AR18 - Diocletian L Β

Year two of Diocletian's reign in Egyptian reckoning (L Β) places this coin squarely in the period before his currency reform of 296 AD, which effectively killed the Alexandrian tetradrachm series entirely after nearly two and a half centuries of continuous production. The reform standardized coinage across the empire and stripped Egypt of its long-standing monetary isolation — the province had operated a closed currency system since the Ptolemies.

Billon content by this point had degraded so severely from earlier silver standards that these coins were essentially bronze with a surface wash.