Mesha (Moab)

Mesha was king of Moab, east of the Dead Sea, ruling from Dibon. According to 2 Kings 3, he was a sheep breeder who paid Israel a tribute of 100,000 lambs and the wool of 100,000 rams, and rebelled after Ahab's death. Jehoram of Israel, Jehoshaphat of Judah and the king of Edom invaded and besieged him in Kir-hareseth, until Mesha sacrificed his firstborn son on the city wall and the invaders withdrew.

Mesha told his own side of the story on the Mesha Stele, or Moabite Stone, a black basalt inscription of 34 lines found at Dhiban in 1868. Shattered by local villagers soon after, it was reconstructed with the help of a paper squeeze made for Charles Clermont-Ganneau and is now in the Louvre. Mesha writes that "Omri king of Israel" had oppressed Moab because the god Chemosh was angry with his land, boasts that "Israel has perished forever," and says he captured Nebo and dragged "the vessels of YHWH" before Chemosh. It is the earliest known mention of the God of Israel by name outside the Bible, and one of the longest Iron Age inscriptions from the region.