Wa-wa-wee-wah - What a FIND!

My glass addiction sends me outdoors compulsively searching for little bits of Roman glass - glass that some poor fool dropped 2,000 years ago and never bothered to clean up. At least, that's how I imagine some of it gets there. I never collect from archaeological sites but you can hike fields and hills and forests in Israel and often just find this stuff laying around. Which is unbelievable. (Hint - walk into the sun and look for something shiny). What is really unbelievable is that I can infect other people with this compulsion and we all clamber over rocks and through gullies with our eyes glued to the ground as if we are contemplating a major concern of the planet. Or as if we've lost a contact lens. It's a miracle that we haven't walked into trees or off cliffs while doing this.

So there we were, David and I, having a nice conversation while returning from such a hike, (OK, he was trying to convince me to take on a huge project that would gobble up my life for the next 20 years; it's the kind of project you could only consider for love, and could only take on if you are independently wealthy, which I'm not) and I, while walking down the perimeter road of our village - the one that 2 joggers had just run down and that I had walked up with David just that morning - I noticed THIS!!!

Since it's only about 1/2 inch in diameter, and I'm over 5 feet tall and don't have the eyes of an eagle, I didn't actually see it the way you're seeing it now. But I did see that it didn't look natural. I spend a lot of time picking at things that don't look natural but are natural, as you might guess. I once even picked up some squished deer poo, which is pretty natural from close up. And the first thing I noticed about this is that it wasn't glass. But I was only dissapointed for a second - I think the entire region must have heard my screech. I think David may have feared for a moment that I'd stepped on a snake....

I've sent photos of this for identification but my best guess at the moment is Roman. A lot of those guys and gals posed for their portrait coins with decorative hair pieces and togas, while facing to the right. Although I've searched, I haven't found anything like the back of the coin (not posted here), so I'm not sure exactly what I've got but, by golly, I AM EXCITED!!