Hemihekte

Among the earliest coined money produced anywhere in the world, these fractional electrum pieces from western Anatolia predate the standardizing influence of Lydian royal issues and reflect a period when individual cities — or possibly wealthy merchants — were experimenting with the concept of guaranteed metal weight. The issuing authority behind this type remains genuinely unresolved; the Weidauer and Kayhan attributions place it within an Ionian context, but the absence of a civic badge or ethnic makes definitive attribution impossible with current evidence.