Half Shekel Coin from the Temple Mount

Dr. Barkay won the Jerusalem Prize for Archaeology in 1996 and is one of the most important experts on archaeology in Jerusalem.

Rubble from the Temple Mount

“For over 150 years there have been archaeological excavations in Jerusalem, but without even one find from the Temple Mount”, says Dr. Barkay. Finding archaeological remnants from the Temple Mount only began after November 1999 when the Muslim Waqf decided to dig a massive hole in the Temple Mount, in order to build an entrance to a new prayer hall. The hole was built extremely fast, over a period of four days, and without any archaeological supervision. During the work, 400 truckloads of dirt, saturated with archaeological finds from Temple Mount, were dumped at various sites. Most of the rubble was dumped in the adjacent Kidron Valley. Zachi Dvira (Zwieg), an archaeological student at the time, made the discovery. He turned to his professor, Dr. Barkay, and together they initiated the Temple Mount Sifting Project.

A technique called “wet sifting” is used, where the dirt is sprayed with running water, revealing thousands of tiny artifacts. Almost six thousand ancient coins, many of Jewish origin, have been discovered over the course of nine and a half years of sifting.

The first coin that was discovered is from the First Revolt of the Jews against the Romans. Another significant find was coins with the words “Yahad” on them, the earliest coins to be minted in Jerusalem. They date to the 4^th century BCE, the period known as “The Return to Zion”. Numerous coins from the Hasmonean dynasty and Herod’s rule were also uncovered.

Half Shekel Coin

To understand the importance of the half shekel coin from the Great Revolt, we should go back a few hundred years, to the commandment of the half shekel mentioned in the Bible. In the section titled “Ki Tisa”, God commands Moses to count the People of Israel by collecting a half shekel, which would be donated to the Tabernacle. “This they shall give- everyone who passes through the census- a half shekel of the sacred shekel: the shekel is twenty geras, half a shekel as a portion to Hashem” (Exodus 30:13). Payment was made through the collection of silver metal that weighed a measurement called “half a shekel”.

During the Second Temple, every Jewish male paid a half shekel tax to the Temple treasury once a year on the first of the Hebrew month of Adar. This is the reason that the Sabbath before the first of the month of Adar is known as “Shabbat Shekalim”. The amount is based upon the half shekel from the“Ki Tisa” portion of the book of Exodus. During the First Temple period, the shekel weighed 11.35 grams. From here we extrapolate that the half shekel weighed 5.67 grams. This weight is also referred to as “Beka Le’golgolet”, “Beka” meaning to “split off” half from the full shekel. Weights from the First Temple period have been found with the words “Beka” on them, together with other weights with different names on them. Coins were not yet in use during the First Temple period and payment was made through measurements of silver metal.  Coins first appear at the end of the First Temple period.

The use of coins became much more common during the Second Temple period where it was decided that the highly reliable Tyrian shekel would be used to determine the half shekel payment.