The folded lead defixio, the subject of this paper, probably derived from the fill of the altars.Īpotropaic and imprecatory artifacts emerged in the Mediterranean Basin in prehistoric times. Thus, it is possible that Zertal’s findings relate to this verse. Ebal as part of a covenant renewal ceremony soon after the Israelites returned from Egypt to Canaan. The biblical tradition (Joshua 8:30) records that Joshua, Israel’s early leader, built an altar on Mt. The smaller Late Bronze Age II altar lay directly beneath the larger Iron Age I altar. The inscription falls within the literary genre of Chiastic Parallelism and predates any previously known Hebrew inscription in Israel by at least 200 years.įrom 1982 to 1989, Adam Zertal excavated what he interpreted as two altars at el-Burnat (A) on Mt. Epigraphic analysis of the tomographic data revealed a formulaic curse written in a proto-alphabetic script likely dating to Late Bronze Age II. The tomographically reconstructed data were subjected to advanced processing to reveal the hidden text. A team of scientists performed X-ray tomographic measurements with different scanning parameters. The tablet could not be opened without damaging it.

The earlier and smaller round altar lay underneath the geometric center of the later and larger rectangular altar.

The east dump pile, from which the object emerged, contained the discarded matrix from two structures that he interpreted as altars dated to the Late Bronze Age II and Iron Age I. Ebal to examine the discarded material from Adam Zertal’s 1982–1989 excavation yielded a small, folded lead tablet.

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