Too Good to Be True? Reckoning with Sensational Inscriptions

Ancient inscriptions that connect in some way to the Bible often garner much attention. BAR readers are likely very familiar with notable texts such as the Tel Dan Stele, the Moabite Stone, the Amarna Letters, and the Dead Sea Scrolls, all of which shed substantial light on biblical places, peoples, and events. These textual (or epigraphic) finds have provided dramatic insights into ancient languages and cultures and unquestionably improved our understanding of biblical history.

But in the field of epigraphy, which focuses on the study of ancient inscriptions, there are also many instances where scholars—often along with the media and the general public—overstate, misrepresent, or mischaracterize the importance of newly discovered inscriptions, leading to sensational and distorted views of the biblical past. Here I deal with three recent examples of such inscriptions and the lessons both scholars and the public should take from them.

A New (Old) “Hezekiah” Inscription

A fragmentary inscription excavated in Jerusalem almost 20 years ago recently became the subject of substantial interest. The inscription was chiseled into stone and written in very nice Old Hebrew script. Paleographically, the script can be dated to the late eighth or early seventh century BCE. There is absolutely no doubt that the inscription is ancient.

However, scholars Gershon Galil and Eli Shukron recently made the striking claim that this fragmentary inscription should be read “Hezekiah made the pool in Jerusalem.”¹ At first blush, this sounds fairly reasonable.² After all, the Bible does refer to Hezekiah as having been responsible for the tunnel that is normally referred to as “Hezekiah’s Tunnel” (2 Kings 20:20; 2 Chronicles 32:30), and we do have a very nice Old Hebrew inscription from the late eighth century that was found in that tunnel, namely, the famed Siloam Tunnel Inscription. But a picture is worth a thousand words, and in the case of the recent claims, the photos demonstrate clearly that this inscription is brief and fragmentary.

Here are the facts. Only two fragmentary lines are present, and there is not even a single complete word. The preserved lines and letters are: (1) […]qyh[…] (2) […]kh.b[…]. The first line probably does contain the end of a personal name: the letter qoph followed by the first two letters of the standard Yahwistic theophoric element (yhw), namely yod and he (not preserved, of course, is the final letter, vav, which sometimes is dropped in any case). The second line has a kaph and a he. After the he, there is a word divider in the form of a dot (indicating that the he was the last letter of the preceding word) and then a bet (as the first letter of the next word). That’s it.

Galil and Shukron contend, however, that the royal name “Hezekiah” (ḥzqyh) can be restored in the first line and that the word “pool” (brkh) can be restored in the second. They also assume that “Jerusalem” can be restored after the bet, a letter they assume to be the preposition “in.” Finally, they restore the entire Hebrew word for “made” (‘ śh) as well.

Let’s look closely at this situation. The scholars propose to restore two thirds of the root letters of the name “Hezekiah” (het and zayin) and two thirds of the root letters of the word “pool” (bet and resh). And they restore every single letter of the words for both “Jerusalem” (yod, resh, shin, lamed, mem) and “made” (ayin, śin, he). In short, despite there being only six preserved letters in this fragmentary inscription, the scholars restore a dozen additional letters, meaning the restored letters outnumber the preserved letters two to one! In the field of epigraphy, it is sometimes possible to make some modest restorations, especially in formulaic legal or literary texts. But outside of those situations, restorations are quite precarious.

COURTESY ISRAEL ANTIQUITIES AUTHORITY

Of course, some might suggest that restoring a het and a zayin in the first line, to form the name Hezekiah, makes good sense. And, indeed, that is one possibility. But, before jumping to conclusions, let us consider other personal names from the Hebrew Bible (or even other Old Hebrew inscriptions) that could be read here instead. Among the many possibilities are: Bukki (bqy), Bukkiah (bqyhw), Bazak (bzq), Habakkuk (ḥbqwq), Helek (ḥlq), Hilkiah (ḥlqyhw), Zedekiah (ṣdqyhw), Bakbuk (bqbwq), Isaac (yiṣḥaq), Azbok (‘zbwq), Azki (‘zqy), Amok (‘mwq), Eshek (‘ šq), Shobek (šwbq), and Shashak (ššq). And the list could go on.

