Here is a recent NCLT from Armenia featuring books.

How about this one from 2009 (Louis Braille Bicentennial)

A couple honorable mentions for the list of coins depicting books:

• The Alabama state quarter depicts Helen Keller with a braille book
• The Tennessee state quarter depicts a musical score

The 2012 one-ounce Proof American Platinum Eagle has a book in its design. To quote the U.S. Mint’s literature: “It depicts a vigilant minuteman from the Revolutionary War, representing the protection and defense of the country during its early days. The minuteman carries a rifle and a book, which symbolizes the importance of knowledge in defending our Nation.”

This coin is featured in Ed Moy’s upcoming American Gold and Platinum Eagles --- a coin with a book within a book about coins. It makes one’s head spin!

A nice question that did not pique my interest until I saw the answers – all the examples given are relatively modern coins. So to look at some older ones, try Justinian II (Byzantine Empire, 685-695 A.D.) with Christ holding the book of the Gospels .

The predecessors of books are scrolls, and we find an end view of a scroll in the Ark of the Covenant on a Jewish coin of the Bar Kochba revolt (132-135 A.D.) .

Before that is a nice Roman Republic denarius with Clio, the Muse of History, holding an open scroll (56 B.C.) .

As an example of Greek coinage there is Homer holding a scroll in his left hand (Ionia, Kolophon, 50 B.C.) .

Finally, to go further back in time is this Greek coin from Syracuse, Sicily, with a female holding a scroll (216-215 B.C.) .

Photos are courtesy of Classical Numismatic Group, Inc.

In response to the query in the last couple editions of the E-Sylum regarding books on coins, I can’t help but point out that there are easily several hundred, if not a few thousand medals with books included in the main devices. As a collector of school award medals, I must have at least a couple of hundred such medals myself.

The earliest medal showing a book that I’m aware of is the 1642 silver school prize medal from Basel, Switzerland (M&H 39, Leu 1122). The obverse shows a full length figure of a boy who is reading an open book, while he is being crowned with a laurel wreath by an arm reaching down from the clouds above. The legend VIRTUTIS COMES GLORIA roughly translates as “Fame is a companion of virtue”.

The earliest medal that I know of showing only a book as the device is the Christ’s Hospital (London) markers’ medals, which were issued for several decades to the school monitors beginning in 1755 (Grimshaw 1981, #89). The reverse shows an open Bible with the inscription “HEAR READ MARK LEARN”, with the initials of the headmaster and date.

This phrase is taken from the Anglican Book of Common Prayer (Collect for the Second Sunday of Advent), “BLESSED Lord, who hast caused all holy Scriptures to be written for our learning; Grant that we may in such wise hear them, read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest them…” I certainly don’t mean to compare any numismatic book to the Holy Bible, but perhaps this motto can be appreciated by even the most agnostic numismatic bibliomaniac as it may relate to books generally. Well…maybe not the “mark” part!