Hekte

Kyzikos dominated the electrum coinage market across the Greek world for roughly two centuries, with its hektes functioning as an international trade currency far beyond the Sea of Marmara. The city's control of tuna fishing grounds — the tunny appears repeatedly across the series as a mint identifier — underwrote the commercial confidence that made Kyzikene electrum acceptable from the Black Sea coast to Egypt. Athenian records and temple inventories from the fifth century list Kyzikene staters alongside Attic silver as standard units of account, a rare acknowledgment of a foreign coinage's reliability.