A 4-Year-Old Boy Breaks a 3,500-Year-Old Jar at an Israeli Museum
August 28, 2024 | In the PressFrom NYTimes.com (https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/28/world/middleeast/4-year-old-boy-jar-hecht-museum.html?unlocked_article_code=1.Gk4.9PWz.xC1IpYQzhCjb&smid=url-share)
A vessel used for oil and wine during the Middle Bronze Age in the ancient region of Canaan survived for thousands of years before going on display at Israel's Hecht Museum.
Last week, she was shot down by a child's curiosity.
On Friday, a 4-year-old boy visiting the museum in Haifa, a coastal city in northern Israel, with his parents tried to peer inside the 3,500-year-old jar to see what it contained, his father said. The object fell from its metal stand at the museum's entrance and shattered, the museum said in a statement this week.
The Hecht Museum typically presents its valuable archaeological pieces without placing them behind glass or cordoning them off with other barriers. Experiencing historical objects in this way has “a special charm,” the museum said, because visitors can be almost as close to the artifacts as the person who handled them in ancient times.
This approach is in line with the vision of the institution's founder, Reuben Hecht , the museum said. But the vase was left exposed to the whim of the boy, who, his father told the BBC , "took a slight tug on it", causing it to fall.
The jar dates to between 2200 and 1500 BC, before the time of King David and his son and successor King Solomon. Its features match similar objects attributed to ancient Canaan, the museum said, a region that includes what are now parts of Israel and the Palestinian territories.
“Similar vessels have been found in archaeological excavations, but most were broken or incomplete,” Inbal Rivlin, the museum’s director general, said in an emailed statement Wednesday. “The vessel on display at the Hecht Museum, however, was intact, and its size made it an impressive find, placed at the museum’s entrance.”
The Hecht Museum, part of the University of Haifa, said the jug would be professionally restored in a process that would also be open for public viewing.
Museums around the world have been plagued by the pranks and gaffes of visitors who bump into works of art. In 2010, a woman lost her balance and fell on a Picasso at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. In 2016, a child at the Shanghai Museum of Glass pulled on an angel sculpture , causing it to fall. In 2017, a visitor shattered a glowing LED pumpkin at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington.
Despite the mishap, the Hecht Museum will continue to display its artifacts without hindrance, Rivlin said.
“There are cases when exhibits are intentionally damaged, and these cases are dealt with very severely, including with the involvement of the police,” Rivlin said. “In this case, however, that was not the case.”
The family, who were not identified, have been invited back to see the restored piece, he said.
Hecht, an Israeli businessman and confidant of prime ministers, donated his collections of Middle Eastern archaeological artifacts and 19th-century paintings to the museum. He died in 1993, aged 83.
