A bronze coin minted by Jews in Jerusalem with the inscription “For the Redemption of Zion” during the final year before the destruction of the Second Temple nearly two millennia ago has been unearthed near the Temple Mount, the Israel Antiquities Authority announced on Thursday.
The rare coin was discovered last week in an archaeological garden at the southwest corner of Judaism’s holiest site where the ancient Jewish Temples once stood. It was minted during the fourth year of the Great Revolt against the Romans, the state-run archaeological body said.
The obverse side of the well-preserved coin carries the inscription in ancient Hebrew script: “For the Redemption of Zion”—expressing the heartfelt desire of Jerusalem’s Jews, toward the end of the revolt which culminated in the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE and the subsequent enslavement and displacement of many of the Jews of Judea, which was later, following the suppression of the Bar Kokhba revolt, renamed Syria Palaestina.
“We thought from the looks of it that it might be a rare coin,” said Esther Rakow-Mellet, an IAA archaeologist. “We waited anxiously for several days until it came back from cleaning, and it turned out that it was a greeting from the Jewish rebels in the Year Four of the Great Revolt.”
On the obverse of the coin is a goblet with the inscription: “LeGe’ulat Zion”—"For the Redemption of Zion.” On its reverse is a lulav, a palm frond used in the Sukkot festival. Next to it are two etrogs, the citron used in that same holiday. The reverse bears the inscription: “Year Four” of the revolt, allowing scholars to date the coin to 69-70 CE.
The inscription “For the Redemption of Zion,” replacing the earlier “For the Liberation of Zion,” indicates a profound change of identity and mindset, and perhaps also reflects the desperate situation of the rebel forces about six months before the fall of Jerusalem on Tisha B’Av, the ninth of the Hebrew month of Av; in August of the year 70 CE, according to IAA Excavation Director Yuval Baruch.
“It would seem that in the rebellion’s fourth year, the mood of the rebels now besieged in Jerusalem changed from euphoria and anticipation of freedom at hand, to a dispirited mood and a yearning for redemption,” said Baruch, who has researched this site for over a quarter century.
“Two thousand years after the minting of this coin, we come along a few days before Tisha B’Av and find such a moving testimony to that great destruction,” said Rakow-Mellet. “There is nothing more symbolic.”
(Tisha B’Av begins on Saturday evening and ends on Sunday evening.)
The coin is being presented to the public for the first time this summer at the Jay and Jeanie Schottenstein National Campus for the Archaeology of Israel in Jerusalem, located between the Israel Museum and the Bible Lands Museum.
