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Art Institute of Chicago (Egyptian) · other

Tetradrachm (Coin) Portraying Emperor Nero

Source of record: Art Institute of Chicago (Egyptian) — catalogued by the holding institution. View the original record →

Description

The front (obverse) of this coin portrays a bust of Emperor Nero, facing left, wearing a cuirass (military cloak). The date this coin was struck is indicated in the inscription " LI ∆ " (only the last letter is visible in this example), which means the fourteenth year of Nero's reign, or 67-68 CE. Nero reigned as emperor from 54-68 CE. The back (reverse) depicts the bust of the god Apollo of Actium, facing right, a quiver on his shoulder, and a star before. Nero's fondness of music and the arts is demonstrated in this imperial type showing the god of these themes, Apollo.

AI image analysis GPT-5.4-nano

Machine-generated from the object's image on Jul 2026. Not curatorial; treat deities, names, and signs below as the model's best reading, not authority.

Two sides of a small silver-colored coin are shown, each with a central portrait of a bearded figure and surrounding pseudo-lettering or stylized symbols.

The image depicts a bifacial t-radrachm-style coin: on the left side a profile bust of a bearded, laureate-haired male figure faces left, surrounded by a ring of tightly spaced characters that resemble Greek/Latin letterforms or worn legends rather than Egyptian hieroglyphs. The right side also shows a central head/bust of a similar male figure (or possibly a different angle of the same ruler) facing right with a surrounding circular legend; the legend is too worn/blurry to read reliably. No clear hieroglyphs, cartouches, or Egyptian deity iconography are visible. A small amount of greenish corrosion is visible on the right coin face. No separate Greek/Coptic/Arabic script blocks are legible.

royal Roman Imperial period (catalogued as Nero), but exact date uncertain from the image quality. good
Materials metal (silver-colored; billon)green patina/corrosion on surface
Signs Circular coin legend / pseudo-letters around portrait (unreadable)

Inscriptions (1)

Inscription #1

English description

Obverse: [NEΡΩ K]ΛAY KAIΣ ΣEB ΓEΡ A[V], LIΔ before Reverse: [AKTIOΣ] AΠOΛΛΩN

Cross-references (1)

  • ARTIC-id 142281 tier-2

Similar inscriptions · by content embedding

About this record's data
  • From the source institution — accession, description, dimensions, and dating are as catalogued by Art Institute of Chicago (Egyptian).
  • AI-inferred — the image-analysis panel (deities, names, signs) is machine-generated and may be wrong.
  • Approximate location — most map points are plotted at the site centroid, not the exact findspot.
  • Inferred links — cross-references marked with a match method other than explicit-source-field were matched by us, not stated by the source.