Israeli Coins

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Obverse of Israeli 1995 50th Anniversary of the Liberation

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Reverse of Israeli 1995 50th Anniversary of the Liberation

Origins of Israel
The earliest archaeological records of a land known as 'Israel' date back to 1209 BC, on an Egyptian record known as the Merneptah Stele. The Kingdom of Israel emerged during the late Bronze or early Iron Age, when a confederation of Jewish tribes consolidated themselves into a single nation presided over by King Saul, the first King of Israel.
However, the Jewish Kingdom split in 930 BC following the death of King Solomon, when 10 of the Israeli tribes refused to accept Solomon’s son Rehoboam as King. The Kingdom of Israel known as 'the Northern Kingdom' was conquered by the Assyrians in 720 BC.
The Southern Kingdom of Judah lingered on until the Babylonian King; Nebuchadnezzar II conquered Judah in 589 BC and expelled the Jews from the land.

Re-establishment of a Jewish State
The Persians conquered Babylon in 539 BC, and allowed the exiled Jews to return to Jerusalem and rebuild the temple. Judah was governed as a province of the Persian Achaemenid Empire until this Empire fell to Alexander the Great in 333 BC. Following the death of Alexander, the territories of Judah and Israel fell under the control of the Seleucids.
Although the Greek rulers of the Holy Lands were generally quite tolerant of the Jewish religion for the most part, this began to change under Antiochus IV (175 – 164 BC). Since Alexander's conquest many years before, many Jews had become Hellenised, and some even began to abandon the Jewish religion and God in favour of the Greek pantheon, much to the consternation of many within the Jewish community and hierarchy. Antiochus IV wanted to hasten this protest using aggressive measures, which culminated in the outlawing of the Jewish religion itself on pain of death.
Not surprisingly, many Jews objected to this quite strongly and rose up against 'Antiochus the Wicked'. A rebel army, known as the Maccabees (after Judas Maccabeus, its early leader), was formed and after intense fighting eventually expelled the Seleucids from Judea. The victorious Maccabees established the Hasmonean dynasty which was to rule over Judea until 37 BC.

Roman Rule
In 37 BC, the Romans installed Herod (also known as Herod the Great) as their client King in Judea. Herod is notorious amongst Christians for being the man who ordered the 'slaughter of the innocents' in response to a prophecy that stated that a new-born male baby born in Bethlehem would one day replace him as King of Judea. Herod nevertheless died soon afterwards in around 4 BC*. Herod's son, Herod Archelaus, proved to be an even crueller ruler than his father and aroused such opposition that the Romans decided to depose him and govern Judea as a Roman Province instead in 6 AD, governed by a prefect (one of whom, Pontius Pilate, was according to the Bible the reluctant magistrate who authorised Jesus Christ's execution).

Jewish Revolts
Judea was restored to the status of client Kingdom in 41 AD with Herod Agrippa as its King until 44 AD. His son, Herod Agrippa II, was deeply unpopular with the local Jewish population however, and in 66 AD, the Jews revolted against Roman rule. The rebellion lasted until 73 AD, and was eventually crushed by Vespasian (who became Emperor during the revolt) and his son Titus. The ending of the revolt also saw the destruction of the Temple at Jerusalem. After this revolt, Judea was reduced to the status of Roman province once again, although they upgraded the status of the local governor to that of a praetor, rather than a mere procurator and stationed an entire Roman legion, the X Frentensis to garrison the province.
However, in 132 AD, another revolt broke out, this time led by Simon Bar Kokhba, who many Jews believed to be the true Messiah. This revolt was also crushed, and the Jews were expelled from Jerusalem. Interestingly, this period also marked the clear divergence of Christianity (which was then considered to be a Jewish sect) and Judaism, as Christians, for obvious reasons, refused to recognise Simon Bar Kokhba as the Messiah and therefore declined to participate in the revolt. The pagan Romans still did not recognise this distinction however, and the Christians were expelled from Jerusalem as well, along with all the 'other' Jews. The ending of this revolt is held by some to mark the beginnings of the Jewish diaspora.

Christian Roman/Byzantine Rule
Early in the 4th Century, Constantine the Great became the first Christian Emperor of Rome. Soon afterwards, Jews were granted permission to visit, but not settle in Jerusalem. However, in 351 AD, another Jewish revolt originating in Syria Palaestina province broke out in reaction to the corruption of the local Roman governor Constantius Gallus, this was also crushed. By the 5th Century AD, only about 10-15% of Judea's population was Jewish. More Jews fled when the Emperor Heraclius banned Judaism from all areas under Byzantine control during the early 7th Century.

