Year 6 of Marcus Aurelius at Alexandria coincides almost exactly with the return of Lucius Verus's army from the Parthian War — and with it, the Antonine Plague, which devastated Egypt's population through the late 160s. Alexandrian bronze production was already complicated by the city's closed currency system, which barred outside coinage and required all incoming money to be exchanged at the local tesserakontarouron rate. Whether plague disruption affected output in this specific regnal year remains debated, but Egyptian hoards from the period show sharp discontinuities in coin deposition after 166 AD.
Year 6 of Marcus Aurelius at Alexandria coincides almost exactly with the return of Lucius Verus's army from the Parthian War — and with it, the Antonine Plague, which devastated Egypt's population through the late 160s. Alexandrian bronze production was already complicated by the city's closed currency system, which barred outside coinage and required all incoming money to be exchanged at the local tesserakontarouron rate. Whether plague disruption affected output in this specific regnal year remains debated, but Egyptian hoards from the period show sharp discontinuities in coin deposition after 166 AD.