And even if the first line does contain a personal name, there is also the question of the person’s identity. It could be the name of the stonemason responsible for the inscription or a royal or military official lauded for some achievement. It could even be the fragmentary remains of a list of royal officials, like some of the lists of officials we find in the Hebrew Bible (e.g., 2 Samuel 8:16–18; 2 Kings 18:18, 37; Isaiah 36:3, 22). Similarly, this inscription could be from the time of the completion of the Siloam Tunnel (late eighth century) or, because the tunnel was used for centuries thereafter, it could have been written later, perhaps in the early seventh century (as the script would allow). Ultimately, we just don’t know, and that’s the problem with speculation.

The Mt. Ebal “Inscription”

In March 2022, a team of scholars announced the discovery and decipherment of a roughly 1-by-1-inch folded lead “inscription” from the late second millennium BCE found near the site of Mt. Ebal in the West Bank.^a According to the scholars, there are 48 letters on the inside of this folded piece of lead. However, the letters are not discernible to the naked eye, since this lead “tablet” remains folded and cannot be opened (because of the lead’s fragility). Nevertheless, thanks to advanced imaging technology, they contend the letters can be read as an inscription: “Cursed, cursed, cursed—cursed by the God Yhw [Yahweh]. You will die cursed. Cursed you will surely die. Cursed by Yhw—cursed, cursed, cursed.” The scholars believe the inscription was written in “proto-alphabetic” script and is probably Hebrew, which would make it the oldest Hebrew inscription ever found.

When the find was first announced, a number of dramatic claims were made about its significance. The lead archaeologist, Scott Stripling, stated at the press conference announcing its discovery, “One can no longer argue with a straight face that the biblical text was not written until the Persian period or the Hellenistic period, as many higher critics have done, when we clearly do have the ability to write the entire text [of the Bible] at a much, much earlier date.” And one of the team’s epigraphers, Gershon Galil, said that “the scribe who wrote this important text, he could write every chapter in the Bible,” before going on to claim that it was “the most important inscription ever found in Israel.”

JAROSLAV VALACH, FROM STRIPLING ET AL., “‘YOU ARE CURSED BY THE GOD YHW’: AN EARLY HEBREW INSCRIPTION FROM MT. EBAL,” HERITAGE SCIENCE 11:105 (2023) / CC BY 4.0

In May 2023, when the object was published in the journal Heritage Science and the team’s readings and claims could finally be scrutinized, an even more troubling problem appeared: The published photos did not demonstrate the presence of any actual letters. Of course, the article included drawings of the inscription, and there are some legible letters in the drawings, but the problem is that the drawings do not correspond at all with the photos. In fact, all that can be seen in the published photos are random scratches, striations, pitting, and indentations. A basic principle of modern epigraphy is that photos or images of an inscription must demonstrate the cogency of any readings. In other words, concrete proof is required. Of course, sometimes an inscription might be faded or abraded, and someone might not always be able to see every single part of every single letter. But in the case of the Mt. Ebal “inscription,” there is no correspondence between the published images and the published drawings. Indeed, I do not believe that the lead “tablet” has an inscription at all.³

DANIEL VAVRIK; FROM STRIPLING
ET AL., “‘YOU ARE CURSED BY THE GOD YHW’: AN EARLY HEBREW
INSCRIPTION FROM MT. EBAL,” HERITAGE SCIENCE 11:105 (2023) / CC BY 4.0

GERSHON GALIL; FROM STRIPLING
ET AL., “‘YOU ARE CURSED BY THE GOD YHW’: AN EARLY HEBREW
INSCRIPTION FROM MT. EBAL,” HERITAGE SCIENCE 11:105 (2023) / CC BY 4.0

Various aspects of this situation are instructive. First, sometimes scholars can and do overstate the evidence, sometimes dramatically so. In fact, whenever I hear someone state that a particular find is the “first,” “oldest,” “most important,” or that it will “revolutionize” the field of biblical studies or epigraphy, I am suspicious. Second, the peer-review process for scholarly journals and books is useful and necessary, and it filters out a fair amount of problematic, tenuous, and erroneous claims. However, poor scholarship does sometimes slip through. And some journals and presses are better than others at screening out poor scholarship. Therefore, no one should assume that a peer-reviewed publication is beyond reproach. Third, scholars should not attempt to force readings on a text. Although we may all want to make letters out of things that are no more than scratches on metal (or pottery or stone) or darkened areas on papyrus, we should restrain ourselves and allow facts, reason, and judicious assessments to be the rule. There is no place for forced readings or grandiose claims in the field of epigraphy.

The Darius Inscription

King Darius (r. 522–486 BCE) is rightfully famous in the world of biblical studies. After all, Darius was the Persian hegemon who ruled over Judah when the Second Temple was completed during the time of Ezra (Ezra 6:1–15; Haggai 1–2; Zechariah 1, 7; Daniel 6).

