Hekte

Mytilene's electrum hektes were struck under a well-documented civic coinage program that ran for roughly two centuries, with each obverse type paired to a specific reverse — a matching system that allows modern scholars to sequence the issues with unusual precision. Bodenstedt's 1981 corpus remains the definitive typological study, and pieces assigned to his 69th type fall within the later phase of production, after Mytilene's catastrophic revolt against Athens in 428 BC had reshaped the city's political and economic relationships across the Aegean.

The electrum itself was not locally sourced; Lesbos had no significant gold deposits, making the alloy's procurement a matter of active trade networks.