Æ34 - Antoninus Pius L Ζ

Year 7 of Antoninus Pius's reign — the regnal year encoded in the L Ζ formula used consistently by the Alexandrian mint — places this issue squarely within a period when Egypt was administered with unusual stability. The prefecture changed hands rarely under Antoninus, a deliberate contrast to the revolving door of earlier reigns. Alexandria's bronze coinage of this decade circulated as the effective small-change economy of the entire province, Rome having ceded local fiduciary coinage entirely to the Egyptian monetary system.

The Alexandrian mint maintained its own reckoning calendar independent of the Roman year, beginning in late August, which means pieces dated L Ζ span parts of what Romans would have called two separate years.