The Monoliths were discovered in 1861 by a British archaeologist John George Taylor, who was the British Consul-General stationed in the Ottoman Eyalet of Kurdistan, at a site called Kurkh, which is now known as Üçtepe Höyük, in the district of Bismil, in the province of Diyarbakir of Turkey.

[10] The location of the discovery at the town called "Kurkh" was described as about 14 miles from Diyarbakir ... situated at the eastern end of an elevated platform ... on the right bank of the Tigris, and close to the angle formed by the junction of the Giuk Su with the former, which receives also the waters of the Ambar Su, on the left bank opposite, then in the Ottoman Eyalet of Kurdistan in Al-Jazira.

[11] The location was also known as Kerh or Kerh-i Dicle and is now known as Üçtepe (in Kurdish: Kerx/Kerkh or Kerxa Kîkan[12]), in the district of Bismil, in the province of Diyarbakir of Turkey.

[15][16] Taylor described his find as follows: I had the good fortune to discover a stone slab bearing the effigy of an Assyrian king, and covered on both sides with long inscriptions in the cuneiform character, to within 2 feet of its base, which had purposely been left bare to admit of its being sunk erect in the ground, as a trophy commemorative of its capture by the king, and at the point probably where his legions effected their forced entry into the city.

[17] The British Museum describes the image as follows: The king, Shalmaneser III, stands before four divine emblems: (1) the winged disk, the symbol of the god Ashur, or, as some hold, of Shamash; (2) the six-pointed star of Ishtar, goddess of the morning and evening star; (3) the crown of the sky-god Anu, in this instance with three horns, in profile; (4) the disk and crescent of the god Sin as the new and the full moon.

The gesture of the right hand has been much discussed and variously interpreted, either as the end of the action of throwing a kiss as an act of worship, or as resulting from cracking the fingers with the thumb, as a ritual act which is attributed to the Assyrians by later Greek writers, or as being simply a gesture of authority suitable to the king, with no reference to a particular religious significance.

According to the British Museum, the stela "shows Ashurnasirpal II in an attitude of worship, raising his right hand to symbols of the gods" and its inscription "describes the campaign of 879 when Assyrians attacked the lands of the upper Tigris, in the Diyabakir region.

In the year of Dâian-Assur, in the month of Airu, the fourteenth day, I departed from Nineveh, crossed the Tigris, and drew near to the cities of Giammu, (near) the Balih(?)

The tribute of the kings on that side of the Euphrates,---of Sangara of Carchemish, of Kundashpi of Kumuhu (Commagene), of Arame son of Gûzi, of Lalli the Milidean, of Haiani son of Gahari, of Kalparoda of Hattina, of Kalparuda of Gurgum, - silver, gold, lead, copper, vessels of copper, at Ina-Assur-uttir-asbat, on that side of the Euphrates, on the river Sagur, which the people of Hatti call Pitru, there I received (it).

I scattered their corpses far and wide, (and) covered (lit.., filled) the face of the desolate plain with their widespreading armies.

[21] The identification of "A-ha-ab-bu Sir-ila-a-a" with "Ahab of Israel" was first proposed[22] by Julius Oppert in his 1865 Histoire des Empires de Chaldée et d'Assyrie.

Schrader also noted that whilst Assyriologists such as Fritz Hommel[27] had disputed whether the name was "Israel" or "Jezreel",[24][28] because the first character is the phonetic "sir" and the place-determinative "mat".

[22] The identification as Ahab of Israel has been challenged in more recent years by Werner Gugler and Adam van der Woude, who believe that "Achab from the monolith-inscription should be construed as a king from Northwestern Syria".

[29] According to the inscription, Ahab committed a force of 10,000 foot soldiers and 2,000 chariots to an Assyrian-led war coalition.

The size of Ahab's contribution indicates that the Kingdom of Israel was a major military power in the Levant during the first half of the 9th century BCE.

[30] Due to the size of Ahab's army, which was presented as extraordinarily large for ancient times, the translation raised polemics among scholars.

Summarizing scholarly works on this subject, Kelle suggests that the evidence "allows one to say that the inscription contains the first designation for the Northern Kingdom.

Other scholars have also pointed out that it would be more logical if Shalmaneser fought Byblos instead of Que, because it would make better geographic sense—since the other kings of the area are polities to the south and west of Assyria, it might be expected that another city-state in that area—Byblos—would fight at Qarqar, rather than Que, which is in Cilicia.

Casual readers will note that the Monolith in fact lists eleven, but some scholars have attempted to explain that there really is a missing king, stemming from the description of "Ba'sa the man of Bit-Ruhubi, the Ammonite".