American Teen Spots 3,300-Year-Old Egyptian-Style Amulet on the Ground at Tel Gezer
Two days into his first trip to Israel, 17-year-old Shiloh Attoun picked up a Late Bronze Age scarab seal at the biblical city of Gezer and handed it to the Israel Antiquities Authority.
See where this is ›GEZER, Israel —
A 17-year-old American student on his first visit to Israel found a scarab-shaped amulet seal about 3,300 years old lying on the ground at Tel Gezer National Park in the Judean Lowlands, All Israel News reported Nov. 3.
Shiloh Attoun was touring the site with the Muss High School Israel program of Jewish National Fund-USA. “This was our class's first trip to see the country; we arrived only two days earlier,” he said. While the group was learning about Tel Gezer's history and archaeology, he noticed a small object that looked ancient, picked it up and showed it to his guide.
Benji Hain, dean of students at Muss, said the group called the Israel Antiquities Authority right away to report the find. Adam William Asper, an archaeologist and supervisor in the authority's Central Region, met the group, accepted the amulet on behalf of the National Treasures of Israel and gave Attoun a certificate of appreciation.
Professor Ido Koch of Tel Aviv University's Department of Archaeology and Ancient Near Eastern Cultures dated the seal to the Late Bronze Age, in the second millennium B.C. He said it shows “two cobras above a semi-ellipse.” The cobra, which Koch said is identified with the biblical serpent, was called the uraeus in Egyptian and Greek, and the semi-ellipse is the Egyptian hieroglyph “nb,” meaning “lord.” A similar scarab with three snakes was found earlier in excavations at Tel Megiddo, he said.
Amit Melman, the antiquities authority's educational director for the Central Region, praised Attoun and the program's instructors for “showing responsibility and immediately handing over the find.” Tali Tzour Avner, director of JNF-USA in Israel, said the experience is what the program works to give its students.
Gezer is named many times in the Old Testament. The Bible records that a pharaoh of Egypt captured Gezer and gave it to his daughter, Solomon's wife, and that Solomon rebuilt it along with Hazor and Megiddo (1 Kings 9:15-17). The site's large city gate is often called the “Solomonic gate.”
See where this is ›Tel Gezer National Park lies in the Judean Lowlands between Jerusalem and the coastal plain. The report did not give the exact date of the find or say where the amulet will be kept.
