Mount Ebal is a significant location mentioned in the Hebrew Bible. Located in the West Bank, near the northern city of Nablus, it is considered to be a sacred site by Jews, Christians, and Muslims alike. One of the most intriguing aspects of Mount Ebal is the discovery of ancient curse tablets, which date back to the 6th century BCE. The curse tablets found on Mount Ebal were discovered during archaeological excavations in the 1980s and 1990s. These tablets are small, inscribed pieces of stone or metal, typically filled with a curse or a plea for divine punishment to befall the person named. Often, the curses relate to property or legal disputes, seeking to invoke divine intervention to resolve the issue in the curse maker's favor.

New Studies Debunk Controversial Biblical ‘Curse Tablet’ From Mt. Ebal

Look! It’s a 3,400-year-old inscribed lead tablet that could prove the historicity of the Bible. But actually there is no discernible writing on it and the purported tablet is likely a fishing-net weight commonly used in ancient times.

That’s the short version of the latest chapter in a bizarre archaeological row centered on a minuscule lead artifact and a contested ancient site in the West Bank, believed by some to be the biblical altar built by Joshua on Mt. Ebal.

The long version is a complex story involving a controversial excavation in a volatile conflict zone and sensational claims about what a single find there could tell us about the historicity of the Bible and the birth of the Hebrew language, all on the background of the political and religious strife engendered by the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Now, an upcoming series of scientific studies is demolishing the initial astounding conclusions by the discoverers of the purported inscription. The studies propose instead that the find is a rather run-of-the-mill artifact and the entire brouhaha was just a biblical tempest in a teapot. But let’s take this one step at a time.

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Y’all are cursed

Last year, a team of researchers announced to great fanfare that their excavation of a cultic structure on Mt. Ebal in Samaria – in the northern West Bank – had yielded an extraordinary find: a lead tablet about two centimeters by two centimeters, inscribed with a curse in ancient Hebrew, and dating to the 14th or 13th century B.C.E. That would make this curse the earliest known text in Hebrew by centuries.

The curse had been supposedly written on a lead sheet that was then folded, said the researchers led by Scott Stripling, professor of biblical archaeology and church history at the Bible Seminary in Katy, Texas; Gershon Galil, a retired professor of biblical studies and ancient history at the University of Haifa; and Pieter Gert van der Veen of Johannes Gutenberg-Universitat Mainz.

Since the sandwiched tablet was too fragile to be opened, the researchers used tomographic scans to look inside and claimed to see letters in the proto-Canaanite (or proto-alphabetic) script that they read as follows:

“Cursed, cursed, cursed – cursed by the God YHW.
You will die cursed.
Cursed you will surely die.
Cursed by YHW – cursed, cursed, cursed.”

At the time, the researchers said the language used for the text was Old Hebrew and Galil hailed the find as an “earthquake in biblical studies.” Not only was this the oldest Hebrew inscription by at least two or three centuries; it was key new evidence in the ongoing debate on whether the Bible can be considered a historical document.

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The large stone structure on Mt. Ebal, where the purported tablet was found, was first unearthed in the 1980s by Israeli archaeologist Adam Zertal, who interpreted it as an early Israelite altar, possibly even the one built on this mound by Joshua according to the Bible (Joshua 8:30) during his campaign to conquer Canaan.

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The curse tablet was dated to the Late Bronze Age, roughly when one would expect Joshua’s conquest to have occurred. Its discovery confirmed that the structure was indeed that very biblical altar, Stripling and colleagues claimed. This was based on the biblical verse (Deuteronomy 11:26, 29) according to which this cultic site was dedicated to just such ritual cursing.

More broadly, the discovery of the tablet suggested that the early Israelites were literate and thus capable of writing the Bible pretty much in real time, the scholars reported. This contradicted decades of research showing that ancient Hebrew writing developed at a later stage and the Bible was written down centuries after most the events it relates, and therefore its accounts cannot be taken at historical face value.

