The Israel Antiquities Authority reported on Wednesday that a 3,000-year-old stone scarab was recently found at Azor, some four miles southeast of Tel Aviv, during an eighth-grade school field trip.
The scarab’s carvings show what is thought to be the conferring of legitimacy upon a local monarch.
Gilad Stern of the IAA Educational Center, who was leading the tour, remarked, “We were strolling around when I observed something that looked like a small toy on the ground.
“Pick it up and turn it over, an inner voice told me. I was amazed: It was a scarab with an engraved scene, the fantasy of every amateur archaeologist. The students were very enthusiastic! ”
The third annual IAA tour guide course was the setting for the tour, which featured students from Rabin Middle School.
“The scarab served as a seal and represented prestige and authority.
It might have been worn on a ring or a necklace.
Faience, a silicate substance covered in a bluish-green gloss, is used in its construction, according to Amir Golani, an IAA expert on the Bronze Age. “It may have fallen from the hands of a significant authority person who went through the area, or it may have been purposefully buried in the earth with other things and came to the surface after thousands of years,” he continued.
The geopolitical reality in Canaan during the Late Bronze Age (about 1500–1000 BCE), when the local Canaanite monarchs lived (and occasionally rebelled) under Egyptian political and cultural hegemony, is essentially reflected in this image.
As a result, there is a good chance that the seal dates to the Late Bronze Age, when the Egyptian Empire governed the nearby Canaanites, said Golani.
Hundreds of scarabs have been found in Israel, some of which were brought there from ancient Egypt, and many more were copied by local craftspeople who were influenced by Egyptian culture.
“The discovery of the scarab during a field trip with students enrolled in the tour-guide course is noteworthy because the students were learning about archaeology while also adding to our cultural legacy.
This collaboration is incredibly inspiring as we endeavor to reunite communities with their cultural legacy, according to IAA Director Eli Escusido.
Ancient Egyptians equated the scarab, or common dung beetle, with birth, death, and reincarnation.
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