“Le’Geulat Tzion”: Rare Coin Minted One Year Before The Churban Discovered Near Har Habayis

Archaeologists in Yerushalayim have uncovered a rare bronze coin minted by Jews in the final year before the Beis Hamikdash was destroyed.

The discovery, announced Thursday by the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA), was made last week near the southwestern corner of Har Habayis, in an archaeological garden adjacent to the site where the Beis Hamikdash once stood.

The coin—well-preserved despite the passage of two millennia—was struck during the fourth year of the Great Revolt against Rome, just months before the destruction of the Second Beis Hamikdash in the year 70 CE.

On one side of the coin is a goblet alongside the inscription in ancient Lashon Hebrew: “LeGe’ulat Tzion”—“For the Redemption of Zion.” On the reverse appears a lulav and two esrogim, with the words “Year Four” inscribed—dating it unmistakably to the year immediately preceding the Churban.

According to IAA Excavation Director Dr. Yuval Baruch, the shift in inscription from earlier coins that said “LeCheirut Zion” to this coin’s “Le’Ge’ulat Tzion” is not just linguistic. The coin tells of a transformation among the Jewish fighters in besieged Yerushalayim, as they moved from hopes of liberation to a broken-hearted tefillah for geulah.

“It would seem that in the rebellion’s fourth year, the mood of the rebels now besieged in Jerusalem changed from euphoria and anticipation of freedom at hand, to a dispirited mood and a yearning for redemption,” Dr. Baruch explained.

Esther Rakow-Mellet, one of the archaeologists who discovered the coin, said, “We waited anxiously for several days until it came back from cleaning, and it turned out to be a greeting from the Jewish rebels of the Year Four of the Great Revolt.” The timing of the find, just days before Tishah B’Av, made the moment especially poignant. “There is nothing more symbolic,” she added.

The coin is being displayed for the first time this summer at the Jay and Jeanie Schottenstein National Campus for the Archaeology of Israel in Yerushalayim, near the Israel Museum and the Bible Lands Museum.