AR23 - Severus Alexander L ΙΒ

Year 12 of Severus Alexander's reign fell during a period of mounting pressure on Rome's eastern frontier, with the newly ascendant Sasanian Empire under Ardashir I actively pushing into Roman Mesopotamia. Alexandria's mint continued its unbroken tradition of regnal-year dating — unique among Roman provincial mints — making these billon tetradrachms precise chronological markers in a way Roman imperial coinage rarely allows. The Dattari collection, from which one of the primary reference numbers derives, was assembled by Giovanni Dattari in early 20th-century Cairo and remains the foundational corpus for Alexandrian tetradrachms of this period.