A 3-year-old exploring an archaeological site in Israel last month reportedly stumbled upon an ancient treasure: an amulet dating back 3,800 years. Ziv Nitzan and her family were visiting Tel Azekah, a hill created by the layered debris of ancient settlements, when the toddler picked up the scarab amulet believed to be linked to the Canaanites, per NBC News and CBS News. The Canaanites were an early Semitic population with regular mentions in the Bible, and the area itself is referenced as the site of the biblical battle between David and Goliath.
"We were walking along the path, and then Ziv bent down—and out of all the stones around her, she picked up this particular stone," Ziv's sister, Omer Nitzan, told the Israel Antiquities Authority, per CBS. "When she rubbed it and removed the sand from it, we saw something was different about it." Daphna Ben-Tor, an expert on ancient amulets and seals at the Israel Museum, believes the amulet dates to the Middle Bronze Age, from around 2100 BC to 1600 BC, during the rise of the Canaanites. "Scarabs were used in this period as seals and as amulets," which "were found in graves, in public buildings and in private homes," she says in a statement.
The amulets were likely inspired by ancient Egypt, where dung beetles, a type of scarab beetle, were considered a sacred "symbol of new life." "The scarab found by Ziv joins a long list of Egyptian and Canaanite finds discovered here, which attest to the close ties and cultural influences between Canaan and Egypt during that period," Oded Lipschits, a professor of archaeology at Tel Aviv University, tells CBS. The find—which shows that "even children can be a part of discovering history," according to Israeli Heritage Minister Amichai Eliyahu—earned Ziv a certificate for "good citizenship," per the Jerusalem Post. (More Israeli Antiquities Authority stories.)
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