Æ23 - Trajan L ΙΗ

Year 18 of Trajan's reign — rendered as L ΙΗ in Greek — places this issue squarely in the period of his Parthian campaign, when Roman imperial ambitions reached their greatest eastern extent. Alexandria's civic mint continued producing dated bronze for local Egyptian circulation throughout, largely indifferent to the wars being fought a thousand miles away. The regnal year dating system, inherited from Ptolemaic practice, is what makes precise attribution possible here where Roman provincial bronzes elsewhere resist it.