Hiker stumbles across rare 2,000-year-old Roman coin
A hiker accidentally uncovered a piece of history during a recent trek in Galilee, Israel, when she spotted a 2,000-year-old golden coin near an archaeological site.
Hiker Laurie Rimon handed in the coin to the Israel Antiquities Authority after discovering it on a walk around a ruin in eastern Galilee.
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Rimon said she spotted the shining coin in the grass nearby. But she was not initially sure that it was authentic. When she picked it up, she didn't recognize the symbols and thought it was perhaps a toy. But a local guide shared a photo with the antiquities organization that knew just how special it was.
"Finding this amazing coin is truly an astonishing discovery."
"Finding this amazing coin is truly an astonishing discovery," said Nir Distelfeld, who works for the Israeli Antiquities Authority.
The authority said Monday that the ancient coin appears to be only the second of its kind to have been found. London's British Museum possesses the other coin.
The coin, from the year A.D. 107, bears the image of Augustus, the first emperor of the Roman Empire. It was minted as part of a series of coins honoring Roman rulers.
A video from the Israeli government shows the coin.
Dr. Donald T. Ariel, head curator of the coin department at the Israel Antiquities Authority explained the magnitude of the find.
"It's extremely exciting to find something like this. There are no other coins of Trajan in gold in the north, and we don’t really know what was going on at the beginning of the 2nd century C.E. as regards to the Roman presence," Ariel said in the video. "I don’t know of a coin of this value coming into the state treasury in the past 30 years."
Ariel said the coin may have paid part of the salary of a Roman soldier.
Additional information from the Associated Press.
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Megan Specia was Mashable's Assistant Real-Time News Editor and joined the team in September 2014. She received her Bachelor of Arts degree in Journalism & Mass Communications from the University of New Hampshire after growing up in the Jersey 'burbs. She made her way to New York via a four year stopover in Dublin. Megan previously worked as a journalist and editor at Storyful in both Dublin and New York. Before all of that, though, her claim to fame was as head cake arranger and purveyor of all things sweet at Queen of Tarts cafe in Dublin, where she developed a serious addiction to macarons.
