Archaeology
Mount Ebal Curse Tablet
- Era
- disputed: Late Bronze – Iron II
- Location
- Mount Ebal, West Bank
- Discovered
- 2019 (sifting)
A small folded lead tablet from Mount Ebal that its excavators report contains a paleo-Hebrew curse formula — including the divine name YHW.
The find
Announced in 2022 by Scott Stripling and an Associates for Biblical Research team after wet-sifting Adam Zertal's Mount Ebal dump, the tablet was scanned with tomography rather than opened. The team published a 40-character text invoking curses by "YHW." The reading and date are heavily contested — many epigraphers see only natural striations and date the site's "altar" later. The find is included here as a candidate to watch, not as a settled result.
Why it matters
If the early dating holds up under further review, it would be the oldest Hebrew inscription ever found and an artifact tied directly to the covenant ceremony described in Deuteronomy 27 and Joshua 8:30–35.
Cross-linked Scripture
Doctrine check
Sources
Image: Wikimedia Commons
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