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Zuz - Simeon bar Kosevah Year Two
| Issuer | Jewish Provisional Government (Bar Kokhba Revolt) |
|---|---|
| Year | 133-134 |
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| Composition | Log in to see details |
| Weight | 3.44 g |
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| Reverse description | A tall, narrow lulav (palm branch) flanked by an etrog (citron fruit) on each side occupies the central field, both motifs being iconic symbols of the Jewish festival of Sukkot and of national identity during the revolt. The Hebrew inscription שב לחרות ישראל (Year two of the freedom of Israel) is distributed around the design within a beaded border. The imagery is boldly struck in the characteristic overstruck Bar Kokhba style, with elements of the underlying host coin occasionally visible on the irregular flan. The overall composition is framed by a dotted border in the Roman tradition, adapted to Jewish iconographic and epigraphic conventions. |
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| Edge | Plain |
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| Additional information |
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.