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April 20, 2003
JERUSALEM -- Israeli archaeologists excavating caves near the Dead Sea have found nine rare silver coins believed to date back to a failed Jewish rebellion against the Romans in the second century.
The coins add another layer to the story of the families Shimon Bar Kochba led into hiding in the caves of the Judean Desert -- what turned out to be the end of the second Jewish uprising against the Romans, which resulted in their exile. Archaeological finds relating to the three-year rebellion are rare.
About 2,000 coins from the rebellion are known to exist, and this is only the second time archaeologists have found such coins on a dig, said Hanan Eshel, who led the digs and is the head of the Jewish Studies and Archaeology Department at Tel Aviv's Bar Ilan University.
Of particular rarity is the largest Jewish coin ever issued, a half-ounce silver coin known as the Petra Drachma.
One side of the coin shows Jerusalem's second Jewish temple, destroyed by the Romans during the first Jewish rebellion in the year 70. The other side shows another important Jewish symbol -- the image of four plants, used during ceremonies for the festival of Sukkot.
"Bar Kochba never minted his own coins, so what we have here is a Roman coin with the temple and the four species stamped over the portrait of the Roman emperor," Eshel said.
Historical records tell little about the rebellion or its leader.
"Neither the Jews or the Romans considered the rebellion to be a success, so very little was written about it," Eshel said. "That is why archaeological finds are so important."
The coins will be displayed at Jerusalem's Israel Museum.
CAIRO, Egypt -- French archaeologists unearthed a necropolis filled with rock-hewn tombs that are more than 4,000 years old, Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities said Saturday.
Culture Minister Farouk Hosni said the necropolis near the pyramids of Saqqara, about 15 miles south of Cairo, contained tombs from ancient Egypt's Old Kingdom, which lasted from 2400 B.C.-2100 B.C.
The writings on one tomb identified it as belonging to Hau-Nefer, a priest who served in the mortuary temple of King Pepi I, Hosni said.
Hawass said the French team from the Institut Francais d'Archeologie Orientale also found 12 complete limestone statues of another priest, Khnum-Hotep, in seated and standing positions.
Archaeologists have discovered a 4,000-year-old image of the South American Staff God, significantly pushing back the earliest known date of Andean religion.
The image was carved and painted on a gourd fragment dated to 2250 B.C., according to a report in the latest issue of the magazine Archaeology.
The fragment is 1,000 years older than any other known image of the Staff God, an important deity worshiped in South America for thousands of years. Originally part of a small bowl, the piece was found by a team examining a looted cemetery 120 miles north of Lima, on the coast of Peru.
The primitive image depicts a being with fierce fangs and splayed feet. A snake's head tops the end of one arm, and a staff is held in the other. A similarly decorated gourd fragment was found at another old cemetery nearby.