Myshemihekte

Kyzikos, the Propontine city that would become one of antiquity's most prolific electrum minting centers, produced these fractional pieces in the archaic period before any standardized coinage infrastructure existed across the Greek world. The myshemihekte — a sixteenth of a stater — represents the smallest practical subdivision of exchange, struck for transactions that full staters simply couldn't serve.

The electrum used at Kyzikos was locally sourced from alluvial deposits, with natural gold-silver ratios that varied between dies, making precise weight control at this scale genuinely difficult.