Girl, 12, finds 3,500-year-old Egyptian amulet on hike in central Israel
Dafna Filshteiner discovered a small scorpion-adorned scarab amulet lying out in the open near Tel Qana outside of Hod Hasharon
Gavriel Fiske is a reporter at The Times of Israel
A young girl on a family hike near the central city of Hod Hasharon recently discovered a small Egyptian stone amulet, thousands of years old, lying out in the open, the Israel Antiquities Authority said Thursday.
While searching for “porcupine needles and smooth pebbles,” Dafna Filshteiner, 12, said she found “an interesting stone.” Her mother thought it was “just an ordinary stone or bead” but the girl said, “I saw a decoration and stubbornly insisted it was more than that.”
After searching the internet for similar artifacts, the family realized what had been found and contacted the IAA, per Israeli law.
The amulet was then transferred to IAA headquarters in Jerusalem for examination, and the family received a good citizenship commendation from the authority.
The scarab amulet, a beetle shape carved out of stone and adorned with the images of two scorpions, is estimated by experts to be 3,500 years old, the time of Egypt’s New Kingdom period when the empire was at its height and had expanded to what is now Israel, Lebanon and Syria.
Amulets carved in the shape of a dung beetle, called scarabs, were common in ancient Egypt.
The dung beetle was “considered sacred” and was “a symbol of new life” and “the embodiment of the divine creator,” the IAA noted in their announcement.
“The scarab amulets found in Israel – sometimes used as a seal – are evidence of Egyptian rule in our region about 3,500 years ago, and of its cultural influence,” the IAA said.
“The scorpion symbol represented the Egyptian goddess Serket, who was considered responsible, among other things, for protecting pregnant mothers. Another decoration on the amulet is the nefer symbol, which in Egyptian means ‘good’ or ‘chosen.’ There is also another symbol which looks like a royal staff,” explained Dr. Yitzhak Paz of the IAA, who examined the amulet.
Scarab amulets are “a distinct Egyptian characteristic, but their wide distribution reached far beyond Egypt’s borders,” Paz said.
The amulet “may have been dropped by an important and authoritative figure passing through the area, or it may have been deliberately buried. Since the find was discovered on the surface, it is difficult to know its exact context,” he said.
When the amulet was found, the Filshteiner family was hiking near Tel Qana, an archaeological site with multiple layers of settlements dating back to the early Bronze Age.
The find “is both exciting and significant,” said Dr. Amit Dagan, from Bar-Ilan University’s Martin (Szusz) Department of Land of Israel Studies and Archaeology, and Dr. Ayelet Dayan of the IAA, who are conducting excavations at Tel Qana.
“The scarab and its unique pictorial features, along with other finds discovered at Tel Qana with similar motifs, provide new insights into the nature of the Egyptian influence in the region,” they said.
