A Bronze Hoard from Khirbet el-‘Eika and the Mid-Second Century BCE Disruption in the Galilee

Presented here is a bronze hoard, composed of civic coins of ‘Akko-Ptolemais, found in the excavations at Khirbet el-‘Eika. It is argued that the dispersal pattern of several more coins found in the vicinity suggests that they also belong with the hoard, fixing its deposition in the mid-140s BCE, when the site was abandoned. The added evidence of a practically identical hoard found some 14 km from the site raises the possibility that the mint of ‘Akko-Ptolemais continued striking plentiful civic issues long after the death of Antiochos IV in 164 BCE, a time when very few royal Seleucid issues were struck in the city. The two hoards also highlight the troubled period of the mid-second century BCE, when Seleucid kings and pretenders, and Ptolemaic interests and Hasmonean political aspirations, clashed in the southern Levant.