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Description
This bronze bull was found on a hilltop southwest of Mt. Gilboa, all the way at the northern end of the central hill. When the site was excavated, excavators found an elliptical wall, 70 feet in diameter, inside of which was a large, roughly hewn stone that was 4 feet long, 3 feet high, and 1.75 feet thick. Next to the large stone were some paving stones. Nearby was a piece of folded bronze that had a handle attached and a square fragment of pottery that might have been part of a square-based incense burner like those found at Beit Shean, Megiddo, and Taanach. The excavator interpreted the wall as a temenos (i.e., a sacred enclosure), the bronze fragment as a mirror, and the large stone as an altar. The placement of the site and the combination of the above evidence also led him to conclude that the bull figure had been used at this site and that it was an early Israelite open-air high place, or bamah. Early Israelite bull worship is known from the Bible (Exodus 32), as well as in the northern Kingdom of Israel in the Iron Age II (1 Kings 12:28-33; 2 Kings 10:29). Other scholars have challenged these conclusions, saying that the evidence is too slim to conclude that it was a shrine, let alone that it was an Israelite shrine.