JERUSALEM: The first such discovery in Israeli waters was a rare and “remarkably well preserved” Roman-era coin from about 1,900 years ago that featured the moon goddess Luna.The coin was found by researchers with the Israel Antiquities Authority during digs off Haifa in northern Israel.
It was produced in Alexandria in modern-day Egypt and depicts the Roman emperor Antoninus Pius on one side and the zodiac sign Cancer underneath Luna.The phrase “year eight” refers to the eighth year of Antoninus Pius’s administration, which spanned from 138 to 161, and was a period known as the Pax Romana, a time of largely peaceful conditions throughout the Roman Empire.
The coin is one of 13 in a set that includes examples found elsewhere in the world and shows the zodiac’s 12 signs on one and its whole wheel on another.These discoveries, he continued, “have been incredibly well preserved; some are quite uncommon, and their finding completes pieces of the historical puzzle of the country’s past. They were lost at sea and disappeared from sight for hundreds and thousands of years.
