RARE YEHUD COINS FOUND AT TEMPLE MOUNT

Three extremely rare Jewish-minted coins dating from the 4th century BCE were recently discovered by the Temple Mount Sifting Project, doubling the number unearthed in ancient Jerusalem to date. These coins are among the earliest testaments to Jewish minting in the Land of Israel.

But they’re easy to miss: The coins are only 7 millimeters in diameter and of an almost negligible weight. Made of silver, their design is based on the Athenian Obol and utilize its barn owl motif, representing the goddess Athena. However, instead of the Greek letters ?T? for Athens, they bear an inscription in ancient Hebrew — “yhd” or Judah.

Yehud The Sifting Project has uncovered over 6,000 ancient coins during its systematic meticulous study of thousands of tons of Temple Mount earth haphazardly discarded during unauthorized renovations of a subterranean mosque in the late 1990s.

The Yehud coins were minted during a rare period in which Jews semiautonomously ruled under the Persian Achaemenid Empire, from circa 539-332 BCE, in a province called Yehud Medinata. With a capital in Jerusalem, Yehud Medinata existed for some 200 years until the conquest of Alexander the Great.

Interestingly, the Yehud class of coin was first identified only in 1934 by pioneering Israeli archaeologist Eleazar Sukenik. In an article, he included in this new class a drachm, which was known already from the 18th century, as well as a Palestinian collector’s obol, and a hemiobol, which had been excavated in 1931 at Beth Zur, a site of biblical import located south of Jerusalem close to Hebron.

David adds:

To read the complete article, see:
3 tiny, extremely rare 4th century BCE Jewish-minted coins found in Jerusalem (https://www.timesofisrael.com/extremely-rare-4th-century-bce-jewish-minted-coins-unearthed-in-jerusalem/)

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