Mount Ebal curse tablet | |
---|---|
Material | Lead sheet |
Size | 2 cm × 2 cm (0.79 in × 0.79 in) |
Discovered | December 2019 Mount Ebal, West Bank 32°14′7″N 35°16′9″E / 32.23528°N 35.26917°E |
The Mount Ebal curse tablet is an inscribed folded lead sheet reportedly found on Mount Ebal in the West Bank, near Nablus, in December 2019. The artifact, discovered by a team of archaeologists led by Scott Stripling, was found by wet-sifting the discarded material from Adam Zertal's 1982–1989 archaeological excavation.[1]
According to a team from the United States, Israel, Czech Republic, and Germany, it is the oldest known Hebrew inscription, preceding the Khirbet Qeiyafa ostracon by at least two centuries, with the curse tablet dated to around 1200 BC. The use of the term YHWH (which, if proven to be inscribed on the tablet, would be the oldest example of its use by centuries)[2][3] as the Hebrew word for God, would define the inscription as early Hebrew and not Canaanite.[1][4]
The tablet has been the subject of scholarly skepticism and controversy since the announcement of its discovery, as the team made sensationalist claims about its contents before the find had undergone the peer review process, and presented little to no evidence for their findings, outside of a single photograph taken of the folded tablet which was unveiled during the initial announcement.[5]
The editio princeps of the inscription was published in May 2023.[6] The findings were nearly universally rejected by scholarly commentators.[7][8]