Hekte

Mytilene's electrum hektai were struck under a long-running agreement with Phokaia, the two cities alternating annual issues across roughly a century of production. The natural electrum alloy used here was not artificially adjusted — its gold-to-silver ratio reflects the local Lydian river sources, which creates measurable variation between issues and complicates precise die attribution. Bodenstedt's corpus remains the definitive reference, though unlisted pieces surface regularly enough that a missing number signals novelty rather than obscurity.