The Larnakas tis Lapithou pedestal inscription, also known as KAI 43 or RES 1211, is a sixteen-line Phoenician inscription on the pedestal of a now lost statue of a local Cypriote governor, Yatonbaal. It is on a piece of greyish marble, measuring 44 by 69 centimeters, found in 1893 by ÃÂmile Deschamps at the foot of a hill near the northeastern Cypriote village of Larnax-Lapithou (ancient Narnaka), in a field strewn with ancient stones, "that local inhabitants use as building material".
The inscription is now in the Louvre, with identification AM 624. It probably dates from 275 BCE.
The inscription reads:
The dating formulas in the inscription ("year x of the Lord of Kings Ptolemy, son of the Lord of Kings Ptolemy": lines 4, 6, 8) show that it dates from the time that the Egyptian Ptolemies ruled over Cyprus. However, it is not immediately evident which Ptolemies are meant. Berger in 1894 proposed that the inscription dated from year 11 of Ptolemy Soter II (107 BCE) or Ptolemy Philadelphus (275 BCE). Cooke (1903) suggested Ptolemy Philometor (170 BCE) or Ptolemy Soter II (107 BCE). More recent editors usually choose Ptolemy Philadelphus, the inscription then dates from the year 275 BCE.
The ultrashort first line seems to be a separate caption to the statue: it consists of only six characters and these are more widely spaced than the rest of the inscription.
The author of the inscription, YatonbaâÂÂal, apparently was a member of a very distinguished family: he was able to trace back his ancestry through six generations (lines 2âÂÂ3), and both he himself, his father, and his grandfather held the office of regional governor, while BodâÂÂastart, his brother, was a priest in the royal cult for king Ptolemy (lines 5âÂÂ6).
The hardly readable word PRKRML(?) in lines 3 and 6 probably was the name of the district where YatonbaâÂÂal and his family lived. Berger, who read Q[W]RML, compared it to nearby (Cape) Kormakiti, and to (Mount) Karmel in Israel.
Lines 4-5 of the inscription mention the local calendar of Narnaka. If indeed the inscription was made in 275 BCE, which was year 33 of the "Narnaka calendar", then years must have been counted from 308/7 BCE. The city of Kition, on the southern coast of Cyprus, also had its own calendar, but that one counted from 312/1 BCE. Both calendars started in a period when the first Ptolemy fought fierce fights with competing diadochs over Cyprus.