The Mount Ebal Structure

Found on a Survey, Dug for Eight Seasons

A. Zertal came across the site in 1980 while walking his long archaeological survey of the northern hill country, and excavated it across eight seasons from 1982 to 1989 for the University of Haifa and the Israel Exploration Society. The place is a rectangular structure of unworked field stones, roughly nine metres by seven, built straight onto bedrock, standing about four metres high, with two paved courtyards and a sloping wall running up to it that Zertal read as a ramp. It has no doorway and no floor. Its interior is packed with layers of ash and stone.

In the fill were burnt animal bones — cattle, goats and fallow deer — charred slowly rather than in a destruction. Two Egyptian scarabs came out of the site, and they carry the dating argument: B. Brandl assigned one to the reign of Ramesses II in the last quarter of the thirteenth century BC, reading a cartouche of Thutmose III on the other as a commemorative issue; D. Ben-Tor and P. van der Veen have since argued for the reign of Thutmose III itself or shortly after. The scarabs are the load-bearing evidence for the date and they are contested.

Zertal published his identification in Biblical Archaeology Review in 1985 under the title "Has Joshua's Altar Been Found on Mt. Ebal?" and gave the excavation's preliminary report in the journal Tel Aviv in 1987. He read the structure as the altar of Joshua 8:30-32, built where Deuteronomy 27 said to build it, on the mountain Deuteronomy 11:29 assigns the curse.

Why It Is Worth Taking Seriously

The case has real content, and dismissing it would be as lazy as swallowing it. This is an Iron Age I installation, in the right place, on a mountain named in the text, full of the burnt bone of animals that are overwhelmingly kosher, in a period when the hill country was filling up with new settlements. It is not a house and it is not a normal building: a structure with no door and no floor, filled deliberately with ash and stone, is doing something other than sheltering people.

That much has persuaded scholars who are nowhere near Zertal's conclusion. A. Mazar's assessment is worth quoting because it is exactly the shape of the honest position: Zertal "may be wrong in the details of his interpretation, but it is tempting to accept his view concerning the basic cultic nature of the site and its possible relationship to the Biblical tradition." N. Na'aman accepted a cultic reading while identifying the place as a temple of El-Berith rather than Joshua's altar. Even I. Finkelstein, who rejects the identification, has said there is definitely an Iron I site there.

Why Most of the Field Has Not Accepted It

The identification with Joshua's altar has never carried the discipline, and that has to be said plainly rather than buried. A. Kempinski, who visited during the first season, published "Joshua's Altar — An Iron Age I Watchtower" in Biblical Archaeology Review in early 1986, arguing the stones were part of a watchtower and that there was no basis whatever for reading the structure as an altar; Zertal replied in the same issue. A. Rainey read it as a farmstead with an animal pen. The faunal assemblage cuts both ways: the bones are largely kosher, but fallow deer make up a substantial share of them, and fallow deer are not a sacrificial animal in the Levitical system, which is awkward for a neat fit with Joshua 8. And Zertal died in 2015; a final excavation report could not be traced for this article.

The state of play, stated as carefully as it can be: that the site had some cultic character is a serious and respectable position held by scholars well outside Zertal's camp. That it is specifically the altar Joshua built is a minority view, not accepted by most archaeologists, and it is not going to become the app's house position on the strength of one excavator's reading. It is also not fringe in the sense of being unpublished or ignored — it appeared in a peer-reviewed journal and was argued over by senior scholars in print, which is more than can be said for a good deal of what gets repeated about this site.

One thing that must not be run together with any of the above. In December 2019 a team from Associates for Biblical Research wet-sifted Zertal's spoil heaps and recovered a folded lead object about two centimetres across, announced at a press conference in Houston in March 2022 — fourteen months before it appeared in a journal — as a Late Bronze Age Hebrew curse inscription. The peer-reviewed publication followed in Heritage Science in May 2023. The response has been overwhelmingly negative from the specialists who work on early alphabetic writing. A. Maeir and C. Rollston concluded in the Israel Exploration Journal that the tomographic images "fail to demonstrate any discernible letters" and that the object "is most reasonably understood as an uninscribed lead fishing-net weight"; A. Mazar and N. Yahalom-Mack published in the same issue to similar effect; and a refutation by M. Haughwout appeared in 2024 in the same journal that had published the original claim, concluding that there is "currently insufficient epigraphic evidence to conclude that writing exists on the interior or exterior of this folded piece of lead". The object came from a spoil heap, not a stratified deposit. This app does not treat it as a find, and it has no bearing on the structure Zertal excavated.

