Bibi’s Gift to Obama Is 2,000 Years Old

The chip on the stone. Image by Technion’s Russell Berrie Nanotechnology Institute
President Obama will be receiving an unusual gift during his trip to Israel.
According to New York Magazine’s Daily Intelligencer, Prime Minister Netanyahu commissioned scientists at Technion’s Russell Berrie Nanotechnology Institute to inscribe the US and Israel’s Declarations of Independence side by side on a “golden-coated silicon chip.” The inscriptions measure a grand total of 0.04 square millimeters, and run 20 nanometers, or 0.00002 mm, deep.
Impressed? Well, that’s not all.
The chip was set on a Jerusalem stone dating back to the Second Temple Period (1st century BCE to 1st century CE). It’s nearly 2,000 years old.
The etching was done by “accelerating charged atoms, called ions, and bombarding them at various points on the surface of the chip,” a press release by Technion explained. “When an ion beam hits the chip it creates a tiny recess, in this case 20 nanometers deep.”
The preparation process took about a week, but the actual engraving took less than an hour, the statement added.
The final image etched into the chip is made up of over a million dots.
Top that.
Watch Technion scientists explain exactly how the gift was made:
The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.
Readers like you make it all possible. We’ve started our Passover Fundraising Drive, and we need 1,800 readers like you to step up to support the Forward by April 21. Members of the Forward board are even matching the first 1,000 gifts, up to $70,000.
This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism, because every dollar goes twice as far.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
2X match on all Passover gifts!
Most Popular
- 1
Film & TV What Gal Gadot has said about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
- 2
News A Jewish Republican and Muslim Democrat are suddenly in a tight race for a special seat in Congress
- 3
Fast Forward The NCAA men’s Final Four has 3 Jewish coaches
- 4
Culture How two Jewish names — Kohen and Mira — are dividing red and blue states
In Case You Missed It
-
Fast Forward Secretive GOP firm distorts Democratic candidate’s views on Israel in NJ governor race
-
Fast Forward Trump administration to review nearly $9 billion in Harvard funding over campus antisemitism
-
Yiddish World Yiddish fans in Berlin launch a Yiddish open mic series
-
Fast Forward Cornell pro-Palestinian student leader opts to leave US, as Columbia ‘self-deportee’ makes her case to return
-
Shop the Forward Store
100% of profits support our journalism
Republish This Story
Please read before republishing
We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines.
You must comply with the following:
- Credit the Forward
- Retain our pixel
- Preserve our canonical link in Google search
- Add a noindex tag in Google search
See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.
To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.