Send pics, please

The 2022 announcement of the tablet’s discovery blindsided most biblical experts, who immediately raised a bunch of red flags.

The find was proclaimed at a press conference rather than through a peer-reviewed publication, as is customary for most major scientific discoveries. Since no high-resolution images of the tablet were available, colleagues were unable to tell whether they agreed with the reading of the inscription or even if there were actually any letters there to begin with.

Also, the context of the find was hugely problematic. Stripling and colleagues didn’t unearth the tablet in a fresh dig of neat archaeological layers. Rather, they collected piles of waste from Zertal’s excavation and sifted it at a nearby settlement, which makes it nearly impossible to confirm the date of the artifact.

The dating of the site (not everyone agrees it’s an altar) is already the subject of controversy, since it’s based largely on the pottery finds there, with some researchers placing it in the Late Bronze Age (13th century B.C.E.) and others saying it can only go back to the 11th century B.C.E., in the Early Iron Age.

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As for the lead artifact itself, the fact that it was found in the jumbled up dump of Zertal’s excavation meant it was impossible to tell which phase it belonged to, and could have been dropped at the site at any time, including in the Roman era, skeptics noted.

Finally, questions were raised about the dig itself, backed by U.S. evangelical Christians keen on proving the bible right. The excavation was conducted without a permit from the Palestinian Authority, which nominally has civil control over the site, located in Area B of the West Bank, or from the Israeli military, which considered it “private activity.”

Like many archaeological sites in the region, Mt. Ebal is a flashpoint of religious and political conflict. It is frequently visited by settlers and right-wing activists who want Israel to exert sovereignty on this and other heritage sites, which they claim Palestinians are willfully damaging. The Palestinians deny this and assert that Israel has no right to operate in the area under the Oslo Peace Accords and that settlers are using heritage protection as a cover to push for a land grab.

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Eyerolls from Rollston

Going back to the tablet, ultimately Stripling and colleagues published an article earlier this year in the journal Heritage Science, making an academic case for their theory and including images of the artifact. But their paper did nothing to quell the academic storm.

In a series of three articles to be published next week in the Israel Exploration Journal a team of researchers examines and refutes the conclusions of Stripling and colleagues, proposing a very different interpretation of the tiny lead artifact.

Stripling and Galil’s claims “are quite dramatic and require close inspection,” says Prof. Aren Maeir, an archaeologist at Bar-Ilan University and one of the lead researchers in the debunking effort.

In the first article, Maeir and renowned biblical epigraphist Prof. Christopher Rollston of George Washington University examine the context of the find, its dating and reading. They run through some of the already-mentioned critical points above and, in analyzing the supposed text of the curse they reach a brutal conclusion: the writing just isn’t there.

The letters drawn by Stripling and colleagues don’t match the bumps and indentations visible in the photos they published, according to the two researchers.

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Views of the Mt. Ebal 'curse tablet' Credit: Jaroslav Valach: Stripling, S., Galil, G., Kumpova, I. et al. “You are Cursed by the God YHW:” an early Hebrew inscription from Mt. Ebal. Herit Sci 11, 105 (2023)

“The photos must correspond with the letters someone believes they are seeing,” Maeir and Rollston write. “In this case, the photos do not correspond with the drawings, and thus, the reading and translation are not anchored to empirical data.”

The lead surface displays “random scratches, striations, pitting, and indentions,” which are consistent with the nature of lead and the processes or erosion and weathering the artifact may have undergone over the centuries, they add.

For the sake of argument, Maeir and Rollston go into a long exposition to show that even if there were letters there (not that they can see any), their reading by Stripling’s team is questionable. For one thing, the letters in the published drawing are arranged in a haphazard “mishmash” or “salad” of letters that follows none of the possible directions that ancient Canaanite script took. The proposed text also contains letters that were not used in Late Bronze or Early Iron Age Canaanite inscriptions and only appear in texts centuries later, meaning that the original reading, if accurate, is quite anachronistic.

