Trite - Alyattes II 'Branch'

These electrum trites are among the earliest coins ever struck — produced in Sardis under Alyattes II, the Mermnad king whose campaigns against Miletus lasted over a decade and whose treasury funded what may have been the world's first monetized economy. The natural electrum alloy drawn from the Pactolus river varied in gold content from piece to piece, which ancient authorities apparently accepted without standardization. Herodotus credits the Lydians explicitly with inventing coinage, and while that claim remains contested, the archaeological evidence from the Artemision deposit at Ephesus places issues of this type among the earliest datable struck coins anywhere.