E’ stata ritrovata in Israele questa rara moneta coniata nel 35 a.C. circa che raffigura Cleopatra da un lato e Marco Antonio dall’altro. La moneta é stata rinvenuta durante degli scavi in corso da quasi trent’anni presso Bethsaida, una città fondata molti secoli prima di Cristo, vicino alle alture del Golan.

Ne parla Matthew Hansen in questo articolo pubblicato sulla rivista online Omaha.com:

It looked like any other 2,000-year-old coin on the day they dug it up.

Covered in two millennia’s worth of rock and soil. Shrouded in mystery from a time so long ago that the Romans hadn’t yet fully built their empire.

In other words, really, really dirty. So dirty that the person — most likely a college student — digging last summer at the Israeli site of a longtime University of Nebraska at Omaha archaeological dig couldn’t see the famous faces on the coin. So dirty that the digger never realized she was, in fact, holding a tiny, priceless nugget of ancient civilization in the palm of her hand.
“We weren’t amazed at all until we cleaned the coin and looked at it,” says Rami Arav, the University of Nebraska at Omaha professor who has led the Bethsaida Excavations Project in Israel for the past 27 years. “I looked at the face and then I knew — I was looking at a face from the history books.”

“We weren’t amazed at all until we cleaned the coin and looked at it,” says Rami Arav, the University of Nebraska at Omaha professor who has led the Bethsaida Excavations Project in Israel for the past 27 years. “I looked at the face and then I knew — I was looking at a face from the history books.”

Leggi l’articolo originale completo su Omaha.com