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# "You are Cursed by the God YHW": an early Hebrew inscription from Mt. Ebal

**Authors:** Scott Stripling, Gershon Galil, Ivana Kumpova, Jaroslav Valach, Pieter Gert van der Veen, Daniel Vavrik · **Year:** 2023 · **Venue:** Heritage Science 11, article 105 **Link:** [doi.org/10.1186/s40494-023-00920-9](https://doi.org/10.1186/s40494-023-00920-9) · **Licence:** [CC BY 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)

[**3** citations](https://openalex.org/works?filter=cites:W4376126574) openalex · 2026-10-18[Heritage Science](https://openalex.org/S2736968195)[licence](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)

- [Publisher's page](https://doi.org/10.1186/s40494-023-00920-9)
- [PDF](https://heritagesciencejournal.springeropen.com/counter/pdf/10.1186/s40494-023-00920-9)
- [DOI 10.1186/s40494-023-00920-9](https://doi.org/10.1186/s40494-023-00920-9)
- [OpenAlex](https://openalex.org/W4376126574)

**Authors (6)**

1. [Scott Stripling](https://openalex.org/A5073602240) h 2 · 12 citations · 18 works
2. [Gershon Galil](https://openalex.org/A5061682238) h 9 · 303 citations · 89 works
3. [Ivana Kumpová](https://openalex.org/A5069139120) [ORCID](https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8556-4996) · h 14 · 572 citations · 88 works
4. [Jaroslav Valach](https://openalex.org/A5056751434) [ORCID](https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9185-1534) · h 10 · 593 citations · 82 works
5. [Pieter Gert van der Veen](https://openalex.org/A5028596087) h 2 · 8 citations · 25 works
6. [Daniel Vavřı́k](https://openalex.org/A5042539559) [ORCID](https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8599-9903) · h 20 · 1410 citations · 126 works

Citations and author metrics from openalex (2026-10-18); authors with the same name are not always told apart.

## What it is about

A small folded lead tablet was found in 2019 by wet-sifting the dump of Zertal's excavation of the Mt. Ebal "altar". It could not be opened, so the team read its inner faces by X-ray tomography and image processing. They read 48 proto-alphabetic letters (eight letter types) in 14 words, written in several directions, as a curse in three lines: "you are cursed by the god YHW, cursed; you will die, cursed — cursed, you will surely die; cursed you are by YHW — cursed", with ארור six times inside and perhaps six outside (twelve, as in Deut 27). They date it to Late Bronze Age II, call its structure chiastic, and present it as the oldest Hebrew inscription and the oldest attestation of the divine name. The reading and dating rest on faint tomographic traces and have been strongly disputed by other epigraphers; the card records the authors' claims only.

## Ideas

- I1. The curse formula as a speech act: ארור + (2nd person or participle/noun) is a performative curse, as in the twelve ארור of Deut 27:15–26 and Gen 3:14, 4:11, 9:25. A `prag` rule giving act "curse" (and negative evaluation) to sentences headed by ארור, and בָּרוּךְ for "bless", measured on the Torah.
- I2. The pairing מוֹת תָּמוּת (infinitive absolute + finite, "you will surely die") is a fixed emphatic pattern; count it in the Torah (Gen 2:17, 20:7 and others) as a worked example of the infinitive absolute.

## For Mova

I1 is a candidate rule in `tools/macula/src/prag.rs` (the act column; ארר is already in the negative-evaluation list) and a paragraph in [Discourse: narrative, speech and the shape of a text](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/languages/hbo/09-discourse/) (performatives). I2 is a count for `06-verb.md` (infinitives). The epigraphic claims themselves give nothing to the tools: Mova reads the Masoretic text, not inscriptions.

## Cite

The paper itself, not this card. BibTeX from the library's record of the work. [DOI 10.1186/s40494-023-00920-9](https://doi.org/10.1186/s40494-023-00920-9)

```
@inproceedings{stripling2023you,
  title = {{"You are Cursed by the God YHW": an early Hebrew inscription from Mt. Ebal}},
  author = {Stripling, Scott and Galil, Gershon and Kumpová, Ivana and Valach, Jaroslav and Veen, Pieter Gert van der and Vavřı́k, Daniel},
  booktitle = {Heritage Science},
  year = {2023},
  doi = {10.1186/s40494-023-00920-9},
  url = {https://doi.org/10.1186/s40494-023-00920-9}
}
```

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