by
their form that it dates from the Persian period, and its
provenance is sufficiently attested. Its weight moreover
suggests that it was not merely a Babylonian or Persian
importation, but cast for local use, yet in design and
technique it is scarcely distinguishable from the best
Assyrian work of the seventh century.

This village in north-western Syria, on the road between Antioch and
Mar'ash, marks the site of a town which lay near the southern border or
just within the Syrian district of Sam'al. The latter is first mentioned
in the Assyrian inscriptions by Shalmaneser III, the son and successor
of the great conqueror, Ashur-nasir-pal; and in the first half of the
eighth century, though within the radius of Assyrian influence, it was
still an independent kingdom. It is to this period that we must assign
the earliest of the inscribed monuments discovered at Zenjirli and
its neighbourhood. At Gerjin, not far to the north-west, was found
the colossal statue of Hadad, chief god of the Aramaeans, which was
fashioned and set up in his honour by Panammu I, son of Qaral and king
of Ya'di.(1) In the long Aramaic inscription engraved upon the statue
Panammu records the prosperity of his reign, which he ascribes to the
support he has received from Hadad and his other gods, El, Reshef,
Rekub-el, and Shamash. He had evidently been left in peace by Assyria,
and the monument he erected to his god is of Aramaean workmanship and
design. But the influence of Assyria may be traced in Hadad's beard
and in his horned head-dress, modelled on that worn by Babylonian and
Assyrian gods as the symbol of divine power.

(1) See F. von Luschan, _Sendschirli_, I. (1893), pp. 49
ff., pl. vi; and cf. Cooke, _North Sem. Inscr._, pp. 159 ff.
The characters of the inscription on the statue are of the
same archaic type as those of the Moabite Stone, though
unlike them they are engraved in relief; so too are the
inscriptions of Panammu's later successor Bar-rekub (see
below). Gerjin was certainly in Ya'di, and Winckler's
suggestion that Zenjirli itself also lay in that district
but near the border of Sam'al may be provisionally accepted;
the occurrence of the names in the inscriptions can be
explained in more than one way (see Cooke, op. cit., p.
183).

The political changes introduced into Ya'di and Sam'al by
Tiglath-pileser IV are reflected in the inscrip