Archaeologists Found a 2,300-Year-Old Ring That May Have Been a Child's Treasure
Archaeological work in the Jerusalem Walls National Park within the City of David uncovered a gold ring set with a red gemstone.
Experts believe the ring belonged to a child 2,300 years ago, and may have been buried as part of a ritual.
It's the second such ring discovered in the area in less than a year.
At some point about 2,300 years ago, when a child living in Jerusalem underwent the symbolic move from childhood to adulthood, they parted with a gold ring set with a red garnet. That ring was just found in the City of David within the Jerusalem Walls National Park, and was actually the second such ring discovered there in less than a year.
Both rings have been dated to the Early Hellenistic period (and specifically, the Second Temple period), according to a statement from the Israel Antiquities Authority. Rivka Lengler—a City of David excavator present when the more recently discovered ring was unearthed—said that a worker was sifting dirt through a sieve when the ring was found. At first, they thought it was a modern ring that had been dropped by an excavator, but after a closer look, Lengler was able to tell that the ring had been waiting to be found for a long time. 'When I examined the ring,' Lengler said, 'I immediately assessed it was something ancient. We called over the archaeologists, everyone gathered around us and marveled at the special find. It was very exciting.'
Officials on the excavation project, which was conducted by the Israel Antiquities Authority and Tel Aviv University working in collaboration, said that the two gold rings were both discovered in the foundation of a large building that was located in a layer of earth dating to the late third or early second century B.C. In the same layer, archaeologists found multiple bronze earrings and a gold earring adorned with a horned animal image and a decorated gold bead.
'That the two small rings and the rest of the jewelry were all discovered under the building's floors raises the possibility that they were buried there on purpose,' said Marion Zindel from the Israel Antiquities Authority. 'One of the possibilities now being examined is that the jewelry found in the building's foundations was in the context of executing a well-known Hellenistic period custom in which betrothed women would bury jewelry and other childhood objects in the house foundations as a symbolic of transition from childhood to adulthood.'
With gold being so valuable, accidentally losing multiple gold pieces in the same general area isn't likely to have been the reason for the presence of these rings. But what exactly the reason was is still up for debate, as not much is known about Hellenistic period culture in Jerusalem (which may have been at odds with Jewish customs). 'These rings, along with other pieces of jewelry and the architecture we've uncovered,' Yuval Gadot of Tel Aviv University told The Times of Israel, 'are beginning to advance our understanding of the city at that time.'
'This is the first time that we have found in Jerusalem such a large assemblage of gold jewelry from that period,' said Efrat Bocher, an excavation manager. 'This displayed wealth is very rare in any archaeological layer, and it attests to the wealth of Jerusalem and the high standard of living of the city's residents during this period.'
Jewelry that combines gold with brightly colored precious stones—such as the red garnet in the newly discovered ring—is heavily associated with this region during this period of history, when fashion was quite influenced by countries to the east like India and Persia. Experts on the project said that Alexander the Great's conquests influenced fashion and trade channels within these regions.
The potential future discovery of Greek-inspired rituals—as well as architecture and customs not associated with Jewish traditions—may shed more light on the period. 'In order to understand more about Jerusalem's identify in the Hellenistic period,' Gadot said, 'we are going to need more discoveries and research. It will take time.'
You Might Also Like
The Do's and Don'ts of Using Painter's Tape
The Best Portable BBQ Grills for Cooking Anywhere
Can a Smart Watch Prolong Your Life?
