A massive stone, deliberately laid on its side and buried within the walls of an ancient Judean home, may provide physical evidence consistent with interpretations of King Hezekiah’s reported religious reforms.

The Hebrew Bible describes the events of Hezekiah’s reforms, including the tearing down of shrines, the destruction of sacred pillars, and the relocation of religious practice from the countryside into royal control in Jerusalem. For decades, archaeologists have searched for evidence of these changes, mostly by studying temples and public worship sites.

A new study by Avraham Faust of Bar-Ilan University, published in the Jerusalem Journal of Archaeology, suggests that important evidence may also be found in private residences.

A Stone That Wasn’t Supposed to Move

The study focuses on a massebah, a cultic standing stone about 4.6 feet tall and weighing 750 kilograms, found at Tel ‘Eton in the Judean Lowlands. The stone was originally located inside Building 101, a large residence sometimes referred to as the Governor’s Residency. Archaeologists found it placed in the largest room, directly opposite the entrance, where it functioned as a central feature for anyone entering the building.

Decommissioned, Not Destroyed

Sometime before the Assyrian destruction of Tel ‘Eton at the end of the eighth century BCE, during the period of Hezekiah’s reign, the stone’s status changed. Rather than leaving it upright and visible, the builders laid it on its side and incorporated it into a stone platform. The people responsible did not smash or desecrate the stone. They carefully removed it from use without destroying it.

“Those responsible for changing religious practices may have wished to eliminate the stone’s ritual function, and perhaps wanted the old ritual objects desecrated, but the people who carried out the change seem to have treated it with respect,” Faust said. “They removed it from use without destroying it, effectively neutralizing its cultic significance while preserving the object itself.”

Rare Domestic Evidence

Most searches for evidence of the events of Hezekiah’s reforms have focused on public worship sites, such as the temple at Arad and the dismantled altar at Beersheba. Researchers consider these sites significant, but competing interpretations persist, partly because so few examples exist.

Domestic religious practice presents a different challenge. When a household abandoned a religious object, people often removed or discarded it, leaving no trace for archaeologists to find centuries later. Since ordinary homes do not receive the same archaeological attention as temples and traditional sites of worship, evidence of religious practice located within these residences often disappears rather than being properly preserved or studied. This makes the Tel ‘Eton stone unusual in the archaeological record. People left it in place, buried it, and sealed it inside a platform, where it remained undisturbed for nearly 3,000 years.

An Open Question

Faust does not overstate the discovery. The study does not claim that Hezekiah’s policies directly led to the stone’s decommissioning. The dating places the event only within his reign, but not as a definite result of them. Still, the timing, the method of removal, and the care taken to preserve the object all match a period when religious practice across Judah appears to have been changing.

Austin Burgess is a writer and researcher with a background in sales, marketing, and data analytics. He holds an MBA, a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration, and a data analytics certification. His work focuses on breaking scientific developments, with an emphasis on emerging biology, cognitive neuroscience, and archaeological discoveries.

Psilocybin therapy involves more than the compound itself, and a new research initiative at the University of Southern California is investigating the effects of combining psilocybin with structured mental training.

A team from the Keck School of Medicine of USC, working with the USC Dornsife Brain and Creativity Institute and the USC Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center, has begun the university’s first clinical trial of psychedelic therapy. The study will examine whether structured mindfulness meditation can boost the effects of psilocybin, the active ingredient in psychedelic mushrooms, on mental well-being and cognitive performance.

Funding for the trial comes from ARPA-H’s EVIDENT initiative, a federal program designed to accelerate the development of rapid-acting treatments for mental and behavioral health conditions. The study will investigate whether adding mindfulness training to psilocybin-assisted therapy yields outcomes distinct from those of psilocybin-assisted therapy alone.

A Schedule 1 Drug With a Breakthrough Label

Although the Controlled Substances Act still classifies psilocybin as a Schedule I substance, the FDA has granted it a breakthrough therapy designation for major depressive disorder and treatment-resistant depression. In clinical settings, psilocybin has shown promise in treating these conditions, and other studies suggest it may also help with addiction.

Psilocybin alters a person’s perception, mood, and thought processes, and can influence how individuals experience their senses and their sense of time and space. With therapeutic support, people often report emotionally meaningful or spiritual experiences during these altered states.

Testing Whether Mental Training Changes the Outcome

About 72 middle-aged adults from the Los Angeles area will take part in the study. All participants will have no psychiatric or medical conditions and no previous experience with either psychedelics or meditation. Researchers will assign participants to one of two groups: one will receive supervised psilocybin alone, while the other will receive psilocybin alongside an eight-week mindfulness training program designed to build attention and focus through structured meditation.

The study is based on the hypothesis that mindfulness training, which has demonstrated mental and physical health benefits independently, may enhance the effects of psilocybin-assisted therapy when used together.

“Mindfulness meditation practice provides people with the tools to deconstruct unhelpful narratives, a process that may be amplified by psilocybin-assisted therapy,” said Rael Cahn, MD, PhD, director of the USC Center for Mindfulness Science and the study’s co-lead. The trial, he said, is meant to clarify how combining the two approaches “may enhance both the potential immediate and longer-term effects of psychedelic medicine.”

An Unusually Deep Data Set

The team will collect extensive biological, neurological, and psychological data from participants throughout the study. Participants will undergo EEG scans, brain MRI and fMRI imaging, and provide saliva, blood, and stool samples. Researchers will administer psychological and cognitive assessments before and after treatment and will survey participants again at three, six, and twelve months.

The team will use the data to track changes across psychological, cognitive, neurological, and biological measures, including well-being, spirituality, brain activity, and markers of inflammation and brain health. The open-label design means both participants and researchers are aware of group assignments, which allows for more comprehensive data collection at the expense of some blinding rigor.

Through the EVIDENT initiative, researchers will contribute anonymized trial results to a national repository. The resource will help researchers identify broader patterns in rapid-acting mental health treatments.

“Psilocybin-assisted therapy has the potential to revolutionize how we approach mental health research,” said Caryn Lerman, PhD, director of the USC Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center and the study’s other co-lead. Beyond addiction, she said, there’s growing evidence the treatment could improve “quality of life and emotional well-being for people facing serious illness and end-of-life challenges.”

A Test Case for the Next Wave of Psychedelic Medicine

If mindfulness training is shown to enhance the effects of psilocybin therapy, future protocols for psychedelic treatment may incorporate mental training as an additional component of treatment. Regardless of the outcome, the study will generate one of the most detailed biological and psychological datasets from a psilocybin trial to date.

Whether mindfulness ultimately amplifies psilocybin’s effects remains an open question. By tracking participants’ brains, biology, and psychological well-being over the course of a year, the USC team hopes to generate some of the clearest data yet on how mindset and psychedelic medicine interact.

Austin Burgess is a writer and researcher with a background in sales, marketing, and data analytics. He holds an MBA, a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration, and a data analytics certification. His work focuses on breaking scientific developments, with an emphasis on emerging biology, cognitive neuroscience, and archaeological discoveries.