Archaeological dig in Jaffa unearths 3,800-year-old baby buried in a jar
The jar was found in the Old City portion of the the 4,000-year-old port town, one of the oldest in the world.
By JERUSALEM POST STAFFLights are reflected in the Mediterranean Sea, as a view of Jaffa Port is seen at sunset, in Jaffa, Israel June 16, 2019. Picture taken June 16, 2019(photo credit: REUTERS/AMIR COHEN)
Israeli archaeologists excavating a site in Jaffa found a 3,800-year-old jar, the contents of which contained the skeleton of a baby, according to Live Science.Researchers from the Antiquities Authority (IAA) unearthed the set of remains buried 10 feet below the surface while surveying the city ahead of planned construction, and detailed their findings in the journal Atiqot - joining 50 other archaeological studies based in Jaffa.Live Science notes that the practice of encasing infants in jars before burial is not uncommon, and that it has existed since the Bronze Age and even continued up until the 20th century."You might go to the practical thing and say that the bodies were so fragile, they felt the need to protect it from the environment, even though it is dead," IAA archaeologist Yoav Arbel told Live Science. "But there's always the interpretation that the jar is almost like a womb, so basically the idea is to return [the] baby back into Mother Earth, or into the symbolic protection of his mother."The jar was found in the Old City section of the 4,000-year-old port town, considered one of the oldest in the world."We're talking about a city that was ruled by a lot of different people," Arbel said to Live Science. "Let's say that a lot of flags flew from its mast before Israel's flag of today."Considering the port town has been inhabited for the past 4,000 years, the archaeologists are discovering antiquities dating from different periods around sites within close proximity to one another. The journal entry detailed a pit of amphorae, used to import and export wine, that was dated to be 2,300 years old, compared to the much older jar containing the baby's skeleton.
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