AR24 - Septimius Severus L Ε

Year 5 of Severus's reign in the Alexandrian reckoning, struck while he was still consolidating power after defeating his last serious rival, Clodius Albinus, at the Battle of Lugdunum in February 197. The provincial mint at Alexandria operated on its own regnal calendar and fiercely guarded its monopoly on local bronze and billon coinage — Roman citizens in Egypt were required to exchange imperial silver for local currency at the frontier, a system that funneled considerable revenue to the imperial fiscus.

The billon fabric by this point had degraded substantially from earlier Antonine standards, with silver content in Alexandrian tetradrachms hovering well below ten percent.