(Photo By: Heidi Levine/POOL/AFP)
By: Amanda Borschel-Dan - November 5, 2020
There are some 750,000 coins stored in one room in a well-protected Israel Antiquities Authority vault and Donald T. Ariel, the head of the IAA’s Coin Department, stands watch over them all.
Ariel, who immigrated to Israel from the United States, has headed the department since 1991. He is the editor of the Israel Numismatic Research journal and serves as the coin expert on several ongoing excavations in the country. He took The Times of Israel Community on a virtual tour of the history of Holy Land coinage and pulled out some of the IAA’s treasures during a recent Behind the Headlines conversation.
The foundation of the coin collection is housed in mahogany wood boxes built by the British Mandate almost 100 years ago. The original boxes stand to one side, segregating the collection, which was amassed through purchases from coin dealers, versus the excavated coins the IAA holds in boxes made for buts and bolts that are made in the coastal Israeli city Holon.
Read More: Times Of Israel