THE MOUNT EBAL LEADEN CURSE TABLET
AND THE CRISIS IN ALPHABET RESEARCH
Brian Edric Colless MA BD PhD ThD
This remarkable little artefact (a mere 2 x 2 centimetres), resting on the hand of the archaeologist Scott Stripling, is believed (by Stripling and some other scholars) to be an imprecatory tablet, technically known as a defixio. It was discovered in December 2019, on Mount Ebal (near modern Nablus, ancient Shekem, on the "West Bank" of the Jordan River), in the course of an expedition of the Associates for Biblical Research, led by Scott Stripling. It has now appeared officially in a preliminary publication:
"You are Cursed by the God YHW:" an early Hebrew inscription from Mt. Ebal
https://heritagesciencejournal.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/s40494-023-00920-9?fbclid=IwAR3G9ih5D98ZCB7t1Wk7fIXfVerZzXAdu2Uiw4yqP8KYDCDEvFbnh3Qs7LM
The story of its discovery and its decipherment is told here:
A Tsunami from Mt. Ebal: Cursed by the God Yahu
https://www.academia.edu/104014709/A_Tsunami_from_Mt_Ebal_BAS_Spring_2023
Scott Stripling, Abigail Leavitt, Pieter Gert van der Veen, Bible and Spade, 36.2 (2023)
My tentative opinion is that the editors have largely succeeded in deciphering the two inscriptions (interior and exterior), discerning that the roots for "die" (MWT) and "curse" ('RR) are multiply present; but some of their interpretations may be slightly awry.
For my part, I will suggest some other possibilities.
Instead of the indicative mood, I will propose the imperative mood for some of the verbs: "Die!" (MT). "Be accursed!" (H'R or HT`R).
Bottom: the folded leaden tablet, unopened.
Top right: the exterior inscription,"Outer A".
Top left: traces ("bulges") of the "Inner B" text on the outside .
The red spot indicates the broken corner of the object; apparently it should be positioned as the top right corner when reading the Outer A text.
The engraver had written an elaborate "cursary" (my word for a collection of curses, in the sense of invocations of doom upon an offender, incantations of death, involving a deity, and therefore not magic spells but imprecations). Yahwe (rather than Yahu), the god named in this conjuration, would be the agent of the curses, analogous to ancient treaties, in which the gods named in the covenant administer the curses and blessings written in the document.
This was the procedure: a small strip of lead was prepared, and on one half of its face the cursary was inscribed with a stylus; the unmarked part of the document was then folded over as an envelope, and the elaborate curse was repeated in tiny writing on the outside; thus the imprecation was recorded in duplicate, and even in triplicate, as the imprint of the first impression was bulging on the rear side to some extent.
How was the concealed inscription read? Surprisingly, against our preconceptions about the metal lead (plumbum) being impenetrable to X-rays, the results were achieved by employing "X-ray computed tomography and advanced data processing", producing and analysing the photographs of 46 "slices". Say no more.
See the moving picture of the detecting process:
https://static-content.springer.com/esm/art%3A10.1186%2Fs40494-023-00920-9/MediaObjects/40494_2023_920_MOESM1_ESM.gif
As is my custom, I will ponder whether the revealed letters belong to a syllabary, and thus represent syllables (consonant plus vowel, syllabograms), not simply consonants (consonantograms).
By the way, there is a word "leaden" (like "golden") which helps in decoding the multi-purpose 'lead" (liid or led?); I have just seen it in action in a Father Brown story of G. K. Chesterton.