Crusader-Era Gold Coins Unearthed in Israel

News December 3, 2018

(Yaniv Berman)
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Israel Caesarea Coins
(Yaniv Berman)

CAESAREA, ISRAEL—BBC News reports that a small bronze pot holding a cache of 900-year-old gold coins and a gold earring has been found hidden in the wall of a well, at a house located in the ancient Mediterranean port of Caesarea. Peter Gendelman and Mohammed Hatar of the Israel Antiquities Authority said the eleventh-century coins may have been hidden during the Crusader conquest of the city in 1101, when historic sources note that the most of the city’s inhabitants were killed by the army led by Baldwin I, the king of the Crusader kingdom of Jerusalem. Gendelman and Hatar explained that the well-to-do owner of the coins probably either died in the massacre or was sold into slavery and so was unable to return for the coins. For more, go to “Reimagining the Crusades.”

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