COURTESY NATHAN STEINMEYER

Because of Darius’s importance to the history of post-exilic Judah, it was not entirely surprising that an inscription mentioning Darius might be found in Israel. And, indeed, on March 1, 2023, the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) announced that an Aramaic inscription with the words “Year 24 of Darius” had been found on a pottery sherd discovered at the site of Lachish in the Judean foothills. But the inscription was not found during an excavation. Rather, it was a surface find, picked up by a tourist who was visiting the site. After being turned over to the IAA, the potsherd was analyzed in a laboratory and the results reportedly affirmed its dating and authenticity. A noted epigrapher also studied the object and said it was ancient.

But I was suspicious. The day the find was announced, my only public statement, which I shared on my Facebook page, was “I’d like to see the full laboratory tests.” After all, it was a surface find and not found in a stratified archaeological context. Moreover, it was an incised inscription, the easiest of all inscriptions to fake. And, in addition, thousands of sherds from the Iron Age (and earlier and later periods) are readily available on archaeological sites, so finding a good piece of pottery to write on is incredibly easy. The only other things one would need to fake the inscription are a sharp tool (preferably an ancient piece of iron, something that is not that hard to come by on the antiquities market), a standard Aramaic textbook with good script charts, and a reliable lexicon of ancient Aramaic.

Two days after the IAA’s announcement, decisive evidence appeared. The person who made the inscription came forth, confessing it was not ancient but had actually been made just a few months earlier, ostensibly as an on-site teaching lesson about how to make an Aramaic inscription. The IAA then issued a retraction, stating that “the inscription bearing the name Darius the Great is not authentic.”^b

Again, several aspects of this situation are instructive. First, in epigraphy, the antiquity of the medium (the “writing surface”) does not guarantee the antiquity of the letters on that medium. In ancient times, inscriptions were written on various media, including pottery, metal, parchment, papyrus, clay, and stone. All of these can be found on the antiquities market today. Second, it is not that difficult to produce an inscription that can dupe trained specialists, be it an epigrapher looking at the script or a hard scientist performing laboratory tests. Both happened in this case. Third, researchers sometimes fail to perform the right tests to determine authenticity. In this case, two simple tests could have rapidly demonstrated this sherd was incised in the modern period: a patina analysis of the interior of the incised letters, and microscopic analysis of the letters to look for traces of metal. By examining the patina (surface accretions that develop over time), researchers would have quickly noticed that the incised letters did not have the same patina as the rest of the sherd (since the incisions would have etched away the patina that had developed on the surface of the sherd over the past 2,500 years). Similarly, in studying the inscription under a microscope, they would have almost certainly identified tiny metal fragments of the modern tool (likely a knife or chisel) that was used to create the inscription.

***

A basic cycle is often repeated when a new inscription comes to light: Some scholar (or team of scholars) makes a sensational and dramatic claim about an inscription, and then the media repeats this claim, often without sufficient caution. And then the general public will often assume that this scholar’s interpretation of the evidence must be correct (perhaps because the scholar has a Ph.D. or because they teach at a prestigious college or university). At that point, more careful and sober scholars try to tamp down the hype, and soon a solid consensus begins to emerge, at least within the academy, about the actual importance (or non-importance) of the inscription.

But the problem is that after those initial sensational claims are made, some people so earnestly want them to be true that they hold on to them for dear life in spite of overwhelming factual evidence to the contrary. Exacerbating the situation is the fact that people love to trumpet the sensational claims made about these supposedly dramatic, field-shattering discoveries on the megaphone of the internet and social media. And, in this way, the sensational claims live on, even if the scholarly community largely believes otherwise.

At least for me, dramatic claims require dramatic, credible, and compelling evidence. It’s a high bar, but I think we should all be especially fond of facts and try to see through smoke, mirrors, and speculation. Ultimately, I think the field is best served when scholars are careful, circumspect, and do not overstate the facts. And, if ever in doubt, here’s a good rule of thumb: If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.

Editor’s note: Christopher Rollston serves on BAR’s Editorial Advisory Board.

From time to time, the world of biblical archaeology is upended by the discovery of a remarkable inscription. But is it possible that our insatiable appetite for such groundbreaking finds clouds our ability to evaluate them cautiously and fairly? A closer look at a few recent examples sheds light on how our eagerness to find the sensational can lead even experts to jump to inaccurate conclusions.