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While exploring the area around the hotel that he had been evacuated to along the Dead Sea, Nati Toyikar came across an ancient coin dating back to the Hasmonean period.. An 11-year-old boy found a 2,000-year-old coin belonging to the Hasmonean king and high priest Alexander Yanai, Israel Antiquities Authority announced on Tuesday. Nati Toyikar was evacuated from his home, Kibbutz Magen, following Hamas's October 7 attacks. He is currently living in one of the hotels for evacuated residents along the Dead Sea, where, on one of his explorations, he unexpectedly found an ancient coin from the time of Hasmonean...

Were it not for its proximity to Christmas, Hanukkah would be unknown to most non-Jews and it would not be celebrated by most non-religious Jews. The proof is that the other post-Hebrew Bible holiday, Purim, while very popular in Israel, where it is sort of a Jewish Mardi Gras, is essentially unknown to non-Jews and largely ignored by most American Jews. Too bad. Hanukkah is actually of seminal importance both to Judaism and to the world. SNIP To understand why Judaism so bothered Antiochus, one needs to understand that no pagan religion completely rejected Hellenism. Judaism did. If Antiochus wanted...

The Jewish–Roman wars was a series of uprisings against the Roman Empire that started in AD 66 during the reign of Emperor Nero.The seeds of the revolt were in response to increasing religious tensions and high taxation, leading to reprisal attacks against Roman citizens. In retaliation, the Roman Governor of Judea plundered the Second Temple and launched raids to arrest senior political and religious figures within the Jewish community.This led to a wide-scale rebellion, resulting in the Roman officials abandoning Jerusalem to the rebels.Nero tasked Vespasian, a Roman general (who would succeed to the role of Emperor during the "Year...

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...

There are several people alive that can personally attest to being eyewitnesses of the Vatican possessing Temple vessels, including the Menorah candelabra.ransomnote: at the link, a beautiful photo in the article.Pretend for a moment that the Vatican has in its possession some sacred and precious relics that were originally in the Herodian Jewish Temple located in Jerusalem 1,950 years ago.If you were the pope living in the 14th century and could verify this fact, would you not ask yourself how indeed such Jewish artifacts had come to your residence in the first place?After some digging around (no pun intended), you...

Just north of the City of David (ancient Jerusalem), archaeologists believe they have found the first of its kind engraving on a precious gem of a biblical plant known to many as the Balm of Gilead. Deep underground in a 2,000-year-old drainage ditch next to Jerusalem’s Western Wall, archaeologists say a rare artifact from Second Temple times was uncovered. “It is a stone seal made of semi-precious amethyst stone with an engraving of a dove and a branch of a tree with fruit on the branch,” said Eli Shukron, former archaeologist of the Israel Antiquities Authority. What was surprising was...

Forty-nine times the Bible mentions a perfect, pure blue, a color so magnificent and transcendent that it was all but impossible to describe. Yet, for most of the last 2,000 years, nobody has known exactly what “biblical blue” — called tekhelet in Hebrew — actually looked like or how it could be re-created. At the time of the Second Temple, which towered above Jerusalem until it was destroyed by the Romans, a blue dye of the same name was used to color the fabric used in the clothing of the high priests. Jewish men are still commanded to use a...

The ancient burial caves on the outskirts of Jericho date back to the Second Temple era, and are apparently part of the extensive burial grounds of the Hasmonean palace uncovered at the site. The cave was recently exposed in the course of landscaping work carried out by local Arab farmers, who bulldozed the site to prepare the ground for agricultural work. Professor Rachel Hachlili of Haifa University's Zinman Institute of Archaeology, who studied this region, identified these caves as the largest Second Temple-era burial ground in Israel. Hikers visiting the site over the weekend were appalled by what they found:...

JERUSALEM – An ancient limestone tablet covered with a mysterious Hebrew text that features the archangel Gabriel is at the center of a new exhibit in Jerusalem, even as scholars continue to argue about what it means. The so-called Gabriel Stone, a meter (three-foot)-tall tablet said to have been found 13 years ago on the banks of the Dead Sea, features 87 lines of an unknown prophetic text dated as early as the first century BC, at the time of the Second Jewish Temple.

2,000 year-old Jewish town with ritual baths, olive press, and burial estate found in Eastern Jerusalem. Impressive remains of a Jewish village from the Hasmonean period, approximately 2,000 years ago, are currently being uncovered in a salvage escavation conducted by the Israel Antiquities Association in the Sharafat neighborhood of Jerusalem, where an elementary school will be built.

A 2,000-year-old ring was uncovered in archaeological excavations in the City of David National Park in Jerusalem, dating back to the Second Temple period. Source: City of David A ring with a solitaire gem stone was found by Israel Antiquities Authority archaeologists in what appears to be an ancient Mikveh (ritual bath) on the Pilgrimage Road which dates back to the time of the Second Temple period. The ancient paved road runs up from the Shiloach (Siloam) pool to the Temple Mount and is thought to have been the main thoroughfare taken by pilgrims to the Temple. According to archaeologists...