Arab Conquest
During the 630s, soon after the Prophet Muhammad's death in 632, the Muslim Arabs led by the Caliph Umar al-Bakr conquered Palestine and the Holy Lands, and lifted the ban on Jews living in Jerusalem, although the majority of the population in Jerusalem and the surrounding area (by now known as Palestine) was slowly converted to Islam.

Destruction of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre
The initially tolerant attitude of the Muslim Caliphate was undermined when the Fatimid Caliph al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah had the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem destroyed, angering many in the Christian world. Although the Caliph’s successor allowed the church to be rebuilt by the Byzantines in 1039 (after a large sum of money was paid for the privilege of doing so) the memory of what had been done to the church remained a source of resentment.

The Crusades and the Kingdom of Jerusalem
As the Byzantines came under increasing pressure from the Seljuk Turks, the Emperor began to write letters to the Pope urging the west to come to their aid against the Seljuks, citing past and present persecutions of Christian pilgrims as justification for their help. Eventually, Pope Urban II answered the Byzantine’s call and urged that a Christian army should be formed to go to the Holy Lands and retake Jerusalem, offering absolution for the sins of those taking part.
The Crusaders (dominated by Franks) arrived in the Holy Land in late 1096 and early 1097. After a protracted campaign, Jerusalem was captured. The Kingdom of Jerusalem was established under Baldwin I, a younger son of a French Count. Jerusalem itself was reconquered by a Muslim army under Saladin in 1187, although the crusades persisted until fall of Acre in 1291 marked the final end of Christian rule in the Holy Lands.

Ottoman Rule
Following the fall of Acre, the Egyptian Sultanate ruled the Holy Lands and the surrounding area until 1516-1517, when the Ottoman Emperor Selim II conquered the area, which was incorporated into the Ottoman province of Syria.
Anti-Semitic persecution in Christian Europe led to many Jews choosing to migrate to Palestine throughout the late Middle Ages. As the world entered the Early Modern Period, persecution of the Jews became particularly acute in Eastern Europe.

Theodor Herzl and the Emergence of Zionism
During the 19th Century, frequent anti-Jewish pogroms in Tsarist Russia began to convince many Jews that they would not be safe unless they had their own homeland. The writings of Theodor Herzl, a Jewish Hungarian journalist, formed the basis of Zionist ideology advocating the formation of a Jewish State in the Levant during the late 19th Century.

World War I and the British Mandate of Palestine
In 1914, Ottoman Turkey joined the Central Powers. During the War, a Jewish legion was formed within the British Army, and many Zionist Jews (including David Ben-Gurion, the future Israeli Prime-Minister) joined the Legion, which formed several battalions within the Royal Fusiliers Regiment, and saw action against the Ottomans. The Ottomans were driven from Jerusalem in 1917 The Balfour Declaration (a letter by Britain’s Foreign Secretary and former Prime-Minister Arthur Balfour to British Zionist Baron Rothschild) was issued promising to establish a Jewish Homeland in Palestine. This declaration by a high-ranking minister within the British government would later come back to haunt the British establishment throughout the British mandatory period.
Britain’s erstwhile Arab allies, who had also helped the British fight the Ottomans, opposed the idea of the establishment of a Jewish Homeland, and following the establishment of a temporary British Mandate over Palestine, the British authorities found themselves caught between the Zionists and the Arabs, who would both come to feel betrayed by the British for making promises which could not be kept without breaking the promises made to the other side.

The Holocaust
The rise of Nazi Germany encouraged a massive increase in Jewish immigration in Palestine, The British authorities tried to stem the tide in order to appease local Arabs, a policy viewed as particularly important following the outbreak of World War II, due to the Middle East as the location of the strategically vital Suez Canal and as source of petroleum.
Zionist Jews were divided on whether or not to support the British. On the one hand, it seemed the obvious choice to aid the British in the struggle against a power that was systematically persecuting and murdering Jews on an unprecedented and eventually industrial scale, but some Zionists arrived at the conclusion that Britain was their main enemy, as they were present in Palestine and proving the main obstacle to the creation of a Jewish state. One of these extremist Zionist groups, Lehi (also known as the Stern Gang) even advocated forming an alliance with Nazi Germany.
Nevertheless, most Jewish Palestinians at this stage supported the British war effort, rather than make what amounted to a pact with the Devil. Many Palestinian Jews (over 30,000 in all) joined the British Armed Forces, many within the Jewish Brigade and its predecessor, the Palestine Regiment.
Following the end of the War, Britain maintained a policy of trying to stem the tide of Jewish immigration into Palestine. They were opposed in this by Haganah**, a Jewish Palestinian Militia formed before the war to protect Jews against Arab militias. Haganah worked to thwart Britain’s attempts to restrict Jewish immigration, but also on occasion cooperated with the British authorities against the Arabs and against Irgun and Lehi.

