Marseille Tariff
The Marseille Tariff is a Punic language inscription from the third century BCE, found on two fragments of a stone in June 1845 at Marseille in Southern France. It is thought to have originally come from the temple of Baal-Saphon in Carthage. It is one of the earliest published inscriptions written in the Phoenician alphabet, and one of the longest ever found.
It was first published by Jean-Joseph-Léandre Bargès, and is known as KAI 69 and CIS I 165.
It is held on display in Marseille at the Musée d'archéologie méditerranéenne.
Discovery
In June 1845, workers demolishing a house in the old town of Marseille, not far from the Marseille Cathedral, found two fragments of an inscription in the rubble. The inscription was said to be engraved on Pierre de Cassis, such that it was considered to have been locally produced. The mason offered the stones to the director of the museum, who immediately purchased them for ten francs. The French newspapers announced that the text discovered was of such perfect preservation and of such length that no other Phoenician epigraphic monuments then known could compete in importance with this one.Modern chemical analysis of the stone has shown that its place of origin is Carthage. The first two words of the inscription tell us that it originally was part of a temple of the important god Baal Hammon. The two suffetes mentioned in lines 1-2 and 18-19 of the inscription, who both bore the name Ḥaloṣba‘al, apparently were the eponymous magistrates of the city in the year the inscription was made. The suffetes are comparable with the two eponymous consuls in Rome.
The inscription
The tariff regulated the payments to the priests for performing sacrifices and described the nature of the victims. All victims are male animals, and females are not mentioned.The inscription reads:
Comparison with Leviticus
The Marseille Tariff has often been compared with the Jewish rules for sacrifices as given in the Bible book Leviticus 1-7. As Van den Branden has said, "No one will deny that Israel in developing its religious cult has derived elements from Canaanite rites". When Solomon built the First Temple, he closely cooperated with King Hiram of Tyre. Now Tyre was the mother city of Carthage, and Carthage is known to have been conservative in guarding the religious practices of its mother city. Thus the Marseille Tariff can be expected to mirror Canaanite practices.Similarities exist between the Marseille Tariff and Leviticus. Both give provisions as to what is due to the priests. Also, the order of the offerings, going from large to small animals, and ending with food offerings like cakes or oil, is the same for both. And both make special mention of the hide of the animals. However, their general character is very different: the Marseille Tariff is an economic document, focusing on the fair part that is to be given to both the priest and the sacrificer, while Leviticus is a religious document. In the Leviticus rules, the provisions stating what is due to the priests make up only an extremely minor part, while its extensive subdivision into half a dozen religious categories of offences and corresponding offerings, is completely missing from the Marseille Tariff. Also missing from the Marseille Tariff are meticulous regulations as to how the offerings shall be performed, as in Leviticus 6 and 7.
The difference between an economic and a religious document is relevant for the interpretation of the much debated clause KLL ’M ṢW‘T ’M ŠLM KLL, an example of the very common construction
Early editors translated the clause in this case as
assuming that, in analogy with Leviticus, «KLL», «ṢW‘T», and «ŠLM KLL» were three religiously different kinds of offerings. For example,
However, if such a religious interpretation is not presupposed, the much simpler alternative is to translate "entire X, either cut in pieces or entirely intact", with KL/KLL and ŠLM having their normal meaning, and where the otherwise unknown word ṢW‘T is assumed from context to mean "dismembered".