Finally, even if the text is there, it is unclear whether it could be defined as Hebrew.

Most of the words, like the oft-repeated ‘arur’ (cursed), were used in other semitic languages spoken in the Levant at the time, Maeir and Rollston note.

The only properly Hebrew word in the text would be the divine name of Yahweh, but even then, it should be noted that the biblical God is also mentioned in non-Hebrew texts.

In fact, Yahweh’s oldest known extrabiblical mention, aside of course from the contested Mt. Ebal tablet, is found in the ninth century B.C.E. Mesha stele, which is in Moabite.

Let that sink in

So, according to this study, the lead artifact found at Mt. Ebal is not a tablet at all. But then, what is it?

In the second article of the series, Prof. Amihai Mazar, a retired archaeologist from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, notes that the artifact has the perfect size, shape and composition to be a “sinker,” an object used to weigh down fishing nets.

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Views of the Mt. Ebal 'curse tablet' Credit: Jaroslav Valach/Stripling, S., Galil, G., Kumpova, I. et al. “You are Cursed by the God YHW:” an early Hebrew inscription from Mt. Ebal. Herit Sci 11, 105 (2023)

In the Late Bronze Age, but also in later periods, these weights were commonly made by folding a thin lead sheet around the netting, which obviously has decomposed with time, leaving archaeologists with these tiny metal sandwiches, Mazar notes.

Hundreds have been found in digs across the Eastern Mediterranean, of different sizes and shapes. The Mt. Ebal one belongs to a subtype that is more commonly found in Greece and less so in the Levant, he writes.

This is also consistent with the isotope analysis of the artifact, which is the topic of the third study in the series and identified the lead as having originated in Greece.

Since some sinkers were decorated with incisions, it is possible that the marks seen on the Ebal artifact are just such an embellishment, though they may also be the result of centuries of the object being smashed and compressed, Mazar notes. In any case, he agrees that no letters are visible, and cites two other eminent epigraphers, Prof. Benjamin Sass of Tel Aviv University and Dr. Anat Mendel-Geberovich of the Hebrew University, as agreeing that no symbols are discernible.

While Mazar acknowledges that most sinkers are found in shipwrecks and at coastal sites, they are not unheard of at sites more inland.

“Of course, one has to ask how and why a fishing-net sinker made of lead from Greece found its way to the inland, mountainous site of Mt. Ebal, where almost no other imported objects except a few Egyptian scarabs and two small Mycenean sherds were found,” Mazar concludes. “This question remains to be answered.”

The last and final study, conducted by Prof. Naama Yahalom-Mack of the Hebrew University, deals with the provenance of the lead in the artifact, which was a key argument by Stripling’s team for dating the object to the Late Bronze Age. While the isotope analysis confirms the metal came from the Lavrion mine in mainland Greece, which is known to have operated in the Late Bronze, this cannot be used to date the artifact as Stripling and colleagues do, because that location was also active in later periods, Yahalom-Mack says.

Stripling responded saying he had not yet read the new studies, but was “confident that there is writing on the tablet and that the script strongly suggests that it dates to the Late Bronze Age.”

The drawings he and his team published in the Heritage Science article “come close to capturing what the tomographic scans revealed,” Stripling stresses in an email to Haaretz.

“It is natural for other scholars to reach divergent views,” he adds. “I have the highest regard for Professor Mazar, but I find it difficult to imagine that lead fishing weights were inscribed with proto-alphabetic letters.”

Galil, the epigraphist in Stripling’s team, did not respond to an e-mail seeking comment as of press time.

But no one is claiming that fishing weights were decorated with letters. The problem is that we might be very well dealing with a case of pareidolia, in which scholars with faith saw patterns that they wanted to see but are not actually there – just like when people see the face of Jesus in the burnt bits of their grilled cheese sandwich.

It is likely that more responses and counterarguments will be made, but it may be time for the theory of the Mt. Ebal “inscription” to go sleep with the fishes.

