This roughly shaped, 5-foot-tall black basalt stela from the Late Bronze Age (1550–1200 B.C.E.) was discovered at Balu‘a in central Jordan. Carefully etched into the stela are three figures in distinctively Egyptian style. The central figure, cloaked in a patterned full-length gown and wearing a bag-shaped headdress, is likely a local king or chieftain of Moab. He is being presented on the left with a scepter held by a god who wears a simplified form of the double crown of Upper and Lower Egypt. Looking on behind the king is a female figure dressed in a sleek, fitted gown […]
