As the adage goes: You break it, you pay for it. Unless, that is, you are the four-year-old boy who shattered a 3,500-year-old jar at the University of Haifa’s archaeological museum in northern Israel.
The boy who reportedly knocked the large Canaanite jar off its display base near the Hecht Museum’s entrance has since been invited back to the site by its general director to view the jar once it is restored.
The now fragmented vessel dates back to 2200–1500 BCE and was originally found in a tomb at Ein Samiya in the Occupied West Bank, where Bedouin residents recently fled as a result of settler violence, and was likely once used to transport olive oil and wine.
Vases of that size and age have mostly been unearthed by archaeologists broken or incomplete, making the one held at Haifa a “priceless” anomaly, the museum said in a statement to Hyperallergic. Museum officials enlisted Roy Shafir from the University of Haifa’s School of Archaeology and Marine Cultures to lead the jar’s restoration.
Reuben Hecht founded the museum in 1984 to house his collection of artifacts, including the vessel that was broken. In 2020, the institution came under scrutiny after it canceled a talk with Saher Miari because the artist was Palestinian. Hecht was the personal aide to Prime Minister Menachem Begin during the Camp David talks between Israel and Egypt in 1978-9, according to his obituary. He was also a member of the anti-Arab Irgun paramilitary, which facilitated illegal immigration into Palestine, and carried out terrorist attacks against British Mandate soldiers and local Palestinians.
