An ancient postage-stamp-sized tablet may contain the earliest inscription of the Hebrew name for God: Yahweh.
International archaeologists believe the small folded sheet of lead found in the West Bank was made at least 3,200 years ago and contains a text calling on God to curse anyone who breaks his word.
If confirmed by future research, the discovery would make it almost 2,000 years older than the previous find: the Mesha Stele slab, which dates to 840 BC.
The team translated the 48 letters as follows: “Cursed, cursed, cursed – cursed by Yahweh.”
The tablet was found on the Biblical Mount Elba, said to be in the Promised Land, and could appear on it to write older than any known Hebrew inscription from ancient Israel.
An ancient postage-stamp-sized tablet may contain the earliest inscription of the Hebrew name of God
The small artifact was discovered during excavations at Mount Ebal, mentioned in the Bible as part of the Israelite's escape from ancient Egypt.
Scripture states that Moses was to build an altar on the mount after freeing the Israelites from slavery, but because of his rebellion he was denied entry into the Promised Land.
Moses' successor, Joshua, is said to have built the altar at Ebal that renewed the covenant – and archaeologist Adam Zertal discovered it more than 17 years ago.
The altar is made of stones stacked on top of each other, located towards the top.
A team recently returned to the site in the mountains of Samaria, about 50 kilometers north of Jerusalem, to continue Zertal's work.
Scott Stripling, director of the Archaeological Studies Institute at The Bible Seminary in Texas, said: 'These types of curse tablets are well known in the Hellenistic and Roman periods, but the excavated pottery from Zertal dates from the Iron Age I and the Late Bronze Age, so it makes sense the tablet is derived from one of these earlier periods. Yet our discovery of an inscription from the Late Bronze Age surprised me.'
The tablet was found on the Biblical Mount Elba, said to be in the Promised Land, and may contain texts older than any known Hebrew inscription from ancient Israel.
The team translated the 48 letters, which read: “Cursed, cursed, cursed – cursed by Yahweh.”
Archaeologists found the tablet in 2019 among discarded materials from Zertal's 17-year expedition.
It is a single strip of lead, folded in half, and if it were separated it would have looked like a small book of two pages, but if you opened it it would be damaged.
The inscription consists of 48 letters in sets of 14 words, appearing in three formulaic patterns, which read in full: 'You are cursed by the god, cursed. You will die cursed – cursed. Cursed by you are by YHW – cursed.”
Researchers found that the term 'arur', meaning 'cursed', appeared twelve times on each side with the inscriptions 'Outside' and 'Outside B' – six on each side.
And it looks like the creator wrote in different directions: left to right, right to left, top to bottom, bottom to top, and alternate lines.
“Eight of the 22 letters in the Canaanite/Hebrew alphabet appear in the inscription 'Inner B,'” the team wrote in the study published in the Heritage science journal.
'All letters represent a variety of shapes and views, as the relevant tables and figures demonstrate.'
According to researchers, the curse reflects the text Genesis 9:6: '
Whoso sheddeth human blood, by men shall his blood be shed.”
Researchers found that the term 'arur', meaning 'cursed', appeared twelve times on each side, with the captions 'Outside' and 'Outside B' – six on each side
The team also conducted a chemical analysis and discovered that the lead used to make that tablet came from a mine in the Aegean Sea, Greece, that was operating when the tablet was made.
Pieter Gert van der Veen of the Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz in Germany, who was involved in the discovery, said: 'From the symmetry I could see that it was written as a chiastic parallelism.'
According to van der Veen, reading the hidden letters proved tedious, 'but every day we found new letters and words written in a very old script.'
The team also conducted a chemical analysis and discovered that the lead used to make that tablet came from a mine in the Aegean Sea, Greece, that was operating when the tablet was made.
“We have an ancient text that says the Israelites arrived around 1400 [B.C.]and then we have evidence that they sat on a mountain where the Bible says they wrote a language that the Bible says they used,” Stripling shared. Living Science.
“I think an honest person would be willing to inductively conclude that Israelites were there.”
However, not all archaeologists are convinced: a study published this month claimed the tablet was used as a fishing lure.
Archaeologist Aren Maeir of Israel's Bar-Ilan University told LiveScience that he and his team also performed an X-ray on the tablet and found no such inscriptions.
But they were etchings resulting from weathering.