The State of Israel
In 1947, a United Nations plan called for the partition of Palestine into non-contiguous Jewish and Muslim areas, and Jerusalem was to be administered by the UN. This plan pleased neither the Arabs nor the Jews, although the Jewish leadership was reluctantly prepared to accept it. The Arabs rejected the partition plan outright however, and fighting broke out between the Jewish and Arab Palestinians as the hapless British eagerly withdrew in advance of the termination of their mandate in May 1948.
The day after the British mandate was terminated on the 14th of May 1948, David Ben-Gurion declared the Independence of the State of Israel, which was immediately recognised by both the US and the USSR.

1948-49 Arab-Israeli War
Following the declaration of independence, was dissolved to form the core of the new Israeli Defence Force (IDF). Other Jewish armed groups were ordered to disarm and disband or join the IDF. Almost as soon as the creation of a Jewish state was announced, the neighbouring Arab states declared war and invaded Israel in support of the Palestinian Arabs, hoping to strangle the nascent Israeli state at birth. The invasion was a failure however, and the armies of the Arab League were repulsed. Subsequently, Israel recaptured all areas captured by the Arabs and added many territories that had been earmarked for the Arab Palestinian state. Many Palestinian Arabs fled, setting up refugee camps outside of the Israeli occupied zones in the hopes that they would eventually be able to return in the wake of a future Arab victory. An armistice agreement was signed in 1949 bringing a halt to the fighting for time being.

Six Day War
The peace between Israel and its neighbours was an uneasy one. In 1967, tensions between Israel and the neighbouring Arab states began to escalate once again when President Nasser of Egypt accused Israel of massing troops at the Syrian border. In response, Egypt began to mass its own troops in the Sinai Peninsula. Fearing another attempt to overwhelm Israel with superior numbers, Prime-Minister Levi Eshkol after some hesitation authorised a pre-emptive strike to destroy Egyptian and Syrian forces on the ground. The element of surprise proved to be decisive and overwhelming, and Israel succeeded in occupying the Golan Heights, the West Bank and the Sinai Peninsula.

Continued Arab-Israeli Conflict
The Palestinian Liberation Organisation was founded in 1964 with the support of the Arab League, and was created with the original aim of destroying the Jewish state of Israel and reinstating Palestine’s borders as they existed under the British Mandate. During the 1970s, they began a campaign of insurgency against Israeli forces and a campaign of terrorism within Israel itself and against Israelis in other parts of the world.
In 1973, Egypt and Syria launched a surprise attack on Israel during Yom Kippur. This further attempt to defeat Israel militarily once again ended in failure. However, Egyptian forces performed better than the Israelis had expected, and this fact helped the Egyptian president Anwar Sadat to negotiate the return of the Sinai Peninsula in return for a peace treaty which was signed in 1979***.
The Golan Heights, West Bank and Gaza Strip were considered strategically vital in the face of hostile neighbouring powers however. The Gaza Strip remained in Israeli hands until 2005, and parts of the West Bank, as well as the Golan Heights remain under Israeli Occupation.
The PLO formally abandoned its insistence on the destruction of Israel as a prerequisite for peace during the 1980s and instead began to campaign for a two-state solution. However, in 1987, the more extreme Hamas emerged as a major force in Palestinian Arab nationalism, and engaged in a long standing terrorist campaign, with the aim of destroying the nation of Israel. A separate Shi’ite group, Hezbollah emerged in 1982 following the Israeli invasion of Southern Lebanon (which was launched in response to PLO activity in the area at that time). Both Hamas and Hezbollah refuse to recognise the legitimacy of Israel as a Jewish state.
In 1995, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated by a Jewish extremist unhappy with proposed concessions to the Palestinians as part of on-going peace negotiations. The peace process between Israel and the Palestinians is a long and painstaking one, and as the assassination of Rabin and violence between Hamas and the PLO demonstrated, moderates have been subjected to violence from extremists on their own side as well as those in the opposite camp.
In 2011, The Palestinian Authority declared Palestinian statehood, claiming sovereignty over all Palestinian territory outside of Israel’s pre-1967 borders. This state is not universally recognised however, and many states, including Israel, have so far refused to recognise it.

