AR23 - Antoninus Pius L Ζ

Year 7 of Antoninus Pius's reign falls squarely within the long administrative stability Egypt enjoyed under him — 23 years as emperor, the longest peaceful reign of the high imperial period, with not a single visit to the province he ruled it entirely through prefects. Alexandrian billon tetradrachms of this era were produced in enormous volume to satisfy Egypt's closed currency system, which barred the circulation of imperial silver and forced all commerce through locally struck coin.

The Dattari reference places this among the better-documented types in the series, catalogued from the collection Giorgio Dattari assembled in Alexandria around the turn of the twentieth century — still the foundational corpus for the type.