The Roman provincial coinage of Egypt — six hundred and thirty-one specimens.
From the Roman conquest of 30 BCE to Diocletian's currency reform of 296 CE, the province of Aegyptus retained its own closed monetary system distinct from the rest of the Roman Empire. The Alexandrian mint produced silver tetradrachms (reduced in fineness from the Ptolemaic standard), billon tetradrachms after Nero, and a rich bronze coinage including drachms, hemidrachms and small denominations. The atlas's Roman file documents six hundred and thirty-one specimens — the largest section of the catalogue — with full Burnett-Amandry-Ripollès Roman Provincial Coinage attribution. Hamza al-Marsafi is the lead editor.
The structural narrative.
Roman Egypt's coinage falls into four structural phases. The first, from Augustus to Nero (30 BCE – 65 CE), continues the Ptolemaic silver tradition at a reduced fineness while introducing the Roman imperial portrait on the obverse; the reverse types diversify into a wide vocabulary of allegorical and religious figures drawn from the Greco-Egyptian syncretic pantheon. The second, from Nero to Commodus (65 – 192 CE), sees the systematic debasement of the tetradrachm — from approximately twenty-five percent silver content under Nero to under seven percent under Commodus — and the expansion of the bronze drachm to compensate for the silver shortage. The third, the Severan period through the third-century crisis (193 – 296 CE), is characterised by extreme die variability, regnal-year dating which makes the coinage exceptionally datable to individual years of issue, and the political turbulence of the soldier-emperors reflected in the rapid succession of obverse types. The fourth, the post-Diocletian period after 296 CE, lies outside this file because the reform closed the Alexandrian mint as a provincial issue and brought Egypt into the unified imperial coinage; that material is in the Byzantine and Fatimid file.
What the file covers in counts.
- Augustus and Tiberius (30 BCE – 37 CE): 41 specimens, mostly diobols and obols in bronze
- Claudius and Nero (41 – 68 CE): 38 specimens, including the first billon tetradrachms after the Neronian reform of 65
- Flavians (69 – 96 CE): 56 specimens; the Vespasianic and Domitianic tetradrachms in particular have rich reverse-type variability
- Trajan, Hadrian and Antoninus Pius (98 – 161 CE): 174 specimens, the file's most concentrated decade-by-decade documentation; the Hadrianic series alone runs to ninety specimens
- Marcus Aurelius, Commodus and the Severans (161 – 235 CE): 138 specimens
- Third-century crisis emperors (235 – 285 CE): 142 specimens, covering every documented emperor with an Alexandrian issue including the rare specimens of Macrianus and Quietus
- Diocletian and the tetrarchy (284 – 296 CE): 42 specimens, including the last regnal-year-twelve tetradrachms before the reform
Regnal-year dating — the file's diagnostic strength.
From the reign of Tiberius onward, Alexandrian tetradrachms are dated to the regnal year of the issuing emperor, written in Greek letters with the L year-sigil. This dating system, unique among Roman provincial coinages, makes Alexandrian coins exceptionally datable to individual years of issue. The atlas's file records the regnal year for every dated specimen and provides a year-by-year concordance across the catalogue. The Hadrianic regnal-year series in particular — twenty-two consecutive years of dated issues — is one of the most useful diagnostic windows on the third decade of his reign.
The Severan portrait sequence.
The Severan dynasty (193 – 235 CE) produced the most diverse portrait sequence in Alexandrian coinage. The atlas's file documents specific dies for Septimius Severus, Julia Domna, Caracalla, Geta, Macrinus, Elagabalus, Julia Soaemias, Julia Mamaea and Severus Alexander; the youthful Caracalla and Geta portraits, struck in parallel for several years before Geta's damnatio memoriae in 211, are a rich source of die-comparison work for the Alexandrian engravers. Three Geta tetradrachms in the file show the post-211 erasure of the Geta name from the obverse legend, a numismatic record of the political event in real material form.
Forgery and the modern market.
The Roman Egyptian coinage is less heavily forged than the Ptolemaic series — the lower visual recognition by non-specialist buyers protects it. Eleven modern forgeries are documented in the file's forgery register, mostly Hadrianic tetradrachm pressings from late twentieth-century European workshops, plus three electrotype copies of British Museum specimens. The diagnostic features of each are illustrated in the forgery register.
The companion file on the Ptolemaic tetradrachm covers the pre-conquest dynasty; the Byzantine and Fatimid file picks up after the Diocletianic reform. The atlas's attribution methodology sets out the working process. The 2024 Hermopolis hoard of one hundred and ninety-four billon tetradrachms is documented in the hoard reports.