Are There Coins Over The Eyes of the Face on the Shroud of Turin?

This page is best understood by first reading the page, Variegated images on the Shroud of Turin.

The word lepton means small or thin, and in Roman occupied Palestine, a lepton was always a low value coin, usually the smallest available denomination of a local currency. The Roman lepton was informally called a mite in the Greek-speaking parts of the Roman Empire; this use is seen in the New Testament.

Some researchers have identified mages of lepta (coins), minted by Pontius Pilate for use by the Jewish population in Palestine, over both eyes of the Shroud of Turin face. But is the identification valid? Most shroud researchers, while agreeing that the Shroud of Turin is likely genuine, seriously doubt this identification.

In 1978, scientists, including John P. Jackson and Eric J. Jumper, while working with NASA's VP-8 (3D) Image Analyzer, discovered what appeared to be raised button-like shapes over each eye.

Then in 1980, Francis Filas, S.J., of Loyola University in Chicago and Michael Marx, an expert in classical coins, examined the area over the right eye and detected patterns of what appeared to be the letters UCAI (from the middle of TIBERIOU CAISARUS). They also found a lituus design (an auger's staff). Filas concluded that this was a lituus lepton coin minted by Pontius Pilate between 29 and 32 CE. Over the left eye, Filas also identified what he believed to be a Juolia lepton with a distinctive sheaf of barley design. The Juolia lepton was only struck in 29 CE in honor of Tiberius Caesar's wife, Julia.

Subsequent computerized image enhancement analysis at the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University's Spatial Data Analysis Laboratory supports, though cautiously, the existence of the lituus lepton over the right eye and an outline of a coin over the left eye.

By overlaying polarized images, Alan Whanger at Duke University identified what he believed to be coins. Alan found 74 points of congruence with an existing lituus lepton and 73 points with a Juolia lepton. But such identification is highly interpretive and other researchers do not find the same level of congruence. Many argue that congruence analysis, as used to match fingerprints, is valid for matching two identified samples (e.g. two fingerprints or partial fingerprints) but that it is not a valid method for identifying a unknown sample (e.g. is it a fingerprint, is it a coin image).

The UCAI Problem

Though the lepta minted in Palestine were Roman produced coins, the inscription of Tiberius Caesar would have been written in Greek as TIBERIOU KAISAROS. Was the C, where a K was expected, a misspelling? This was a problem that seemed to preclude positive identification until an actual Lituus lepton was found with the aberrant spelling. Several have since been found. This anomaly seems to give credence to the coins identification.

Coin Identification Problems

Barrie Schwortz, a technical photographers who photographed the Shroud, questions the coin identification. Having studied numerous high quality negatives of the Shroud taken in 1978, he concludes:

My personal opinion, based on my photographic experience and my close examination of the Shroud itself, is that the weave of the cloth is far too coarse to resolve the rather subtle and very tiny inscription on a dime sized ancient coin...What he [Filas] saw as inscriptions, I saw as random shapes and noise. Such is the subjective nature of image analysis. For these reasons however, I cannot accept these coin "inscriptions" as viable evidence of a first century Shroud "date"...I do not argue that there appears to be something on the eyes of the man of the Shroud, and it may well be coins or potshards, since they were used in some first century burial rituals, but I do not believe we can resolve coin inscriptions.

 Background Noise

There is no question that background noise is a severe problem for coin identification. Banding, both vertical and horizontal, encroaches on the area of the eyes, certainly adding anomalous data. Much of the fine detail claimed to be features of the coins probably comes from background noise.