It’s not every day that someone finds a treasure as rare as a pot of gold.

That’s what archaeologists discovered during an excavation and conservation project in the Israeli city of Caesarea at the Caesarea World Heritage site.

Coins… And an Earring?

The treasure found was comprised of 24 rare gold coins and a gold earring. These items were inside a bronze pot.

Even more interesting? The bronze pot was discovered wedged between two stones in the side of a well. The location of the well was outside of a house where a neighborhood existed during the Fatimid and Abbasid periods.

This leads archaeologists to think that the coins may have been hidden in the well by an individual that hoped to come back for it.

Unfortunately, they didn’t.

Killed By Crusaders?

The possible reason for not returning? The person may have been killed when a Crusader army came and massacred the city in 1101.

The army was that of Baldwin I. He ruled over Jerusalem’s Crusader kingdom from 1100 to 1118.

Another possibility? They could have been sold into slavery.

The directors of the excavation, Dr. Peter Gendelman and Mohammed Hatar, commented,“It is reasonable to assume that the treasure’s owner and his family perished in the massacre or were sold into slavery, and therefore were not able to retrieve their gold.”

Whatever the reason, archaeologists from the Israel Antiquities Authority view this treasure to be a “silent testimony to one of the most dramatic events in the history of Caesarea: the violent conquest of the city by the Crusaders.”

Treasure hunters will also be interested in the Roman gold coins recently found in Italy.