Teen discovers 1,500-year-old magic mirror at Israeli excavation

Teenage student uncovered a 1,500-year-old magical mirror from Byzantine period during an Israel Antiquities Authority excavation

Tel Aviv: A 1,500-year-old magical mirror from the Byzantine period was uncovered this week by a teenage student during an Israel Antiquities Authority excavation at the ancient site of Usha in northern Israel, the Antiquities Authority announced on Thursday.

Aviv Weizman, of Kiryat Motzkin, near Haifa, was one of 500 students participating in a week-long Survival Course which included a 90 km trek and participation in excavations at archaeological sites around Israel which will be opened to the public in the future.

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At the site, the 17-year-old Weizman noticed an unusual pottery shard peeping out of the ground between the walls of a building, the Authority said. Weizman picked it up and brought the shard to Dr Einat Ambar-Armon, Director of the Israel Antiquities Authority Northern Education Center, who recognized the find as the plaque of a magical mirror.

The fragment is part of a magical mirror from the Byzantine period, the 4th, 6th centuries CE, said Navit Popovitch, the Antiquities Authority’s curator of the Classical periods.

A glass mirror, for protection against the Evil Eye was placed in the middle of the plaque, Popovitch explained. The idea was that the evil spirit, such as a demon, who looked in the mirror, would see his own reflection, and this would protect the owner of the mirror. Similar mirror plaques have been found in the past as funerary gifts in tombs, in order to protect the deceased in their journey to the world to come. Usha, a national park located in the Western Galilee near Nazareth, was where the Sanhedrin, a supreme judicial council of rabbinic sages, sat for brief periods of time following the Roman destruction of the Second Temple. A number of prominent Talmudic rabbis lived there.

Eli Eskosido, director of the Antiquities Authority said that students also found pottery jars, coins, decorated stone fragments, and even a water aqueduct.

History, usually taught in the classroom, comes to life from the ground. A pupil who uncovers a find in the course of an excavation will never forget the experience. There is no better way to attach the youth to the country and the heritage, Eskosido said.