Ancient Lod coin hoard reveals details of little-known 4th-century Jewish uprising
94 coins found in a destroyed Jewish public building were buried during the short-lived Gallus Revolt, undertaken by the Jews during a time of Roman civil war
Gavriel Fiske is a reporter at The Times of Israel
Archaeologists have uncovered a hoard of silver and bronze coins dating from the 4th century CE buried in the foundations of an ancient, destroyed Jewish public building in the central Israel city of Lod, the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) announced on Sunday.
The 94 coins were probably buried for safekeeping during the events of the Gallus Revolt (351-354 CE), a lesser-known Jewish uprising against Roman rule in the land of Israel, but the building was destroyed and the coins were never recovered, the IAA said.
The Gallus Revolt was named by historians after the Roman Emperor Constantius Gallus (326–354), who at the time was presiding over a fractured, weakened empire, but specifics about the events “are not clear,” explained IAA archaeologist Mor Viezel, co-director of the Lod excavations, to The Times of Israel.
“We have so little information about it. There nearly aren’t historical records, just three Roman historians who wrote a few lines, and a bit of writing by Chazal about a revolt in Lod,” Viezel said, using the Hebrew term for the ancient Jewish sages of the post-Second Temple period.
The Roman Empire at the time was experiencing the turmoil of a civil war, as Gallus strove against the usurper general Magnus Magnentius. “Caesar wasn’t a big power, not very strong, and maybe [the Jews] felt there was a window of opportunity to take control again, but it didn’t work,” Viezel said.
There could have been other factors in the short-lived Jewish rebellion, as the Jewish community was suffering under steep taxes, and it was also a time when Christianity was growing in the Roman Empire and taking a more belligerent tone vis-à-vis the Jewish communities, Viezel noted.
“According to the Roman historians, Roman forces came to Tiberias, Sepphoris and Lod and destroyed buildings down to their foundations. And this is the building we found in Lod, with this treasure of 94 coins buried underground,” Viezel said.
There is some archaeological evidence of the Gallus Revolt in the Galilee, where much of the Jewish community lived at the time, but the Lod excavation is “the first time we have found a building and connected it to the revolt in the south of Israel, so it’s very exciting,” Viezel said.
The unearthed building was probably “a magnificent Jewish building that housed the city’s elders. From Talmudic writings, we know that Lod was a most significant Jewish center in the aftermath of the Second Temple’s destruction in Jerusalem,” the IAA said in its statement announcing the finding.
“This building, destroyed down to its very foundation, is a clear indication that the revolt was forcefully put down with violence and cruelty, and was not simply a local uprising event, as some earlier studies contended,” the IAA added.
Although the building was destroyed, archaeologists found “impressive stone and marble artifacts” along with “Greek, Hebrew and Latin inscriptions” including one “bearing the name of a Jewish man from a priestly family, which is still being studied,” the IAA said. The building could have been used as “a synagogue, study hall, meeting hall of the elders, or all three of these functions as one.”
From the time of the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE and through the subsequent Jewish revolts against Roman hegemony, the most famous being the Bar Kochba Revolt of 132–136 CE, Lod was “a leading community” and “a center of Torah-true Jewish life,” the IAA said.
After the Gallus Revolt, “Lod didn’t return to its former self. It was a very important city and the Gallus Revolt, it seems, destroyed it for the Jews,” though Christians and others continued to live in the city, Viezel said.
The archaeologists actually discovered “hundreds” of coins in the excavation, but the specific hoard of 94 coins, found together, was dated from the time of the Gallus Revolt or just before, and a significant number of them “hadn’t been used very much,” Viezel said, indicated that they were newly minted and then set aside.
“We see them as emergency coins. There was instability, and they buried the coins to protect them. They did it in a public building. We find a lot of these hoards in synagogues, as people felt those buildings would survive and they could return later,” Viezel said.
Lod is one of the oldest cities in Israel, and has been continually populated since the Neolithic period, making excavations challenging because of the dense layers of history found underneath the modern city. The destroyed ancient building, located in the northern part of the city near Tel Lod, was discovered as a result of construction work, and the excavation was funded by the Lod Municipality in conjunction with the IAA.
“They want to build a new public building, and then we found an ancient one. Certainly, more finds are waiting. We have to work little by little. In Lod, you throw a stone and find antiquities. I think that Lod, as an archaeological site, doesn’t receive enough respect,” Viezel said.
More information about the Lod coin hoard, and other recent archaeological finds, is to be presented at the annual Central Israel Region Archaeological Conference, to be held on Thursday, June 20 at the Eretz Yisrael Museum in Tel Aviv. The conference, free and open to the public, is hosted by Tel Aviv University, Bar Ilan University and the Israel Antiquities Authority.
