event · E0489
Mount Ebal Altar מזבח יהושע בהר עיבל
A large rectangular installation of unhewn field stones on the northeastern slope of Har Eival, above Shechem in the Shomron, discovered in Adam Zertal's Manasseh Hill Country Survey in 1980 and excavated by him for the University of Haifa from 1982 to 1989. The main structure (Stratum IB, Iron Age I) is a filled stone platform of roughly 7 × 9 m ascended by a ramp — not steps — ringed by ledges and courtyards with dozens of installations, and packed with thousands of animal bones, overwhelmingly young male bulls, sheep, goats, and fallow deer, many of them burnt, with no pig at all. Zertal identified it as the altar Yehoshua built on Har Eival; the identification is fought to this day — Kempinski answered with a watchtower — but even critics broadly accept an Iron I cultic or ceremonial site. The site remains in situ on Har Eival.
I. Who
- Hebrew
- מזבח יהושע בהר עיבל
- Also known as
- Joshua's Altar, el-Burnat, Zertal's Mount Ebal site
- Era
- bible
II. When
- Traditional
- 2488–2489 AM — Yehoshua builds the altar on Har Eival upon Israel's entry into the land; the tradition itself divides over the day, with Sotah 36a placing the whole ceremony on the very day of crossing the Yarden and other voices in the tradition setting it later in the conquest years.
- Civil (computed)
- 2488–2489 AM · 1273–1272 BCE (trad.)
- Academic
- Iron Age I, c. 1250–1200 BCE — Stratum II founded in the mid-13th century and the main Stratum IB structure c. 1200 BCE, dated by the Israelite-type pottery and two Egyptian-style scarabs of the Ramesses II–III horizon.
- Date range
- Iron Age I, c. 1250–1200 BCE (academic); built 2488–2489 AM ≈ 1273–1272 BCE on the traditional count
- Duration
- ≈1 years
- Precision
- approximate
IV. What
- Events
- Conquest of the Land
Why it matters
The Torah commands that when Israel crosses the Yarden it must build an altar of unhewn stones on Har Eival, and Sefer Yehoshua says it was done. On that very mountain sits a great stone structure of exactly the right period, and the details are what make it argue: it is climbed by a ramp, because the Torah forbids steps on an altar; it is a shell filled with stones, earth, and ash, the same fill construction the Mishnah describes for the altar in the Beit HaMikdash; and its thousands of burnt bones come only from kosher animals — young bulls, sheep, goats, and fallow deer, with not one pig bone on a hill country site where pig is otherwise common. What is certain is the site itself: a real Iron Age I installation, scientifically excavated, that nearly everyone agrees served some cultic or ceremonial purpose. What is debated is the name on it — Zertal called it the altar of Yehoshua, critics called it a watchtower or withheld the word "altar" — and the atlas grades the identification, not the stones. And the dates nearly meet: the traditional count puts Yehoshua's altar at 2488–2489 AM, about 1273 BCE, while the scarabs and pottery date the site to about 1250–1200 BCE — a rare near-convergence of the two chronologies for so early an era, off by decades rather than centuries.
V. How do we know
| Claim | Evidence | Confidence | Sources |
|---|---|---|---|
| Adam Zertal discovered the site in April 1980 during the Manasseh Hill Country Survey and excavated it for the University of Haifa over eight seasons, 1982–1989, on the northeastern slope of Har Eival (the hill known as el-Burnat). Two strata: Stratum II, an earlier installation founded in the mid-13th century BCE, and Stratum IB, the main structure — a rectangular platform of roughly 7 × 9 m built of large unhewn field stones and deliberately filled with layers of stones, earth, ash, and animal bones, ascended by a stone ramp rather than steps, with surrounding ledges and two courtyards holding dozens of installations of pottery, ash, and bones. The pottery is Israelite-type Iron Age I, and two Egyptian-style scarabs of the Ramesses II–III horizon date the strata to c. 1250–1200 BCE. | archaeology | ★★★★★ | |
| The bone assemblage is the decisive fact of the site: thousands of animal bones from the fill and installations — the analyzed sample alone runs to several thousand — belonging to young male bulls, sheep, goats, and fallow deer, a striking share of them burnt or scorched, and with no pig bones at all, on a hill-country horizon where pig is otherwise a routine find. The faunal analysis was published by Liora Kolska Horwitz alongside Zertal's report. | archaeology | ★★★★★ | |
| Zertal identified the structure as the altar Yehoshua built on Har Eival (Yehoshua 8:30–35), fulfilling the command of Devarim 27:4–8 to build there an altar of unhewn stones — the covenant ceremony the Mishnah recalls at Sotah 7:5. His argument rests on the location itself; on the ramp, since the Torah forbids ascending an altar by steps (Shemot 20:23) and Mishnah Middot 3:3–4 describes the Temple altar's ramp and its fill construction, both paralleled here; on the species — bulls, sheep, and goats are the Torah's sacrificial animals, and the fallow deer, though never a korban, is kosher; and on the burnt, young-male profile matching olot. The identification is a possible reading of a real structure, not a demonstrated one.
Graded at the strength of the connection, not the find: the anchor texts are secure, the structure is real, and the attachment of the one to the other is the debated reading — "debated" on this entry means the identification, and only the identification. The fallow deer, a kosher species that is not a sacrificial one, is cited by both sides.
|
biblical archaeology | ★★★☆☆ | |
| The identification is genuinely debated. Aharon Kempinski answered Zertal in print with a counter-reading of the structure as an Iron Age I watchtower onto which an "altar" had been imposed; others have questioned whether calling any early Iron I installation an altar is anachronistic, and the site's location in the Shomron has kept its interpretation entangled in politics. But the debate has narrowed, not dissolved, the cultic reading: the bone profile — kosher species, young males, burnt, no pig — is accepted on all sides, and even critics broadly allow an Iron I cultic or ceremonial site. No one disputes the excavation or the stones.
As with the Stepped Stone Structure, the site is authenticated and the identification is the fought-over part; the entity grade carries the debate so the map and library say so honestly.
|
archaeology | ★★★★★ | |
| The AM placement (2488–2489) is the traditional count's own datum: Yehoshua enters the land in 2488 AM and builds the altar on Har Eival, with the tradition divided over the day — Sotah 36a has Israel cross the Yarden, come to Har Gerizim and Har Eival, and build the altar all on the same day, while other voices place the ceremony later in the conquest. On the tradition's own arithmetic that is about 1273–1272 BCE; the academic dating of the strata is c. 1250–1200 BCE. Above the Persian-period seam the two chronologies normally run far apart, and here they nearly meet — a convergence of decades, not centuries, rare for so early a horizon. The convergence does not prove the identification; it is why the identification is arguable at all.
Schematic placement per the standing existence-point rule; the entry is positioned at the traditional building date, which the academic window brackets within a few decades.
|
tradition reconstruction | ★★☆☆☆ |