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Breathtaking Quality Year Two Silver Sela
84
Judaea, Bar Kokhba Revolt. Silver Sela (11.59 g), 132-135 CE. Year 2 (133/4 CE). ‘Simon’ (Paleo-Hebrew),
tetrastyle façade of the Temple of Jerusalem; show bread table or Ark of the Covenant in chest form with
semicircular lid and short legs, seen from a narrow side; above façade, star. Rev. ‘Year two of the freedom
of Israel’ (Paleo-Hebrew), lulav with etrog at left. (Mildenberg 28 (O6/R19); TJC 233; Hendin 1388).
Magnificent. Fantastic strike and toning. Perfectly centered.
“This is the finest Year Two sela I have ever seen”
(Ira Goldberg)
. Superb extremely fine.
$ 8,000
ex Nelson Bunker Hunt Collection, part. II (Sotheby’s, 21-22 June 1990), lot 618.
This and the following seven sela varieties of the second year (133/4 CE) of the Bar Kokhba War depart from the previous issues of
the first and second years in the paleo-Hebrew obverse legend. Here, instead of the usual legend naming Jerusalem, now Simon [bar
Kokhba] is named. It is unclear whether this change indicates that all hope of reclaiming Jerusalem had been given up by the rebels
by this point in the war or whether it merely indicates an increased emphasis on Bar Kokhba’s personal leadership as a messianic fig-
ure. It should be noted that it is unlikely that Bar Kokhba?s soldiers ever occupied Jerusalem. In all of the archaeological excavations
that have been conducted there, tens of thousands of coins have been found, but only three of them were coins of Bar Kokhba.