Scripture references

• Deuteronomy 11:29 — The blessing on Mount Gerizim and the curse on Mount Ebal
• Deuteronomy 27:4-8 — Build an altar of uncut stones on Mount Ebal and write the law on plastered stones
• Joshua 8:30-32 — Joshua builds the altar on Mount Ebal and writes a copy of the law on the stones

Sources

• Holding institutionUniversity of Haifa and the Israel Exploration Society — the excavating bodies — The Zinman Institute of Archaeology, University of Haifa, and the Israel Exploration Society · The excavation ran under these two bodies across eight seasons, 1982-1989. Its own published output is A. Zertal's preliminary report in Tel Aviv 14:2 (1987), cited below; no final excavation report could be traced for this article, and A. Zertal died in 2015. No institutional web page is given because none was found that the excavating bodies themselves maintain for the siteSupports: Who excavated the site, under what auspices, and what the excavation itself published
• ScholarshipA. Zertal, "An Early Iron Age Cultic Site on Mount Ebal: Excavation Seasons 1982-1987: Preliminary Report" — Adam Zertal, University of Haifa · Tel Aviv 14:2 (1987), 105-165, with L. K. Horwitz's faunal report at 173-189 in the same issue. The excavation's own peer-reviewed publication. Print and subscription only · paywalledSupports: The excavation, the structure and Zertal's identification
• ScholarshipA. Kempinski, "Joshua's Altar — An Iron Age I Watchtower" — Aharon Kempinski · Biblical Archaeology Review 12:1 (January/February 1986), with A. Zertal's reply in the same issue. Kempinski visited the site during the first season and argued there was no basis for reading the structure as an altar. Body text paywalled · paywalledSupports: The principal published objection to the altar identification
• ScholarshipA. Maeir and C. Rollston, "The So-Called Mount Ebal Curse Tablet: A Critical Response" — Aren M. Maeir (Bar-Ilan University) and Christopher Rollston (George Washington University) · Israel Exploration Journal 73:2 (2023), 132-142. Their conclusion: the images "fail to demonstrate any discernible letters" and the object "is most reasonably understood as an uninscribed lead fishing-net weight"Supports: The specialist response to the lead object, which is a separate matter from the structure
• ScholarshipS. Stripling, G. Galil, I. Kumpova, J. Valach, P. van der Veen and D. Vavrik, "'You are Cursed by the God YHW': an early Hebrew inscription from Mt. Ebal" — Associates for Biblical Research and collaborators · Heritage Science 11:105, published 12 May 2023, open access. The original claim, cited here so a reader can weigh it against the responses rather than take this article's word for itSupports: The lead object's proposed reading, as its authors state it
• ScholarshipM. Haughwout, "Mt. Ebal curse tablet? A refutation of the claims regarding the so called Mt. Ebal curse tablet" — Mark S. Haughwout, Indian Bible College · Heritage Science 12, article 70, published 26 February 2024, open access — in the same journal that published the original claim. Read in full. Concludes that there is "currently insufficient epigraphic evidence to conclude that writing exists on the interior or exterior of this folded piece of lead". The "currently" is his and is kept: it makes the verdict time-indexed rather than finalSupports: The published refutation of the lead object's reading
• EncyclopediaWikipedia: Mount Ebal site — Its summary of the state of opinion: many archaeologists accept early Israelite cultic activity at the site, while "its identification with Joshua's altar is disputed"

Further reading

• Wikipedia: Mount Ebal site
• A. Zertal, "Has Joshua's Altar Been Found on Mt. Ebal?", Biblical Archaeology Review 11:1 (1985)

Reflect

A find announced at a press conference before it was reviewed did not survive review. What do you do with news that fits what you already believe?