Joshua’s Altar and the Mount Ebal Curse Tablet

Critical scholars often view the historical accounts in the Old Testament as fiction or mythology. But what happens when archaeology confirms what we read in the Old Testament? Recent archaeological discoveries at Mount Ebal strongly confirm a historical event in the Old Testament.

Often, the curses relate to property or legal disputes, seeking to invoke divine intervention to resolve the issue in the curse maker's favor. What makes the Mount Ebal curse tablets unique is their connection to an ancient biblical story. In the Book of Deuteronomy, Moses commands the Israelites to gather on Mount Ebal and Mount Gerizim, two adjacent mountains facing each other.

Has Joshua’s Altar Been Found?

In Deuteronomy 27, before Israel had crossed the Jordan to take possession of the land of Canaan, Moses charged them that when they entered Canaan, six tribes (Simeon, Levi, Judah, Issachar, Joseph, and Benjamin) should stand on Mount Gerizim to read and recite the blessings that would come to them if they kept God’s law. The other six tribes (Reuben, Gad, Asher, Zebulun, Dan, and Naphtali) were to stand on Mount Ebal and read and recite the curses that would come upon them if they disobeyed God ’s law.

In Joshua 8, after the Israelites had their victory at the Canaanite fortress (or city) of Ai, they held a covenantal ceremony with the Lord (YHWH, יהוה) near Shechem, with Mount Gerizim on one side and Mount Ebal on the other (Joshua 8:33). It was on Mount Ebal where Joshua built an altar to the Lord (Joshua 8:30). Mount Ebal is located northwest of the Dead Sea and about 30 miles north of Jerusalem in the west bank of Israel. South of Mount Ebal is Mount Gerizim, and between them is the city of Shechem (Joshua 24:25).1 To the north of Shechem, Mount Ebal rises 3,084 feet above sea level, and located on the eastern side of the mountain is an altar that was discovered by secular Israeli archaeologist Professor Adam Zertal (1936–2015) on behalf of the University of Haifa.2

In 1980, Professor Zertal discovered a large rectangular altar (30 meters square and 3 meters high, see below) on Mount Ebal, and from 1982–1989, excavation followed. Zertal believed the large rectangular structure was Joshua’s covenant ceremony altar (Joshua 8:30–35). Zertal’s discovery was initially met with skepticism by many in the archaeological community, but several respected archaeologists (e.g., Professor Benjamin Mazar, Hebrew University) were convinced. The excavations around the large structure revealed large amounts of ash and over 1000 bones from young, choice male animals (mainly kosher). This indicated the site was used for animal sacrifices conducted according to biblical standards. Based on the pottery and scarabs found, Zertal dated the altar from the thirteenth to twelfth centuries (c. 1225 BC).3 If this is Joshua’s altar, then it presents a problem for the exodus and conquest of Canaan taking place in the fifteenth century BC (1446–1400 BC). However, Zertal’s excavations also document the presence of an earlier altar underneath the massive rectangular altar (see below).4 The earlier altar was circular, had a diameter of only 2 meters, and was made from unworked, medium-size stones. Zertal noted that immediately on top of this smaller altar was a ten-centimeter layer of clean ash and animal bones, most of which were burnt (cf. Deuteronomy 27:7; Joshua 8:31). Zertal believed the smaller round altar was built before the larger rectangular one, but he dated it to around the same period (c. 1250 BC).

Several years ago, archaeologist Dr. Scott Stripling turned his attention to Zertal’s discoveries at Mount Ebal. Due to political reasons, however, Dr. Stripling was unable to continue Zertal’s excavations on Mount Ebal, but he was able to wet-sift the material excavated by Zertal that was left in dump piles next to the large structure. Dr. Stripling agrees that the smaller circular altar was built before the larger rectangular altar. However, Dr. Stripling not only believes that Zertal’s altar has been misdated, but that the round altar is most likely Joshua’s altar and should be dated to the fifteenth century BC (c. 1400 BC).5 Dr. Stripling supports this interpretation from evidence discovered from the wet-sifting of Zertal’s excavated material. Dr. Stripling found pottery from an earlier period in the fill, suggesting an earlier use of the site.

