(Times of Israel) Amanda Borschel-Dan - Three Jewish-minted coins dating from the 4th century BCE were recently discovered by the Temple Mount Sifting Project. Made of silver, they bear an inscription in ancient Hebrew - "yhd" or Judah. The Sifting Project has uncovered over 6,000 ancient coins in tons of Temple Mount earth discarded during unauthorized renovations of a subterranean mosque in the late 1990s. The Yehud coins were minted during a period in which Jews semiautonomously ruled under the Persian Achaemenid Empire, from circa 539-332 BCE, in a province called Yehud Medinata, with its capital in Jerusalem. Sifting Project co-director Zachi Dvira told Ynet, "Throughout the 150 years of archeological digs all across the sites of ancient Jerusalem, only five of these coins were ever found. We have now found three whole coins, along with two eroded ones, apparently from the same series, and assume we'll find more in the future."
2018-05-25 00:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive