Abstract
The present article offers a thorough re-edition of the tenth- or ninth-century bce ʿAzorbaʿl bronze spatula inscription from Byblos (KAI 3), with attention to its epigraphic and palaeographic features, ancient use contexts, and metallic materiality. The text is interpreted as the record of a debt paid in smelted silver to ʿAzorbaʿl; this payment resolves previous economic relations between ʿAzorbaʿl and the individual on whose behalf the text was written. A newly secure epigraphic analysis is enabled by recent photographs, and the lexical analysis is supported by newly considered cognates for this inscription’s lexemes {nšbt} “smelted” and {mgšt(-)} “tax(es)” in Egyptian Aramaic and biblical Hebrew, respectively.
