AR24 - Hadrian L Ϛ

Year 6 of Hadrian's reign (121–22 AD) falls squarely within his first great tour of the eastern provinces, during which he visited Egypt in 130 AD — though the coins of this earlier year predate that visit and reflect Alexandria's mint operating under established Trajanic administrative rhythms still being unwound. The Alexandrian mint functioned entirely outside the Roman imperial system, issuing tetradrachms denominated in local Egyptian terms rather than Roman ones, a monetary arrangement preserved from Ptolemaic practice that Rome deliberately left intact to avoid disrupting Egypt's grain economy.