The oldest alleged evidence of Hebrew writing was found on a tiny and curious curse amulet, discovered under a pile of rocks that purposefully covered an iron age altar that some claim was erected by Joshua. The altar and the amulet of curses are at the heart of one of the most fascinating and politically charged contemporary controversies rocking the world of biblical archeological these days.
There are actually two piles of rocks at the center of today’s chapter - it’s the second one that is at the center of the current academic-political drama. The first pile of rocks was political drama back in its day -- heaped upon the corpse of the King of Ai, after his humiliating defeat by Joshua’s army. That marker is ‘still there to this day’ according to the authors of the 8th chapter in Joshua. Scholars still debate where Ai would have been located and how much of this particular story - as well as the entire book’s historicity - can be verified at all. That’s where the second pile of rocks comes in. It’s not often that there’s serious academic debate over archeological findings that some voices raise up to back the authenticity of biblical narratives as actual history. Joshua’s altar on Mount Ebal is what this storm is about. And what it’s really about is the occupation of the land - then, and now.
In the early 1980’s, Prof. Adam Zertal of Haifa University started to dig on Mount Ebal, overlooking Nablus. But since the mid 1990’s the area is under Palestinian jurisdiction and the dig has not been continued. But during the 8 years of digging Zertal found the dramatic remains of large stone altar, buried under a heap of rocks, dating to the 12th century BCE - the iron age that is some claim is the approximate time of Joshua’s conquest of Canaan.
Zertal’s fantastic findings went vital, with many believing that they correspond to the exact details mentioned in chapter 8, and proscribed by Moses earlier in the Book of Words:
“At that time Joshua built an altar to Adonai, the God of Israel, on Mount Ebal, as Moses, the servant of Adonai, had commanded the Israelites—as is written in the Book of the Teaching of Moses—an altar of unhewn stone upon which no iron had been wielded. They offered on it burnt offerings to Adonai, and brought sacrifices of well-being.”
The controversy surrouding Zertal’s findings spans politics and academia, left and right, religious and secular. What may be the ramifications of proving the existence of Joshua’s altar and therefore the conquest of Canaan - when the site in question is in the middle of the Palestinain territories? The conflicting interests to refute or adopt the findings have persisted for forth years. A remarkable recent discovery continues to baffle scholars with additional data that challenges multiple previous assumptions. The discovery is an amulet, made of lead, about 1 inch in diameter, dating back to the later Bronze age. It was found on Mt. Ebal - named by Moses as the Mount of Curses, during Zertal’s excavations in the 80’s, and only recently deciphered by researchers in Prague who used advanced scanning tech tools to recover the hidden text. They revealed an ancient proto-alphabetic Hebrew inscription consisting of 40 letters comprising 23 words - a nasty and dramatic curse tablet:
Cursed, cursed, cursed - cursed by the God YHW(H).You will die cursed.Cursed you will surely die.Cursed by YHW(H) – cursed, cursed, cursed.
Biblical archeologists were stunned by this news, and many in all fields and research area continue to debate its meaning and accurate reading.
A recent article suggested that“If accurate, the text is now believed to be the oldest example of proto-alphabetic Hebrew discovered to date in Israel. This would also be the oldest appearance of the name of the God of Israel.”
So sometimes stones speak, and rocks rock the world by their mere presence. It’s early to tell what’s the real story that’s hiding on Mt. Ebal but there’s no doubt that beyond blessings and curses, amulets and altars, a vast reality of mystery is found in plain site, blurring history and myth, fact and fiction, past and present, politics and poetry. All under a pile of rocks.
Image: The name of God - YHW as shown in the curse amulet discovered on Mt. Ebal, in Proto-Hebraic script.
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