Push Admin

Article (news)

900-year-old gold coins found in Israel

Agence France-Presse

<div class="embed-wrap"><figure data-feedback="fb:likes,fb:comments"><img src="http://sa.kapamilya.com/absnews/abscbnnews/media/2018/news/12/04/coins.jpg"/><figcaption>A picture taken on December 3, 2018, shows ancient gold coins and an earring recently uncovered at an excavation site in the Israeli Mediterranean town of Caesarea. A treasure of 24 rare gold coins consisting of 18 Fatimid dinars, which were the standard local currency during that time (909-1171), as well as six are Byzantine coins, which include five dating to the era of Byzantine Emperor Michael VII Doukas (1071-1078), was recently uncovered in Caesarea.<em> Jack Guez, Agence France-Presse</em></figcaption></figure></div><p>CAESAREA, Israel - Rare gold coins and a golden earring have been discovered in the ancient Mediterranean port of Caesarea in northern Israel -- possibly left and never recovered as Crusaders conquered the area 900 years ago.</p><p>The Israel Antiquities Authority announced the find on Monday of a small bronze pot holding 24 gold coins and the earring.</p><p>According to the authority, it was found between two stones in the side of a well in a house in a neighborhood that dates back some 900 years, during the Abbasid and Fatimid periods.</p><p>The directors of the excavation, the IAA&#x27;s Peter Gendelman and Mohammed Hatar, said the coins in the cache date to the end of the 11th century.</p><p>That makes it possible &quot;to link the treasure to the Crusader conquest of the city in the year 1101, one of the most dramatic events in the medieval history of the city&quot;, an IAA statement said.</p><p>&quot;According to contemporary written sources, most of the inhabitants of Caesarea were massacred by the army of Baldwin I (1100–1118), king of the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem,&quot; it added.</p><p>&quot;It is reasonable to assume that the treasure’s owner and his family perished in the massacre or were sold into slavery, and therefore were not able to retrieve their gold.&quot;</p><p>IAA coin expert Robert Kool said &quot;one or two of these gold coins were the equivalent of the annual salary of a simple farmer, so it seems that whoever deposited the cache was at least well-to-do or involved in commerce&quot;.</p><p>Caesarea was constructed in the first century BC by King Herod at a time that Judea was part of the Roman empire.</p><div><strong>bur-dms/lal/mjs/hc</strong></div><div><strong>© Agence France-Presse</strong></div>

<p>CAESAREA, Israel - Rare gold coins and a golden earring have been discovered in the ancient Mediterranean port of Caesarea in northern Israel -- possibly left and never recovered as Crusaders conquered the area 900 years ago.</p>

CAESAREA, Israel - Rare gold coins and a golden earring have been discovered in the ancient Mediterranean port of Caesarea in northern Israel -- possibly left and never recovered as Crusaders conquered the area 900 years ago.