Caesarea, Israel. 3rd December, 2018. ROBERT KOOL, Curator of Coins for the Israel Antiquities Authority, displays a cache of rare gold coins and a 900 year old gold earring to a random group of schoolchildren who did not want to miss an opportunity to see 'a real treasure'. The treasure, discovered at the Port of Caesarea during extensive excavation and conservation work, a small bronze pot holding 24 gold coins and a gold earring, was uncovered just days ago hidden between two stones in the side of a well in a neighborhood dating to the Abbasid and Fatimid periods, some 900 years ago. Archaeologists from the Israel Antiquities Authority elaborated; "The cache is a silent testimony to one of the most dramatic events in the history of Caesarea - the violent conquest of the city by the Crusaders. Someone hid their fortune, hoping to retrieve it - but never returned." The coins in the cache dating to the end of the eleventh century, link the treasure to the Crusader conquest of the city in the year 1101. According to contemporary written sources, most of the inhabitants of Caesarea were massacred by the army of Baldwin I (1100–1118), King of the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem.
