1,700-year-old 'emergency hoard' of coins dates to last revolt of Jews against Roman rule

A hoard of 1,700-year-old coins found in Israel provides new evidence about the last known Jewish revolt against Roman rule.

Archaeologists found the hidden coins while conducting excavations inside the remains of a newly discovered public building dating to the Late Roman-Early Byzantine period in Lod (also known as Lydda), a city in what is now central Israel that the Romans renamed "Diospolis," according to a statement from the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA).

Despite the building having "suffered violent destruction" at the time of the revolt, its surviving foundation protected 94 silver and bronze coins dating to between A.D. 221 and 354. Whoever's stash it was, they likely "deliberately placed" it inside the building in hopes of returning to collect it when the situation calmed down, according to the statement.

"This is essentially an emergency hoard, meaning a hoard that people hide in anticipation of a catastrophic event," Mor Viezel, an excavator with the IAA, said in a translated video. 

Many of the coins were struck during the Gallus Revolt (A.D. 351 to 354), a tumultuous time when Jews rebelled against the rule of Flavius Claudius Constantius Gallus, the half-nephew of Constantine the Great (the first Roman emperor to convert to Christianity) and ruler of the Roman Empire's eastern provinces at the time. Lod was just one of several Jewish communities that revolted as the Romans "burned and destroyed" several cities' buildings, according to the video. 

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Other cities that were attacked include Tiberias and Sepphoris, Viezel added. By the time of the Gallus Revolt, Jews in Judaea had been revolting against Roman rule for hundreds of years. During the First Jewish-Roman War (A.D. 66 to 70), the Romans destroyed the Second Temple, and later during the Bar Kokhba Revolt (A.D. 132 to 135), the Romans crushed the Jewish resistance that was fighting for an independent state.