A metal detectorist in England discovered a ninth century gold coin pendant depicting Saint John the Baptist, a Christian saint, in an area previously conquered by pagan Vikings.
Sarah Durn
Wed, April 8, 2026
POP SCI
One side of the coin shows the profile of a bearded man with the Latin for John and the other has part of a Latin inscription translating as baptist and evangelist.
Less than a 30 minute drive from the University of Cambridge, a metal detectorist followed beeps to a remarkable treasure: a ninth century gold coin pendant.
Now finding long-lost coins in the English countryside isn’t exactly unheard of. In 2025, another metal detectorist discovered a gold coin dating back to the Iron Age in East Yorkshire. Before that, a Viking silver cache was discovered in North Yorkshire.
But this newly discovered gold coin isn’t like the others. This coin might just rewrite history, at least a little bit.
What makes this coin a bit of a head scratcher is what it depicts: a bearded profile of Saint John the Baptist. Thanks to a Latin inscription, experts have no doubts the coin shows the Christian saint. But what experts don’t yet understand is why the Vikings, who had conquered the English kingdom of East Anglia (where the coin was found) and who weren’t Christians, minted or wore a coin with a Christian saint on it. Why would pagans want a coin with a Christian on it?
Limestone relief of John the Baptist from Zakynthos, Byzantine and Christian Museum, Greece. Image: Public Domain
Elizabeth Rayne
Wed, April 8, 2026
Archaeologists Found a Legendary Ancient Temple
Sarah Durn
Wed, April 8, 2026
POP SCI
One side of the coin shows the profile of a bearded man with the Latin for John and the other has part of a Latin inscription translating as baptist and evangelist.
Less than a 30 minute drive from the University of Cambridge, a metal detectorist followed beeps to a remarkable treasure: a ninth century gold coin pendant.
Now finding long-lost coins in the English countryside isn’t exactly unheard of. In 2025, another metal detectorist discovered a gold coin dating back to the Iron Age in East Yorkshire. Before that, a Viking silver cache was discovered in North Yorkshire.
But this newly discovered gold coin isn’t like the others. This coin might just rewrite history, at least a little bit.
What makes this coin a bit of a head scratcher is what it depicts: a bearded profile of Saint John the Baptist. Thanks to a Latin inscription, experts have no doubts the coin shows the Christian saint. But what experts don’t yet understand is why the Vikings, who had conquered the English kingdom of East Anglia (where the coin was found) and who weren’t Christians, minted or wore a coin with a Christian saint on it. Why would pagans want a coin with a Christian on it?
Limestone relief of John the Baptist from Zakynthos, Byzantine and Christian Museum, Greece. Image: Public Domain
In an interview with BBC, numismatics expert Simon Coupland compared the coin to “a child trying to fit a hexagonal object into a square hole.” The coin just doesn’t fit into history the way it should, which suggests we may have some of the history wrong.
Maybe pagan Vikings liked wearing pendants showing Christian saints as a way to assimilate into East Anglia’s largely Christian population? Or maybe a Christian East Anglian wore the pendant? Or maybe a Christian Viking wore the pendant, even though most historians believed the invading Danes were pagan, not Christian?
And just like that, one small gold coin can upend history—rewriting England’s cultural landscape during the island’s perilous ninth century.
Archaeologists Discovered a Legendary Ancient Temple Hiding in Plain Sight
Maybe pagan Vikings liked wearing pendants showing Christian saints as a way to assimilate into East Anglia’s largely Christian population? Or maybe a Christian East Anglian wore the pendant? Or maybe a Christian Viking wore the pendant, even though most historians believed the invading Danes were pagan, not Christian?
And just like that, one small gold coin can upend history—rewriting England’s cultural landscape during the island’s perilous ninth century.
