Year 22 of Antoninus Pius's reign, placing this tetradrachm squarely within one of the most administratively stable periods Roman Egypt ever experienced. Antoninus never visited the province — never visited any province, famously refusing to leave Italy throughout his entire 23-year reign — yet Alexandria's mint continued producing these billon tetradrachms with mechanical regularity, the coinage functioning as much as a fiscal instrument for grain-trade settlement as anything else.
The Dattari reference traces to Giovanni Dattari's personal collection, catalogued in 1901, which remains the foundational corpus for Alexandrian imperial coinage despite being over a century old.
Year 22 of Antoninus Pius's reign, placing this tetradrachm squarely within one of the most administratively stable periods Roman Egypt ever experienced. Antoninus never visited the province — never visited any province, famously refusing to leave Italy throughout his entire 23-year reign — yet Alexandria's mint continued producing these billon tetradrachms with mechanical regularity, the coinage functioning as much as a fiscal instrument for grain-trade settlement as anything else.
The Dattari reference traces to Giovanni Dattari's personal collection, catalogued in 1901, which remains the foundational corpus for Alexandrian imperial coinage despite being over a century old.