AR24 - Trajan L ΙϚ

Regnal year 16 of Trajan's reign coincided with the final preparations for the Parthian War — the most ambitious military campaign Rome had attempted in the East since the disasters of Crassus. Alexandria's mint, operating under the rigid conventions of the Egyptian provincial coinage system, continued producing tetradrachms denominated in local terms rather than Roman ones, a monetary arrangement that had persisted since Augustus absorbed Egypt as a personal imperial possession, deliberately isolated from the standard provincial economy.