A 2,000-year-old lamp that looks just like the one that would have been used by Aladdin to summon the genie has been found by a group of school friends in Israel.

The boys – Alon Cohen, Liam Atias and Rotem Levnat who are in the fourth grade – said they first thought it was a stone when they pulled it out of the earth.

The three – from the Parod Kibbutz in the northern Galilee – handed the ancient lamp over to the Israel Antiquities Authority, who confirmed it was more than 2,000 years old.

They said that interesting they were already carrying out a dig in the area in advance of a new building project but the lamp that was found was outside their boundaries.

IAA archaeologist Haim Mamliya told local media: “Discovery of the lamp may give us a clue as to how far the borders of the ancient site reached.

“If it weren’t for the children, we wouldn’t know this. There is no doubt that the find sheds new and interesting light on the excavation.”

As a thank you, the kids were given a certificate praising their act, and were told that it was rare to find an intact lamp of this age.

They added that it was a typical type of lamp for the Jewish settlements of the early Roman period, and as a result, lacked decoration in contrast to the labs that were often more ornate.