Archaeologists Discovered a Legendary Ancient Temple Hiding in Plain Sight
Elizabeth Rayne
Wed, April 8, 2026
POP MECH
Archaeologists Found a Legendary Ancient Temple
Paul and Rachel Schrank - Getty Images
Elagabal was a solar deity in ancient Syria who was also worshipped by a Roman emperor and high priest who named himself Elagabalus in honor of the god.
The Temple of the Sun, built in honor of Elagabal, was the religious epicenter of Syria at the time, but after the arrival of Christianity and then Islam, it seemed to have disappeared.
A Greek inscription found on one of the columns of the Great Mosque suggests that it might have been built over the temple or even had elements of the temple integrated.
During the third century, when the Severan dynasty of Rome ruled Syria, a grand temple dedicated to the sun god Elagabal rose in the city of Emesa. Then it vanished.
The cult of Elagabal was known as Sol Invictus or the Invincible Sun. While there was no statue ever made in his image, he was represented by a sacred black meteorite that had fallen from the heavens, which was paraded among revelers in lavish midsummer processions. After the sudden assassination of Roman emperor Caracalla in the year 217 C.E., a teenage priest of Elagabal known as Sextus Varius Avitus Bassianus (who bore an uncanny resemblance to Caracalla and may or may not have been his illegitimate son) ascended to the throne. He chose Marcus Aurelius Antoninus Augustus as his imperial name, but his dedication to the solar deity soon earned him the title he would be recognized by long after his death—Elagabalus.
Remains of the temple where Elagabalus worshipped long eluded archaeologists. Scholars believe the temple was converted into a Christian church after the rise of Christianity, and then into a mosque after the Islamic conquest, meaning its remains may lie beneath the landmark Great Mosque of al-Nuri, which still stands in Homs (ancient Emesa). And recently, during restoration work on the mosque, something unusual surfaced.
At the base of one of its columns was an ancient Greek inscription, now thought to have possibly been left over from the pagan temple whose heart was once a conical meteorite. Greeks had been in Syria since the 7th century B.C.E. While the Greek presence was at its height during the Hellenistic period and the Seleucid Empire, the language persisted long afterward. Archaeologist and historian Maamoun Saleh Abdulkarim of the University of Sharjah analyzed and translated the inscription, which he described as epic in its heroic, militaristic tone.
“He soars in the sky to crush the warring barbarians,” it reads, according to a study recently published in the journal Shedet. “He comes with a screaming voice, piercing the air. He smashes shields with his sword, tearing the enemy into pieces. He instantly transforms into a tiger, facing the foe. From the top of the hill, you hear his roar as he strikes with strength and ferocity. His royal power is derived from the god of war during the day.”
This isn’t the only reference to Elagabalus, whose adopted name derived from the Aramaic Ilaha Gabal, or “God of the mountain.” Another inscription discovered on a different side of the same column read, “The king, the round image of the universe, conquered all peoples and obtained everything through the skillful driving of a chariot.” It seems both inscriptions were meant to deify Elagabalus.
Worship of Elagabal was centered in Syria, but it spread beyond the Levant and eventually reached Rome. Historian Abdulhadi Al-Najjar was the first to attempt a translation of the recently discovered inscription. Despite grammatical errors in the Greek—common in Aramaic-speaking Syria during the Roman period—he determined that it described a warrior king so fierce he was likened to storm winds and a great predatory cat. The young emperor was in fact compared to a tiger, so his reading was close.
Both Greek inscriptions strengthen the theory that whatever is left of the legendary Temple of the Sun may lie beneath the Great Mosque. The inscriptions were not analyzed earlier because of turmoil in Syria, but now they’re offering insights into the cult of Elagabal, whom Elagabalus raised above the entire Roman pantheon after he became emperor. Roman religious identity was primarily based on paganism. As Christianity began to seep into Syria, the transition between religions is thought to have been gradual, with pagan rites repurposed to be accepted into Christian traditions. It was previously debated whether the Temple of the Sun was hidden beneath or even within the Great Mosque, or if it was buried on a mound beneath the ruins of the Islamic Citadel of Homs.
