A 3-Year-Old Was Taking a Family Walk—and Picked Up an Amazing 3,800-Year-Old Amulet
A 3-year-old girl on a family walk picked up an interesting-looking pebble that turned out to be a 3,800-year-old amulet.
The Canaanite scarab amulet, which dates to the Middle Bronze Age, was camouflaged among a the gravel on a path nearby an archaeology site in Israel.
The find was reported and will now go on display in a special exhibition.
Children are always picking stuff up off the ground—dirt, bugs, rocks, anything shiny. And usually, it's just junk. However, 3-year-old Ziv Nitzan made the discovery of her young life when, on a walk with her family, she picked up a small stone that wound up being a scarab amulet more than one thousand times her age.
'We were walking along the path, and then Ziv bent down and out of all the stones around her, she picked up this particular stone,' Omer Nitzan, Ziv's sister, said in a translated statement from the Israel Antiquities Authority. 'When she rubbed it and removed the sand from it, we saw something was different about it. I called my parents to come see the beautiful stone, and we realized we had discovered an archaeological find.'
The family brought in the Israel Antiquities Authority, and Daphna Ben-Tor, an expert in ancient amulets and seals, analyzed the amulet before declaring it a 3,800-year-old Canaanite scarab from the Middle Bronze Age. 'Scarabs were used in this period as seals and as amulets,' Ben-Tor said, 'They were found in graves, in public buildings, and in private homes. Sometimes they bear symbols and messages that reflect religious beliefs or status.'
Popular in ancient Egypt, amulets in the shape of a dung beetle often come with ornate designs. The dung beetle was revered in ancient Egypt, considered sacred and a symbol of new life.
Nitzan found the scarab at the foot of Tel Azeka, an archaeological mound near Beit Shemesh. Previous excavations in the area have revealed an ever-shifting mix of cultures across the site's history, from a Judahite Kingdom that featured city walls and agricultural installations to the possible site of the Biblical battle between David and Goliath found in the book of First Samuel.
Unlike the archaeologists that have dug up the site over the years, Ziv needed no formal training for her find. Omer said in a translated video statement that out of the 70,000 stones around Ziv, she picked up the one that was an amulet and 'saw that something was different about it.'
'We have been excavating here for almost 15 years,' Oded Lipschits, professor and director of the Tel Aviv University archeological dig at the site, said in a statement, 'and the excavation findings show that during the Middle Bronze and Late Bronze ages, here in Tel Azekah, thrived one of the most important cities in the Judean lowlands. The scarab found by Ziv joins a long list of Egyptian and Canaanite finds discovered here, which attest to the close ties and cultural influences between Canaan and Egypt during that period.'
Lipschits said that the locally made artifact found by Ziv was inspired by Egyptian styles.
Amichai Eliyahu, Israeli Minister of Heritage, said Ziv's find and the family's reporting of it deepens connections to ancient civilizations. 'Thanks to her, everyone will be able to see it and enjoy it,' he said.
The scarab now joins additional artifacts from the era for a special public display at the Jay and Jeanie Schottenstein National Campus for the Archaeology of Israel in honor of Passover. Many of the items will be shown for the first time, including seals of pharaohs, Egyptian statues, ritual vessels, and now a scarab amulet discovered by an enthralled 3-year-old.
You Might Also Like
The Do's and Don'ts of Using Painter's Tape
The Best Portable BBQ Grills for Cooking Anywhere
Can a Smart Watch Prolong Your Life?
