AR26 - Hadrian ΕΤ ΕΝΑΤ

Year 9 of Hadrian's reign coincided with his first great tour of the eastern provinces — a journey that took him through Greece and Asia Minor before reaching Egypt in 130 AD. Alexandria's imperial mint was unusually productive during this period, issuing an exceptional range of types keyed to regnal years, a dating system unique to the Egyptian provincial coinage and essential for modern scholars reconstructing the sequence of Hadrian's movements and administrative priorities.

The billon fabric itself reflects decades of steady debasement in the Alexandrian tetradrachm series, a process that had begun under Nero and continued incrementally through the Antonine period.