Æ34 - Antoninus Pius L Ε

Year five of Antoninus Pius's reign — the regnal year encoded in the Greek numeral on this piece — fell during a period of unusual administrative stability in Roman Egypt. The prefect Lucius Munatius Felix oversaw the province during these years, and Alexandrian bronze production under his tenure was notably prolific, with a wide range of reverse types issued simultaneously to serve a population that used these large bronzes as the backbone of local commerce. Roman Egypt operated under a closed currency system; coins minted at Alexandria could not legally circulate elsewhere in the empire, nor could imperial coinage enter Egypt without exchange.