‘It had teeth': A 3-year-old discovers ancient treasure in Israel

Boston Globe

03-04-2025

Naturally, Ziv picked it up. When she rubbed off the dirt, 'she noticed that it was something very special,' said her mother, Sivan Nitzan.
The alluring pebble turned out to be a 3,800-year-old Egyptian amulet, engraved with the design of an insect known as a scarab and dating from the Bronze Age, according to the Israel Antiquities Authority, which later collected it.
It wasn't the first time that a young hiker had stumbled upon an archaeological treasure in Israel, given its rich history.
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Last year, while on a hike on Mount Carmel in Haifa, a 13-year-old boy found a Roman-era ring with an engraving of the goddess Minerva. In 2016, a 7-year-old boy on a trip with friends in the Beit She'an Valley discovered a well-preserved, 3,400-year-old carving of a nude woman. And many sharp-eyed children have unearthed coins made during periods of Roman or Hasmonean rule.
But Ziv is the youngest child known to have discovered an ancient artifact in Israel, said Yoli Schwartz, a spokesperson for the antiquities authority, who called the find 'very exciting.'
Ziv found the relic near Tel Azekah, an archaeological site and an area described in the Bible as the site of the battle between David and Goliath.
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The amulet most likely belonged to the Canaanites, a group of Semitic people who lived in the area around 1800 B.C., said Oded Lipschits, a professor of Jewish history at Tel Aviv University who is leading an excavation at Tel Azekah. The Canaanites, like others in the region at the time, were interested in all things Egyptian, he said, and they often imported or imitated their food, style and luxury items — including seals like the one that Ziv found, which were worn like jewelry as personal talismans.
Scarabs, or dung beetles, were particularly popular in talismans at the time because they were a symbol of rebirth, the antiquities authority said in a statement. (The insects lay their eggs in balls of dung, from which a new generation emerges.) Ziv's scarab relic was most likely created in Egypt and then found its way to modern-day Israel around 3,800 years ago, Lipschits said.
But how did it end up on a hiking trail where a child could find it?
Lipschits offered an explanation.
In 1898, two British archaeologists began excavating Tel Azekah — one of the first biblical sites to be exhumed in Israel — where they found an acropolis, walls of a citadel and artifacts from pre-Israelite cultures. When they were done, the man who owned the land asked them to fill the hole they had excavated so he could farm the area, Lipschits said.
'So the modern layers are now inside, and the old layers that used to be very deep in the ground are now on the surface,' he explained. 'And this is why people can find all kinds of ancient items like these scarabs on the surface.'
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Children also make excellent amateur archaeologists, Lipschits added, because they're curious, low to the ground, and unafraid to get their hands dirty.
In itself, the amulet that Ziv picked up 'was not so exceptional,' Lipschits said — his team has uncovered dozens of similar scarabs in the area, some of higher quality. What is more important, he said, is that the family handed it over to the Israel Antiquities Authority so that it could be preserved and everyone could enjoy it.
'If she put it in her pocket and kept it, we wouldn't know about it,' Schwartz said. 'We're very happy to show it to the public.'
The authority gave Ziv a certificate of appreciation for 'good citizenship.' The amulet she found will be included in an upcoming exhibition of Canaanite and Egyptian artifacts at the Jay and Jeanie Schottenstein National Campus for the Archaeology of Israel in Jerusalem.
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