Archaeologists find 1,000 year-old coins in Jerusalem

by Karen Faulkner, Worthy News Correspondent

(Worthy News) –
Israeli archaeologists have unearthed a jar containing 1,000-year-old coins in the Old City of Jerusalem, CBN News reports. Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) inspector Yevgenia Kapil made the discovery during preliminary digging for a Western Wall elevator installation in October.

The small jar holding four coins was found as the Company for the Reconstruction and Development of the Jewish Quarter in the Old City prepared ground to install an elevator for visitors to the Western Wall Plaza, CBN News said.

After Kapil discovered the jar, excavation director David Gellman emptied it and saw the coins. “To my great surprise, along with the soil, four shiny gold coins fell into my hand. This is the first time in my career as an archaeologist that I have discovered gold, and it is tremendously exciting,” Gellman said in a statement.

The 1,000-year-old coins date back to a time when Jerusalem was under Islamic rule. Two of the coins were minted in the Israeli city of Ramla, which was controlled by Caliph al-Muti from 946-974 AD. The other two gold coins were minted in Egypt. In a statement, IAA coin expert Dr. Robert Kool said: “The coins were in excellent preservation and were immediately identifiable even without cleaning.”

Explaining the history behind the discovery, Kook continued: “The coins date from a relatively brief period, from the late 940s to the 970s CE. This was a time of radical political change, when control over Eretz Israel passed from the Sunni Abbasid caliphate, whose capital was Baghdad, Iraq, into the hands of ​​its Shiite rivals—the Fatimid dynasty of North Africa, who conquered Egypt, Syria, and Eretz Israel in those years. The profile of the coins found in the juglet are a near-perfect reflection of the historical events.”

Latest Worthy News