Æ25 - Augustus ΣΕΒΑΣΤΟΣ

Alexandria's civic bronze issues under Augustus occupied an awkward administrative position — technically provincial coinage, but produced under direct imperial supervision as Egypt remained the personal property of the emperor rather than a senatorial province. No senator was permitted to enter Egypt without explicit imperial authorization, a restriction that held from Augustus through the third century.

The Greek epithet ΣΕΒΑΣΤΟΣ — a deliberate translation of "Augustus" rather than a transliteration — was a conscious political choice, grounding imperial authority in the existing vocabulary of Greek honorifics rather than importing Latin wholesale.