The Temple Mount Sifting Project has found three exceedingly rare Jewish-minted coins from the 4th century BCE, tripling the total amount of coins found in ancient Jerusalem to far. Among the first evidence of Jewish minting in the Land of Israel are these coins.
However, they’re simple to overlook: The coins weigh nearly nothing and have a diameter of just 7 millimeters. Their silver design is modeled from the Athenian Obol and uses the goddess Athena’s barn owl symbol. However, they have an inscription in ancient Hebrew that reads “yhd,” meaning Judah, in place of the Greek letters ΑΘE for Athens.
In the course of its methodical, painstaking examination of hundreds of tons of Temple Mount dirt that were carelessly dumped during unapproved renovations of an underground mosque in the late 1990s, The Sifting Project has discovered more than 6,000 antique coins.
There are two others that are thought to be of the same type, but only three were positively recognized as these silver Yehud coins that were made in Jerusalem by Jews during the Persian Empire.
In all, 193 coins with archeological provenance that were produced locally throughout the Holy Land during the Persian era have been found in Israel to yet. There are just fifty-one Yehud coins among them.
The Yehud coins were produced in the province of Yehud Medinata during the brief time between 539 and 332 BCE when Jews lived under the semiautonomous control of the Persian Achaemenid Empire. Before Alexander the Great’s conquest, Yehud Medinata lasted for around 200 years, with its capital in Jerusalem.
Several Hebrew Bible books include accounts of this time period. Once a key cup-bearer to King Artaxerxes I of Persia, who asked to be governor of Yehud/Judah in order to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem after the Babylonian conquest, Nehemiah’s struggles are chronicled in the Book of Nehemiah.
Furthermore, the second book of Chronicles and the books of Ezra and Nehemiah attest to the Second Temple’s construction following an order from Cyrus the Great, who ruled starting in 559 BCE. Around 516 BCE, Darius the Great finished the structure, according to the Book of Ezra.
These Yehud coins, which date from the conclusion of the short Jewish administration under the Persian Empire, are a tangible representation of the time period. Yaakov Meshorer, the now-deceased leading Israeli numismatist, estimated that the Yehud coins were struck around 350 BCE.
However, it’s evident from foreign terminology that they weren’t really “Jewish.”
Similarly, most of the coins in circulation at the time were huge denominations that were still produced outside of the Holy Land. Local mints, mostly in Jerusalem and Gaza, produced coins of lesser value. According to Meshorer, these lesser local coins ranged in value from 1 drachma (4 grams of silver) to the hemiobol (1/3 gram of silver), which was the smallest denomination.
The Jordanian managers of the Muslim holy sites in Jerusalem, the Waqf and the Northern Branch of the Islamic Movement, took 9,000 tons of antiquities-rich dirt from the Temple Mount and disposed of it in the neighboring Kidron Valley in the late 1990s. According to the Sifting Project, it was thrown away when the Temple Mount’s underground “Solomon’s Stables” underwent unapproved modifications to expand its current usage as an underground mosque.
The Sifting Project was established in 2004 by archaeologists Dr. Gabriel Barkay and Zachi Dvira (Zweig) in an attempt to recover any valuable items that could be discovered among the debris. To divide the materials into categories like glass, mosaic, metal, bone, clay, and stone, the two created a technique of “wet sifting” buckets of dirt over mesh screens.
Up till now, over 70% of the recovered earth has been wet-sifted, mostly at the project’s former headquarters at Emek HaTsurim, which is next to the Mount of Olives.
Under the academic aegis of the Institute of Archaeology at Bar Ilan University, the project is now focused on study and the dissemination of its half a million discoveries, and it is still expanding. In a new pilot project, truckloads of dirt are transported to various locations and examined by community members and schoolchildren in order to test the wet sifting procedure.
The Philistian, Edomite, Samarian, and Dor classes of coins were produced by four different municipal mints in the Land of Israel during the Persian era, in addition to the Jerusalem “Yehud” coin mint.
Interestingly, it wasn’t until 1934 that Eleazar Sukenik, a trailblazing Israeli archaeologist, recognized the Yehud class of coins. He added a drachm, which was previously well-known from the 18th century, a Palestinian collector’s obol, and a hemiobol—which had been discovered in 1931 in Beth Zur, a biblically significant location south of Jerusalem near Hebron—to this new class in an essay.
