900-year-old gold coins found in the Israeli Mediterranean town of Caesarea

Rare gold coins and a golden earring have been discovered in the ancient Mediterranean port of Caesarea in northern Israel — possibly left and never recovered as Crusaders conquered the area 900 years ago. The Israel Antiquities Authority announced the find on Monday of a small bronze pot holding 24 gold coins and the earring. According to the authority, it was found between two stones in the side of a well in a house in a neighbourhood that dates back some 900 years, during the Abbasid and Fatimid periods. The directors of the excavation, the IAA’s Peter Gendelman and Mohammed Hatar, said the coins in the cache date to the end of the 11th century. That makes it possible “to link the treasure to the Crusader conquest of the city in the year 1101, one of the most dramatic events in the medieval history of the city”, an IAA statement said. “According to contemporary written sources, most of the inhabita