The round altar at Mount Ebal could very well be Joshua’s altar and is consistent with a fifteenth-century exodus and the conquest of Canaan under Joshua.

In the material associated with the round altar, a scarab belonging to Pharaoh Thutmose III (c.1504–1450 BC) was found. The traditional view is that the Thutmose III scarab is commemorative and belongs to the thirteenth century. Dr. Stripling, however, argues, “This is nothing new. The identification of Eighteenth Dynasty [fifteenth century] scarabs from sites like Mount Ebal, Shiloh, and Jericho are often judged to be commemorative because they challenged the dominant late-date theory. The theory now drives the interpretation.”6 If the Thutmose III scarab is not commemorative, as Stripling believes, then it provides evidence for the earlier construction of the smaller circular altar. The round altar cannot be an earlier Canaanite altar as Joshua was commanded to tear down their altars (Judges 2:2; cf. Exodus 34:13). Furthermore, all the stones belonging to the round altar are unworked, which fits with the requirement of Joshua 8:31. The round altar at Mount Ebal could very well be Joshua’s altar and is consistent with a fifteenth-century exodus and the conquest of Canaan under Joshua.

Joshua’s altar on Mount Ebal. Image courtesy of Melissa Barreiro/Armstrong Institute of Biblical Archaeology

The tribes were instructed to recite blessings from Mount Gerizim and curses from Mount Ebal. This ritual is described as part of the covenant between God and the Israelites, signifying the consequences of obedience and disobedience to His commandments. The discovery of the curse tablets on Mount Ebal confirms the importance of this biblical story. They provide archaeological evidence that a sacred ritual involving curses did take place on these mountains, as described in the Bible. This discovery not only offers insights into the religious practices of the ancient Israelites but also provides a tangible link between biblical accounts and historical reality. The curse tablets themselves are a testament to the superstitious beliefs prevalent in ancient times. People believed that curses had the power to bring about divine retribution, ensuring justice in their favor. By inscribing these curses on stone or metal tablets and depositing them in sacred places like Mount Ebal, believers hoped to secure the intervention of supernatural forces. The discovery of these curse tablets on Mount Ebal serves as a reminder of the deep historical and religious significance of this location. It highlights the intertwining of archaeological findings with biblical narratives, shedding light on the practices and beliefs of ancient civilizations. Mount Ebal continues to be a site of importance for scholars and visitors alike, providing a tangible connection to the past and a glimpse into the rich cultural heritage of the region..

Reviews for "Mount Ebal Curse Tablet: A Valuable Artifact in Ancient Near Eastern Studies"

1. Sarah - 1 star

I found "Mount ebal curse tablet" to be extremely disappointing. The plot was weak and disjointed, and the characters lacked depth and development. The storylines were never fully explained or resolved, leaving me feeling confused and unsatisfied. Overall, I felt like I wasted my time reading this book and would not recommend it to others.

2. John - 2 stars

"Mount ebal curse tablet" had an interesting premise, but unfortunately, it failed to deliver. The writing style was dull and lacked any real excitement. The author seemed more focused on describing the surroundings rather than building a captivating plot or developing engaging characters. I found myself struggling to stay engaged throughout the book, and the ending left me feeling unfulfilled. Overall, I wouldn't recommend this book as there are better options in the same genre.

3. Emily - 2 stars

I was really looking forward to reading "Mount ebal curse tablet" based on the positive reviews, but I found it to be a letdown. The pacing was slow, and the story dragged on unnecessarily. The characters felt flat and lacked any real personality. The whole book felt like a missed opportunity to explore interesting themes and ideas. Overall, I was disappointed with this book and wouldn't recommend it to others who are seeking an engaging and captivating read.

4. Mike - 1 star

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5. Jessica - 2 stars

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The Language of Curses: Translating the Mount Ebal Curse Tablet