Student spots half-buried object — and uncovers ancient ‘magical mirror’ in Israel

Aspen Pflughoeft
·2 min read
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You look in the mirror when checking if there’s something stuck in your teeth, when getting ready in the morning and when backing up the car. After all, mirrors are commonplace and often serve pretty boring purposes.

But some mirrors are much more special — magical, even.

Aviv Weizman, a 17-year-old high school student from northern Israel, was at an archaeological excavation site in Usha, the Israel Antiquities Authority said in an Aug. 3 news release.

Along with 500 other students. Aviv was participating in a “survival course,” an about-56-mile trek between two mountains, officials said. During the trek, the students stopped at an archaeological site to help with excavations.

A group of students at the archaeological site.
A group of students at the archaeological site.

Near one of the site’s buildings, Aviv spotted an “unusual” object, half-buried in the ground. She uncovered the pottery fragment and took it to archaeologists.

Archaeologists immediately recognized it as part of the plaque for a “magical mirror,” the release said. The fragment was from the Byzantine era and about 1,500 years old, the release said.

The grayish fragment was a half-circle with an indented center and a decorated outer ring, photos show. The decoration shows several arrow-like shapes pointing in the same direction.

The pottery fragment from a “magical mirror.”
The pottery fragment from a “magical mirror.”

“A glass mirror, for protection against the Evil Eye was placed in the middle of the plaque,” Navit Popovitch, a curator with the Israel Antiquities Authority, explained in the release.

“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,” Popovitch said. “Similar mirror plaques have been found in the past as funerary gifts in tombs, to protect the deceased in their journey to the world to come.”

Photos show an example of a more complete “magical mirror.”

An example of a “magical mirror.”
An example of a “magical mirror.”

During the excavations, the students also found “pottery jars, coins, decorated stone fragments, and even a water aqueduct,” Eli Escusido, the director of the Israel Antiquities Authority, said in the release.

Usha is about 65 miles northeast of Tel Aviv.

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