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Hekte
| Issuer | Mytilene |
|---|---|
| Year | 412 BC - 378 BC |
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| Composition | Log in to see details |
| Weight | 2.52 g |
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| Obverse description | Bare head of Io facing right, her hair arranged in flowing waves and bound with a tainia; the rendering is naturalistic and finely detailed, characteristic of the high-quality die engraving associated with Lesbian electrum coinage. The portrait exhibits a graceful profile with delicate facial features, the hair swept back in undulating locks with individual strands carefully articulated. No legend or inscription appears in the field. |
|---|---|
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| Mintage | ND (412 BC - 378 BC) |
| Additional information |
Mytilene's electrum hektes occupied a peculiar niche in Aegean trade: struck in a naturally occurring gold-silver alloy sourced from the river sands of the Lydian interior, they circulated as high-value fractional currency along the eastern Aegean littoral from roughly the Persian Wars onward. The city produced these coins in matched obverse-reverse pairs that changed with each issue — a deliberate policy, whether for anti-counterfeiting purposes or civic display, that has never been fully resolved in the scholarship.
The date range assigned to this piece brackets the period of intense Spartan-Athenian proxy conflict in the region, including the Mytilenean revolt of 428 and its brutal Athenian suppression. Bodenstedt 77 is a relatively late pairing in the sequence.