An extremely rare 2,550-year-old coin was discovered in the Judean Hills from a Return to Zion period when 50,000 exiled Jews returned to Israel from the Persian empire.
Following a decree by the Persian King Cyrus, conqueror of the Babylonian empire (538 BCE), some 50,000 Jews set out on the first return to the Land of Israel, led by Zerubbabel, a descendant of the House of David. Dating from around this time, 2550 years ago, antiquity researchers have found both a one shekel weight and fragments of a silver coin. It was found in the Judean Hills outside Jerusalem in the course of infrastructure works undertaken by the Netivei Israel National Transport Infrastructure Company. A building from the First Temple Period was also unearthed.
Site of excavation
The rare coin was discovered by Semyon Gendler, the Acting Judean District Archaeologist of the Israel Antiquities Authority. The coin, found intentionally broken, was minted with a square stamp embedded into one face; later, more sophisticated techniques produced coins with protruding rather than sunken stamps.
According to Dr. Robert Kool, Head of the Israel Antiquities Authority Numismatic Department, “The coin is extremely rare, joining only half a dozen coins of its type that have been found in archaeological excavations in the country. The coin was minted in a period when the use of coins had just begun.
Rare shekel Zionist-era weight from 2500 years ago
The rare find contributes information concerning the way trade was carried out, and the process whereby global commerce moved from payment by weighing silver pieces, to the use of coins. The coin belongs to a group of very early coins that were minted outside Israel, in the regions of ancient Greece, Cyprus and Turkey. In the 6th to 5th centuries BCE, such coins began to appear at sites in the Land of Israel.
An additional indication of the gradual process is the fact that, although the silver coin was minted as a coin, it was found intentionally cut into two. This indicates that in the 4th century BCE, it was used as a weighed piece of silver, rather than as a coin, even though coins were current in this period.
According to Michal Mermelstein and Danny Benayoun, Excavation directors on behalf of the Israel Antiquities Authority, “The site was situated in the rural area of the Kingdom of Judah, whose capital was in Jerusalem. It was first settled in the First Temple period, in the 7th century BCE (2,700 years ago), during the reigns of the kings of Judah, Hezekiah, Manasseh, Amon and Josiah, a peak settlement period in the kingdom of Judah.
A characteristic ‘four-room house’ was uncovered from this period, and the shekel weight, found on the floor of one of the rooms in the house, provides early evidence for trade. The dome-shaped stone weight would have been used for weighing metals, spices, and other expensive commodities.
The sign on the weight was an ancient Egyptian (hieratic) abbreviation for the word shekel, and the single incised stroke represents one shekel. The weight weighs 11.07 g. “This was in effect a standard weight in the region of the kingdom of Judah, showing that commodities were carefully weighed in the markets,” say the archaeologists.
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