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
9 hours ago
- Yahoo
A Tomb Once Said to Hold ‘Jesus's Midwife' Might Instead Hold Ancient Royalty
"Hearst Magazines and Yahoo may earn commission or revenue on some items through these links." Here's what you'll learn when you read this story: For centuries, a cave near Jerusalem was believed by Christian pilgrims to be the tomb of an attendant to the birth of Christ. Salome is depicted in the apocryphal Gospel of James as doubting the 'virgin birth' only to repent and be visited by angels. A new study suggests that the Salome buried in this tomb was, in fact, not the apocryphal Biblical figure, but rather the younger sister of Judean king Herod the Great. This story is a collaboration with For centuries, a subset of Christian pilgrims have journeyed to a cave southwest of Jerusalem in Israel referred to as the 'Cave of Salome,' due to its asserted connection to a figure associated with Jesus of Nazareth. Now, a new study in the Israel Antiquities Authority's journal 'Atiqot posits that this cave does serve as a tomb to someone named Salome, but not the one it's long been purported to have been. Rather than the Biblical figure sometimes described as 'Jesus' midwife,' the tomb might have held a figure of Judean royalty. But if you've only read the four canonical Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, you might find yourself wondering just who this Salome was supposed to be in the first place (while there is a Salome briefly alluded to in Mark 15:40 said to be present at the crucifixion, this is not the Salome in question). For that, we need to dip into a subset of Christian texts known as 'the apocrypha.' Given the underground origins of Christianity amidst the Roman Empire, it's no surprise that there was not one single written text relied upon to spread the word of the new faith. Even the four Gospels widely considered part of the Biblical Canon are traditionally believed to have been originally composed with different audiences in mind (Matthew wrote for those with a familiarity with Jewish tradition while Mark for a Roman audience, for example). This means that there are an array of texts, both extant and lost, that offer different, divergent, and at times even contradictory tellings of the story of Jesus than those that were ultimately determined by church bodies to be the 'canonical' works. One particular and prominent subset of these are what is called the 'infancy gospels,' stories of Jesus during his childhood. Little is said of Jesus' youth in the four canonical gospels, with only Matthew and Luke mentioning the story of his birth, and Luke alone including a single anecdote of a child Jesus visiting a Temple (Luke 2:41-52). But the apocryphal infancy gospels contain a wide array of events allegedly involving a child Jesus, including a confrontation with a literal dragon (the Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew). One of these texts, the apocryphal Gospel of James, introduces the character of Salome. While Salome is present for the birth of Jesus in this text, she was not actually 'Jesus' midwife.' Rather, this gospel depicts the actual midwife during Jesus' birth, referred to only by her title of 'Emea,' crying out to Salome about the virgin birth she had witnessed, only for Salome to dismiss it: 'And the midwife went forth of the cave and Salome met her. And she said to her: Salome, Salome, a new sight have I to tell thee. A virgin hath brought forth, which her nature alloweth not. And Salome said: As the Lord my God liveth, if I make not trial and prove her nature I will not believe that a virgin hath brought forth.' Salome then goes to witness the newborn child herself and decries her earlier doubts, seeking atonement, and is visited by an angel, healed, and told not to speak of what she had witnessed 'until the child enter into Jerusalem.' Some scholars point to this story of Salome as a predecessor and/or parallel to the more famous story, post-Resurrection, of Doubting Thomas. As Live Science reports, the aforementioned Cave of Salome gained its religious reputation when an ossuary, a casket filled with bones, was discovered in that cave bearing the name Salome. Adherents to the Gospel of James took to attributing these bones, and therefor the tomb that held them, as belonging to the Salome of the birth story, and began making pilgrimages there. As Live Science notes, those pilgrimages were a common enough occurrence that they continued for two hundred years after the area had been conquered by the Islamic Caliphate in the 7th century. The cave was excavated in 1984, where they found 'hundreds of clay oil lamps from the eighth and ninth centuries, which archaeologists think were sold to Christian pilgrims so they would have light while exploring the dark cave.' But to determine who might really have been interred in this tomb, the 2025 IAA study, co-authored by Vladik Lifshits and Nir-Shimshon Paran, they looked not at what had been left within the tomb, but rather how the tomb itself had been constructed: 'Lifshits noted the monumental architecture — including a large courtyard at the entrance — indicated that a member of the royal family may have been buried there. The authors also discovered the remains of several luxurious villas nearby, which indicates