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Hekte
| Issuer | Mytilene (Lesbos) |
|---|---|
| Year | 521 BC - 478 BC |
| Type | Standard circulation coin |
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| Composition | Log in to see details |
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| Diameter | Log in to see details |
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| Obverse description | Log in to see details |
|---|---|
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| Reverse description | Head of a rooster facing left, struck in incuse relief, displaying a dotted comb, large round eye, and detailed wattle rendered with careful attention to naturalistic form. The incuse square is irregular in outline, with an additional shallow incuse depression visible behind the rooster's head in the field. The type is uninscribed, consistent with archaic Mytilenaean hekte coinage of the period. |
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| Mint | Mytilene, Lesbos, modern-day Mytilene, Greece |
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| Additional information |
Mytilene and neighboring Phokaia operated a formal agreement — confirmed by surviving examples and referenced in ancient sources — to jointly produce electrum hektes on a shared standard, one of the few documented inter-city minting arrangements in the Greek world. This particular issue predates that compact, placing it among the earliest independently struck Mytilenean fractions, when the city was still navigating its position between Lydian economic influence and emerging Aegean trade networks.
The natural electrum alloy used in this period was not artificially controlled to a fixed gold-silver ratio — that standardization came later.