By Wikipedia JERUSALEM OF GOLD IS Israel’s first one-ounce, 24-carat gold bullion coin launched by the Bank of Israel in May 2010. The limited-edition coin, the…
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The Hasmoneans were the ruling dynasty of the Hasmonean Kingdom of Israel, an independent Jewish state. The Hasmonean dynasty was established under the leadership of Simon Maccabaeus, two decades after his brother Judas the Maccabee ("Hammer") defeated the Seleucid army during the Maccabean Revolt in 165 BC. The Hasmonean Kingdom survived for 103 years before yielding to the Herodian Dynasty in 37 BC. Even then, Herod the Great felt obliged to bolster the legitimacy of his reign by marrying a Hasmonean princess, Mariamne, and conspiring to have the last male Hasmonean heir drowned in his Jericho palace. According to historical sources including the books 1 Maccabees and 2 Maccabees and the first book of The Wars of the Jews by the Jewish historian Josephus, the Hasmonean Kingdom rose after a successful revolt by the Jews against the Seleucid king Antiochus IV. After Antiochus' successful invasion of Ptolemaic Egypt was turned back by the intervention of the Roman Republic he moved instead to assert strict control over Israel, sacking Jerusalem and its Temple, suppressing Jewish religious and cultural observances, and imposing Hellenistic practices. The ensuing Maccabbee Revolt began a twenty-five-year period of Jewish independence potentiated by the steady collapse of the Seleucid Empire under attacks from the rising powers of the Roman Republic and the Parthian Empire. However, the same power vacuum that enabled the Jewish state to be recognized by the Roman Senate c. 139 BC was next exploited by the Romans themselves. Hyrcanus II and Aristobulus II, Simon's great-grandsons, became pawns in a proxy war between Julius Caesar and Pompey the Great that ended with the kingdom under the supervision of the Roman governor of Syria. The deaths of Pompey, Caesar, and the related Roman civil wars relaxed Rome's grip on Israel, allowing a brief Hasmonean resurgence backed by the Parthian Empire. This short independence was rapidly crushed by the Romans under Mark Antony and Octavian. The installation of Herod the Great as King of Israel as a Roman client state in 37 BC ended the Hasmonean dynasty. In 44 AD, Rome installed the rule of a Roman procurator side by side with the rule of the Herodian kings.