Elagabal was a solar deity in ancient Syria who was also worshipped by a Roman emperor and high priest who named himself Elagabalus in honor of the god.
The Temple of the Sun, built in honor of Elagabal, was the religious epicenter of Syria at the time, but after the arrival of Christianity and then Islam, it seemed to have disappeared.
A Greek inscription found on one of the columns of the Great Mosque suggests that it might have been built over the temple or even had elements of the temple integrated.
During the third century, when the Severan dynasty of Rome ruled Syria, a grand temple dedicated to the sun god Elagabal rose in the city of Emesa. Then it vanished.
The cult of Elagabal was known as Sol Invictus or the Invincible Sun. While there was no statue ever made in his image, he was represented by a sacred black meteorite that had fallen from the heavens, which was paraded among revelers in lavish midsummer processions. After the sudden assassination of Roman emperor Caracalla in the year 217 C.E., a teenage priest of Elagabal known as Sextus Varius Avitus Bassianus (who bore an uncanny resemblance to Caracalla and may or may not have been his illegitimate son) ascended to the throne. He chose Marcus Aurelius Antoninus Augustus as his imperial name, but his dedication to the solar deity soon earned him the title he would be recognized by long after his death—Elagabalus.
Remains of the temple where Elagabalus worshipped long eluded archaeologists. Scholars believe the temple was converted into a Christian church after the rise of Christianity, and then into a mosque after the Islamic conquest, meaning its remains may lie beneath the landmark Great Mosque of al-Nuri, which still stands in Homs (ancient Emesa). And recently, during restoration work on the mosque, something unusual surfaced.
At the base of one of its columns was an ancient Greek inscription, now thought to have possibly been left over from the pagan temple whose heart was once a conical meteorite. Greeks had been in Syria since the 7th century B.C.E. While the Greek presence was at its height during the Hellenistic period and the Seleucid Empire, the language persisted long afterward. Archaeologist and historian Maamoun Saleh Abdulkarim of the University of Sharjah analyzed and translated the inscription, which he described as epic in its heroic, militaristic tone.
“He soars in the sky to crush the warring barbarians,” it reads, according to a study recently published in the journal Shedet. “He comes with a screaming voice, piercing the air. He smashes shields with his sword, tearing the enemy into pieces. He instantly transforms into a tiger, facing the foe. From the top of the hill, you hear his roar as he strikes with strength and ferocity. His royal power is derived from the god of war during the day.”
This isn’t the only reference to Elagabalus, whose adopted name derived from the Aramaic Ilaha Gabal, or “God of the mountain.” Another inscription discovered on a different side of the same column read, “The king, the round image of the universe, conquered all peoples and obtained everything through the skillful driving of a chariot.” It seems both inscriptions were meant to deify Elagabalus.
Worship of Elagabal was centered in Syria, but it spread beyond the Levant and eventually reached Rome. Historian Abdulhadi Al-Najjar was the first to attempt a translation of the recently discovered inscription. Despite grammatical errors in the Greek—common in Aramaic-speaking Syria during the Roman period—he determined that it described a warrior king so fierce he was likened to storm winds and a great predatory cat. The young emperor was in fact compared to a tiger, so his reading was close.
Both Greek inscriptions strengthen the theory that whatever is left of the legendary Temple of the Sun may lie beneath the Great Mosque. The inscriptions were not analyzed earlier because of turmoil in Syria, but now they’re offering insights into the cult of Elagabal, whom Elagabalus raised above the entire Roman pantheon after he became emperor. Roman religious identity was primarily based on paganism. As Christianity began to seep into Syria, the transition between religions is thought to have been gradual, with pagan rites repurposed to be accepted into Christian traditions. It was previously debated whether the Temple of the Sun was hidden beneath or even within the Great Mosque, or if it was buried on a mound beneath the ruins of the Islamic Citadel of Homs.
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