Neirab steles

Discovery

On 11 November 1891, Adrien Barthélemy, then dragoman at France's Aleppo consulate, wrote to Charles Simon Clermont-Ganneau, with information provided to him by the Franciscan priest R.P. Paul de Saint-Aignan (Simoneau) as follows:

"Very recently, workers repairing terraces, on a hillock in the village of Nerab near Aleppo, unearthed a stone representing an offering underneath which is a Phoenician inscription. I did not see the subject, but I saw a stamping of the inscription made by a French cleric".

Clermont-Ganneau wrote to Ernest Renan, who was still in charge of the Corpus Inscriptionum Semiticarum, who replied that the "mouth watering" letter may well be referring to an Aramaic counterpart to a stele found shortly before by the German excavators at Sam'al. This enthusiasm dampened after German expert Julius Euting questioned the authenticity of the steles after having reviewed a squeeze.

The steles were purchased from the landowner by Nicolas Marcopoli, a notable Aleppo merchant family (for whom the Souq Marcopoli is named). Marcopoli offered the steles to Léon Heuzey at the Louvre for 10,000 Francs; Heuzey, who was at the time focused on the excavations at Girsu in Mesopotamia, turned down the offer. Clermont-Ganneau resolved to acquire the steles himself, which he did via two-year-long negotiations led by the Franciscan brothers and the French Consulate. In 1894 he successfully acquired the steles for 2,000 Francs, with funds from the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres; the reduced price was due to the doubts about authenticity. The steles were then transported to Paris over land, in a two-year journey, and acquired by the Louvre in January 1897 for 2,500 Francs.