Between AD 350-353, Rome faced instability and rebellion. In pursuit of greater autonomy and in response to growing Christian intolerance, the Jews in Israel rebelled against Roman rule during this period of Roman weakness. This uprising, known as the Gallus Revolt, was directed against Constantius Gallus, the brother-in-law of Emperor Constantius II. The rebellion was ultimately suppressed by General Ursicinus, acting on behalf Gallus. A hoard of coins dating back to the Gallus Revolt in AD 351-352 has been discovered in Lod, Israel. https://www.timesofisrael.com/ancie...little-known-4th-century-jewish-uprising/amp/ https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_revolt_against_Constantius_Gallus
Did they clean the coins already? Is this picture an actual photo of this hoard? It's a mix of LRB of different sizes (w/o silvering) and mid-3rd c. BI tetradrachms of Antioch. Did these coins still circulate in the mid-4th c.?
Pretty cool find and story. However, "Hoard" seems like it might be a bit of a misnomer in this case. The definition is something like, "wealth buried for the purpose of concealment". 94 coins of these types could just be some guy's wallet or piggy bank that was stored in a cubbyhole. But I guess that "Some dude's pocket change" wouldn't make for a very catchy headline
I read everything (links etc ). Thanks so much. The only this I don’t know what the CE time period means. AD means after Jesus and BC means before right?
@paddyman98 just wondering what paddy would say if he detected 94 pieces of silver in one hole dig. I’m going with hoard. Lol. Dig deeper
CE means "Common Era", which I believe is exactly equivalent to "AD". I guess some people felt the need to remove religious implications from dates. I'm all for secularism, but introduction of this convention for that purpose seems a bit non-sensical to me.
Hi @Cheech9712 , AD stands for “Anno Domini”, which means “the year of our Lord”. That makes it hard to be correct in dating if your Lord is different than my Lord. The current dating system in the West uses the conventional year of the death of Jesus as the starting point for it’s dating. Since that is the era in common use scholars have adopted the “Common Era” or CE as a more accurate way to express the dating system used in the west. - Broucheion
Small correction: "...uses the conventional year of the birth of Jesus". A common misperception is that A.D. stands for "after death". But @Broucheion is fully corrrect in pointing out that it actually abbreviates a pair of Latin words, as he explained/translated in the first sentence of his post immediately above.
AD or CE ? A(nno) D(omini), "Year of the Lord" could be seen too Christian for a globalized world. C(ommon) E(ra) sounds more secular, but some could read it C(hristian) E(ra)... It's supposed to start at the birth of Jesus. The problem is that Jesus was probably not born on 1/1/1 at 00 h. Catholics and Protestants celebrate his birthday as if he was born on 12/25/1 BCE at 00 h. For the Orthodox it was on 1/7/1 CE at 00 h. But all these dates are a mistake : the Gospels say he was born under Herod the Great, who died in 4 BCE. Therefore Jesus was a bit older, he must have been born in 4, or 5, perhaps 6 BH (Before Himself) or, better, BCE.
Hi All, That’s why I wrote “The current dating system in the West uses the ‘conventional’ year…” There was a conscious decision made for the start point. How that was arrived at is another story. - Broucheion
MUCH ink has been spilled (and MUCH keyboard-pounding has occurred) over the intricacies of the subject. I suspect that most scholars would say there is a large amount of we’re-going-to-have-to-agree-to-disagree mindset on the subject. FWIW: Methinks “conventional” was a wise word choice. But more to the point of the O.P. post . . . I have only one coin directly connected to Gallus: