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1,000-year-old gold coins found in a trove in Israel

gold-coins-found-in-IsraelImage source, Reuters

Teenagers in Israel have discovered 1,000 year old coins!

The teens dug them up during a volunteer dig on a site where new houses are being built.

Hundreds of coins were found and the Israel Antiquities Authority think they're around 1,100 years old.

They date back to the ninth century and are 24-carat pure gold.

Image source, Reuters
Image caption,

425 coins have been found!

The Israel Antiquities Authority said the coins would have been worth a lot of money at the time.

Robert Kool, a coin expert, said they would have bought someone a large house in a nice neighbourhood!

Image source, Reuters
Image caption,

The coins could have bought someone a home in Egypt's first capital, Fustat.

Oz Cohen was one on the teenagers who found the coins.

He said: "I dug in the ground and when I excavated the soil, saw what looked like very thin leaves. When I looked again I saw these were gold coins. It was really exciting to find such a special and ancient treasure."

Experts think that whoever buried the coins had probably planned to come back for them.

Image source, Reuters

Liat Nadav-Ziv was the excavation director for the dig.

They said: "The person who buried this treasure 1,100 years ago must have expected to retrieve it and even secured the vessel with a nail so that it would not move. We can only guess what prevented him from returning to collect this treasure."

It's still a mystery who owned the coins, but the area where they were found used to be full of workshops in the ninth century.