Catalog
See full images - free registration
Continue with Google - no registration!
or register with email
Why register? Just to keep bots out of our catalog. Your email stays private - we will never share it or send you anything uninvited. We guarantee you that!
Hekte
| Issuer | Uncertain Ionian city |
|---|---|
| Year | 600 BC - 550 BC |
| Type | Standard circulation coin |
| Value | Log in to see details |
| Currency | Log in to see details |
| Composition | Log in to see details |
| Weight | Log in to see details |
| Diameter | Log in to see details |
| Thickness | Log in to see details |
| Shape | Log in to see details |
| Technique | Log in to see details |
| Orientation | Log in to see details |
| Engraver(s) | Log in to see details |
| In circulation to | Log in to see details |
| Reference(s) | Log in to see details |
| Obverse description | A stylized fleur-de-lis ornament (lily-shaped device) occupies the central field of the obverse, rendered in low relief with three upward-pointing petals flanked by curved sepals and a rounded base lobe. The design is characteristic of archaic Ionian decorative vocabulary and is struck on a naturally irregular electrum flan. The surface shows the typical granular texture and gentle convexity of early hammered electrum coinage. No legend or inscription is present. |
|---|---|
| Obverse script | Log in to see details |
| Obverse lettering | Log in to see details |
| Reverse description | Log in to see details |
| Reverse script | Log in to see details |
| Reverse lettering | Log in to see details |
| Edge | Log in to see details |
| Mint | Log in to see details |
| Mintage | ND (600 BC - 550 BC) |
| Additional information |
The precise attribution of early Ionian electrum hektes remains one of the more contentious problems in archaic numismatics. Without a controlling authority's name or a known civic symbol to anchor it, pieces like this one circulate through the scholarship assigned tentatively to one city, then another. The natural electrum alloy varied in gold-to-silver ratio depending on the river source — Lydian rivers like the Pactolus produced a different composition than sources further west — and metallurgical analysis has increasingly become the primary tool for narrowing attribution where typology fails.