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The thief did not give details of the “many troubles” he believes were caused by the theft of the antiquities.

Hope it was nothing like the ‘Tammy Curse.’ Just saying…

Via Jerusalem Post:

Amos Cohen, an employee of the Museum of Islamic and Near Eastern Cultures in Beersheba, did not believe his eyes last week when he opened a bag left in the museum’s courtyard containing two sling stones and a typed, anonymous note, written in Hebrew.

“These are two Roman ballista balls from Gamla, from a residential quarter at the foot of the summit,” the note read.

“I stole them in July 1995, and since then they have brought me nothing but trouble. Please, do not steal antiquities!”

….On Monday, the IAA’s Dr. Danny Syon, who oversaw numerous excavations at Gamla for several years, welcomed the return of the stones.

“The Romans shot these stones at the defenders of the city in order to keep them away from the wall, and in that way they could approach the wall and break it with a battering ram,” he explained.

….According to Syon, the returned sling stones is not the first case of a thief’s remorse after stealing antiquities belonging to the state.

“In the past, a 2,000-year-old Jewish coffin was returned to the Unit for the Prevention of Antiquities Robbery,” he said. “It had been kept in the bedroom of a Tel Aviv resident until he realized the morbid meaning of the find.”

In another case, Syon said that a minister from New York asked for forgiveness for a member of his congregation whose conscience was tormented after he took a stone from Jerusalem more than a decade earlier….