the site once belonged to a very wealthy family.' Their study suggests the possibility that the Salome in question may not have been connected to Jesus' birth, but rather to a different figure who factors into the story of the young Jesus: Herod I, also known as Herod the Great. Biblical tradition holds that Herod I, who ruled from 37 B.C. to 4 B.C., ordered the death of all male babies in Bethlehem, but no objective historical evidence has yet emerged that supports that particular tale. Instead, what is known about Herod I, as Live Science recounts, are his contributions to the kingdom he oversaw: 'For example, he was a prolific builder who restored the decrepit Second Temple on the Temple Mount, and the massive rock walls he had built are still standing today as the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem.' The study asserts that the Salome buried within the cave was Herod I's younger sister, who died in approximately 10AD. This Salome is not to be confused with Herod I's granddaughter who also bore that name. That Salome, recorded in the Bible as ordering the beheading of John the Baptist, would later be immortalized in an array of fictional works like Oscar Wilde's 1893 play and the subsequent 1905 opera by Richard Strauss. When Live Science spoke to Boaz Zissu of Israel's Bar-Ilan University, a scholar unaffiliated with the study, they conceded that 'The authors correctly identify the original phase as a monumental tomb belonging to local elites of the Herodian period' but suggested 'more rigorous evidential support' was required before it could be firmly established to be the tomb of Salome. For their part, study co-author Vladik Lifshits conceded as much. 'It's not that I think it must be the tomb of Salome the sister of Herod,' Lifshits told Live Science. 'I'm suggesting that this is one of the possibilities.' You Might Also Like The Do's and Don'ts of Using Painter's Tape The Best Portable BBQ Grills for Cooking Anywhere Can a Smart Watch Prolong Your Life?
Washington Post
a day ago
- Washington Post
Inside a historic church painted with murals that reflect searing social commentary
MILLVALE, Pa. — When the scaffolding came down inside the unassuming hilltop church near Pittsburgh, it revealed a raging storm of biblical proportions. A wide-eyed Moses holds the Ten Commandments aloft in righteous fury, ready to shatter the tablets when his followers abandon God for a golden calf. Lightning sizzles and a tornado surges in the background.
Yahoo
2 days ago
- Yahoo
Prehistoric humans may have used fire to smoke meat one million years ago, study suggests
Over time, as the availability of large game declined, humans had to adapt to hunting smaller animals and using fire more consistently. A groundbreaking study by researchers at Tel Aviv University suggests that early humans may have started using fire for a surprising reason: to smoke and preserve meat. According to the study, which was published in Frontiers in Nutrition, this practice could date back as far as one million years. The research, led by Dr. Miki Ben-Dor and Professor Ran Barkai of the university's Department of Archaeology and Ancient Near Eastern Cultures, challenges the long-held assumption that early humans initially used fire primarily for cooking. Instead, the researchers argue that fire served two essential purposes for our ancient ancestors: first, to protect large game from predators and scavengers, and second, to prevent meat from spoiling by smoking and drying it, thus extending its shelf life. 'Fire was a precious resource for early humans, requiring significant effort to gather fuel, ignite, and maintain,' said Dr. Ben-Dor. 'They wouldn't have invested that effort without a strong, energy-efficient reason. Smoking meat was a way to preserve their most important source of calories.' The study focuses on sites dating from 1.8 million to 800,000 years ago, where evidence of fire use has been found. Researchers reviewed nine such sites worldwide, including two in Israel - Gesher Benot Ya'aqov and Evron Quarry -six in Africa, and one in Spain. Intriguingly, all of these sites also contained the remains of large animals such as elephants, hippos, and rhinoceroses, creatures that would have provided a rich and vital source of nutrition for early humans. 'The meat and fat from a single elephant could feed a group of 20 to 30 people for over a month,' explained Prof. Barkai. 'That's an enormous amount of food that needed protection not just from other predators, but also from spoilage.' The study fits into a larger theory developed by Ben-Dor and Barkai that connects many prehistoric phenomena, such as tool use and hunting strategies, to early humans' reliance on large animals for survival. Over time, as the availability of large game declined, humans had to adapt to hunting smaller animals and using fire more consistently. 'Once fire was used to protect and preserve meat, it likely also provided opportunities to cook meat,' Barkai added. 'Cooking could have emerged as a byproduct of this initial use, at no extra energetic cost.' The findings provide a fresh perspective on a question that has long fascinated archaeologists: why did early humans first harness fire? The answer, according to this new research, may lie in the simple need to make the most of a hard-won meal.
