1st-century coins from Jewish revolt against the Romans discovered near the Black Sea

Roman soldiers took coins minted by Jewish rebels in the Holy Land with them to a military camp in Georgia.

The remains of the fortress of Apsaros at Colchis in western Georgia, where archaeologists found Roman-era coins. (Image credit: Photo courtesy of Piotr Jaworski)

Decades after fighting Jewish rebels in the Holy Land, a Roman military unit traveled to what is now the country of Georgia, leaving coins minted in what is now Israel at one of their camps there, new research reveals.

Most of the coins used in the analysis were discovered between 2014 and 2022 by a Polish-Georgian team at the fort of Apsaros at Colchis, Piotr Jaworski, an archaeologist at the University of Warsaw who is a coin expert on the team, told Live Science in an email.