Israel: 6kg of ancient gold coins found underwater.

Amateur divers have found more than 2,000 ancient gold coins weighing up to 6kg, dating back thousands of years, off the coast of the port city of Caesarea, Israel.

These gold coins may have washed ashore due to a recent storm, and they provide valuable archaeological evidence from the Fatimid period, around the 10th-11th centuries, said Kobi Sharvit, director of Israel's maritime archaeology unit.

The divers initially thought they had found toy coins, but they later brought the gold coins to archaeologists for examination.

Archaeologists then used metal detectors and discovered a large quantity of gold coins around the area where the divers had found the first coins. The divers handed over all the coins they found to the research agency.

Robert Kool, an expert on ancient coins from the Israel Antiquities Authority, confirmed that the coins were found in excellent condition. "They are perfectly clean and very new despite having been at the bottom of the sea for over a millennium," Kool said.

Sharvit suggested that these gold coins may have originated from a ship carrying tax money to Egypt or from a merchant ship off the Mediterranean coast.

The discovery of these gold coins could help add to “our understanding of the entire archaeological landscape and answer many questions that we have long been unable to answer,” Sharvit added.

According to Vietnamnet