‘Familiar looking coin found in Jerusalem’

    

Eliyahu Yanai/City of David

There is something going on lately with amateur archeologists unearthing ancient coins. It seems hardly a month passes without some guy with a metal detector finding a cache of Roman or Saxon or some other gold and silver in Britain. A few weeks ago, a child volunteering at a dig in Jerusalem brought to light a 2000-year-old shekel that should look familiar to Mark Master Masons.

Liel Krutokop, age 11, plunged her fingers into her very first bucket when a round object made itself conspicuous amid the dirt taken from the City of David area. It turned out to be a shekel of pure silver dating to 67 or 68 C.E.—The Great Revolt—when Judea was in rebellion against the Roman Empire.

Coil’s Masonic Encyclopedia 

In Freemasonry, tokens closely resembling such ancient coins have a symbolic value in Mark Masonry. In the United States, they typically are called Chapter Pennies on account of their use in the Mark Master Mason Degree, which is conferred in Royal Arch chapters.

I’m assuming whoever lost this coin two millennia ago had some explaining to do when he got home.

Congratulations Miss Krutokop!

     

‘A Mark Mason’s marvelous remuneration’

     
As the Royal Arch Grand Chapter of New York’s Grand Representative Near New Jersey (I never can remember the title properly), I am duty bound to stay up to date on the fantastic happenings of all kinds in the Royal Arch chapters of New York. So here is something really cool.

Tonawanda Keystone Chapter 71, way up and out in Amherst, is making a new chapter penny available to the companions there. Actually it is a reboot of a design from the 19th century used by Buffalo Chapter:

Chapter penny obverse.

Chapter penny reverse.

Companions need only attend a chapter meeting and plunk down ten bucks to have one. (Needless to say, these beauties were brought to fruition by Bro. John Bridegroom of The Masters Craft.)

The penny is yet another instructive symbol in Masonic learning. In the Mark Degree—and Tonawanda Keystone Chapter terms this token a Mark coin—it is the compensation paid to a laborer for his daily toil. Its small denomination rings odd to the modern ear, but of course it simply represents any remuneration.

Tonawanda Keystone Chapter convocations are held on the fourth Tuesday of the month, and the companions have an active schedule: the MEMº today, a table chapter October 22, and the Royal Arch Degree November 26. I wish they weren’t 5,000 miles away.

Well done, Companions!