A municipal employee searching for lost jewelry on the beach in Ashdod instead uncovered a rare 2,500-year-old coin from ancient Cyprus, which archaeologists say is the first of its kind ever found in Israel.

Avi Chaprak, deputy director of Ashdod’s Beaches Department, found the coin about a month ago while scouring the shore for items lost by beachgoers. He understood its significance after seeing similar coins in the past, so he turned it over to the Israel Antiquities Authority, as required by law.

Experts at the authority identified the coin as an exceptionally rare silver-plated siglos minted in the ancient city of Salamis on Cyprus’s eastern coast during the mid-fifth century BC, when the island was under Persian rule.

The roughly 11-gram coin appeared at first to be solid silver but was actually made of base metal coated with silver, a practice known from Cypriot coinage of the period because of shortages of silver on the island, according to Yanniv David Levy, a researcher and curator in the IAA’s Coin Department.

One side of the coin depicts a reclining ram facing left, while the reverse shows a ram’s head inside a sunken square, alongside a laurel branch and three symbols believed to belong to the ancient Cypriot........

© The Times of Israel