A child in central Israel could have picked up any old stone lying on the ground, but the one she chose turned out to be more than just an old stone.
Believed to have been brought to modern-day Israel by the Ancient Egyptians, 3-year-old Ziv Nitzan found a scarab amulet that could be 3,800 years old.
The head of the Israeli Antiquities Authority said such a find helps connect us to “ancient civilizations that lived in this land thousands of years ago.”
Ziv’s sister Omer Nitzan said in the Facebook post: “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.”
What they found was either an Egyptian or Canaanite scarab, which bears some explaining. The English word scarab doesn’t only mean beetle, but also a culture of functional and decorative sculptural jewelry based on the beetles.
To say an Egyptian official was buried “with a scarab” means he possessed a kind of personalized piece of jewelry. Yet, they often acted as seals—conferring evidence of a bureaucratic, military, or royal position. They were sometimes carved with religious or even personal messages. The carved scarab beetle would sit atop a flat surface on which the inscriptions would be made.
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“Scarabs were used in this period as seals and as amulets. They were found in graves, in public buildings, and in private homes. Sometimes they bear symbols and messages, that reflect religious beliefs or status,” Daphna Ben-Tor, an Egyptologist, said in the Facebook post.
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It’s thought that dung beetles were sacred animals in Ancient Egypt and that in the Sun’s movement across the sky could be seen the work of a celestial dung beetle rolling it along with its back legs. This is perhaps why the scarab beetle family came to be symbolized in their theocracy.
The family made the discovery at an ancient archaeological site called Tel Azekah, the site of the legendary battle between David and Goliath.
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