Alexandria in Egypt, Hadrian, Pelusium nome, dated regnal year 11 = 126-127 AD.,
Æ Obol (19-20 mm / 4,86 g),
Obv.: AVT KAI - TPAI AΔPIA CEB , laureate head right.
Rev.: ΠHΛOV - L IA , head of Harpokrates right, wearing hem-hem crown and taenia; L IA (date regnal year 11) right.
Geissen (Köln coll.) 3418 ; Dattari 6346 ; Milne - ; Emmett 1231 .
Pelusium was a city in the eastern extremes of Egypt's Nile Delta, 30 km to the southeast of the modern Port Said. Alternative names include Sena and Per-Amun (Paramoun meaning House or Temple of Amun), Pelousion (Greek, ΠηλοÏσιον), Sin (Chaldaic and Hebrew), Seyân (Aramaic), and Tell el-Farama (modern Egyptian Arabic). Pelusium was the easternmost major city of Lower Egypt, situated upon the easternmost bank of the Nile, the Ostium Pelusiacum, to which it gave its name. It was the Sin of the Old Testament (Ezekiel xxx. 15); and this word, as well as its Egyptian appellation, Peremoun or Peromi, and its Greek (πήλος) connote a city of the ooze or mud (cf. omi, Coptic, "mud"). Pelusium lay between the seaboard and the Deltaic marshes of the Delta, about two and a half miles from the sea. The Ostium Pelusiacum was choked by sand as early as the first century BC, and the coast-line has now advanced far beyond its ancient limits, so that the city, even in the third century AD, was at least four miles from the Mediterranean.
The principal produce of the neighbouring lands was flax, and the linum Pelusiacum (Pliny's Natural History xix. 1. s. 3) was both abundant and of a very fine quality. It was, however, as a border-fortress on the frontier, as the key of Egypt as regarded Syria and the sea, and as a place of great strength, that Pelusium was most remarkable. From its position it was directly exposed to attack by the invaders of Egypt; several important battles were fought under its walls, and it was often besieged and taken.