Eretz Israel Museum facts for kids
The Eretz Israel Museum (also known as Muza) is a cool place to explore history and old objects in the Ramat Aviv neighborhood of Tel Aviv, Israel. It's a museum where you can learn about the land of Israel through different times.
The Eretz Israel Museum opened in 1953. It has many old items from archaeology, history, and different cultures. These items are shown in several special buildings called pavilions. Each pavilion focuses on a different topic, like old glass, pottery, coins, or copper. The museum also has a planetarium, which is a theater that shows you the stars and planets!
In the "Man and His Work" area, you can see how people used to do things a long time ago. They show live demonstrations of old ways of weaving, making jewelry, creating pottery, grinding grain, and baking bread. There's also an ancient site called Tel Qasile right on the museum grounds. Archaeologists have found 12 different layers of history there, showing how people lived over many centuries.
Contents
Exploring Ancient Times: Archaeology at the Museum
This part of the museum is all about discovering the past through old objects and sites.
Ancient Copper Production
The Nechushtan pavilion teaches you about how copper was made in Timna, a place in the southern Negev desert. This happened during the Chalcolithic (Stone-Copper Age), Bronze Age, and Iron Age periods. Inside, you can see a recreated mine, furnaces for melting metal, and items found from an ancient Egyptian-Midianite mining temple in Timna.
The recreated mine shows tools from the Chalcolithic and Late Bronze Age. These include stone hammers, flint blades, and copper chisels. You can also see the marks these tools left on the rocks.
The museum displays four types of furnaces used for melting copper:
- A bowl furnace from the Chalcolithic period (about 4,000-3,000 BCE).
- A domed furnace from the Late Bronze Age (about 1,400-1,200 BCE).
- An actual Late Bronze Age furnace (from the 12th century BCE).
- A tall shaft furnace from the Iron Age (from the 10th century BCE).
The Midianite Temple Pavilion
Around 1,400 BCE, Egyptian pharaohs sent groups to Timna to mine copper. They worked with skilled metalworkers from the Land of Midian. They continued mining copper there until the early 12th century BCE. This pavilion has a model of a Midianite temple. A very interesting item here is a copper snake with a gold-covered head. It was found in the Midianite shrine and reminds people of the biblical Nehushtan, which was a bronze serpent mentioned in the Bible (Numbers 21:4–9; 2 Kings 18:4).
Amazing Ancient Glass
This pavilion shows off many old glass containers. The exhibit is split into three parts, each showing a different time in glassmaking:
- Pre-blown glass (from the Late Bronze Age to the Hellenistic period – about 1,500-1 BCE). This was before people learned to blow glass.
- Blown glass from the Roman and Byzantine periods (1st–7th centuries CE). This is when glass blowing became popular.
- Blown glass from the Islamic period (7th–15th centuries CE).
Two very special items on display are a delicate drinking horn with two openings, called a "rhyton" in Greek. The other is "Ennion's Blue Jug," which has the signature of its famous maker from the 1st century CE.
Parts of a glass furnace from the 13th century CE were found near a Crusader castle at Sommelaria, north of Acre.
The museum also has a unique gold-glass panel from the Byzantine period (late 6th – early 7th century). It's on loan from the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) and came from the "Birds Mosaic Mansion" in Caesarea.
Learning About People and Traditions: Ethnography and Folklore
This section of the museum shows items related to Judaica. These are objects made by Jewish people living in different places around the world (the Jewish diaspora) or in the Land of Israel between 1880 and 1967. They help us understand their traditions and daily lives.
Money Through Time: Numismatics
The Kadman Numismatic section displays different ways people paid for things in the country. It starts with methods used before coins were invented and goes through all historical periods right up to today's money.
Letters and Stamps: Postal History and Philately
The Alexander Museum of Postal History and Philately tells the story of the postal service in the Land of Israel. It covers the time from the mid-15th century until Israel became a state in 1948. You can see old envelopes, letters, photos, posters, mailboxes, and telephones. There's even a mail truck from 1949!
The philatelic wing shows off valuable and rare stamps.
See also
- List of Israeli museums
