Major mint: Alexandria.

The most famous of the pre-classical civilizations of the Old World, Egypt had a very long history before the invention of coinage. With its earliest dynastys foundation sometime before 3000 BC, and the earliest Egyptian written documents - recently discovered wooden account tablets - dating to around that time, Egypts history attracted much Greek speculation, most of it of course completely off target.

Egypt had twenty-six native dynasties before the Persian conquest effectively put an end to native rule there. A rebel dynasty ruled briefly, under Tachos and his successors, but by the 340s the Persians, then the Greeks, then the Romans, ruled the country. Coinage, like many foreign inventions came late to Egypt, which in any event had plenty of gold from mines in Nubia, but little else.

The first Egyptian coins were issued by Tachos in his rebellion against Persia in 361 BC, and imitated the usual Athenian type. His successor Nectanebo II issued a stater which is the only coin which uses hieroglyphics, although the cursive form known as Demotic does appear as a legend on a coin of Artaxerxes III and as graffiti on occasional Ptolemaic coins.

The best-known series are those of the Ptolemies and those of the Romans. Ptolemaic coinage is common and standard, and annoying to attribute to ruler. The Roman series begins with Augustus and continues up to Diocletians reform of 296. The Ptolemaic series is characterized by a variety of bronzes, some of them very large, as silver became increasingly scarce

Under the Romans we find a portrait series which runs consistently from Augustus through Domitius Domitianus, albeit with increasing debasement. Some of the large bronze obols of the second century show an interesting variety of types, both mythological and representational: the labors of Herakles, for example, or the lighthouse at Alexandria. Another interesting feature of Roman Egyptian coinage is the series of issues of small bronzes in the name of various nomes, or administrative districts.