Endnote 16 – Buried Treasure: The Silver Hoard from Dor

On three of the jugs, the Hebrew word hamesh (five) was written in red paint. The contents of one jug, found intact, weighed about 1 pound. As with the hoard found at Dor, it contained silver tokens, jewelry and some pieces of cut silver. Yigael Yadin thought that these five containers and the inscription “five” represented 500 shekels. The problem with this suggestion is that their weight does not correspond to the late Judahite shekel of 11.5 grams. Perhaps the shekel of this period, like ours, followed a different standard; if so, it was probably a lighter shekel. See E. Eran, “A Metrological Consideration of the Eshtemo’a Hoard,” ‘Atiqot, Hebrew ser., vol. 10 (1990), pp. 58–60.