Æ37 - Marcus Aurelius L Ζ

Year 7 of Marcus Aurelius's reign — the regnal year encoded in the LZ date — fell squarely within the Antonine Plague, which had arrived in Egypt by this period carried along the trade routes from the eastern campaigns. Alexandrian bronze production continued largely uninterrupted, but the demographic and economic disruption of the plague years almost certainly affected circulation patterns across the nome system.

Alexandria's imperial bronzes of this size were struck under the authority of the Roman prefect of Egypt, not the imperial mint, making them a provincial issue outside the standard Roman monetary system entirely.