as a possibility, not a fact.)
Sources (read live 2026-06-29 + ISBE 1915, public domain). Inscription quoted from the ISBE entry "Moabite Stone" (A. H. Sayce, citing the Smend–Socin 1886 edition); discovery and provenance per the same entry. Object: the Louvre, Paris.
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