A 1,800-year-old ring with an engraving of the Roman goddess Minerva holding a sword and spear has been found by a teenager hiking in northern Israel.
The piece of jewelry, which seems to be made of bronze, shows Minerva, the Roman equivalent of the Greek goddess Athena, wearing nothing but a helmet.
The goddess, much-loved throughout the Roman period, was “considered, among other things, as the goddess of war and military strategy, and also as the goddess of wisdom,” Nir Distelfeld, inspector at the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) Theft Prevention Unit, and Eitan Klein of the IAA’s Unit for the Prevention of Antiquities Robbery, said in a statement.
1,800-year-old ring depicting Roman goddess discovered by ancient quarry in Israel
— Edward Butler (@EPButler) July 19, 2024
Thirteen-year-old Yair Whiteson came across the ring while walking with his father in Haifa. The pair was hiking close to an ancient quarry on Mount Carmel when Yair, who already has a small collection of rocks and fossils, saw a “small green item” on the ground, as per Live Science.
“It was corroded, and at first, I thought it was just a rusty bolt,” Yair said in the statement. “I thought about heating it, but then fortunately I understood it was a ring. At home, I saw it had an image on it. At first glance, I thought it was a warrior.”
The teenager’s family reached out to the IAA, who then passed on the item of jewelry to Israel’s National Treasures Department.
Roman Israel
The ring most probably belonged to a woman or girl during the Late Roman period, researchers said. It was discovered in Khirbet Shalala, an archaeological site on a hilltop close to the quarry that contains the remains of a Roman-period farmstead.
“There are two burial caves on the quarry’s edge,” Distelfeld and Klein said in the statement. “The ring may have belonged to a woman who lived on this farm. Or, it might have fallen from a quarry worker, or it may have been a burial offering from these nearby graves. There are many possibilities.”
The item is set to go on display at the Jay and Jeanie Schottenstein National Campus for the Archaeology of Israel in Jerusalem.
Other significant ancient finds in Israel
Just a few days ago, another significant find took place in Israel. The earliest known example of red-dyed textiles made using insects in Israel was discovered through an archaeological collaboration between IAA, Bar-Ilan University, and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
The thread of textile was uncovered in a cave in the Judean Desert, having been dyed using Kermes oak insects, cited in the biblical text as the “Tola’at Hashani” (scarlet worm).
Sourced from the dried bodies of the females, scale insects are used in red kermes dye production in crimson and scarlet.
Red dye derived from insects has been a practice of the ancient Egyptians, Mesopotamians, Indians, Greeks, Romans, and Iranians since antiquity, but the discovery in the Judean Desert is the earliest known example, as described in the Torah, in Israel.
