The archeological record continues to reveal details of the systems of state currency once enjoyed by the ruling authorities in the ancient Roman empire. This story comes to us from the eastern side of the empire, in present day Israel, rather than the present day UK, where most of the recent Roman coin hoards have been being unearthed.
Below is a photo of this hoard, which includes some personal effects (jewelry) probably which indicates that this hoard was in the possession of the non-govt sector at the time it was buried. Any Roman coins present here represents a portion of the savings or Net Financial Assets (NFA) of the non-govt sector of Rome 2,000 years ago. These savings were provided by the Roman monetary authorities to the non-government sector through deficit spending of these coins into circulation by the Roman government. Interestingly, no Roman Treasury Securities were found buried along with this coin hoard ;).
The author of the story gets it right to an extent when the author writes here:
“During the uprising, between 132-135 CE, the Jews under Roman rule would re-strike coins of the emperor Trajan with symbols of the revolt."It is not clear whether this hoard contains any re-struck coins of the type referred to here, but if there was a revolution against the authority of the Roman civil government at that time, that would be strongly demonstrated by re-striking Roman state currency with a new imprimatur of the revolutionary entity. Thus staging a tax revolt as, although the silver slug would still exist, the currency would not as coins struck with the correct image of the Emperor would no longer be available to pay the Roman poll tax, so the act of re-striking the Roman currency (nomisma) was indeed crossing the point of no return for the rebels.
Nat Geo is also reporting a recent find in Israel of gold artifacts from centuries before the Roman empire here. No coins were found in that hoard, it may pre-date (c. 1,000 BC) the human establishment of civil governments that issued state currency.