Coins dating from the Jewish revolt against the Roman Empire (66 CE-70 CE) were discovered by archeologists during excavations near the southern wall of the Temple Mount on Monday, according to the Israel Nature and Parks Authority. The archeological dig, run by Dr. Eilat Mazar of the Institute of Archaeology of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, uncovered dozens of bronze coins measuring approximately 1.5 cm., as well as numerous fragments of pottery vessels. The vessels, mainly jars and cooking pots, were left behind by Jewish residents who hid in a large cave that measured seven meters by 14 m. The...

BEIT SHEMESH, Israel — The carved stone block is about the size of an occasional table. It has held its secrets for two millenniums. Whoever engraved its enigmatic symbols was apparently depicting the ancient Jewish temples. But what makes the stone such a rare find in biblical archaeology, according to scholars, is that when it was carved, the Second Temple still stood in Jerusalem for the carver to see. The stone is a kind of ancient snapshot. And it is upending some long-held scholarly assumptions about ancient synagogues and their relationship with the Temple, a center of Jewish pilgrimage and...

We all know where priceless ancient manuscripts should be found: somewhere remote, preferably a desert, and we need a good hiding place; caves are perfect. In terms of creating a stereotype, the Dead Sea Scrolls are the model case, followed by the ancient Christian and Gnostic texts found at Nag Hammadi, in Egypt, around the same time. Yet one of the greatest such discoveries in modern times broke all those rules, which might explain why it remains so thoroughly unknown outside quite a narrow specialist world. And we still are only beginning to come to terms with the implications.The...

Journalist Simcha Jacobovici believes that the nails discovered in a Jerusalem cave are revolutionary in their implications regarding the birth of Christianity. The Peace Forest is a small grove of pines sandwiched between the Abu Tor neighborhood and main promenade in Jerusalem. Anyone walking along the road that snakes through the grove can see a green pipe rising from the ground and reaching a height of several meters. This pipe, if journalist Simcha Jacobovici is to be believed, this is the physical tip of an archaeological detective story in the style of the Da Vinci Code. And this pipe is...

A Jerusalem family ripping up its living room floor found a staircase lost for 2,000 years, leading to a large ritual bath carved out of bedrock. It took the family some years to call in the authorities and show them the discovery beneath their house, in the Jerusalem neighborhood of Ein Kerem. Throughout the interim, the family blocked off the entrance to the mikveh with wooden doors, and simply continued to live over it. When they did call in the Israel Antiquities Authority, beneath the doors, the archaeologists found the carved stone staircase leaving to a big mikveh, 3.5 meters...

(IsraelNN.com) A coin from the Second Temple, used in the half-shekel census, was found in excavations in the City of David, just below and east of Jerusalem’s Old City. The upcoming Purim festival features the half-shekel prominently in its observance. The ancient silver coin was discovered in an archaeological excavation that is being conducted in the main Second Temple-era drainage channel of Jerusalem. The foreign coin is of the denomination used during the turbulent Second Temple period to pay the Biblical half-shekel head-tax. This coming Thursday night (Saturday night for Jerusalemites), before reading the Megillah (Scroll) of Esther, Jews worldwide...

WASHINGTON - A nearly 2,600-year-old clay cylinder described as the world's first human rights declaration is being shown for the first time in the United States. The Cyrus Cylinder from ancient Babylon ... The cylinder carries an account, written in cuneiform, of how Persian King Cyrus conquered Babylon in 539 B.C. and would allow freedom of worship and abolish forced labour. The account also confirms a story from the Bible's Old Testament, describing how Cyrus released people held captive to go back to their homes, including the Jews' return to Jerusalem to build the Temple.

On the eve of Tisha B'Av, commemorating the anniversary of the destruction of the First and Second Temples, artifacts were exposed that breathe new life into the story of the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem... During the course of work the Israel Antiquities Authority carried out in Jerusalem's ancient drainage channel, which begins in the Siloam Pool and runs from the City of David to the archaeological garden (near the Western Wall), impressive finds were recently discovered that breathe new life into the story of the destruction of the Second Temple... A 2,000 year old iron sword, still in...

Jewish home found in City of David By ETGAR LEFKOVITS Jun. 5, 2005 18:32 | Updated Jun. 5, 2005 19:29 "Site of excavation at City of David. Photo: Israel Antiquities Authority A Second Temple Jewish house has been uncovered in Jerusalem's ancient City of David, Israel's Antiquities Authority announced Sunday. The 2,000 year old private home, which archeologists believe was part of a complex of homes belonging to affluent people, was discovered during an excavation at the history-rich site last month. Several rooms of the split-level house - as well as a ritual bath - were found at the compound,...