Numismatic dating of the Turin Shroud through the analysis of Byzantine coins

The 1988 radiocarbon dating of the Turin Shroud (TS) assigned a calibrated calendar age of 1260-1390 A.D. with a 95% confidence for the linen fabric, but three recent alternative dating assigned an age compatible with the First Century A.D., period in which Jesus Christ lived in Palestine. The present analysis is based on the face and on the posture of Christ reported on many Byzantine coins, that clearly demonstrate that the TS was seen starting from 692 A.D., year in which the emperor Justinian II represented the face of Christ in the coins for the first time in the history. It is interesting to observe that, as not all the peculiar details of the TS face were represented in such a small depiction of a coin, the choice of which detail had to be considered was let to the single engraver. Therefore we can see coins made by different officinae, under the same emperor, showing different details, all typical of the TS face, but with different faces of Christ. With the time passing, not all the engravers had the possibility to observe directly the TS; as a result, a degradation of the similarity with the TS of the produced face of Christ results. Nevertheless when the TS was taken in Constantinople in 944 A.D., we detect a great improvement of the partially lost similarity. This is also demonstrated by an analysis based on the variation of the ratio between eyes distance and nose length. From a probabilistic analysis, it results that the Byzantine engraver who represented Christ on the gold solidus, semissis, tremissis and silver hexagram during the period of Justinian II would have only seven chances in one billion of billions of different possibilities of hitting these peculiar features all together without having seen the TS; this demonstrates that the TS was seen in the first Millennium A.D. The paper also presents a tracking shot of the various features, different century by century, but all in agreement with the TS body image, reported in the Byzantine coins up to the fall of the Byzantine Empire in 1204 A.D. and in the following centuries, evidencing the various features of the TS image frequently reproduced in accordance with Byzantine canons.