Æ16 - Elagabalus ΑΔΡΑΗΝωΝ (retrograde)

Adraa, a minor city of the Roman province of Arabia Petraea, issued coins only sporadically under the Severan emperors, and the retrograde ethnic on this piece — ΑΔΡΑΗΝωΝ running right to left — almost certainly reflects a local engraver working without a corrected die model rather than any deliberate stylistic choice. The phenomenon is well-documented in small Levantine civic mints where die-cutting was contracted to craftsmen unfamiliar with Greek letterforms.