AR19 - Diocletian L Γ

By Year 10 of Diocletian's reign (294–295 AD), the Alexandrian mint was operating under the monetary reforms that would culminate in the edict on coinage issued around 296–297. This piece, struck in the penultimate years before that overhaul, belongs to a transitional phase when billon fineness had already collapsed so severely that the coins were effectively bronze with a thin surface wash of silver. The L Γ regnal year formula — a distinctly Alexandrian dating convention inherited from Ptolemaic practice — places it precisely within that narrow window before the reform coinage displaced the old tetradrachm tradition entirely.