event · E0352
Kurkh Monolith מונולית כורח
A limestone stele of Shalmaneser III found at Kurkh (modern Üçtepe, near Diyarbakır, Turkey) by John George Taylor in 1861 and donated to the British Museum in 1863 (BM 118884, Room 6). Its annals give the most detailed surviving account of the battle of Qarqar, 853 BCE: a twelve-king coalition led by Hadadezer of Damascus met Assyria on the Orontes — and among the allies stands "A-ha-ab-bu Sir-ila-a-a," Achav the Israelite, with 2,000 chariots and 10,000 soldiers, the largest chariot corps in the line. It is the earliest cuneiform mention of Israel by name and the only extrabiblical attestation of Achav.
I. Who
- Hebrew
- מונולית כורח
- Also known as
- Kurkh Stele of Shalmaneser III, Battle of Qarqar Stele
- Era
- bible
II. When
- Traditional
- c. 3049 AM — placed at the stele's carving on the atlas's chained royal chronology; the battle it records fell the year before, at the close of Achav's reign (he dies 3048 AM on that chain)
- Civil (computed)
- 3049 AM · 712 BCE (trad.)
- Academic
- stele c. 852 BCE; the battle of Qarqar is 853 BCE
- Date range
- stele erected c. 852 BCE, recording the battle of Qarqar, 853 BCE
- Precision
- approximate
IV. What
- Events
- Black Obelisk of Shalmaneser III
Why it matters
The first time any surviving cuneiform document says "Israel," it is counting Achav's chariots. On this stone an Assyrian king lists the coalition that stopped his advance at Qarqar in 853 BCE, and there, between the kings of Damascus and Hamath, stands "Achav the Israelite" with the largest chariot force on the field — a military weight Tanakh never pauses to describe. The battle itself appears in no biblical text; the stele records what the text omits, and its fixed Assyrian date has become the anchor from which the whole Divided-Kingdom chronology is hung. It also catches Israel and Aram fighting side by side — exactly the truce window the sefer implies between Achav's wars with Ben-Hadad.
V. How do we know
| Claim | Evidence | Confidence | Sources |
|---|---|---|---|
| The stele was found at Kurkh (modern Üçtepe, Diyarbakır province, Turkey) by John George Taylor, British consul, in 1861, and came to the British Museum in 1863; it is BM 118884, displayed in Room 6 near the Black Obelisk. Its cuneiform annals of Shalmaneser III run through his sixth year, ending with the battle of Qarqar on the Orontes, 853 BCE. | archaeology external | ★★★★★ | |
| Among the twelve allied kings led by Hadadezer of Damascus the annals list "A-ha-ab-bu Sir-ila-a-a" — Achav the Israelite (Achav) — with 2,000 chariots and 10,000 soldiers, the largest chariot corps in the coalition. This is the earliest mention of Israel by name in any cuneiform source and the only attestation of Achav outside Tanakh.
"Ahab the Israelite" is the strong majority reading; a few dissenters have proposed other identifications. The chariot figure is the Assyrian scribe's and may carry scribal inflation — it dwarfs every other contingent's.
|
archaeology external | ★★★★★ | |
| Qarqar appears in no biblical text, but it illuminates one: the coalition has Israel fighting beside Aram-Damascus — the same Aram Achav otherwise fights — in exactly the interval Melachim I implies between the wars, when Achav spared Ben-Hadad and "made a covenant with him." The stele's fixed date, 853 BCE, is also the synchronism from which historians hang the chronology of the divided kingdoms.
The truce-window reading is standard but interpretive; the chronological anchor role of 853 BCE is not in dispute.
|
biblical archaeology reconstruction | ★★★★☆ | |
| The same king's Black Obelisk (Black Obelisk of Shalmaneser III, also British Museum, Room 6) shows Yehu paying tribute a dozen years after Qarqar: the two monuments bracket Israel's ninth century from the Assyrian side — Achav resisting Shalmaneser in 853, Yehu prostrate before him in 841. This entity extracts and upgrades what was previously a claim inside Black Obelisk of Shalmaneser III. | archaeology external | ★★★★★ | |
| The atlas places the stele at its carving, c. 852 BCE — c. 3049 AM when hung from the atlas's chained chronology, on which Achav dies in 3048 AM (853 BCE) — so the battle it records falls in the last year of his reign. Per the standing placement rule, the artifact sits when it was made; the battle is carried in the claims.
Schematic placement for the atlas timeline; the academic dates do not map one-to-one onto the traditional count.
|
tradition reconstruction | ★★☆☆☆ |
Referenced by: Achav, Black Obelisk of Shalmaneser III