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- JERUSALEM - One-thousand-year-old
coins found near the Sea of Galilee bear the likeness of Jesus and have
Greek inscriptions praising him, Israeli archaeologists announced on Wednesday.
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- The coins were unearthed in October in archaeological
excavations at the site of ancient Tiberias in northern Israel but only
during a cleaning of the find last month did archaeologists discover the
image of Jesus on 58 of the 82 coins.
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- Some coins also bore Greek inscriptions such as "Jesus
the Messiah, the King of Kings," and "Jesus, the Messiah, the
Victor."
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- "This is the largest collection of these types of
coins. They are very rare," said archaeologist Yizhar Hirschfeld,
who co-directed the excavations.
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- Archaeologists also found many types of bronze utensils
dating from the 10th and 11th centuries, when the Islamic Fatimid ruled
the region.
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- Hirschfeld said the coins were probably brought from
Constantinople to Tiberias by Christian pilgrims.
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- "We know Tiberias was a mixed city, where Jews,
Moslems and Christians all lived together. Tiberias was a pilgrimage site."
Hirschfeld said.
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- Archaeologists found the coins and other objects in three
large clay pots hidden under the floor of a structure. The Crusaders destroyed
ancient Tiberias at the end of the 11th century but the invaders did not
discover the coin hoard.
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