Jerusalem: Israel’s archaeologists announced on Monday that they had recently found a treasure of gold coins from the early Islamic period during the excavation of a protected property near the city of Yavne. In a joint statement, the country’s archaeologists Liait Nadav-Ziv and Eli Haddad said that 425 coins have been found in the excavation which is entirely made of gold. Most of these are coins of the Abbasid period about 1,100 years ago. This is an “extremely rare” discovery.
He said that this treasure of coins has been discovered by young volunteers. Small ‘clippings’ of gold coins have also been found in the excavations which may have been used as small currency.
Coin expert Robert Cool stated that preliminary assessments show that the coins date from the late ninth century to what is considered the Golden Age of the Abbasid Caliphate and which controlled most of Southwest Asia and North Africa.
