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A nearly 2,000-year-old Roman coin, etched with a symbol of the zodiac, was fished from the waters around Haifa in northern Israel...Archaeologists with the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) made the discovery while conducting an underwater archaeological survey. The bronze coin was minted in Alexandria, Egypt, during the reign of the Roman emperor Antoninus Pius...One side of the coin features an image of Luna, the Roman goddess of the moon, and an image of the zodiac sign for Cancer; the other side depicts Antoninus Pius. The coin also bears the inscription "Year Eight," indicating that it was produced during the eighth...

University of Haifa researchers have made an important discovery underwater: a rare inscription from the period preceding the Bar Kochva revolt offers for the first time the definite identification of Gargilius Antiques as the Roman prefect of Judea at that time. The inscription was found in a University of Haifa underwater excavation at Tel Dor, on Israel’s Mediterranean coast, about 20 miles south of Haifa. “For the first time, we can state with certainty the name of the Roman prefect of Judea during the critical period leading up to the Bar Kochva revolt,” stated Prof. Assaf Yasur-Landau of the University...

Second-century artifacts found From correspondents in Jerusalem, Israel November 19, 2002 A cave survey in Israel's Judean Desert has found papyrus scrolls, coins and arrow heads from the time of the Jewish rebellion against the Romans in the second century, archaeologists said. The scrolls, while believed to be less significant than the Dead Sea Scrolls found in the region in 1947, will shed light on the time of the revolt led by Simon Bar Kochba, said Zvika Tzuk, an archaeologist for the National Parks Authority. The artifacts were found in the Ein Gedi Nature Reserve, near the Dead Sea, by...

When Israeli archaeologists began excavating caves near the Dead Sea, they found a real treasure: nine rare silver coins that are believed to date back to a failed Jewish rebellion against the Romans in the second century A.D... archaeological finds relating to the three-year rebellion are rare, and these coins help tell the story of the families that Shimon Bar Kochba led into the caves of the Judean Desert at the end of the second Jewish uprising against the Romans to escape brutal repression -- a move that resulted in their exile... Only 2,000 such coins are known to exist,...