Zuz - Simeon bar Kosevah Year Two

Struck during the second year of the Bar Kokhba Revolt, this Zuz belongs to a coinage program that was ideologically and practically unusual: Jewish rebels overstruck existing Roman provincial silver — predominantly Trajanic and Hadrianic tetradrachms and denarii — rather than striking on fresh flans. The act of obliterating Roman imagery was itself a political statement, though the underlying host coin occasionally bleeds through on weakly overstruck examples.

The revolt's trigger was almost certainly Hadrian's decision to refound Jerusalem as the Roman colony Aelia Capitolina, combined with a rumored ban on circumcision. Bar Kokhba's administration dated its coins by regnal year, implying a functioning state apparatus — one that collapsed entirely by 135 AD when the Romans crushed the rebellion and depopulated Judea.