Zuz - Eleazar the priest Year One

Struck in the first year of the Bar Kokhba revolt against Rome, this coin was part of a deliberate Jewish monetary program that overstruck existing Roman provincial silver — principally tetradrachms from Antioch and Caesarea. The rebels could not mint from raw metal at scale, so they commandeered Roman coinage and stamped it with Jewish iconography, effectively erasing imperial authority one coin at a time. Eleazar the Priest, named in the inscription, likely held a senior religious role within the revolt's leadership, though his precise relationship to Simon Bar Kokhba remains disputed among scholars.