Rare Half-Shekel Coin from Anti-Roman Revolt Found in Israel

Inspectors, exploring the caves of Israel's Dead Sea region in search of artifacts, recently unearthed a rare coin dating back to 66 or 67 CE, from the first year of the Jewish rebellion against the Romans. The Israel Antiquities Authority announced that during the four-year revolt, this currency played a significant role in the clandestine Jewish economy.

According to Times of Israel, the coin was engraved with the words "Holy Jerusalem" in ancient Hebrew script rather than the local Greek language of that time. This choice was a testament to their Jewish identity and a decision to mint coins autonomously, as explained by Yani Devi David Levi, a numismatist from the Israel Antiquities Authority.

"For nearly 200 years, people made pilgrimages on foot and used silver coins to pay the 'half-shekel tax,'" Levi said. "And evidently, these coins were used to pay taxes in the temple as well as for the internal economy during the revolt."

The decision to mint coins autonomously during the rebellion was a political statement and an expression of national identity. At that time, only the Roman emperor had the right to mint coins, and they almost always featured the image of the ruling emperor and animals.

On the coins minted by Jewish rebels, three pomegranates were depicted. On the other side of the coin was an image of a vessel resembling one that the priests might have used in the Holy Temple, along with the words "half-shekel" and the letter "aleph," signifying the first year of the rebellion against the Romans.

"There was probably a rebel who wandered the desert and lost this precious treasure of a shekel, and fortunately, we managed to find it after 2,000 years and return it to the public," said Hagai Hamer, an archaeologist researching the Judean Desert. "There are people who continue the tradition of paying the temple's half-shekel tax to this day as a commandment."

Archaeologists discovered the coin in the Ein-Gedi oasis area during an intensive survey of all the caves in the Judean Desert, aiming to identify and document archaeological findings before they could be looted by thieves, particularly additional Dead Sea Scrolls. For the past six years, researchers have traversed the desert, both on foot and descending steep cliffs to reach the caves hidden in the mountainside. This investigation is a joint initiative of the Israel Antiquities Authority, the Ministry of Heritage, and the Civil Administration's Archaeology Division in Judea and Samaria.

"Over the six years of the project, we have documented over 800 caves and found thousands of significant discoveries," said Amir Ganor, the director of the Judean Desert research and excavation project. He mentioned that if ancient artifact thieves had found the coin, they could have sold it at a considerably high price.