It’s every parent’s worst nightmare (ok, maybe not worst, but close): you take your 4-year-old child to the museum and he or she curiously touches something, accidentally shattering an irreplaceable artifact of human history that dates back millennia–and it just happened to a Dad at the Hecht Museum in Haifa in Israel this week, as the BBC reports:

Boy accidentally smashes 3,500-year-old jar on museum visit

Ugh! His four year old boy wanted to know what was in the giant amphora, grabbed at the rim to look and then it took a tumble. The rest is history:

Shay Levy, Hecht Museum (via BBC)

Or, I guess, it was history. Now I think my blood pressure will go up even more next time I take my kids to a museum. This jar was from before 1500 BC. That means half a millennium before David and Solomon. It could be 4,000 years old. When a four-millennium old piece of pottery goes up against a four-year-old, we know who wins–and it’s not the jar. I would imagine that the Hecht museum curators are face-palming themselves over their desire to display artifacts without glass protection because of the “special charm” museum-goers feel. Oh well, I suppose by the time the eschaton arrives all clay jars will be smashed. I’m not sure which proverb to cite, but maybe “He who digs a pit will fall into it” (Eccl 10:8 ESV) or perhaps better would be Jeremiah’s prophecy about the broken flask: “So will I break this people and this city, as one breaks a potter’s vessel, so that it can never be mended” (Jer 19:11 ESV). Keep a close eye on the artifacts next time you bring a little child to a museum or they might be so broken that they can never be mended again!