ANASTASIA SHAPIRO/ISRAEL ANTIQUITIES AUTHORITY
While hiking in the Tabor Stream Nature Reserve at the foot of Tel Rekhesh in the Lower Galilee, a man’s sharp eye caught a sparkling treasure on the ground: a stunning carnelian seal carved in the shape of a scarab beetle. While scarab seals are well known from ancient Egypt, the underside of this seal depicts a griffin, a type of iconography that was more commonly used by the Assyrians.
Although the seal was not found in a stratified context, the history of the area suggests it may date to the middle of the first millennium BCE, sometime around the fall of the Northern Kingdom of Israel (722 BCE) when Assyria was active throughout the southern Levant. Indeed, the nearby site of Tel Rekhesh (the proposed location of biblical Anaharath; see Joshua 19:19) boasted a formidable citadel during the period of Assyrian dominance in the seventh and sixth centuries.
“Considering the scarcity of finds discovered so far in the area of the citadel, it may be possible to link the seal to the Assyrian presence in the citadel of Tel Rekhesh, which may be a discovery of great significance,” said archaeologist Yitzhak Paz of the Israel Antiquities Authority.
While hiking in the Tabor Stream Nature Reserve at the foot of Tel Rekhesh in the Lower Galilee, a man’s sharp eye caught a sparkling treasure on the ground: a stunning carnelian seal carved in the shape of a scarab beetle. While scarab seals are well known from ancient Egypt, the underside of this seal depicts a griffin, a type of iconography that was more commonly used by the Assyrians. Although the seal was not found in a stratified context, the history of the area suggests it may date to the middle of the first millennium BCE, sometime around the […]
