2. _The Moabite Stone_ (fig. 53). This, perhaps the most famous, and, certainly, one of the most important, of Semitic relics, was discovered in 1868 by Dr. Klein, a German missionary, during his travels in Moab. The Arabs who escorted him took him to see an inscribed stone, the Phœnician characters on which were beautifully cut in thirty-four lines. The doctor copied a few words, and resumed his journey. On reaching Jerusalem he made known his discovery, whereupon competition was started between the French and German Consulates for purchase of the coveted treasure. This aroused the suspicion of the Arabs, to whom the stone had become a sort of talisman on which the fertility of their crops depended--that is, when they had industry enough to plant them. Messengers sent by M. Clermont-Ganneau succeeded in taking a squeeze of the inscription, which made the Arabs still more hostile, and in the end, after the Turkish governor of Nablus had vainly tried to secure the stone for himself--of course to sell at a profit to the "infidel"--the Arabs put a fire under it, then poured cold water over it, and smashed it into fragments, which were distributed as charms among the tribe. But the tact of M. Clermont-Ganneau recovered nearly all the pieces, so that, a few lines excepted, the inscription is complete. The original is preserved in the Louvre, and a very good cast of it may be seen in the Phœnician department of the British Museum. The inscription, which is written in a language resembling closely the Hebrew of the Old Testament, gives Mesha's account of his rebellion against the King of Israel, to whom he had hitherto paid yearly tribute of the wool of a hundred thousand lambs and a hundred thousand rams. Historically the monument is of high value. Mesha speaks of himself as the son of Chemoshmelek, whose position as the national god of the petty kingdom of Moab corresponds to that of Yahweh or Jehovah among the Israelites. The reference to Chemosh throws light on the correspondences in belief between the several Semitic peoples. The "high place" or altar of the god, his anthropomorphic character as angry, as urging his votaries to battle and to slaughter of their foes, giving them no quarter--all this is identical with the Hebrew conception of deity, so that the inscription, _mutatis mutandis_, reads like a transcript from the warlike annals of the Old Testament. From the epigraphic standpoint, which alone concerns us here, the inscription is regarded by Canon Taylor and other scholars as supporting the theory of M. de Rougé.