Iron Age Trade in Bronze Age Scarabs at el-Ahwat, Israel

A newly discovered scarab from the 2024 excavation season at el-Ahwat features a well-known depiction of an Egyptian king on a chariot – a hallmark of Ramesside royal iconography. Similar scarabs from the Southern Levant are known from Late Bronze Age funerary contexts, but the el-Ahwat scarab was found in a secure Iron Age IB context, at a site that was not settled during the previous Late Bronze period. Therefore, this scarab, together with a previously published rich glyptic assemblage from the site, offer a unique data point to the corpus of Egyptian-style glyptic material in Canaan after the end of its Egyptian domination. Building on scarab typological frameworks, this study reassesses several of the previously published scarabs from the site, advocating for a later, post-Ramesside, date for one of the finds. Together, the new and reinterpreted finds illuminate the persistence and symbolic resonance of Egyptian royal imagery in Canaan during the early Iron Age, suggesting continued access to, or circulation of, Egyptian-style seals long after the decline of direct Egyptian control. The glyptic corpus from el-Ahwat – a site that participated in the copper trade network – may thus reflect a shift in the function of Egyptian scarabs during a transformative period in Levantine history, transforming from objects of elite emulation during the Bronze Age to traded low-value manufactured exotics in the early Iron Age.