A boy of just nine years has found a gold bead about 3,000 years old in Jerusalem. The piece was so well preserved that initially, archaeologists thought it was a contemporary gem.

Binyamin Milt and his family were involved in a project to sift the sand illegally removed from the Temple Mount during a construction project carried out between 1996 and 1999. For 16 years, numerous volunteers have helped analyze the tons of land that have been removed from the site considered sacred.

The gold bead found by the schoolboy is made of gold and is six millimeters in diameter and four millimeters high, the project’s website detailed. The tiny piece has four layers, each of which has small spheres attached to each other in the shape of a flower.

The boy found the bead in August, but due to its perfect state of preservation, it was initially thought to be a piece of the modern world, which somehow ended up in the soil of the Temple Mount. Its unique nature was only recently recognized, after the project’s co-director, Professor Gabriel Barkay, took a closer look at it. 

The dating of the bead, according to Barkay’s estimates, goes back to the so-called First Temple period. That is, the bead found by Binyamin could be up to 3,000 years old.

At the moment, it is not known what the bead was for. It is believed that it could be part of an ornament worn by a priest of the Temple of Solomon or by an important person who visited the sacred place.