Archaeologists have announced the discovery of a 2,300-year-old gold ring discovered in Jerusalem’s City of David. The ring is small, most likely made for a child’s finger, and is set with a garnet. It was uncovered by a joint excavation between the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) and Tel-Aviv University. Tehiya Gangate described the process of discovering the ring. “I was sifting earth…and suddenly saw something glitter. I immediately yelled, ‘I found a ring, I found a ring!’ Within seconds everyone gathered around me, and there was great excitement,” she said. She called the find “emotionally moving” and “not the kind you find every day.” The ring is “exceedingly well-preserved” and was formed by “hammering thin pre-cut gold leaves onto a metal ring base.”
The ring dates from about the 3rd or 4th centuries BC, during the Persian and early Hellenistic periods of Jerusalem’s history. Professor Yuval Gadot of Tel Aviv University said these types of discoveries have helped to establish Jerusalem as a major city, rather than the small town asserted by some scholars. “Whereas in the past we found only a few structures and finds from this era, and thus most scholars assumed Jerusalem was then a small town, limited to the top of the southeastern slope (“City of David”) and with relatively very few resources, these new finds tell a different story: The aggregate of revealed structures now constitute an entire neighborhood. They attest to both domestic and public buildings, and that the city extended from the hilltop westward. The character of the buildings—and now of course, the gold finds and other discoveries—display the city’s healthy economy and even its elite status,” he said.
The ring will be one of the pieces displayed at the “Jerusalem Mysteries – The Archaeology of Jerusalem” conference hosted by the IAA in honor of Jerusalem Day, which is from the evening of June 4 to June 5. The event commemorates the reunification of Eastern and Western Jerusalem after the Six-Day War.