On any given day there's not a whole lot going on in Montana — a ranch here, a mesa there — but apparently for the past five decades or so there's been a rich and fascinating scrap of ancient history just hanging out in some guy's house courtesy of his mom:
Israel has acquired a previously unknown ancient papyrus bearing a Hebrew inscription dated to around 2,700 years ago that had long been in possession of a Montana resident, the country's antiquities authority said Wednesday.
The scrap of papyrus — scarcely larger than a postage stamp with four lines of angular script — is one of just a few from the region in the Late Iron Age, archaeologists said. The Israel Antiquities Authority said it authenticated its age using radiocarbon dating, which corresponded with the age of the text's writing style. ...
The antiquities authority declined to name the Montana resident but said the man's mother obtained the artifact during a visit to what was then Jordanian-occupied east Jerusalem in 1965 and brought it to the United States.
Here's a shot of your mom after she brings a 2,700-year-old piece of global history back to your ranch home in the suburbs of Butte:
Seriously though...this mom was bold:
Jordanian law that was in force at the time severely restricted the sale of antiquities and prohibited the export of artifacts without a permit from the minister of antiquities. It wasn't clear whether the woman possessed such authorization. ...
Eitan Klein, head of the Israeli antiquities' theft prevention unit, said the Montana man's mother may have either purchased the object from Khalil Iskander Shahin — a Bethlehem-based antiquities dealer better known as "Kando," who traded in many of the originally discovered Dead Sea Scrolls — or may have been given the papyrus by the curator of the Rockefeller Museum in Jerusalem.
Yeah you don't just walk out of Jordan in the 1960s with a piece of contraband. You gotta get yourself good and disguised and slink out.
The scrap is fascinating enough but I wanna know the full story of how the heck it got to Montana!
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