Stater

Phokaia's early electrum coinage predates the city's catastrophic abandonment in 546 BC, when its citizens chose mass emigration over submission to the Persian-backed siege of Harpagos. The natural electrum used here — alluvial gold-silver alloy sourced almost certainly from the Pactolus river valley trade network — has a variable gold content across specimens, which is why Bodenstedt's emissions classifications remain the primary tool for attributing these pieces: the electrum composition itself shifts enough between dies to complicate authentication without comparative analysis.