An ancient silver coin dating from the First Temple period was recently discovered at a site in the Judean Hills southwest of Jerusalem, along with a stone shekel weight and other items, the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) said Wednesday.
The extremely rare coin, which dates from the Persian period some 2,550 years ago (6th–5th centuries BCE), is one of only half a dozen of its kind that have been found in Israel, according to Dr. Robert Kool, head of the Israel Antiquities Authority Numismatic Department.
“The coin was minted in a period when the use of coins had just begun. 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–5th centuries BCE, such coins began to appear at sites in the Land of Israel,” Kool explained.
The coin was discovered split into two pieces, indicating to the archaeologists that it was being used as a weight for commerce even though it had been minted originally as a coin, a sign of the gradually changing economy of the time.
Archaeologists unearthed the items during an excavation of a First Temple-era four-room house discovered during an expansion of a section of Route 375, which runs from the Gush Etzion area south of Jerusalem, through the Judean Hills and down to the Ella Valley. The structure dates from the 7th century BCE, around 2,700 years ago, when the area was a rural part of the Kingdom of Judah, the archaeologists said. A small arrowhead was also discovered at the site.
The stone shekel weight, which weighs 11.07 grams, is a sign of early organized trade in the region. “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. This was in effect a standard weight in the region of the Kingdom of Judah, showing that commodities were carefully weighed in the markets,” excavation directors Michal Mermelstein and Danny Benayoun said.
“The tiny coins are a crucial source of information in archaeology… Through a tiny object like a coin, it becomes possible to trace human thought processes and observe that our economic habits have remained largely unchanged for thousands of years — only the technology has changed. In this context, it is interesting to consider future archaeological research in a world that has adopted electronic commerce,” IAA director Eli Escuisido said in a statement.
The excavation project was undertaken with the cooperation of Netivei Israel, the government-owned corporation responsible for national transportation infrastructure projects.