Hoard of coins illuminates triumphant Maccabee campaign in 2nd-century-BCE Israel
A rare intact Hellenistic estate at Khirbet el-Eika in Eastern Galilee was likely abandoned by its inhabitant as Yonatan Maccabee and his army drew nearer, new research shows

A hoard of bronze coins unearthed in the remains of a Hellenistic-era building offers new evidence for life in Israel in the tumultuous mid-2nd century BCE’s victorious military campaign led by Yonatan Maccabee, brother of the Hanukkah hero Judah, according to new research.
The cache of 26 coins was found in 2016 at the site of Khirbet el-Eika, on the top of a mountain overlooking the Eastern Galilee in Israel’s north. Its discovery was published for the first time in an academic paper in the American Journal of Numismatics last month.
“Khirbet el-Eika was an agricultural estate with close ties to the coastal city of Akko [Acre],” Dr. Roi Sabar from the Institute of Archaeology of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem told The Times of Israel in a video call.
Sabar co-authored the paper with Danny Syon from the Institute for Galilean Archaeology of the Kinneret Academic College, and fellow Hebrew University researchers, Dr. Yoav Farhi and Prof. Uzi Leiber.
Khirbet el-Eika was surveyed for the first time in the early 2000s and later selected to be excavated in the framework of the Hellenistic Galilee Project under Leiber’s direction between 2015 and 2018.
While many sites in Israel were occupied during the Hellenistic period, most remained active in the Roman and Byzantine eras, making it harder for archaeologists to uncover the relevant layer.

Khirbet el-Eika, however, was abandoned around the mid-2nd century BCE, most likely due to a violent event, Sabar pointed out.
“Khirbet el-Eika offered us a great opportunity to excavate straight into the Hellenistic period, which has traditionally been underrepresented in Israeli archaeology,” he said.
The site presented a wide range of finds, including luxury objects such as a bronze mirror and a copper bowl, as well as iron agricultural tools.
“We uncovered an impressive number of artifacts,” Sabar noted. “We excavated a rich pottery assemblage, including numerous amphoras from across the Aegean Sea. We also found five door keys, which are quite rare in archaeological excavations.”
According to Sabar, the excavation results are consistent with the idea that the site’s inhabitants felt the urge to flee.
“We believe that the people of Khirbet el-Eika were in a situation of stress in the last days of the site, either because an army attacked it or they expected it to be attacked soon,” he said. “Hoarding coins is a practice typical of people who want to hide money, and it is also typical of a situation of stress. They tried to get everything ready to leave, hoping that one day they would be able to return.”

While the estate was never resettled again, the researcher explained that the people of Khirbet el-Eika did manage to flee because archaeologists found no human skeletons at the site.
However, plenty of their possessions remained behind, including the hoard of coins.
“We are talking about a group of up to 26 coins, some of which were found attached and some scattered, but we believe they still belonged to the hoard,” Farhi, a numismatic expert, told The Times of Israel in a phone call. “We hypothesize that the coins were hidden in a room on the second floor of the building, and when the building collapsed, they spread around.”

Most of the coins are Akko-Ptolemais civic bronze coins. In the mid-2nd century BCE, Akko belonged to Phoenicia and was the main port in the north of the land of Israel.
On one side, the coins feature a cornucopia, a horn-shaped container used as a symbol of plenty, which was also depicted on Hasmonean coins from the 2nd and 1st centuries BCE in the form of a double cornucopia — and decorates the current Israeli two-shekel coins.

On the other side, the coins present the heads of the Dioscuri, twin Greek gods regarded as patrons of sailors.
The archaeologists unearthed another type of coin that was likely part of the hoard, a coin featuring King Demetrios II and carrying a date equivalent to 144-143 BCE.
In 164 BCE, Judah Maccabee managed to defeat the local forces of the Seleucid Empire led by Antiochus IV and purified the Jewish temple in Jerusalem. For the following decades, the region would be contended by battling dynasties trying to impose their rule over different parts of the land.
Demetrios II was one of such kings.
In 144 BCE, Jewish general and Maccabee leader Yonatan sided with the Seleucid king Antiochus VI against Demetrios, an ally of Ptolemy VI Philometor from Egypt, who invaded the region a few years earlier.
“As the latest coin of the assemblage, the Demetrios coin allowed us to pin down the date of the hoard very precisely,” Farhi said.

According to the researcher, the level of preservation of the Akko-Ptolemais coins also suggests that they were struck not long before they were hoarded.
“In the past, we thought this type of coin was only minted until around 160 BCE, but bronze coins deteriorate pretty rapidly when in use, while the coins we found at Khirbet el-Eika appear to be in very good condition,” he said. “Therefore, they were presumably minted later, maybe even in the same decade they were hidden.”
“This is why this hoard of coins is so meaningful,” he added. “It offers us another piece of the puzzle of what was happening in the region in that decade.”

Yonatan’s campaign in the Galilee is chronicled in the first Book of Maccabees, Sabar noted.
“The Book of Maccabes describes a battle between the two armies, that of Demetrios II and that of Yonatan on behalf of Antiochus VI,” he said. “They met in Qedesh, also located in the eastern Galilee, not far from Khirbet el-Eika.”
The Books of Maccabees are apocryphal works not canonized in the Hebrew Bible (while some are part of the Catholic and Protestant canons).
“Now when Jonathan heard that Demetrius’ princes were come to Cades [also written Qedesh], which is in Galilee, with a great power, purposing to remove him out of the country, he went to meet them,” reads a passage in the text (I Maccabees, 11:73-74, Brenton’s Septuagint translation as included in the online Jewish library Sefaria).

Excavations at Qedesh also uncovered the remains of an administrative building abandoned in the same period. Another hoard of Akko-Ptolemais civic bronze coins very similar to that from Khirbet el-Eika was unearthed at Har Yona, some 14 kilometers from there.
“We believe that all of these finds belong to the same event, Yonatan’s campaign in Eastern Galilee,” said Fahri.
According to Sabar, much more remains to be discovered about life during the Hellenistic period in the Galilee and in the whole land of Israel.
“Many sites still need to be explored and many questions asked,” he said. “I hope the finds of Khirbet el-Eika will inspire other researchers to seek more information and new data.”
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