AR25 - Hadrian L ΔΕΚΑΤΟΥ

Year 10 of Hadrian's reign coincides almost exactly with his first visit to Egypt — a journey he undertook in 130 AD, though the administrative numbering of regnal years in Alexandria ran on a different calendar cycle anchored to the Egyptian new year in late August. The Alexandrian mint operated under distinct imperial oversight, producing billon tetradrachms as a closed currency system: Roman coins did not circulate freely in Egypt, and Egyptian issues did not leave the province. This monetary isolation was deliberate, inherited from Ptolemaic practice and maintained by Rome as a fiscal control mechanism.

The Köln and Dattari references place this squarely within a well-documented sequence, but individual die matches across the four major catalogues frequently diverge.