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Archaeologists in Jerusalem have found a uncommon, miniature gold coin that depicts the Egyptian queen Berenice II and dates to the reign of her husband, the third ruler of the Ptolemaic Kingdom of Egypt.
The Ptolemies have been a Macedonian royal dynasty based by one in every of Alexander the Nice’s generals, Ptolemy I Soter, throughout Egypt’s Hellenistic interval (circa 323 to 30 B.C.).
The coin was doubtless minted in Alexandria 2,270 years in the past, in accordance with the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA), which made the discover in Jerusalem. It could have been a part of a group of cash that have been gifted to troopers getting back from the Third Syrian Struggle (246 to 241 B.C.), a battle between the Ptolemaic Kingdom of Egypt and the Seleucid Empire of Syria.
“It is a attractive coin,” Robert Kool, head of numismatics on the IAA, stated in a video describing the invention. “We [have] solely discovered 17 of those cash over the previous 100 years.”
Of these cash, this one is the primary to have been discovered outdoors Egypt and in organized excavations. It was unearthed within the Metropolis of David, an archaeological website in East Jerusalem that’s thought-about the town’s historic settlement core.
Rivka Langler, who has been excavating an space of the location known as the Givati Parking Lot for 2 years, noticed the coin whereas sifting by way of soil. “I used to be sifting the excavation soil when all of the sudden I noticed one thing shiny,” Langler stated in a assertion. “At first, I could not consider what I used to be seeing, however inside seconds I used to be operating excitedly by way of the excavation website.”
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One facet of the coin reveals a portrait of Queen Berenice II carrying a tiara, a veil and a necklace. The opposite facet, which depicts a cornucopia and two stars, bears the traditional Greek inscription “Basileisses,” which implies “of the Queen.”
Berenice II was the spouse and consort of Ptolemy III, who dominated in Egypt between 246 and 221 B.C. — however the inscription on the coin suggests Berenice could have been a ruler in her personal proper, in accordance with the assertion.
“She was a queen of an space which was known as Kirinyaka, as we speak in japanese Libya,” Kool defined within the video. “When she married her cousin Ptolemy III, this space grew to become a part of this huge and really, essential and wealthy Hellenistic kingdom. When her husband, Ptolemy III, invaded Syria, she took over because the regent of Egypt.”
Queens of the Ptolemaic dynasty sometimes appeared on cash, with one well-known instance being Cleopatra VII (recognized merely as Cleopatra), the daughter of Ptolemy XII. However the brand new discovery nonetheless stands out as one of many oldest such cash and suggests Queen Berenice II had nice political energy or affect, in accordance with the assertion.
It is unclear how the coin ended up in Jerusalem, however its discovery there signifies that the traditional metropolis was quickly recovering from the destruction of the First Temple in 586 or 587 B.C., when the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar II laid siege to Jerusalem.
“Till now, the prevailing scholarly view was that [after the siege] Jerusalem was a small, marginal, resource-poor city,” Yiftah Shalev, an archaeologist with the IAA who co-led the excavations, stated within the assertion.
Nevertheless, “Jerusalem appears to have begun recovering already in the course of the Persian interval [586 to 333 B.C.] and grew stronger below Ptolemaic rule,” Shalev stated. “Jerusalem within the centuries after the destruction of the First Temple was not desolate and remoted, however reasonably a metropolis within the technique of renewal, reestablishing ties with the dominant political, financial, and cultural facilities of the interval.”
The elite in Jerusalem doubtless shared ties with the ruling elite in Egypt, Yuval Gadot, a professor of archaeology at Tel Aviv College and the excavation director, stated within the video. “The golden coin we discovered right here … tells us that Jerusalem was an essential metropolis,” he stated.
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