“... Israelite royalty participated in the common West Semitic custom of erecting funerary steles. According to 2 Samuel 18:18, Absalom erected a funerary stele in his own memory, “for he thought, ‘I have no son to invoke my name,’” ba῾ăbûr hazkîr šemî (cf. Isa. 56:5; 66:3).641 A Persian-period inscription from Kition records a similar funerary inscription: msbt lmbhy … ᾽᾿l mškb nhty l‘lm w/’šty, “a stele for among the living … on my eternal resting place and for my wife” (KAI 35:1- 3). A Hellenistic-period Phoenician inscription from the environs of Athens (KAI 53) likewise attests to the practice of erecting a stele (mṣbt) as a “memorial,” skr, a term apparently cognate with *zkr. A third-century Phoenician inscription from Lapethos (KAI 43:6) records a commemoration for a father by a son (cf. KAI 34:1; CIS 44:1; 46:1-2; 57:1-2; 58:1; 59:1; 60:1; 61:1; RES 1208). This Phoenician funerary practice is also mentioned by Philo of Byblos (PE 1.10.10): “He says that when these men died, those who survived them dedicated staves to them. They worshipped the steles and conducted annual festivals for them.”642 The practice of erecting commemorative steles is also attested in the Ugaritic texts (KTU 1.17 I 28; 6.13; 6.14).643 ...”