At the time, it was still unknown where these Yehud coins were created, in contrast to other locally struck Persian-era coins that had obvious indications indicating their location. Another Yehud coin was discovered just 38 years after Sukenik’s publication, this time at an excavation 2 kilometers north of old Jerusalem in the French Hill area.
Unfortunately, it grew more and more challenging to uncover these coins in situ. According to a 2016 article titled “The Circulation of Locally Minted Persian-Period Coins in the Southern Levant” by Donald Ariel, head of the coin department for the Israel Antiquity Authority, “clandestine antiquities theft had produced a growing number of coins [on the market] from within this series” after the 1967 Six Day War.
Through thievery and antiquities dealers, many coins from this era made their way into the market. He continues, “The coin dealers “talked about findspots south of Jerusalem,” even though it was unclear where these coins came from archeologically.
According to Ariel, the investigation of archeological data revealed that Yehud coins were mostly found in Judea; however, they were sometimes found beyond the province, such as at Mount Gerizim in Samaria.
It wasn’t until 1977 that it was decided that the Yehud class mint was located in Jerusalem. “The location of the mint was not immediately clear due to the scarcity of such coins in excavations within the capital and the fact that the coins’ inscriptions read yhd, yhwd, or (later) yhdh (Judah) rather than yršlm (Jerusalem),” writes Ariel.
The Sifting Project hopes to find even more Yehud coins from Jerusalem in the 30% of the planet that it hasn’t yet explored.
Co-director Dvira stated in a YNet story that only five of these coins were ever discovered over the 150 years of archeological excavations conducted throughout the locations of ancient Jerusalem. Three whole coins and two corroded ones that appear to be from the same series have already been discovered, and we anticipate finding more in the future.
Persian Achaemenid Empire
One of the most potent and significant civilizations in antiquity, the Persian Achaemenid Empire united many cultures under its single rule and covered three continents.
Established by Cyrus the Great in 550 BCE, this empire covered a wide range of lands and populations and extended from the eastern Mediterranean to India’s borders. Parts of present-day Iran, Turkey, Iraq, Egypt, and parts of Central Asia were all included in its wide-ranging influence.
The founder of the empire, Cyrus the Great, was renowned for his innovative style of leadership. He instituted policies of tolerance and respect for the traditions and faiths of conquered peoples instead of imposing strict control.
This strategy helped him win over subjects and win their loyalty by laying the groundwork for a stable empire. Perhaps the most well-known example of Cyrus’s humanitarian policies is found in the Cyrus Cylinder, an ancient document that is frequently cited as the first human rights declaration in history and emphasizes the protection of freedom of religion and the rights of minorities.
Under succeeding kings, especially Darius I, who further increased the Achaemenid Empire’s territory and unified its government, it thrived. A visionary leader, Darius established a standardized currency, an effective bureaucratic system, and enhanced infrastructure, including the Royal Road, which ran more than 1,600 miles from Sardis to Susa.
This road connected distant regions of the empire and promoted trade, communication, and military movement. In order to ensure efficient governance over great distances, Darius also established a complex taxation system and appointed local governors, or satraps, to oversee different regions.
During the Achaemenid era, art and architecture flourished. They are renowned for their magnificent palaces, like Persepolis, which have ornate stone carvings and opulent staircases with reliefs that show representatives from all over the empire. These pieces of art represent the unity and diversity of the empire’s numerous nations in addition to showcasing its wealth.
But the empire had problems, particularly with the Greeks. A pivotal conflict, the Greco-Persian Wars saw the Persians win important battles but ultimately fall short of defeating the Greek states.
The empire flourished until Alexander the Great’s invasion in 330 BCE presented its biggest obstacle. Over two centuries of Persian rule came to an end when Alexander’s campaign ultimately brought down the Achaemenid Empire in spite of strong opposition.
The Middle East’s and other regions’ political and cultural histories are replete with remnants of the Persian Achaemenid Empire. Its innovative governance, religious tolerance policies, and cultural accomplishments demonstrated the strength of unity in diversity and left a lasting impression on succeeding empires and civilizations.