Pricot de Sainte-Marie steles
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The Pricot de Sainte-Marie steles are more than 2,000 Punic funerary steles found in Carthage (modern Tunisia) near the ancient forum by French diplomat Jean-Baptiste Evariste Charles Pricot de Sainte-Marie in the 1870s. The find was dramatic both in the scale—the largest single discovery of Canaanite and Aramaic inscriptions—and also due to the finds almost being lost in the sinking of the French ironclad Magenta at Toulon.
The steles were found in their secondary location, having been re-used as building material for a wall in a structure erected after the city had been destroyed by the Romans.
The steles provide evidence of Carthaginian religion prior to the Roman occupation.
Pricot de Sainte-Marie obtained financial support from the French Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres to create a complication for publication in the Corpus Inscriptionum Semiticarum.[1][2] He took stampings of all the 2,170 steles he excavated, and had sent these to France prior to the sinking of the Magenta. They were later compiled and published in the Corpus Inscriptionum Semiticarum.[1]
After the sinking of the Magenta, a large number of the steles were recovered. They now reside at the Bibliothèque nationale de France and the Louvre.[1]
Around 1,500 of the steles were recovered shortly after the sinking.
On 19 April 1994, the French Groupe de Recherche en Archéologie Navale led by Max Guérout, located the Magenta 50 feet below the surface, under four feet of sediment. The expedition had been catalyzed in 1992 by historian Serge Lancel and an amateur French archaeologist, Jean-Pierre Laporte. Guérout's team carried out 843 dives between 1994 and 1998, recovering 115 steles and fragments from the wreckage. Guérout estimated in 1999 that nearly 400 more steles may remain in the wreck.[3][4]
Examples of inscriptions
Text KAI 86 (= CIS I 264 = KI[5] 76) reads:[6][7]
(line 1) LRBT LTNT PNB‘L [Stele dedicated] to the Lady Tinnīt-Phanebal 
(1-2) W/L’DN LB‘L ḤMN and to the Lord Baal-hammon, (2-3) ’Š N/DR ‘BDMLKT that Abdmilkot has vowed, (3-4) BN ’ŠTR/TYTN the son of Astartyaton, (4) ’Š B‘M RŠ MLQRT a member of the people of Rūs Milqart [= Heraclea Minoa, Sicily].
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KAI 87 (= CIS I 221 = KI 80 = AO 31819[8]). Ḥōt-’Ilot, the woman who ordered this stele, belonged to Carthage's elite: both her father and grandfather were head of state in Carthage (suffes):[6][7]
(lines 1-2) [L]RBT LTMT / [P]NB‘L [Stele dedicated] [to] the Lady Ti[nn]īt-[Ph]anebal 
(2-3) WL’D/N LBḤLMN and to the Lord Baal-hammon, (3-4) ’Š / N‘DR ḤTLT that Ḥōt-’Ilot has vowed, (4-5) BT / ḤN’ ’ŠPṬ the daughter of Hanno the suffes, (5-6) BN / ‘ZMLK ’ŠPṬ the son of ‘Az-Milk the suffes.
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The proper names in those inscriptions are common ones. Their meanings are usually evident: ’Abdmilkot ("servant of the Queen"), Astartyaton ("Astarte has given"), Ḥōt-’Ilot ("’Ilot is [my] sister"), Hanno and Baalhanno ("he/Baal has shown him favor").[7]
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