Æ34 - Trajan L ΙϚ

Year 16 of Trajan's reign — the regnal year encoded in that ΙϚ — places this piece squarely in the middle of the Dacian war's aftermath, when Alexandria's mint was running at high volume to service a province whose tax revenues were flowing directly into imperial campaign financing. Egypt's coinage remained a closed monetary system: Alexandrian bronzes could not legally circulate outside the province, a restriction Rome maintained to control the enormous grain wealth passing through the city.