event · E0304
Beersheba Horned Altar מזבח הקרנות מתל באר שבע
A monumental four-horned sacrificial altar of smooth-hewn ashlars, about 160 × 160 cm, reconstructed from stones found reused in a storehouse wall at Tel Beersheba in Yohanan Aharoni's excavations — physical remains of a bamah of the kind the Tanakh describes, and deliberately dismantled in antiquity, plausibly in Chizkiyahu's centralization of worship. One block carries an incised serpent. The reconstructed original stands in a place of honor at the entrance to the Israel Museum's Bronfman Archaeology Wing — the first large object greeting visitors — with a replica at Tel Beersheba National Park.
I. Who
- Hebrew
- מזבח הקרנות מתל באר שבע
- Also known as
- Tel Be'er Sheva altar, Four-horned altar of Beersheba
- Era
- bible
II. When
- Traditional
- c. 3110–3199 AM — its century of use on the atlas's schematic count, ending at Chizkiyahu's centralization (accession 3199)
- Civil (computed)
- 3110–3199 AM · 651–562 BCE (trad.)
- Academic
- 8th century BCE; dismantled in antiquity, linked to Chizkiyahu's (or, per Yadin, Yoshiyahu's) cult reform
- Date range
- 8th century BCE; dismantled in antiquity
- Duration
- ≈89 years
- Precision
- approximate
Why it matters
The Tanakh spends chapters condemning the bamot — the local altars where people sacrificed outside the Beit HaMikdash — and here one stands. Its dimensions echo the five-by-five-cubit altar of the Torah, but it is built of smoothly hewn stones, exactly what the Torah forbids; whoever built it knew the tradition and did not fully keep it. Then someone took it apart, and its stones ended up in a warehouse wall — matching the account that Chizkiyahu removed the bamot and centralized worship in Jerusalem. It now greets every visitor at the entrance to the Israel Museum's archaeology wing: the argument between kings and altars, in stone.
V. How do we know
| Claim | Evidence | Confidence | Sources |
|---|---|---|---|
| The altar's ashlars were found in secondary use in a storehouse wall at Tel Beersheba in Yohanan Aharoni's Tel Aviv University excavations (1969–76; the altar identified in 1973) and reconstructed to a four-horned altar of roughly 160 × 160 cm; one block bears an incised serpent. The reconstructed original stands at the entrance to the Israel Museum's Bronfman Archaeology Wing; a replica stands at Tel Beersheba National Park. | archaeology external | ★★★★★ | |
| The altar's dimensions approximate the five-by-five-cubit altar prescribed in Shemot 27:1, but it is built of hewn (gazit) stones — against the Torah's explicit rule that an altar of stones must not be built of hewn stone (Shemot 20:22). It is a bamah that both echoes and violates the Torah's altar laws.
The cubit equivalence is Aharoni's interpretive observation; the hewn-stone contrast is plain on the object.
|
biblical archaeology | ★★★★☆ | |
| The altar was dismantled in antiquity and its stones reused. Aharoni linked the dismantling to Chizkiyahu's removal of the bamot (Melachim II 18:4; cf. the Assyrian taunt at 18:22), while Yigael Yadin argued for a later, Yoshiyahu-era date (Melachim II 23:8 — bamot defiled "from Geva to Beer Sheva"). The dismantling is a fact of the stratigraphy; its attribution to a specific reform is debated. | biblical archaeology reconstruction | ★★★☆☆ | |
| The AM placement (c. 3110–3199) is a schematic Mesorah Atlas reconstruction: the altar's century of use is laid onto the traditional count so that its dismantling meets Chizkiyahu's accession (3199 AM on the atlas's royal chronology). The academic 8th-century date laid arithmetically onto the AM scale would give roughly 2960–3060; the two arithmetics do not merge, and the atlas places the object by its biblical synchronism. | tradition reconstruction | ★★☆☆☆ |
Referenced by: Chizkiyahu