Status: 11/30/2022 3:22 p.m
Surprise on a school trip in Israel: the tour guide of an eighth grade found a 3000-year-old scarab beetle during a field trip. The Bronze Age seal apparently shows an Egyptian pharaoh crowning a local ruler.
During an archaeological excursion by a school class in Azor near Tel Aviv, a more than 3,000-year-old scarab was discovered, according to the Israel Antiquities Authority. “At first I thought it was a toy lying in the dirt, but an inner voice said to me, pick it up and turn it over,” said Gilad Stern of the agency’s education center, who led the tour.
He was amazed that it was a seal in the shape of the scarab dung beetle with a scene clearly engraved. That is “the dream of every archeology lover,” says Stern. The eighth graders at Rabin Middle School are also “totally enthusiastic”.
Power symbol of an authority figure
With the antiquities authority’s excursion program, schoolchildren should acquire archaeological knowledge and pass it on. The scene depicted on the scarab probably depicts the Egyptian pharaoh’s installation of a local ruler in the land of Canaan. It thus reflects the geopolitical reality of the late Bronze Age, around 1500 to 1000 BC, explained Amir Golani, a Bronze Age specialist at the Israel Antiquities Authority. It is “very likely that the seal actually dates from the late Bronze Age when the local Canaanites were ruled by the Egyptian Empire”.
An authority figure may have worn the bluish-greenish seal on a ring or chain as a symbol of power and status. It is therefore also unclear whether the piece was made in Egypt or in Israel. The scarab was considered by the Egyptians to be a symbol of luck, creation and rebirth. They saw the beetle’s ability to roll dung balls twice its own size as a parallel to the sun god Re and his chariot ride across the sky.