It was the coolest unexpected Christmas gift I’ve ever gotten. It was given to me a couple of years ago by my father-in-law, who is an avid historian. A Roman coin made of bronze, it was made 1,000 years before me around the year 973, during the reign of John I.

The tradition was to have the Roman emperors on the obverse, or front, of the coin. However, it was commonly believed that the world would end in the year 1,000, so people were turning toward Jesus who usually hadn’t before. It seems almost a sort of penance to put Jesus’ image on the coins.

Jesus is pictured on the front of the coin with a halo, holding a book of gospels. You can see what the image would have looked like from the mosaic above of the Christ Pantocrator (usually translated “Almighty”) that’s in the Hagia Sophia.

Even though it’s a Roman coin, the words on the back of the coin are Greek. They say, “XINSUS XRISTUS BASILEU BASILE.” It means, “Jesus Christ, King of Kings.”