https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/toddler-discovers-3800-year-old-egyptian-amulet-while-hiking-with-her-family-in-israel-180986359/

Toddler Discovers 3,800-Year-Old Egyptian Amulet While Hiking With Her Family in Israel

The 3-year-old picked up an ancient Canaanite scarab that dates back to the Middle Bronze Age

Sarah Kuta - Daily Correspondent

April 3, 2025

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The family handed the scarab over to the Israel Antiquities Authority, which plans to display it in an upcoming exhibition. Emil Aladjem / Israel Antiquities Authority

Ziv Nitzan was on a hike with her family when a rock on the ground caught her eye. But when the 3-year-old girl picked up the small stone and cleaned it off, she realized it was no ordinary rock.

Instead, the toddler had chanced upon a 3,800-year-old treasure, the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) announced this week.

Archaeologists say Nitzan picked up an ancient Canaanite scarab that dates to the Middle Bronze Age. When her siblings realized what she'd found, they asked their parents to take a look. The family then handed the scarab over to the government.

"There are thousands of stones over there and it was upside down, but somehow out of all those stones, she picked this one," the girl's mother, Sivan Nitzan, tells the Washington Post's Vivian Ho.

Scarabs are small, decorated objects that originated in ancient Egypt. They're typically shaped like dung beetles, which ancient Egyptians considered a sacred symbol of new life, per the IAA.

These beetles create dung balls or dung pats, then lay their eggs inside or nearby. When the eggs hatch, the larvae feed on the dung.

Ancient Egyptians also revered dung beetles because the rolling of the dung balls reminded them of the sun god rolling the sun across the sky, according to the Israel Museum. Because they mistakenly believed the beetles could spontaneously reproduce, they also connected the bugs with the primary god of creation.

In the Egyptian language, the beetle's name stems from the verb for "to be created" or "to come into being," per the IAA.

During the Middle Bronze Age, scarabs were used as seals and amulets, as Daphna Ben-Tor, curator of Egyptian archaeology at the Israel Museum, says in the IAA statement.

"They were found in graves, in public buildings and in private homes," Ben-Tor adds. "Sometimes, they bear symbols and messages that reflect religious beliefs or status."

Nitzan discovered the scarab during a family outing at the Tel Azekah archaeological site near the city of Beit Shemesh. Over the past 15 years, archaeologists have unearthed evidence of "many changing cultures over the course of history" at Tel Azekah, per the IAA. The Bible also references the area around Tel Azekah as the site of the famed battle between David and Goliath.

Recent archaeological findings suggest Tel Azekah was home to "one of the most important cities in the Judean Lowlands" during the Middle Bronze and Late Bronze ages, says Oded Lipschits, an archaeologist at Tel Aviv University who is leading the excavation work at the site, in the statement.

A 3.5-Year-Old Girl Discovers an Ancient Seal Dating Back 3,800 Years During a Family Hike - IAA PR

Located high above sea level, Tel Azekah was once the "control point of a strategic junction of roads" that traveled in all directions, according to the website of the archaeological expedition at the site. "For millennia, Azekah flourished and grew, as its community benefited from Azekah's rich natural and strategic location."

The scarab is just one of the many Egyptian and Canaanite artifacts discovered at Tel Azekah, which attests to the "close ties and cultural influences between Canaan and Egypt during that period," Lipschits adds.

The IAA thanked Nitzan for her discovery by presenting her with a certificate of appreciation for good citizenship. The agency also plans to highlight the scarab during an upcoming exhibition at the Jay and Jeanie Schottenstein National Campus for the Archaeology of Israel.

It will be placed alongside other Egyptian and Canaanite artifacts, many of which have never been displayed before. The exhibition will include seals of the pharaohs, Egyptian statues, ritual vessels and other examples of Egypt's cultural influence on Israel.

"If she put it in her pocket and kept it, we wouldn't know about it," Yoli Schwartz, a spokesperson for the IAA, tells the New York Times' Jonathan Wolfe. "We're very happy to show it to the public."

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ARCE2025 Session Schedule is Now Live!

