AR23 - Severus Alexander L ΙΑ

Year 11 of Severus Alexander's reign corresponds to 231–232 AD, a period when the emperor was increasingly preoccupied with the Sassanid threat on the eastern frontier — Ardashir I had launched major incursions into Roman Mesopotamia and Syria around 230 AD. The Alexandrian mint continued its own reckoning regardless, dating coins by regnal year rather than the consular system used in Rome, a practice rooted in Ptolemaic administrative tradition that the Romans never bothered to dismantle.

Alexandrian billon tetradrachms of this period show progressive debasement from earlier imperial issues, the silver content by this point largely nominal.