The Batnoam inscription is a Phoenician inscription (KAI 11 and TSSI III 26) on a sarcophagus. It is dated to c. 450-425 BCE.
It was published in Maurice Dunand's Fouilles de Byblos (volume I, 1926-1932, numbers 1142, plate XXVIII).
Text of the inscription The inscription reads:
|+ |- | B’RN ZN ’NK BTN‘M || In this coffin I, Batno‘am, |- | ’M MLK ‘ZB‘L MLK GBL || mother of King Azbaal, King of Byblos, |- | BN PLṬB‘L KHN B‘LT || son of Pilletbaal, Priest of Baalat |- | ŠKBT || lie, |- | BSWT WMR’Š ‘LY || wearing a garment and a head-piece on me, |- | WMḤSM ḤRṢ LPY || and a muzzlemaḥsom: a funerary object to seal the lips of the deceased. of gold on my mouth |- | KM ’Š LMLKYT ’Š KN LPNY || like those of the queens who were before me.
Bibliography Christopher Rollston, "The Dating of the Early Royal Byblian Phoenician Inscriptions: A Response to Benjamin Sass." MAARAV 15 (2008): 57–93. Benjamin Mazar, The Phoenician Inscriptions from Byblos and the Evolution of the Phoenician-Hebrew Alphabet, in The Early Biblical Period: Historical Studies (S. Ahituv and B. A. Levine, eds., Jerusalem: IES, 1986 [original publication: 1946]): 231–247. William F. Albright, The Phoenician Inscriptions of the Tenth Century B.C. from Byblus, JAOS 67 (1947): 153–154.
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