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
16 hours ago
- Yahoo
Archaeologists Found a 4,000-Year-Old Handprint That Was Never Meant to Be Seen
"Hearst Magazines and Yahoo may earn commission or revenue on some items through these links." Here's what you'll learn when you read this story: Researchers at the University of Cambridge discovered a full handprint on a clay 'soul house' used in a burial setting. The 4,000-year-old Egyptian handprint is considered 'rare' and will be part of a new fall display at the university's Fitzwilliam Museum. Ancient Egyptian potters did not get to enjoy high status within their society. Roughly 4,000 years ago, when an ancient Egyptian potter left a handprint on the bottom of a 'soul house' used in a burial, the mark likely wouldn't have been noticed. Today, however, that handprint is being put on display at a Cambridge museum. 'We've spotted traces of fingerprints left in wet varnish or on a coffin in the decoration, but it is rare and exciting to find a complete handprint underneath this soul house,' Helen Strudwick, curator of the Made in Ancient Egypt exhibit and senior Egyptologist at The Fitzwilliam Museum, said in a statement provided by the University of Cambridge. 'This was left by the maker who touched it before the clay dried.' The 4,000-year-old handprint was discovered on the underside of a 'soul house'—a structure shaped like a building with an open courtyard, which was used to hold food offerings in tombs. The soul house was a symbolic offering site and resting place, and their installation was a common practice in ancient Egypt. The clay soul house is dated to between 2055 and 1650 B.C. by researchers at Cambridge's Fitzwilliam Museum, and the handprint on the underside was likely made when the potter moved the house to dry prior to placing it in the firing kiln. 'I have never seen such a complete handprint on an Egyptian object before,' Strudwick said. 'You can just imagine the person who made this, picking it up to move it out of the workshop to dry before firing.' Researchers at the museum believe the soul house was first made with wooden sticks and then coated with clay to make a two-story building supported by pillars. Staircases were formed by pinching wet clay. The potter then would have fired the clay, which would have burnt away the wooden framework and left empty spaces in its place. Clay and ceramics were common in ancient Egypt, and were used as both functional and decorative objects (though the functional sort were more plentiful). Clay was considered such a common material—either deposited by the Nile as silt or found as shale—that the potters were not afforded status in society, with some texts comparing them to pigs wallowing in the mud, according to the BBC. More information is known about the ceramic and clay artifacts created by the craftspeople than the potters themselves, and the Fitzwilliam Museum's October opening of the Made in Ancient Egypt exhibit aims to begin rectifying that disparity by telling the stories of artifact makers. The museum hopes to 'create a vivid picture of these workers as individuals' using work orders, receipts, delivery notes, and unfinished objects. This handprint gives it all a personal touch. 'This takes you directly to the moment when the object was made,' Strudwick said, 'and to the person who made it.' You Might Also Like The Do's and Don'ts of Using Painter's Tape The Best Portable BBQ Grills for Cooking Anywhere Can a Smart Watch Prolong Your Life? Solve the daily Crossword
Boston Globe
4 days ago
- Boston Globe
A day of mourning in a time of fear
Other disasters have coincided with the 9th of Av. That was when the No date in the long annals of the Jews is so drenched in grief. For more than 2,000 years, observant Jews have marked the day by abstaining from food and drink for 25 hours. In synagogues worldwide, families will begin the fast at nightfall Saturday by sitting on the floor and reading the biblical Advertisement In a sense, Tisha B'Av encapsulates in a calendar date all the pain and loss that have been inflicted on the Jewish people through the generations by those who hate them. That hatred has ebbed and flowed, but it has never vanished. There Advertisement Tisha B'Av arrives this year as American Jews confront an inescapable and chilling reality: Antisemitism in the United States has surged to levels unseen since before World War II. The threat has been Advertisement Here in Massachusetts, anti‑Jewish hate crimes A In response to these attacks, the ADL commissioned a national survey. Its report stressed that a majority of Americans regard antisemitic hatred as a serious issue and oppose violence against Jews. But between the lines, the survey's findings were horrifying. Asked about the violent attacks in Washington and Colorado, as well as the torching of Shapiro's home, 13 percent of respondents said that such acts were 'justified,' 15 percent believed they were 'necessary,' 22 percent did not consider them antisemitic, and an astonishing 24 percent — nearly 1 in 4 respondents — pronounced the attacks 'understandable.' Advertisement These are no longer fringe views. Raw, antisemitic bigotry is Young people acquire their opinions from multiple sources, of course. But at least some of this animus against Jews has been As Tisha B'Av approaches, more than Advertisement For anyone born after 1945, this normalizing of Jew-hatred in the United States represents a chilling reversal. The Cold War era's moral taboo against antisemitism — bolstered by the revelation of Nazi Germany's genocide, and by the success of the Civil Rights and Soviet Jewry movements — used to render overt Jew‑hatred unthinkable in mainstream America. Now that taboo is shredding. Ours has become a society in which antisemitic venom — As a Jew, and as the son of an Auschwitz survivor, I find all this darkly ominous. So do many Jewish Americans I know. Yet with few exceptions, most of my non-Jewish friends and acquaintances don't seem to understand how frightening it is for Jews to sense history beginning to repeat itself — or how exposed, isolated, and endangered many Jews now feel. It has been pointed out often that the Advertisement That isn't merely a historical observation. It reflects a pattern first articulated in the earliest pages of the Bible. As an Orthodox Jew, I believe in the continuing validity of the promise God made to Abraham in Benjamin Disraeli, who twice served as Britain's prime minister, distilled the biblical pledge into an axiom of statecraft: 'The Lord deals with the nations as the nations deal with the Jews.' Winston Churchill agreed and on multiple occasions quoted his predecessor's maxim. 