This is a heavily loaded, aggressively propagandist coin minted by the rebels of that second great revolt.

Hello, I'm Neil McGregor, and in this series of podcasts, I'm looking at objects to see how shared beliefs help shape societies.

This episode looks at faiths that try to establish a territory of their own.

This is the BBC.

In the last few programmes, we've looked at how nation-states have tried to impose one faith or to abolish religion altogether.

In this programme, I want to look at the idea of a religious state

which has been lost or does not yet exist,

how Jews, Muslims and Christians have over millennia

dreamt of possessing a territory

where they can give political expression

to the hopes and ideals embodied in their faith.

We're going to carry us away to capitalism political expression to the hopes and ideals embodied in their faith.

Surely the best known the city I'm standing in now,

Jerusalem. There's no obvious geographic or strategic advantage to be had from this site,

and yet its role in Jewish, Christian and Islamic history has made it perhaps the single,

most bitterly contested patch of land in human history.

We all know about the tragic conflicts of today,

but these struggles stretch back over thousands of years

and include the Crusaders and the Assyrians, the British, the Persians, the Egyptians,

and of course the Romans.

One of the most and of course the Romans.

One of the most significant chapters of the Roman story in Jerusalem is told in a coin here at the British Museum.

...