KOLOMNA, RUSSIA—A hoard containing some 2,600 silver coins has been unearthed in western Russia, Live Science reports. A.V. Engovatova of the Russian Academy of Sciences said that the fifteenth-century coins had been placed in a ceramic jug and buried in what is now the historic center of the city of Kolomna. Most of the coins are dengi, which were worth half a kopeck. One hundred kopecks make up a ruble, he explained. These dengi were minted by the monarchs of the Grand Principality of Moscow between about 1389 and the 1420s. Some of the dengi in the collection bear rare images of a bird in flight. More than 350 of the coins are previously unknown varieties that were minted locally in Kolomna. Researchers think that the owner of the hoard may have died in a plague epidemic that struck the region between 1424 and 1427. To read about a birchbark letter found during excavations of a road near Moscow's Kremlin, go to "Medieval Russian Memo."