We knew you were waiting for this: 2025 ARCE Annual Meeting paper schedule

arce 2025 annual meeting This year's ARCE In-Person Annual Meeting Session Schedule and Meeting Schedule are now live*. We are looking forward to a rich schedule of sessions across interests and disciplines. The meeting will feature over 100 presentations under various themes such as archaeological sciences, Greco-Roman Egypt, art history, Nubia, philology, religion, and more!  Additionally, this year's special events include the Teaching Workshop: Translating the Book of the Dead in the 21st Century, led by Rita Lucarelli, and the Dessert Reception at the Legion of Honor Museum (Ticketed Offsite Event). Visit www.arce.org/annual-meeting to register and learn more.  For assistance, please email AMHelp@arce.org  *Schedule is subject to change View Schedule

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New images reveal extent of looting at Sudan’s national museum as rooms stripped of treasures | Sudan | The Guardian

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/mar/31/sudan-war-national-museum-khartoum-rsf-paramilitaries-looting-ancient-treasures-kush-nubia-pharoahs

New images reveal extent of looting at Sudan's national museum as rooms stripped of treasures

Only a few statues remain, with thousands of priceless artefacts from Nubian and Kushite kingdoms missing

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About this content

Kaamil Ahmed

Mon 31 Mar 2025 06.00 EDT

Last modified on Mon 31 Mar 2025 06.03 EDT

Videos of Sudan's national museum showing empty rooms, piles of rubble and broken artefacts posted on social media after the Sudanese army recaptured the area from the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) in recent days show the extent of looting of the country's antiquities.

Fears of looting in the museum were first raised in June 2023 and a year later satellite images emerged of trucks loaded with artefacts leaving the building, according to museum officials. But last week, as the RSF were driven out of Khartoum after two years of war, the full extent of the theft became apparent.

The destruction at the Sudan National Museum wreaked by RSF fighters, who were driven out of Khartoum last week. Photograph: Courtesy of Sudanese National Corporation for Antiquities

A video shared by the Sudan Tribune newspaper showed the museum stripped bare, with only a few large statues remaining, including the seven-tonne statue of King Taharqa, a pharaoh who ruled Egypt and Kush (present-day Sudan) from 690 to 664BC. Others showed ransacked rooms and smashed display cabinets.

The museum held an estimated 100,000 artefacts from thousands of years of the country's history, including the Nubian kingdom, the Kushite empire and through to the Christian and Islamic eras. It held mummies dating from 2500BC, making them among the oldest and archaeologically most important in the world.

A 1st-century gold armlet from the treasure of Amanishakheto, a queen of Kush. Photograph: Courtesy of Sudanese National Corporation for Antiquities

Elnzeer Tirab Abaker Haroun, a curator at the Ethnographic Museum in Khartoum, said a specialist team visited the site after the RSF were expelled to assess the damage, which they will be documenting in a report.

"The tragedy was immense," he said. "Most of the museum's rare artefacts, as well as its precious gold and precious stones, have been lost."

The theft includes not only items on public display but those held inside a fortified room, including gold, which it is feared have been smuggled out of the country for sale abroad.

Unesco, the UN's cultural agency, has previously called on art dealers not to trade, import or export artefacts smuggled out of Sudan.

The scale of the damage to the museum and Sudan's heritage has been felt deeply by Sudanese.

"Seeing the Sudan National Museum being looted and destroyed by RSF was one of the most painful crimes … I felt ashamed and angry," said Hala al-Karib, a prominent Sudanese women's rights activist.

As a student, Karib and her friends would walk through the building admiring the artefacts from ancient kingdoms and jokingly posing as if they were themselves the queens depicted.

Visitors to the national museum in 2015. One statue is of King Natakamani, who ruled Kush with his mother, Amanitore, in the 1st century AD. Photograph: Mosa'ab Elshamy/AP

She first started visiting the museum with her father and, when she became a parent herself, took her own daughter there almost weekly.

"It was very personal; we are proud people and continually inspired by our ancient civilisation – it is the heritage we pass on to our children and grandchildren."

Many view it as a tragedy emblematic of the loss the country has suffered since the war started in 2023 during a power struggle between the army commander, Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, and the RSF's leader, Mohamed Hamdan Dagolo

Shahenda Suliman, a Sudanese trade unionist, said: "Whilst the human tragedy of this war outweighs everything for me, there's a symbolism there in seeing emptiness where these grand objects once stood that sort of captures the scale of destruction, loss and emptying of the country that we've seen since the war started.

"There are artefacts that have survived every plague, invasion and occupation for millennia, and predate the birth of Christ, that didn't survive this war."

Among the treasures at the museum were mummies dating from 2500BC, among the world's oldest and most important. Photograph: Courtesy of Sudanese National Corporation for Antiquities

Dallia Mohamed Abdelmoniem, a former journalist displaced from Khartoum by the war, said the loss of the museum's heritage was especially significant as an appreciation of Sudan's ancient history has become more widespread only recently.

She highlighted how the term Kandaka – a title for queens from the ancient kingdom of Kush – was used to describe female activists who participated in the 2018 protest movement that ousted the dictator Omar al-Bashir.

"I don't know how we'll be able to replace these priceless historical artefacts – and if there's a will to do so," said Abdelmoniem.

"The majority of Sudanese have been adversely affected on so many levels by this war, the restoration and return of items of historical, cultural and ancient significance I fear may not be viewed as a priority."

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