Thursday, February 25, 2016

JERUSALEM—The Israel Antiquities Authority announced that a seven-year-old boy discovered a 3,400-year-old female figurine while hiking at Tel Rehov, located in northeastern Israel, with friends. “Ori returned home with the impressive figurine and the excitement was great. We explained to him this is an ancient artifact and that archaeological finds belong to the state,” his mother said in a press release. Amihai Mazar, director of the excavations at Tel Rehov and professor emeritus at Hebrew University, examined the artifact, which had been made by pressing clay into a mold. “It is typical of the Canaanite culture of the fifteenth to thirteenth centuries B.C. Some researchers think the figure depicted here is that of a real flesh and blood woman, and others view her as the fertility goddess Astarte, known from Canaanite sources and from the Bible,” he said. For more, go to "Egyptian Style in Ancient Canaan."