Six Small Middle Eastern Antiquities

A group of Canaanite antiquities, circa mid-2nd millennium B.C., comprising a bronze dagger blade, two small pottery jars each of globular form, a pottery oil lamp with trefoil lip, and the upper part of a mold-made terracotta figure of a goddess holding her breasts. Together with: an Egyptian green faience ushabti, (3rd centruy B.C.); the entire group labeled "Items I excavated from a Canaanite House (1500 B.C.)" and presented in a leather-covered box with commemorative engraved brass plaque in front. The ushabti evidently a later addition.

Gift of Moshe Dayan, February 1968

A gift of archaeological finds from Moshe Dayan. In addition to being one of Israeli's most prominent military leaders and politicians, Dayan was also an amateur archaeologist.  There is a brass plaque on the side of the box in which the antiquities are housed that reads: "To Robert S. MacNamara [sic] | with admiration | Moshe Dayan | February 1968."  After President Kennedy sent 16,000 military advisers to Vietnam in 1961, McNamara and others made frequent trips to Hawaii and South Vietnam to hear directly about the situation from their American and South Vietnamese colleagues. McNamara remarked: "We always supplemented those meetings with consultations with independent observers. I particularly sought the military advice of the Israeli military hero Gen. Moshe Dayan ..." (In Retrospect, p. 45).