page_title: Charon's obol
section_title: Coins on the eyes?
hierarchical_section_title: Charon's obol / Religious significance / Coins on the eyes?
caption_attribution_description: English: This pendant is decorated with repouss&#233; and with a beaded moulding border.
context_page_description: Charon's obol is an allusive term for the coin placed in or on the mouth of a dead person before burial. Greek and Latin literary sources specify the coin as an obol, and explain it as a payment or bribe for Charon, the ferryman who conveyed souls across the river that divided the world of the living from the world of the dead. Archaeological examples of these coins, of various denominations in practice, have been called "the most famous grave goods from antiquity."
  The custom is primarily associated with the ancient Greeks and Romans, though it is also found in the ancient Near East. In Western Europe, a similar usage of coins in burials occurs in regions inhabited by Celts of the Gallo-Roman, Hispano-Roman and Romano-British cultures, and among the Germanic peoples of late antiquity and the early Christian era, with sporadic examples into the early 20th century.
  Although archaeology shows that the myth reflects an actual custom, the placement of coins with the dead was neither pervasive nor confined to a single coin in the deceased's mouth.
context_section_description: Contrary to popular etiology there is little evidence to connect the myth of Charon to the custom of placing a pair of coins on the eyes of the deceased, though the larger gold-foil coverings discussed above might include pieces shaped for the eyes. Pairs of coins are sometimes found in burials, including cremation urns; among the collections of the British Museum is an urn from Athens, ca. 300 BC, that contained cremated remains, two obols, and a terracotta figure of a mourning siren. Ancient Greek and Latin literary sources, however, mention  a pair of coins only when a return trip is anticipated, as in the case of Psyche’s catabasis, and never in regard to sealing the eyes.
  Only rarely does the placement of a pair of coins suggest they might have covered the eyes. In Judea, a pair of silver denarii were found in the eye sockets of a skull; the burial dated to the 2nd century A.D. occurs within a Jewish community, but the religious affiliation of the deceased is unclear. Jewish ritual in antiquity did not require that the eye be sealed by an object, and it is debatable whether the custom of placing coins on the eyes of the dead was practiced among Jews prior to the modern era. During the 1980s, the issue became embroiled with the controversies regarding the Shroud of Turin when it was argued that the eye area revealed the outlines of coins; since the placement of coins on the eyes for burial is not securely attested in antiquity, apart from the one example from Judea cited above, this interpretation of evidence obtained through digital image processing cannot be claimed as firm support for the shroud's authenticity.
caption: Fourth-century pendant with the image of Alexander the Great (Walters Art Museum)
exif: {"Image ImageDescription": "Anonymous (Roman). 'Pendant with Portrait of Alexander the Great,' 4th century. gold. Walters Art Museum (57.526): Acquired by Henry Walters, 1928.", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "300", "Image YResolution": "300", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Artist": "Walters Art Museum (Baltimore/Maryland/USA)", "Image Copyright": "http://purl.org/thewalters/rights/standard", "Image ExifOffset": "362", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "1464", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "1283"}