Temple de Baal à Marseille, ou Grande inscription phénicienne découverte dans cette ville dans le courant de l'année 1845, expliquée et accompagnée d'observations critiques et historiques

Rare first edition illustrated with 2 plates outside the text, including a frontispiece and a large folding facsimile of the inscription.

Contemporary green half sheep, spine faded and decorated with blind fillets and raised bands, a few scuffs to the spine, marbled paper boards, marbled endpapers, speckled edges, corners bumped.

A few spots of foxing.

This inscription had been unearthed in Marseille in June 1845 and had already given rise to numerous attempts at interpretation.

It is now known as the “Carthage Tariff” and lay at the origin of the enduring myth of the city’s Phoenician origins: the religious regulations it records appeared to provide proof that Phoenician cults were practised in Marseille, and the work of Abbé Bargès went far enough in this direction to influence contemporary scholars.

Yet nothing in subsequent archaeological discoveries suggests that a Phoenician community ever existed in Marseille. Abbé Bargès (1810-1896), a native of Auriol, pursued an unusual career thanks to his remarkable command of Oriental languages (Hebrew, Arabic), and specialised particularly in epigraphy without neglecting other disciplines. The Phoenician world held a special fascination for him because he long defended the Punic origins of Marseille, and between 1847 and 1888 he published six monographs devoted to Phoenician inscriptions; the present work belongs to that series. Cf. Hermary (Antoine): Marseille phénicienne, un mythe du XIXe siècle, in: Pour une histoire de l'archéologie, XVIIIe siècle -1945.