A buried treasure containing over 4, 000 ancient coins, has been unearthed in the Druse village of Isifiya on Mount Carmel, it was reported here today. The coins are believed to be the proceeds of a tax collected by Jewish communities in Phoenicia in 67 A. D. and were to be sent to the Temple treasury in Jerusalem, according to Dr. Leo Kadman, curator of the museum here.
Dr. Kadman, a numismatic expert, said that the treasure was apparently buried when a Jerusalem-bound tax collector’s caravan encountered Roman troops blocking the way to Jerusalem. The officer in charge of the caravan decided to bury the treasure until after the war which ended with the destruction of the Temple by the Romans three years later.
The theory was based, according to Dr. Kadman, on the uniform issue and quantity of the three types of coins found–a shekel, a half shekel and a Roman dinar. The time of burial was estimated according to the time of Vespasian’s invasion of the coastal area.
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