Antoninus Pius coin found during IDF training exercise

NUMISMATICS: Rare 1800-Year-Old Roman coin found on southern Carmel. The coin bears the head of the Roman emperor Antoninus Pius. Very few coins of this kind from recorded contexts have been found in Israel.

This IAA press release (via the Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs) give an informative factual account of this important discovery. Other articles, such as this one by Naama Barak in Israel21c, tell a more personal story involving the Israeli soldier who found the coin and turned it in: Soldier stumbles on rare coin from two millennia ago. The coin probably disappeared from its owner who was traveling on the road, waiting nearly 2,000 years to be picked up again.

Archaeologists excavated a gold Antoninus Pius coin at "Bethsaida" (et-Tell/e-Tell) back in 2010. See here and here.

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