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Israeli archaeologists have discovered a secret stash of Byzantine-era coins inside a stone wall—where someone may have once tried to hide them.Made of pure gold, the 44 coins are decorated with portraits of Emperors Phocas and Heraclius, who ruled in the first half of the seventh century. Experts believe the treasure, which is dated to 635 C.E., was hidden during the Muslim conquest of the area around the end of Heraclius' reign.The artifacts were unearthed as part of a larger excavation in the ancient city of Banias, now a part of Hermon Stream Nature Reserve in the Golan Heights, an...

The 4th through 7th centuries are often considered periods of decay and decline for the Roman Empire. I view them, however, as times of crisis and regeneration, as the previously pagan Empire was transformed into an amazingly resilient Christian Empire which persisted for another millennium despite attacks on all sides and myriad convulsions from within. Who were the most effective rulers during this period? Opinions vary, but here are my choices. Portraits of all, taken from antiquity, may be found in the above image: Constantine the Great (AD 306-337). Constantine may be considered the founder of the Christian Roman...

Excavations have unearthed a hoard of more than 1,300-year-old gold coins under a car park by the ancient walls of Jerusalem, the Israeli Antiquities Authority said on Monday. Archaeologists said the discovery of the 264 coins, in the ruins of a building dating to about the 7th century, the end of the Byzantine period, was one of the largest coin hoards uncovered in Jerusalem. "We've had pottery, we've had glass, but we've had nothing like this," said British archaeologist Nadine Ross, who found the hoard under a large rock on Sunday, in the fourth and final week of a trip...

Just off the west coast of the Bodrum peninsula, southwest of an island called Yassiada, there is a submerged reef appropriately referred to by some as The Ship Trap. About A.D. 626, in the reign of Emperor Heraclius, when the Persians and the Avars were laying siege to Constantinople, the capital of the East Roman Empire, the reef claimed another victim, a small ship bearing in its hold a cargo of nearly a thousand wine amphorae. For more than thirteen centuries the shipwreck lay on the seabed until it was discovered by Kemal Aras, a Turkish diver, who then showed...

In AD 627, the Byzantine Emperor Heraclius won a great victory over the Persians at Nineveh, and the long, bitter struggle between the Byzantines and the Persians came to an end. The Persian army was destroyed, and the Byzantines gained control of virtually all the territory the two empires had fought over for so long. Victory at last! Peace at last! Time to enjoy a peace dividend! And, even better, time to turn on the real enemy: themselves. Bitter political and ideological struggles had divided the Byzantines from the beginnings of their history, but now these struggles turned particularly vicious....