Hekte

Mytilene's electrum hektai were struck under a civic agreement with Phokaia — the two cities alternating issue years, a monetary arrangement documented in an early fourth-century treaty that formalized what had likely been informal practice for decades. The natural electrum sourced from the Lydian river system carried a gold-to-silver ratio that fluctuated between dies, which is why modern analysis of Mytilenean hektai often shows compositional variance even within a single Bodenstedt type.