Silver Lion Dollars, 16th-17th century
The coin collection of the Israel Antiquities Authority possesses fifty-three silver lion dollars (‘leeuwendaalders’) of the Low Countries dating to the 16 and 17th century. These coins belong to two hoards, which were deposited at the Rockefeller Museum in the late 1920’s but never properly identified and studied.
A search in the files of the Coin Department dating back to the British Mandate period allowed a reconstruction of the details surrounding the provenance of the two hoards. The first hoard comprised of thirty-one coins and was found in December 1927 by villagers among a small heap of stones in an open valley near the Arab village of Tarshiha, in the Western Galilee. The second hoard comprised of twenty-four coins and was reportedly concealed in a sealed pot discovered in September 1928 by two Arab workmen in a cave at the artificial mound of Tel el-Jarishe near the coastal city of Tel-Aviv which was then being excavated.
Israel Antiquities Authority
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