AR24 - Antoninus Pius L Δ

Year four of Antoninus Pius's reign marked the first full regnal year following his formal adoption and accession — a period when the Alexandrian mint was consolidating its iconographic vocabulary under the new emperor. The Egyptian provincial coinage operated entirely outside Rome's monetary system, with the tetradrachm serving as a closed-currency instrument; Roman coins could not legally circulate in Egypt, and Egyptian issues could not leave. This isolation produced a remarkably distinct series, and the Dattari reference here anchors it within the foundational corpus assembled by Giovanni Dattari in early 20th-century Cairo from coins excavated largely at Karanis.