Juolia

Francis Filas

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 A.D. 29 and 32. 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 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.

Points of Congruence

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 an unknown sample (e.g. is it a fingerprint, is it a coin image).

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.