A rare 1,100-year-old gold coin hoard found in central Israel

Teen volunteers at an Antiquities Authority dig in central Israel were astonished to discover a large hoard of ancient gold coins at a site being explored before building a new neighborhood. Liat Nadav-Ziv, who heads the dig, reported that the owner of the 425 gold coins, enough to buy a luxury villa 1,100 years ago, evidently expected to come back and reclaim his treasure. “We can only guess why he never did,” she said. The find, rare because antique sites are routinely stripped of gold relics, dates to the era of the Baghdad-based Abbasid Caliphate that ruled from Persia to North Africa. But tellingly one coin fragment was minted in Constantinople, attesting to trade ties between the Abbasids and the rival Byzantine empire.