Other Recent Finds

In March 2008, Reich and Shukron found—in the main drainage channel of Jerusalem—a rare silver coin of a shekel denomination that was Second Temple Period street customarily used to pay a half-shekel head-tax in the Second Temple Period. Shukron said, “Just like today when coins sometimes fall from our pockets and roll into drainage openings at the side of the street, that’s how it was some 2,000 years ago. A man was on his way to the Temple, and the shekel, which he intended to use for paying the half-shekel head-tax, found its way into the drainage channel.” According to the IAA, the shekel weighs 13 grams (0.46 ounces) and bears the head of Melqart (the chief deity of the city of Tyre, the equivalent to the Semitic god Baal) on one side and an eagle upon a ship’s prow on the reverse. The coin was struck in the year AD 22. Only seven such half-shekel coins have been found so far in excavations in Jerusalem. Clay seal from the eighth century BC Their other recent finds from the City of David include, among other things, a complete seal that bears the Hebrew name “Rephaihu (ben) Shalem” and fragments of bullae (flat, round clay seals). In an IAA press release, Reich said: “In contrast with the large cluster of bullae that was found two years ago, in which all of its items contain graphic symbols [such as a boat or different animals – fish, lizards, and birds] but are of an earlier date [end of the ninth to the beginning of the eighth century BC], the new items indicate that during the eighth century BC, the practice had changed and the clerks who used the seals began to add their names to them.”

By Will King, Correspondent BFP Israel Mosaic Radio