Archaeologists working in the ancient city of Abel Beth Maacah in northern Israel have found a detailed miniature sculpture of a head. Owen Jarus reports:

The sculpture depicts a man with long, black hair and a beard who is wearing a yellow and black headband. He has dark, almond-shaped eyes and a serious expression on his face. Carved in a glazed ceramic called faience, the head is only about 2 inches by 2.2 inches in size and was once part of a small statuette, now lost, that was 8 to 10 inches [high]. . . .

The quality of the carving and its seemingly careful placement inside a possible administrative building at the peak of the city indicate that it depicts an elite person. . . . “We’re guessing probably a king, but we have no way of proving that,” said Robert Mullins, [one of the excavation’s directors].

If this was a king, which one? Radiocarbon dating of organic material found in the same room as the sculpture suggests that the object was constructed sometime between 902 and 806 BCE, Mullins said. At this time, he noted, the borders of three different kingdoms—Israel, Tyre, and Aram-Damascus—were near Abel Beth Maacah. . . . Given the long stretch of time during which the sculpture could have been created and the fact that control of Abel Beth Maacah changed throughout this period, the sculpture could depict numerous kings . . . Three possibilities are King Ahab of Israel, King Hazael of Aram-Damascus, and King Ethbaal of Tyre, but there are many other candidates, [Mullins] said.

There is little doubt that if Hizballah had participated more intensively in Saturday’s attack, Israeli air defenses would have been pushed past their limits, and far more damage would have been done. Daniel Byman and Kenneth Pollack, trying to look at things from Tehran’s perspective, see this as an important sign of caution—but caution that shouldn’t be exaggerated:

Iran is well aware of the extent and capability of Israel’s air defenses. The scale of the strike was almost certainly designed to enable at least some of the attacking munitions to penetrate those defenses and cause some degree of damage. Their inability to do so was doubtless a disappointment to Tehran, but the Iranians can probably still console themselves that the attack was frightening for the Israeli people and alarming to their government. Iran probably hopes that it was unpleasant enough to give Israeli leaders pause the next time they consider an operation like the embassy strike.

Hizballah is Iran’s ace in the hole. With more than 150,000 rockets and missiles, the Lebanese militant group could overwhelm Israeli air defenses. . . . All of this reinforces the strategic assessment that Iran is not looking to escalate with Israel and is, in fact, working very hard to avoid escalation. . . . Still, Iran has crossed a Rubicon, although it may not recognize it. Iran had never struck Israel directly from its own territory before Saturday.

Byman and Pollack see here an important lesson for America:

What Saturday’s fireworks hopefully also illustrated is the danger of U.S. disengagement from the Middle East. . . . The latest round of violence shows why it is important for the United States to take the lead on pushing back on Iran and its proxies and bolstering U.S. allies.