Catalog
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| Issuer | Alexandria (Egypt) |
|---|---|
| Year | 146-147 |
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| Composition | Log in to see details |
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| Technique | Hammered |
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| Reverse description | Heracles performing the cleansing of the Augean Stables, advancing right with the Nemean lion skin draped over his shoulder, arms outstretched toward a wall of rocks fitted with a human- or lion-headed water spout from which a stream flows. A mattock rests against the rocky structure, referencing the labor of diversion. The date legend L ΔΕΚΑΤΟΥ appears in the field, denoting regnal year ten. The composition is characteristic of the elaborate mythological reverse types favored by the Alexandrian mint under Antoninus Pius. |
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| Reverse lettering | L ΔΕΚΑΤΟΥ (Translation: of the tenth year) |
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| Additional information |
Year 10 of Antoninus Pius's reign in Egypt — 146/147 AD — places this piece within the prefecture of a province that ran its own dating system, its own coinage, and effectively its own monetary economy, closed to the outside Roman world. Alexandria's bronze issues of this size were not interchangeable with Roman aes; they circulated only within Egypt's borders, a deliberately maintained fiscal boundary that Rome had inherited from the Ptolemies and never dismantled. The Alexandrian mint was one of the most prolific in the empire, yet large-module bronzes of this diameter thin out sharply in surviving collections.