During routine conservation work in the museum’s archaeological garden, in the courtyard of Jerusalem’s Tower of David, outside the Old City’s walls, archaeologists discovered a bronze coin used during the days of King Antiochus IV Epiphanes (175-164/3 BC).

The coin was found near the Hasmonean walls that cut through the centre of the citadel’s courtyard, next to the tower base built during the reign of brothers of Judah the Maccabee, Jonathan and Simon. The coin holds a portrait of Antiochus on the averse and a goddess  wrapped in a scarf on the obverse. Such coins were minted in Acre, once called Antiochia Ptolemais and is dated sometime between 172 and 168 BC.

(after The Jerusalem Post & Tower of David Museum)