Hemidrachm - Ptolemy III Euergetes Alexandria

Ptolemy III inherited a kingdom already at war — his sister Berenice II had been murdered at the Seleucid court, triggering the Third Syrian War within months of his accession. The campaign that followed took Ptolemaic forces as far east as Babylon and Susa, an unprecedented reach that briefly made Ptolemy III the most powerful ruler in the Hellenistic world. The bronze issues of his reign, heavy and consistently struck at Alexandria, reflect a treasury flush with looted Seleucid wealth.

The Lorber 1.2 classification places this hemidrachm within the earliest phase of his coinage, before the weight standard began its gradual drift downward across the reign.