Free Republic

A rare collection of ancient coins was discovered last week by Israeli researchers, who called the find an "archaeological Hanukkah miracle." The coins are more than 2,000 years old and believed to belong to King Alexander Jannaeus, the second ruler of the Hasmonean dynasty that presided over Judea in the final centuries leading up to the common era, according to the University of Haifa in Israel. Archaeologists found the hoard of about 160 of the coins during ongoing excavations in the Jordan Valley, which runs between the Israeli-occupied West Bank and the eastern border of Jordan. The project is headed...

Archaeologists now know whodunnit — the Hasmonean king Alexander Jannaeus — after uncovering a 2,000-year-old mass burial ground in the municipality’s backyard Evidence of a mass slaying, including cruel beheadings, committed during the bloody reign of the Hasmonean king Alexander Jannaeus (103-76 BCE) was recently uncovered in a courtyard next to the Jerusalem municipality during excavations of an ancient water cistern. “We removed from the pit more than 20 neck vertebrae which were cut by a sword,” said Dr. Yossi Nagar, an anthropologist at the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA). “We discovered in the pit, bodies and body parts of infants...