The importance of the Cippi has been lauded and written about by many, not only for their elegant form and graceful execution but mainly for the bilingual inscription adorning both of them, which was key in the decipherment of the Phoenician script. 

The Cippi are two marble candelabra, or ornamental pillars, dating back to the 2nd century BC. The top inscription on their base is written in Phoenician script. Below it is a version of the text in Greek characters. From these inscriptions we can deduce that they are a votive offering by two brothers to Melqart, a Phoenician god and patron deity of the city of Tyre.  

One of the enigmas surrounding the Cippi concerns their provenance. It is not quite clear when the Cippi were first seen in Malta, but one can safely assume that they were on the Maltese Islands sometime after 1647 and before 1687.    

Little was known of the Phoenician language at the time and various translations of the Cippi inscriptions were attempted, mostly from coins. One of the scholars who became interested in translating the inscriptions was French Abbot Jean-Jacques Barthélemy, known for decoding unknown alphabets. 

Barthélemy succeeded in deciphering 17 out of the 22 characters of the Phoenician alphabet in 1758 and published a character chart. Following this major discovery, the inscriptions on the Cippi were integrated into all the major Greek and Phoenician epigraphic collections. 

This brought international acclaim to the Cippi and, as a sign of recognition, Grand Master de Rohan sent one of them to the Académie des Inscriptions et Belle-Lettres in France in 1782. It was transferred to the Louvre Museum in Paris in 1864. The other one remained in Malta as part of the collection and is kept at the National Museum of Archaeology in Valletta.  

It was only last year that the Cippi were reunited – albeit temporarily – thanks to an exhibition at the Louvre Abu Dhabi held on the initiative of the Embassy of Malta in the United Arab Emirates, in commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the diplomatic relationship between the UAE and Malta. Both Cippi are now being exhibited in Malta before one of them returns to the Paris Louvre. 

Beyond their inestimable historical value, the Cippi of Malta are an example of diplomatic cultural relations. We still have many unanswered questions about them, but we know for sure that they were monuments made with the intention of public viewing. Thousands of years later, they are still fulfilling that role.