Æ21 - Augustus ΑΡΧΙΕΡΑΤΙΚΟΝ ΑΝΤΙΟΧΕΙΣ ΘΚ, Antioch

The legend ΑΡΧΙΕΡΑΤΙΚΟΝ — "of the high priesthood" — marks this as an issue connected to the civic cult administration of Antioch, the Seleucid foundation that had become Rome's primary eastern capital by the late first century BC. The ΘΚ in the legend denotes a local civic year within Antioch's own era. Augustus himself held the title of pontifex maximus from 12 BC onward, and the intersection of Roman imperial religion with Antioch's Greek civic institutions produced precisely this kind of hybrid honorific coinage.