Æ24 - Domitian ΕΦΕϹΙΩΝ ΜΑΡΝΑϹ

Marnас is an otherwise obscure deity whose name appears on remarkably few provincial bronzes from Asia Minor, making its presence in the Ephesian civic coinage under Domitian a genuine puzzle. The cult connections are uncertain — the name has been linked to a Syrian rain-god worshipped at Gaza, though how or whether that association reached Ephesus remains unresolved in the scholarship.

Domitian's reign saw aggressive intervention in provincial religious life, and Ephesus was a city acutely sensitive to imperial favor, having competed fiercely with Smyrna and Pergamon for the title of neokoros.