Stones, ash and bones: The mysterious discovery in the heart of the country

Mount Ebal is the kind of site where one verse can turn into an archaeological question spanning decades. According to the Book of Joshua, after entering the Land of Israel, Joshua builds an altar on Mount Ebal. The event is presented as part of a significant change: a people who lived for forty years as nomads are now required to become a society of permanent settlements, families, agriculture, property, and institutions. Along with the home and the land, it must also build a shared identity.

Within this process, the altar on Mount Ebal takes on a broad meaning. It marks an attempt to maintain the unity of worship and faith precisely at the moment when the tribes are scattering across the country and being exposed to local centers of worship of the Canaanite peoples.

And then came archaeology.

Between the years 1982 and 1989, as part of the Mount Menashe survey, Prof. Adam Zertal uncovered a stone structure with a ramp on the northeastern spur of Mount Ebal, and inside it, remains of ash and bones. Zertal dated the site to the last quarter of the 13th century BCE and identified it with the altar described in the Book of Joshua.

The structure was built of whole stones that were not worked with iron. Pottery vessels, cultic remains, and bones of kosher animals were found at the site, including sheep, cattle, and fallow deer, while pig bones were absent from the findings. Additional findings, including scarabs and genizah pits, strengthened the understanding that this is a site with a cultic character.

However, Zertal's identification sparked a controversy that continues to this day. Researchers who opposed the identification pointed to characteristics that they claimed do not align with known biblical altars, including the shape of the structure, the orientation of its corners, and the fact that about 70% of the ceramic findings at the site consist of jars used for daily life and not of cultic vessels.

Most researchers agree that this is a cultic site from the early Iron Age or the end of the Bronze Age. The question that remains open is whether it can be unequivocally identified with the biblical altar of Joshua.

It is precisely this uncertainty that makes Mount Ebal a place that well illustrates the idea underlying the "Derech Eretz Morashet" (Heritage of the Land) project. As part of the project, a move is being promoted on a scale of about 113 million shekels at more than 70 sites, based on the perception that an archaeological site does not end on the day the excavation ends. It requires preservation, protection, ongoing research, and above all, accessibility that will allow the public to encounter the findings at the place where they were discovered.

On Mount Ebal, this importance is sharpened especially: even when researchers are divided on the question of whether the structure uncovered is indeed the biblical altar of Joshua, there is a broader consensus on its cultic character and its importance for understanding the beginning of the settlement period.

Minister of Heritage Amichai Eliyahu (Otzma Yehudit) explains:

"Mount Ebal is one of those sites that illustrate the power of the connection between the Tanakh, archaeology, and the landscape of the Land of Israel. As part of the 'Derech Eretz Morashet' project, we seek to ensure that such places do not remain the preserve of researchers only, but will be accessible to the public."

According to him, "The questions that Mount Ebal raises are part of our heritage no less than the answers, and therefore our duty is to preserve the site and allow future generations to continue to research it."

One does not have to arrive at the site to receive a ready-made answer. One can arrive to meet the question itself: to stand next to the stones, to read the biblical text, to see what archaeology found, and to understand how research, tradition, and landscape meet — and sometimes also argue.