AR24 - Hadrian L Δ

Year four of Hadrian's reign in Egypt — rendered as L Δ in regnal dating — falls in the immediate aftermath of his accession tour, during which he visited Alexandria and made a calculated effort to present himself as a pharaonic ruler rather than a Roman imposition. The Alexandrian mint responded with issues that blended imperial portraiture with deeply local iconographic traditions, a practice that had no parallel elsewhere in the Roman provincial system.

The silver tetradrachm of this period is debased well below true silver standard — closer to billon in practice — yet the mint maintained the fiction of a silver coinage throughout Hadrian's reign.