Note 205 — Chapter XII · EGYPT.

The Egyptian coining of gold naturally ceased with the annexation of the land, for there was in the Roman empire only imperial gold. With the silver also Augustus dealt in like manner, and as ruler of Egypt caused simply copper to be struck, and even this only in moderate quantities. At first Tiberius coined, after 27–28 A.D., silver money for Egyptian circulation, apparently as token-money, as the pieces correspond nearly in point of weight to four, in point of silver value to one, of the Roman denarius (Feuardent, Numismatique, Égypte ancienne, ii. p. xi.). But as in legal currency the Alexandrian drachma was estimated as obolus (consequently as a sixth, not as a fourth; comp. Röm. Münzwesen, p. 43, 723) of the Roman denarius (Hermes, v. p. 136), and the provincial silver always lost as compared with the imperial silver, the Alexandrian tetradrachmon of the silver value of a denarius has rather been estimated at the current value of two-thirds of a denarius. Accordingly down to Commodus, from whose time the Alexandrian tetradrachmon is essentially a copper coin, the same has been quite as much a coin of value as the Syrian tetradrachmon and the Cappadocian drachma; they only left to the former the old name and the old weight.