Rare Persian Coin Found on Beach

A 2,500-year-old Persian coin found on an Israeli beach is reshaping researchers’ understanding of ancient Mediterranean trade between Cyprus and Israel. Imagine looking for little treasures on the beach when suddenly a small coin ends up redefining the socioeconomic understanding of an entire region. Well, that’s what happened to Avi Chaprak, the deputy director of a municipal beach department in Ashdod, Israel. The ancient piece from Salamis, a Greek city-state and former capital of Cyprus, ended up becoming the first such Persian-era silver-plated coin discovered in Israel.

An Extensive Lineage

While this coinage saw extensive circulation throughout the Mediterranean, the discovery of this coin in Ashdod opens up a new door for researchers who study ancient channels of trade and commerce between Israel and Cyprus. The example that Chaprak discovered was novel in another way too: it was a whole, intact 11 gram coin. This is unusual, given that many larger Persian silver coins of the era were typically cut into smaller pieces for trade, akin to how the Spanish “pieces of eight” silver coins  were segmented into eight bits to facilitate smaller, day-to-day transactions.

Chaprak, who followed national law and submitted the coin to Israel’s government agency that protects historic sites and relics, told the press that, for him, “it was clear that the coin belonged to our collective heritage, so I immediately delivered it to the Israel Antiquities Authority.” He continued, “If through this act I contributed another small piece toward the research and history of the Land of Israel, then that is a great honor for me.”