Four-year-old boy who smashed rare Bronze Age jar returns to museum

A four-year-old boy who accidentally broke an ancient urn dating back to the late Bronze Age has returned for a visit to the museum in Israel.

The 3,500-year-old artefact was on display at the Hecht Museum at the University of Haifa when it was damaged last week.

But the museum’s director, Dr Inbal Rivlin, invited the boy to return for a guided tour and to see the jar after it had been repaired.

Exactly a week after the damage the museum said the young boy, Ariel, and his family and friends, had returned to the museum for a visit.

It said he also had the opportunity to carry out some restoration work himself, assembling and restoring a small broken jar using a special kit.

“In a similar manner to the repairs currently under way on the ancient jar, this is exactly what professionals do,” it added.

The ancient urn was discovered during excavations in Samaria, central Israel, and is dated to between 1130 and 1500BC. It has been in the museum for 35 years.

At the time the museum described the jar as a rare and “impressive find”, as most others from that period were found broken or incomplete.

It added: “It predates the days of David and King Solomon, is typical of the Canaan region and was intended for storing and transporting local consumption, mainly wine and olive oil.”

In its latest statement it said there are “two major schools of thought” among worldwide audiences about the approach it should have taken: “The inclusive one, who supports the gracious decision to encourage the child and his family to return to the museum without punishment; on the other hand, the group that believes the decision was wrong and that punishing and reprimanding the child and his family was a moral and educational necessity.”

The museum added: “At a time when reality sometimes appears to be difficult to comprehend, it is more important than ever to engage with culture, history, and values.

“While the saddening incident embodied in the figure of a child who, out of pure curiosity, shatters 3,500 years of history are not without irony, we are proud to have continued generating public interest in museums and their central role and importance in the community.”

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Dr Rivlin previously explained the jar was not behind a display case because of the vision of the museum’s founder, Dr Reuven Hecht, whose intention was to make archaeological items as accessible to visitors as possible.

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The free museum, which sits within the grounds of the University of Haifa, has several archaeological exhibits from the Chalcolithic to Byzantine periods.

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