event · E0463
Bar Kokhba Revolt Coinage מטבעות מרד בר כוכבא
The coinage of the Bar Kokhba revolt (Bar Kokhba Revolt): Roman silver and bronze seized and overstruck with Jewish dies — the Temple facade with the Ark within, lulav and etrog, palm and vine — and legends in paleo-Hebrew script: "Shimon," "Elazar the priest," "Year One of the Redemption of Israel," "For the Freedom of Jerusalem." The atlas's exemplar is a silver sela (tetradrachm) of 134/5 CE, Temple facade on one face and lulav with etrog on the other. Struck across the rebel-held Judean hills, the coins surface in hoards and refuge caves; major collections are in the Israel Museum and the Israel Antiquities Authority.
I. Who
- Hebrew
- מטבעות מרד בר כוכבא
- Also known as
- Bar Kokhba coins, coins of the Second Jewish Revolt
- Era
- tannaim
II. When
- Traditional
- 3892–3895 AM — the years of the revolt
- Civil (computed)
- 3892–3895 AM · 132–135 CE
- Academic
- 132–135 CE
- Date range
- 132–135 CE, struck through the years of the revolt
- Duration
- ≈3 years
- Precision
- approximate
IV. What
- Events
- Bar Kokhba Revolt
Why it matters
Between the year the Temple burned and 1948, exactly one sovereign Jewish government struck coins — this one, for about three years. Bar Kokhba's mints took Rome's own money, hammered the emperor's face flat, and struck over it a Temple facade and the words "For the Freedom of Jerusalem" in the old Hebrew script: the erasure is the message. The coins are the revolt's own official documents — the only objects that name its leadership ("Shimon, Nasi of Israel," "Elazar the priest") in its own voice, and their year-formulae, counted from "the Redemption of Israel," show how the revolt understood itself. The Gemara still remembers the currency: "coins of Kozeviyyot," money of a state that no longer existed.
V. How do we know
| Claim | Evidence | Confidence | Sources |
|---|---|---|---|
| The revolt's administration struck silver and bronze from 132 to 135 CE by overstriking circulating Roman coins — traces of the original emperors' types often survive under the new designs. Silver selas show the Temple facade with the Ark of the Covenant within and a lulav with etrog; other denominations carry palms, vines, and Temple vessels, with paleo-Hebrew legends naming "Shimon" (bar Kosiba, as Nasi Yisrael), "Elazar the priest," and the eras "Year One of the Redemption of Israel" and "For the Freedom of Jerusalem." The standard corpus is Mildenberg's. | archaeology external | ★★★★★ |
|
| The atlas's exemplar is a silver sela (tetradrachm) of the revolt's third year, 134/5 CE — Temple facade with the Ark within and star above; reverse, lulav with etrog and the legend "For the Freedom of Jerusalem" (Mildenberg 85.12). Revolt coins come from hoards and the Judean Desert refuge caves; major groups are held by the Israel Museum and the Israel Antiquities Authority, with examples in collections worldwide. | archaeology external | ★★★★☆ | |
| These are the only coins struck by a sovereign Jewish state between 70 CE and 1948. The Temple facade on the silver — struck six decades after the churban — declares the revolt's aim in images, and dating by years "of the Redemption of Israel" frames the war as the opening of a new era; both make the coinage the most direct statement of what the revolt thought it was doing.
That the facade represents the Temple (rather than a generic shrine) and signals an intent to rebuild is the standard numismatic reading, though an interpretation rather than a legend's plain text.
|
archaeology external reconstruction | ★★★★☆ |
|
| The Gemara knows this money by name: a baraita cited in Bava Kamma 97b rules that second-tithe produce cannot be redeemed onto "coins of Kozeviyyot" — coins of ben Koziba — because, like the coins of ancient Jerusalem and of earlier kings, they were no longer in circulation. Rabbinic law thus preserves the memory of the revolt's currency precisely as demonetized money of a fallen sovereignty.
The baraita (Tosefta Maaser Sheni 1:6) treats the coins as a halachic case of out-of-circulation currency; it is a genuine rabbinic reference to the physical coinage, not a narrative of the revolt.
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rabbinic archaeology | ★★★★☆ |