Coinage of Israel
The earliest coins used in what is now Israel were Persian. It is known that silver coins were struck in the name of the Persian province of Yehud during the 5th Century BC. Some coins struck in this area were imitations of Athenian tetra drachms, which were then the standard trade currency of the Eastern and Central Mediterranean.
The Conquest of Alexander the Great brought the ubiquitous Alexander tetra drachms and drachms to the region, which continued to be struck and circulated within his former empire for centuries after his death in 323 BC. Due to its position on the frontiers of the Ptolemaic and Seleucid Kingdoms, coins of both of these successor states circulated in the area.
Before the destruction of the Second Temple, all Jewish adult males were required to pay a temple tax of two drachms a year to the temple. It was a religious requirement that the coins paid into the temple were of high purity. Following the advent of Roman rule in the region in the First Century BC, Roman currency began to be used for every day transactions. But the silver alloy used in Roman coins was considered too debased to be acceptable by the temple authorities, and so silver shekels and half shekels (also known amongst the Hellenes as tetra drachms and didrachms respectively) were struck in the name of Tyre (in modern day Lebanon) specifically in order to use to pay the tax. The money changers exchanging Roman currency for these more acceptable coins at a profit in front of the Temple famously incurred the wrath of Jesus according to the Bible. As well as Roman and Hellenic silver coins, small bronze coins, known as prutahs and leptons were issued by the local Jewish kings and Roman procurators for use as small change.
During the First and Second Jewish Revolts, Jewish rebels issued their own coins, often defacing Roman issues by overstriking them with their own designs with Hebrew legends.
For the duration of Roman rule and Byzantine rule, Roman currency was issued and used in the Levant. Arab conquest saw the introduction of Arab coinage, although popularity of Jerusalem as a pilgrim city meant that coins from outside the Caliphate were also used as an exchange medium.
The Crusader Era brought Frankish-style silver deniers to the region, many of which were struck locally in the name of the Kings of Jerusalem and the Princes of the other Crusader States, although Arab coins continued to be used, and imitations of Ayyubid Arab coins are known to have been struck in Acre during the Crusader Period for local and trade use.
Following the defeat and eventual expulsion of the Crusaders from the Levant between the 12th and 13th Centuries, coins of the Egyptian sultanate were introduced, which were in turn supplanted by Ottoman currency in the 16th Century.
When the British took control of Palestine from the Ottomans during and after World War I, the Egyptian Pound saw wide circulation, until the Palestine Pound was introduced in 1927.
Although the Palestine Pound was issued at par to the Pound Sterling, it was, unlike the Pound Sterling of the time, a decimal currency dived into 1,000 mils.
Coins of 1 and 2 mils were issued in bronze, 5, 10 and 20 mils were issued in cupronickel (and holed) and 50 and 100 mils coins were issued in 72% silver. All coins featured legends in Hebrew, English and Arabic. Coins for the Palestine pound were issued between 1928 and 1946 (coins dated 1947 were struck, but later melted down).
Following the creation of the state of Israel, the Israeli pound (or lira) was issued to replace the Palestine pound at par and pegged to the Pound sterling. The Israeli lira was subdivided into 1,000 pruta or 100 agora. However, Israel’s first coins were aluminium 25 mils, issued in 1948 and 1949 before the mil sub-unit was renamed as the pruta.
Subsequently, coins of 1, 5, 10, 25, 50, 100 and 250 pruta were issued. From 1960, coins denominated in agora were issued as 1, 5, 10 and 25 agorot pieces. In 1963, ½ and 1 lira coins were issued, followed by 5 lirot from 1978. Israel suffered from high inflation during the 1970s, and the lirot was replaced by the shekel in 1980 at the rate of 10 lirot to the shekel.
Coins of 1, 5 and 10 new agorot and ½ shekel were introduced, with 1, 5 and 10 shekels following through 1981 and 1982. This currency suffered from the effects of hyperinflation, and coins of 50 and 100 shekels were also introduced, and eventually, the currency lost much of its creditability with the Israelis, many of whom began to horde and use telephone tokens as a medium of exchange rather than the increasingly worthless coins and banknotes of the Israeli shekel.
In 1986, the ‘old’ shekel was finally replaced with the ‘new’ shekel at the rate of 1,000: 1.
The new Shekel is the currency of Israel today. Upon its introduction, coins of 1, 5, 10 agarot and ½ and 1 shekel were issued, dated from 1985. Since then, the 1 and 5 agarot coins have been discontinued, and a 2 shekel coin was introduced in 2007.
Interestingly from a numismatic point of view, the designs of the lower denomination coins in particular (up to 10 agarot) are heavily influenced by ancient coins once used in Israel.

*It is now generally accepted that Dionysius Exiguus, the 7th Century monk who invented the Anno Domini era, miscalculated the timing of events in Jesus' lifetime by at least 4 years.
** Haganah was heavily trained during the 1930s by the maverick British general Orde Wingate, a Christian Zionist sympathiser. Eventually, his overt support for the Zionist cause caused him to be relieved of his command in Palestine by his superiors.
***Although this peace treaty was in many ways a diplomatic victory for Sadat over the Israelis, the fact that he had signed any sort of peace treaty with the Israelis at all was a large factor in his assassination in 1981 at the hands of Islamists within the Egyptian armed forces.

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