The Boy Who Smashed an Ancient Bronze Age Jar Returns to the Museum

Photo byNPR

In July 2024, a five-year-old child accidentally pulled and smashed a 3500-year-old Canaanite jar from the Bronze Age. The piece was on display without protection near the museum entrance.

Despite the incident, the museum said it will display items without barriers when possible. It said showing archaeological finds without obstructions has a unique charm, and the item would be restored and returned to display.

Alex Geller said Ariel—the youngest of his three children—is exceptionally curious. The moment he heard the crash last Friday, "Please let that not be my child" was the first thought.

Photo byNDTV

Ariel Geller's family was invited for a guided tour of Haifa's Hecht Museum in Israel a few days after the five-year-old smashed a rare, 3,500-year-old jar in the museum. Part of the tour included observing the restoration of the broken vase.

Roee Shafir, a museum restoration expert, said the repairs would be fairly simple, as the pieces were from a single, complete jar.

Archaeologists often have to sift through piles of shards from multiple objects and try to piece them together.

Photo byEuronews.com

Shafir, who painstakingly reassembled the jar, said the artifacts should remain accessible to the public, even if accidents happen, because touching an artifact can inspire a more profound interest in history and archaeology.

The museum told the BBC that the pottery dates back to the Bronze Age between 2200 and 1500 BC and is a rare artifact because it is so intact.

The jar was one of the artifacts kept out in the open, part of the museum's vision of allowing visitors to explore the past without any glass or barriers.

The jar was most likely intended initially to carry local supplies, such as wine and olive oil. It predates the time of the Biblical King David and King Solomon and is characteristic of the Canaan region on the eastern Mediterranean coast.

Photo byCNN

The Hecht Museum dates to 1984, when Reuben Hecht founded it. Hecht is on the University of Haifa Board of Governors. For sixty years, Hecht collected archaeological artifacts of the Land of Israel in ancient times.

Exhibits chronologically display the archaeology and history of the Land of Israel. Semitic seals, jewelry, artifacts from the Temple Mount excavations, Phoenician metalworking, woodworking, stone vessels, glass making, and mosaics are displayed.

The museum's collection includes French paintings from various eras and Jewish art from the mid-nineteenth to early twentieth century.

The museum owns paintings by Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot, Édouard Manet, Claude Monet, Camille Jacob Pissarro, Vincent van Gogh, Amedeo Modigliani, and Max Liebermann.

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Douglas Pilarski is an award-winning writer & journalist based on the West Coast. He writes about luxury goods, exotic cars, horology, tech, food, lifestyle, equestrian & rodeo, and millionaire travel.

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