'We must admit,' More than 80 years later, the renowned journalist and historian Paul Johnson developed the point in It happened to Spain after it expelled the Jews in the 1490s, to France in the wake of the Dreyfus affair, and to Czarist Russia following the wave of antisemitic pogroms in the late 19th century. Germany's descent into genocidal madness led to cataclysmic military defeat in 1945 and brought on 40 years of communist dictatorship in the eastern third of the country. And the antisemitic obsessions of the Arab world over the past century have kept it mired in economic and cultural backwardness, when it could have become 'by far the richest portion of the earth's surface.' Conversely, nations that extended protection and freedom to their Jewish citizens have invariably flourished. Cyrus the Great of Persia liberated the Jews from captivity, and went on to rule the largest empire the world had seen to that time. The Ottoman sultans who welcomed Jewish exiles from Spain presided over a multicultural dominion that thrived for centuries. Above all, the United States — where Jews enjoyed freedom, opportunity, and safety they had never before known in their long Diaspora — grew into the wealthiest, strongest, and most important nation on the globe. Jewish Americans, making the most of the liberty and equality afforded them, became scientists and doctors, entrepreneurs and entertainers, retail innovators and writers, judges and educators. America's ascent to global preeminence was inseparable from its treatment of Jews as full citizens. 'I will bless those who bless you, and those who curse you I will curse,' God said at the dawn of Jewish history, and history has repeatedly confirmed it. But the ancient promise — or, if you like, Paul Johnson's 'historical law' — is also a reminder and a warning to the American nation. Unchecked antisemitism is not merely a Jewish problem. It is an infection in America's soul and a threat to its future. George Washington, in his famous That vision animated America's founding promise and it helped shape the nation's greatness. But today, nearly 235 years after Washington wrote those words, the children of the stock of Abraham are afraid. If that fear is allowed to deepen and spread, the cost will not fall on Jews alone. Tisha B'Av is a day of mourning for the Jewish people — but it ought to be a moment of reckoning for all Americans. To drive out the virus of antisemitism, to ensure that Jews can live in safety and dignity, is not only to defend a beleaguered minority. It is to recommit to the very ideals that made the United States a light among nations. America has been blessed because it blessed its Jews. May it never learn what happens when it stops doing so. This article is adapted from the current , Jeff Jacoby's weekly newsletter. To subscribe to Arguable, visit . Jeff Jacoby can be reached at
New York Post
5 days ago
- New York Post
Italian archaeologists unveil rare 2,600-year-old tomb untouched by looters
Archaeologists recently unearthed a remarkable 2,600-year-old tomb in Italy — a rare find untouched by looters. The discovery was announced by the Italian Ministry of Culture on June 30. In a press release, the organization said the burial mound dated back to the late 7th century B.C., during the Orientalizing period of Italian history. Advertisement The tomb is part of the Caiolo Necropolis within the San Giuliano archaeological area, some 30 miles north of Rome. The site is famous for housing other ancient burials, including the Queen's Tomb, the Tomb of the Stag, and the Tomb of the Beds. The newly discovered tomb has not been officially named, but authorities emphasized its significance – especially as it remained undisturbed for 2,600 years. Its treasures included ceramic vessels still bearing paint, along with bronze ornaments. 'Once the slab sealing the chamber was removed, numerous vessels immediately became visible,' the ministry said in a statement translated from Italian to English. Advertisement 'Some [were] fine painted ceramics, such as those near the entrance – deliberately placed according to a precise ritual performed before the tomb was sealed,' the statement added. 5 Archaeologists recently unearthed a remarkable 2,600-year-old tomb in Italy — a rare find untouched by looters. Jerolyn Morrison / Baylor University 'On the left-hand bed, a basin and several bronze ornamental elements belonging to the deceased remain in situ.' The excavation was conducted under the supervision of the Superintendency of Viterbo and Southern Etruria, in partnership with Baylor University. Advertisement Supervising archaeologist Barbara Barbaro said that the necropolis contains over 500 tombs, though most were looted by either ancient people or modern robbers – but not the most recent one. 5 'Some [were] fine painted ceramics, such as those near the entrance – deliberately placed according to a precise ritual performed before the tomb was sealed,' the statement said. Jerolyn Morrison / Baylor University 5 The newly discovered tomb has not been officially named, but authorities emphasized its significance – especially as it remained undisturbed for 2,600 years. Jerolyn Morrison / Baylor University 'Finding an untouched tomb is incredibly rare,' Barbaro noted. Advertisement 'That's what makes this discovery so exceptional.' Barbaro also said that further study on the site will be 'fundamental to advancing knowledge of the ancient world.' 'A sealed context is crucial not only for preservation but also because it gives us a complete snapshot of life through the ritual of death,' she added. 5 The excavation was conducted under the supervision of the Superintendency of Viterbo and Southern Etruria, in partnership with Baylor University. Jerolyn Morrison / Baylor University 5 In a press release, the organization said the burial mound dated back to the late 7th century B.C., during the Orientalizing period of Italian history. Ministero della Cultura Reflecting on the emotional weight of the find, Barbaro compared the discovery of the tomb to 'a bridge to our past, a doorway to our ancestors.' 'This is what happens when an untouched tomb is found – it becomes a collective event,' the archaeologist said. 'The silence … the awe, the respect for those waiting behind that massive stone. The emotion.' 'We're thrilled to have rescued this material from those who would illegally profit from it,' she added. 'Now, it will tell a beautiful story for everyone.'
