ANCIENT COIN AMONG OLDEST FOUND NEAR JERUSALEM

Israeli authorities inaugurated a nature park on Wednesday near Jerusalem after five years of archaeological excavations at Ein Hanya, the second-largest spring in the Judean Hills and a key site in the history of Christianity. Along with an announcement that the park will open to the public free of charge within months, the Israel Antiquities Authority revealed some major findings at the site, including a column capital typical of royal structures from the First Temple era and one of the oldest coins ever discovered in the Jerusalem area.

The new findings were publicized for the first time as senior officials participated in a tree-planting ceremony for the Jewish festival of Tu Bishvat and revealed the new nature park.

The statement said that many of the finds were dated to the time of the First Temple, about 2,400 to 2,800 years ago.

“After the destruction of the First Temple, settlement was renewed at the site in the form of an estate house that was inhabited by Jews,” the IAA said.

It said that another significant find from that period was a rare silver coin, described as one of the most ancient discovered so far in the Jerusalem area. It is the ancient Greek currency drachma, with the coin “minted in Ashdod by Greek rulers between 420 and 390 BCE.”

More coins, pottery, glass, roof tiles and multicolored tesserae, or pieces of mosaic, from the Byzantine period were unearthed in the excavation, leading the archaeologists to say that it was during that period (4th–6th centuries CE) that the site reached its zenith.

To read the complete article, see:
First Temple-era relics of possible royal estate found in Jerusalem hills (https://www.timesofisrael.com/first-temple-era-relics-of-possible-royal-estate-found-in-jerusalem-hills/)

	NBS (coinbooks.org) Web