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334 Tell Ghassul, where the UFO-like bulbous vehicles with three extended legs had been depicted (see Fig. 72). For three days the leaderless disciples searched for the disappeared Master, although Elisha had told them the search would be in vain. Possessing the mantle of Elijah, which the prophet had dropped during the ascent, now Elisha could also perform miracles, including the revival of the dead and the expansion of a little food to satisfy multitudes. His fame and miracles were not limited to the Israelite domain, and foreign dignitaries sought his healing powers; after one such magical treatment, the Aramean leader acknowledged that "indeed mere is no Elohim on Earth except the one in Israel." As Elijah before him, Elisha was also involved in royal successions that were divinely ordered; by the time he died, the King of Israel (Joash, circa 800 B.C.) was the fifth succes- sor to Ahab; and as Prophets after him, Elisha was the Divine Spokesman in matters of war and peace. II Kings chapter 3 relates the rebellion by Mesha, the king of the Moabites, against Israelite dominance after the death of Ahab, when Elisha was consulted for Yahweh's ruling whether to fight the Moabites. The veracity of that border war is confirmed by an amazing archaeological find—a stela of that very same King Mesha in which he recorded his version of that border war. The stela (Fig. 108a), now in the Louvre Museum in Paris, is inscribed in the same Old Semitic script which was used at the time by the Hebrews; and in it, the name of the Hebrew God YHWH—exactly as it was written in Israelite and Judean inscriptions—appears in line 18 (Fig. 108b). It was perhaps no coincidence that the centuries that en- compassed the Israelite settlement and conquest of Canaan, through the times of the Judges and early kings, were an intermediate period in what was then World Affairs. The mighty empires of Egypt, Babylon, Assyria, and the Hittites, which arose after the demise of Sumer circa 2000 B.c. and that made the lands of the eastern Mediterranean their battle- grounds, retreated and declined. Their own capitals were overrun or abandoned; age-old religious rites were discon- tinued, temples fell into disrepair. DIVINE ENCOUNTERS