Hekte

Mytilene and Phocaea operated under a formal agreement — likely renewed periodically — to coordinate electrum coinage production, a rare instance of inter-polis monetary cooperation in the Aegean. Mytilenean hektes were struck in dies pairs that changed with nearly every issue, which is why the Bodenstedt typology runs to well over a hundred distinct varieties despite covering less than two centuries of production. This particular issue, Bodenstedt 18, falls in the period immediately following the Persian Wars, when Mytilene was repositioning itself within the Delian League while maintaining independent electrum coinage that Athens never fully suppressed.