Hekte

Mytilene and Miletus held a formal agreement — unusual in the ancient world — to produce electrum coinage on a coordinated schedule, alternating issues so that neither city flooded the regional market. This hekte falls within the archaic phase of that arrangement, before the Persian destruction of Miletus in 494 BC permanently dissolved the partnership and left Mytilene as the sole operator of the tradition.

The natural electrum used in this period varied in gold-to-silver ratio from die to die, since Lesbian smiths had not yet moved to artificially controlled alloys.