Æ23 - Antoninus Pius ΚΥΖΙΚΗΝΩΝ (Ζ shaped as エ)

Cyzicus was among the most productive civic mints in the conventus during the early Antonine period, but this piece carries an orthographic oddity worth noting: the zeta in ΚΥΖΙΚΗΝΩΝ is rendered in a form resembling the Japanese katakana エ — a squared, almost cruciform shape rather than the conventional diagonal-stroke letter. This is not damage or die wear. It reflects a local engraver's idiosyncratic letterform, and the same variant appears consistently enough across dies from this mint and period to confirm it as a deliberate regional practice.