Aramaic-Speaking Communities in Achaemenid Egypt and the Afterlife: the ‘Stela saltiana’ (TADAE D22.54)

The article deals with the so-called “Salt-stela”, a stela with Egyptianizing iconography and a very short Aramaic inscription discovered in Egypt around 1820 and now lost. The iconography of the stela is considered bizarre and unique, and its provenance is usually said to be Saqqara. However, in the article is argued that the stela is clearly funerary both because it was found in the necropolis of Abydos, and because its odd iconography graphically reproduces the common Egyptian funerary formula “ḥtp dj nswt”.