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Nearly 20 years of hard detective work and leads were needed to solve the mystery and close the case of the missing $1 million relic

"Finally, a precious piece of history is coming home," said a US official at a ceremony marking the event, the BBC reports.

This piece of history is a small silver coin with rich symbolism struck during a Jewish revolt nearly 2,000 years ago.

In 2002, it was stolen in Israel, but was eventually found, seized and returned to where it came from.

The saga began when the Israel Antiquities Authority learned from informants that the coin had been taken by Palestinians from the Ella Valley, south of Jerusalem.

The office says it spent the next decade and a half trying to track down the coin, which passed through illegal antiquities markets in Israel, Jordan and the United Kingdom.

It was eventually exported to the US for auction sale in 2017.

The silver coin stamped with Jewish motifs is one of only four known extant coins of this type.

They date the coin to AD 69.

- the fourth year of the Great Uprising.

The minting of such a coin is "a declaration of the independence of the Jews in Israel, a statement against the mighty empire that stood before them."

During the Great Revolt, the Jews of Judea revolted against the despotic rule of the Romans, who a hundred years earlier had ended Jewish independence there.

Archaeologists have discovered rare Roman coins off the coast of Israel

The uprising culminated in the destruction of Jerusalem and the second Jewish temple by the Romans in 70 AD.

Estimates of the number of Jews killed range from hundreds of thousands to over a million.

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