Some of the oldest coins from Mediterranean tombs have been found on Cyprus. In 2001 Destrooper-Georgiades, a specialist in Achaemenid numismatics, said that investigations of 33 tombs had yielded 77 coins. Although denomination varies, as does the number in any given burial, small coins predominate. Coins started to be placed in tombs almost as soon as they came into circulation on the island in the 6th century, and some predate both the first issue of the obol and any literary reference to Charon's fee. [37]

Craig A. Evans, Jesus and the Ossuaries (Baylor University Press, 2003), pp. 106–107. The allusion to Charon is cited as b. Mo'ed Qatan 28b.Coins are found also at the deceased's feet, [156] although the purpose of this positioning is uncertain. John Chrysostom mentions and disparages the use of coins depicting Alexander the Great as amulets attached by the living to the head or feet, and offers the Christian cross as a more powerful alternative for both salvation and healing: Hesychius, entry on Ναῦλον, Lexicon, edited by M. Schmidt (Jena 1858–68), III 142: τὸ εἰς τὸ στόμα τῶν νεκρῶν ἐμβαλλόμεν νομισμάτιον; entry on Δανάκη, Lexicon, I 549 (Schmidt): ἐλέγετο δὲ καὶ ὁ τοῖς νεκροῖς διδόμενος ὀβολός; Callimachus, Hecale, fragment 278 in the edition of Rudolf Pfeiffer (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1949), vol. 1, p. 262 (= Schneider frg. 110), with an extensive note (in Latin) on the fare and the supposed exemption for residents of Hermione; Suidae Lexicon, entry on Πορθμήϊον, edited by A. Adler (Leipzig 1935) IV 176, all cited by Grabka, "Christian Viaticum," pp. 8–9. Edmund Spenser's Poem: The Faerie Queene, Book I, Canto 1". Archived from the original on 2016-03-04 . Retrieved 2016-02-27. Retrieved February 27, 2016 Stevens, "Charon’s Obol," pp. 224–225; Morris, Death-Ritual and Social Structure in Classical Antiquity, p. 106.

The need for a viaticum figures in a myth-tinged account of the death of King William II of England, told by the Anglo-Norman chronicler Geoffrey Gaimar: dying from a battle wound and delirious, the desperate king kept calling out for the corpus domini (Lord's body) until a huntsman [160] acted as priest and gave him flowering herbs as his viaticum. [161] In the dominant tradition of William's death, he is killed while hunting on the second day of red stag season, which began August 1, the date of both Lughnasadh and the Feast of St. Peter's Chains. [162] Neither ancient literary sources nor archaeological finds indicate that the ritual of Charon's obol explains the modern-era custom of placing a pair of coins on the eyes of the deceased, nor is the single coin said to have been placed under the tongue. See " Coins on the eyes?" below.Literally, "You can't get [any obols] from one who doesn't have any." [33] Archaeological evidence [ edit ]