A hoard of ancient silver and bronze coins found by archaeologists in the Israeli city of Lod provides the first evidence of a Jewish uprising against Roman rule almost 1,700 years ago.

The 94 coins were discovered under the floor of a public Jewish building — likely a synagogue — that was violently destroyed during the Gallus Revolt of 351-354 CE.

Experts are convinced the coins were deliberately hidden in the hope that the owners would be able to retrieve them in the future. They never returned.

The Romans had ruled what was then Palaestina since the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE and had quashed the famous Bar Kochba revolt 200 years earlier.

The discovery of the coins and of the remnants of the building in which they were found is the first physical evidence of what turned out to be the last Jewish revolt against Roman persecution in Israel.

It also indicates that the uprising, barely mentioned in surviving texts, was dealt with by the forces of Caesar Flavius Constantius Gallus with far greater violence than was originally thought.

Excavations carried out jointly by the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) and Lod Municipality unearthed stone and marble artifacts bearing inscriptions in Hebrew, as well as Greek and Latin.

That, together with the complete absence of pig bones beneath the building — which was built during the Late Roman or Early Byzantine period — is how they are certain of the building’s links with the Jewish community.