Zuz - Simeon bar Kosevah Year Two

Struck in Year Two of the Bar Kokhba revolt, this coin belongs to a series produced by overstamping existing Roman provincial silver — predominantly Trajanic and Hadrianic tetradrachms — because the rebels had no independent silver supply. The Roman host coins were rarely obliterated completely, and traces of the original legends and imagery frequently bleed through beneath the Jewish overtype, a detail that allows researchers to reconstruct which Roman issues were circulating in Judea at the outbreak of the revolt in 132 AD.

The name "bar Kosevah" — as opposed to the messianic epithet "bar Kokhba" — reflects the actual family name recovered from the Wadi Murabba'at letters found in 1952.