Piece offering: boy, 4, who broke Bronze Age artefact returns to Israeli museum

A four-year-old boy who accidentally smashed a Bronze Age jar into pieces was welcomed back along with his family to the Hecht Museum in Israel.

- ALISHA RAHAMAN SARKAR

The child and his family were visiting the museum at the University of Haifa earlier this month when the boy “pulled the jar slightly” out of curiosity, causing the 3,500-year-old jar to fall and shatter. The artefact had been displayed near the entrance without a protective barrier.

The museum, instead of taking action against Ariel Geller, said it was inviting the boy and his family for a guided tour to “sweeten” their previously bitter experience. During their visit last Friday, the boy gifted the museum a clay vase of his own and was met with forgiving staff and curators.

“It was just a distraction of a second,” Anna Geller, a mother of three from the northern Israeli town of Nahariya, told the Associated Press. “And the next thing I know, it’s a very big boom boom behind me.”