U.S. teen finds 3,300-year-old amulet
A 17-year-old American student visiting Israel for the first time discovered a 3,300-year-old ancient Egyptian amulet during a school trip, the Israel Antiquities Authority said.
Shiloh Attoun, a student on the Jewish National Fund-USA’s Muss High School in Israel study-abroad program, was visiting Tel Gezer National Park in the Judean lowlands when he spotted the small scarab-shaped seal lying on the ground. The amulet, decorated with two cobra motifs, dates to the Late Bronze Age, according to an examination by Prof. Ido Koch of Tel Aviv University’s Department of Archaeology and Ancient Near Eastern Cultures.
Attoun had just arrived in Israel two days before, and was participating in the school’s first educational trip of the year with Benji Hain, the dean of students.
“We had just come from the gates of Tel Gezer, and we were walking up the mountain to an altar,” he recalled in a video distributed by JNF-USA. He picked up a rock, threw it at another rock, and uncovered something spherical and shiny.
“I was like, ‘Ooh, look at this!’ So I picked it up and flipped it over, and I saw two faces of what looked like a [Hebrew letter] Nun,” Attoun said. “I brought it to Benji, and I’m like, ‘Could this be cool?’ and his face lit up. He’s like, ‘Oh my god, you don’t understand what you found,’ [and] he started jumping.”
They reported the discovery, and it was sent to the National Treasures of Israel.
The scarab, an amulet shaped like a dung beetle, shows two cobras above a semi-ellipse. The cobra, known as the uraeus in Egyptian and Greek, was a widespread protective and royal symbol in ancient Egypt and the southern Levant. The semi-ellipse represents the Egyptian hieroglyphic sign “nb,” meaning “lord.”
A similar scarab, depicting three snakes rather than two, already had been discovered during excavations at Tel Megiddo, Koch noted. Scarab amulets, sometimes used as seals, reflect ancient Egypt’s cultural influence over the region during the period of Egyptian rule over Canaan, approximately 3,500 years ago.
The scarab beetle, which the ancient Egyptians considered sacred, was a symbol of new life because it rolled a ball of dung, representing death, and laid its eggs inside it, from which new life emerged. The Egyptian name is derived from the verb “to be formed,” or “to be created, to come into being,” because the Egyptians saw the scarab as an incarnate symbol of the god who creates life.
Tel Gezer was one of the most important Canaanite cities in the country during the Late Bronze Age, controlling a strategic crossroads in the Shephelah region. The archaeological site is now a national park managed by the Israel Nature and Parks Authority.
JTA