literature 117
saying that he “made it better than the palace of any great kings” and
that the previous kings of Samʾal have never had a house so magnificent
(lines 12–17). the stress of this narrative is therefore not on the previ-
ous “ordinary” time (cf. line 12), but rather on the present “excellent” one
(lines 12 and 15). even if the palace of Bar-rakkab was a modest struc-
ture, on the narrative level it had to be presented as the most magnificent
of all time.24
5. Elements of Religious Literature
5.1 Dedications to the Godsthe simplest, and earliest, example of an aramaic dedication is found on the
inscription engraved on a votive stele with a representation of the god
Melqart offered by Bar-hadad, king of arpad (Kai 201). the text25 includes
only the more essential literary elements: name of the gift, name of the
donor (with patronymic and royal titles), verb of dedication, name of the
god to whom the gift is dedicated, and motivation.26 after these essential
elements, dedications often include a request for a blessing. the dedica-
tory inscriptions are usually written in the third person, because their
function is primarily to honor the deity to whom the object is dedicated.
the stele’s inscription of Zakkur (Kai 202), now preserved in fragments,
presents peculiar features because the only typical elements of the dedica-
tion genre are the first line and its conclusion. the first line of the inscrip-
tion (“Stele that Zakkur, King of hamath and Luʿaš, set up for iluwer [his
Lord]”) follows the standard pattern of the dedication genre: name of the
gift (“stele”), name of the donor (“Zakkur,” with his royal titles), and name
of the god (“iluwer,” with his divine titles). the inscription’s conclusion,
with its request for a blessing, only partially preserved, corresponds to the
first line, forming a sort of inclusion with the same religious flavor: “May the
name of Zakkur and the name [of his dynasty last forever].” the second line
of the Zakkur inscription changes abruptly to the first person and, accord-
ing to the memorial inscriptional genre, uses the personal pronoun “i”
24 Similar narrative motifs can be found in the building accounts of the assyrian king
tiglath-pileser iii: “(i made.. .) larger than the former palaces of my ancestors” (tadmor –
Yamada 2011: 47 rev. 19’).
25 “the stele that Bar-hadad, the son of attarsumki, the son of adrame, set up for his
lord Melqart, to whom he made a vow and who heard to his voice” (Kai 201). cf. for this
stele, also section 3.1 in h. Niehr’s contribution on religion in this volume.
26 for similar archaic dedication texts, cf. the old phoenician inscriptions Kai 4; 5; 6; 7.