Posted on 08/01/2025 1:07:37 PM PDT by SunkenCiv
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...
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...
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."
(Excerpt) Read more at popularmechanics.com ...
😊
>>Thanks to her, everyone will be able to see it and enjoy it
In other words, they took her newly found treasure away and will say thank you as they put it in a museum collection where it may, or may not, ever be exhibited. Sigh.
Nature’s Artisan
Beetle
Rolling with grace
Sculptor of life’s remnants
Crafting cycles beneath our feet
Dung master
I found an old bottle cap.
= = =
If it is over 50 years old, it is an artifact to not be disturbed.
“The dung beetle was revered in ancient Egypt, considered sacred and a symbol of new life.“
WHY?
Why not?
Great dad joke.
“…seen as a metaphor for the sun god Ra pushing the sun across the sky, .”””
Seems almost obvious when you point it out but I never would have made the connection myself.
This is such a small find, it probably will be exhibited after conservation is done to it. The main risk in Israel is terrorism, but in the case of artifacts, bogus claims by the various terrorist entities that make up Israel’s none-too-neighborly neighbors.
:)
There are confederate buttons on ebay
https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_nkw=confederate+buttons&_sop=12
😁
Thank you! It’s been so long ago now, I don’t even remember what it looked like. Still, it was a neat find. There were a couple of them. My older brother kept one, and I kept the other. I haven’t asked him about his. He lives in the family homestead where we found them. This would be roughly 50 years after we found them, maybe more.
“I found a Confederate button once.”
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I found a confederate grape shot cannon ball. I thought it was a geode until I picked it up and felt how heavy it was. I think I would prefer an amulet.
I want reparations!.....................
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