Gap Year for Grown Ups volunteer finds 1,300 year old coins
A Gap Year for Grown Ups volunteer, Nadine Ross, has unearthed a hoard of more than 250 coins that are over 1,300 years old in a car park in Jerusalem, the Israeli Antiquities Authority confirmed.
Ross was taking part in the Gap Year for Grown Ups Israel Archaeology Experience volunteer project, at a site at the City of David. "It's an amazing thing to find. I've only been here four weeks," she said. "To come across this is something I didn't dream of. I don't think anyone at home will believe me."
Two Israeli Antiquities Authority archaeologists overseeing the dig, Doron Ben-Ami and Yana Tchekhanovets, reported 'this is one of the largest and most impressive coin hoards ever discovered in Jerusalem – certainly the largest and most important of its period’.
'Since no pottery vessel was discovered adjacent to the hoard, we can assume that it was concealed inside a hidden niche in one of the walls of the building,' they commented.
‘Until now, the only hoard of gold coins from the Byzantine period that had been discovered in Jerusalem consisted of five gold coins’, they added.
Experts say the coins were minted at the beginning of Heraclius's reign and carry the portrait of the emperor, who ruled between AD 610 and 614. The current monetary value of the coins is not yet clear.
"It's very, very exciting," says Ross.
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