Valuable assets including money and gold earrings are said to have been left behind after the bloody massacre at Caesarea.
900 year old jar of gold coins in Israel. Photo: AFP.
The Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) announced on December 3 the discovery of 24 coins and a gold earring hidden inside a small bronze jar dating back 900 years ago, Phys reported. The artifact was found between two rocks of a well, inside an ancient house in the town of Caesarea, northern Israel.
IAA coin expert Robert Kool said the find was a fortune in that one or two coins were worth the equivalent of a farmer’s annual income in the late 11th century. So , the owner of this fortune is most likely a merchant or wealthy person.
The team believes that the jar of gold coins is related to the Crusade of 1101, the most disastrous event in medieval Caesarea’s history when most of the city’s residents were massacred by Baldwin I’s army. , who ruled the Crusader Kingdom in Jerusalem from 1100 to 1118.
Gold coins and earrings are stored inside copper jars. Photo: AFP.
“The treasure owner and his family may have died in the massacre or been sold into slavery and could not have returned to retrieve the pot of gold coins,” said Dr. Peter Gendelman and Mohammed Hatar, the leaders archaeological project at the Caesarea heritage site said.
Caesarea is an ancient city built by King Herod in the first century BC, a period when Judea (Jewish) was still under the rule of the Roman empire.
