Six-year-old Imri Elya was awarded a "good citizenship" certificate for discovering a rare, small Canaanite tablet near an Israeli archaeological site. (Emil Aladjem, Israel Antiquities Authority)
smithsonianmag.com
Six-year-old Imri Elya was hiking in southern Israel with his family when something caught his eye: a small, 1.1-inch by 1.1-inch clay tablet. He picked it up and realized—to his surprise—that the small artifact had two figures engraved on its surface. After submitting the object to government for study, the first grade student and his parents were thrilled to learn that the tablet was likely made by a Canaanite in the Late Bronze Age—making this an exceptionally rare find, Amanda Borschel-Dan reports for the Times of Israel.
Elya discovered the tablet while touring the Tell Jemmeh archaeological site near the Israeli border with Gaza with his family in early March, before the coronavirus lockdown, according to a statement from the Israel Antiquities Authority.
Archaeologists Saar Ganor, Itamar Weissbein and Oren Shmueli studied the object and compared it to other examples of Canaanite and Egyptian art. They dated the tablet to about the 15th to 12th century B.C.
The tablet shows a man leading and humiliating a captive, according to the statement. In the depiction, the tablet's creator emphasized the health of the leftmost figure through his curly hair and full face. The captor’s depicted strength contrasts with the thin, sickly appearance of his naked prisoner, according to researchers.
A rare Canaanite tablet depicts a man leading his naked captive (Emil Aladjem, Israel Antiquities Authority)
In an interview with the Times of Israel, Ganor says that this small object would have been kept as a souvenir of victory to be worn in a belt or displayed in furniture. Its creator likely made multiple impressions of the tablet from a single mold, Ganor says.
“Looking at the object, we see that its rear bears the artist’s fingerprints,” Ganor tells Haaretz. “He imprinted the clay using a stamp, which in ancient times were made of stone.”
According to Haaretz, the archaeological site is identified with the ancient city of Yurza. During the Late Bronze Age, the Egyptian empire ruled the region, known as Canaan, and Canaanite cities were divided into city-states, Ruth Schuster reports for Haaretz. Researchers believe that the inscription may be describing a struggle between Yurza and one of its neighboring cities, per the statement.
“The scene depicted on the tablet is taken from descriptions of victory parades; hence the tablet should be identified as a story depicting the ruler’s power over his enemies,” Ganor, Weissbein and Shmueli say in the statement. “This opens a visual window to understanding the struggle for dominance in the south of the country during the Canaanite period.”
Six-year-old Elya was awarded a certificate for “good citizenship” for his sharp eye and exciting discovery, reports the Times of Israel.
Here’s what Russia’s 2020 disinformation operations look like, according to two experts on social media and propaganda. By DARREN LINVILL & PATRICK WARREN Internet trolls don’t troll. Not the professionals at least. Professional trolls don’t go on social media to antagonize liberals or belittle conservatives. They are not narrow minded, drunk or angry. They don’t lack basic English language skills. They certainly aren’t “somebody sitting on their bed that weighs 400 pounds,” as the president once put it. Your stereotypical trolls do exist on social media, but the amateurs aren’t a threat to Western democracy. Professional trolls, on the other hand, are the tip of the spear in the new digital, ideological battleground. To combat the threat they pose, we must first understand them — and take them seriously. MORE: https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/russia-troll-2020-election-interference-twitter-916482/ P...
The Nightmare Scenario That Keeps Election Lawyers Up At Night -- And Could Hand Trump A Second Term (Photo: Photos: Getty Images) Americans will almost certainly go to bed on Nov. 3 without knowing who won the presidential election. Since millions of people will vote by mail, constraints on time and resources will slow ballot counting into potentially a weeks-long process. Voting patterns suggest it’s likely that President Donald Trump could end Election Day in the lead in certain key states, only to be overtaken by Democratic opponent Joe Biden when more votes are tallied. This could create a nightmare scenario during the three months stretching from Election Day to the Jan. 20 inauguration: a battle on the state and congressional level over who is the legitimate winner. This could include Congress reconvening on Jan. 6, presided over by Vice President Mike Pence , with no consensus over its potential role in choosing the next president. This...
It's like this folks: sometimes your mind goes blank. Happens more than usual with me of course. Take this forum for instance. I wanted to post something today and couldn't think of a topic. At least not a non-sexual one and we know sexual ones lately have been frowned upon. Then along comes one of our regulars and complains about something. Well, they might not say it was a complaint, just an observation, but it was a complaint. A minor one. It has something to do about being able to make something out of nothing. Sort of like me this morning, how to make a thread out of an empty head? But they (notice I am using the correct pronoun, not saying he or she), by what they said got me thinking. What I thought was: Not sure if that is the actual saying, if I remember correctly, I remember the saying going something like this: Umm, no, I don't think the saying I am thinking of goes that way either, maybe ONE of you good folks can remind me how the saying goes. Either way, when...
/https://public-media.si-cdn.com/filer/59/81/598112fb-56f3-4530-802a-f78680b0b31b/boy_better_crop.jpg)
Comments
Post a Comment