Image Details

ERICH LESSING / ART RESOURCE, NY

THE BALU‘A STELE. The discovery in 1930 of the 6-foot-tall Balu‘a Stele, which was found head down along the north side of the Qasr, prompted the first archaeological expeditions to the site. The upper portion of the stela is covered in several lines of text that are now too worn to decipher; the lower portion, which uses clear Egyptian artistic conventions, appears to depict a royal investiture scene of a local leader. Likely dating to the Late Bronze Age or the Iron Age I (c. 13th–11th centuries BCE), the stela predates much of Balu‘a’s later construction, including the Qasr.