Mt Ebal Sifting Project

In December 2019, an expedition on Mt. Ebal to examine the discarded material from Adam Zertal’s 1982–1989 excavation of an altar structure. The site actually contains two structures: an earlier and smaller round altar underneath the geometric center of the later and larger rectangular altar. The later altar dates to the Iron Age, but the earlier round altar dates to the Late Bronze Age. The evidence suggests this might be connected to the covenant renewal ceremony recorded in the Bible (Josh. 8:30-35), where curses were to be recited from Mt. Ebal (Deut. 27:13-26).
While wet-sifting this material, ABR’s team discovered a small, folded lead tablet from Zertal’s east dump pile. The tablet could not be opened without damaging it. So a team of scientists performed X-ray tomographic scans, which revealed the hidden text, which turned out to be a formulaic curse written in a protoalphabetic script likely dating to Late Bronze Age II.