Ecbatana

[ek-bat-n-uh]

Ecbatana, capital of ancient Media, later the summer residence of Achaemenid and Parthian kings, beautifully situated at the foot of Mt. Elvend and NE of Behistun. In 549 B.C. it was captured by Cyrus the Great. It possessed a royal treasury and was plundered in turn by Alexander, Seleucus, and Antiochus III. The site has never been thoroughly excavated, since it is covered by the modern city, Hamadan, Iran, where the traditional tomb of Esther is still honored by the Jewish community. Ecbatana was the Achmetha of Ezra 6.2 and the Apocrypha. It is also called Hangmatana.

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Ecbatana

Ecbatana (Old Persian: Haŋgmatana, written Agbatana in Aeschylus and Herodotus, Agámtanu by Nabonidos, and Agamatanu at Behistun; modern Hamadan, Iran) (literally: the place of gathering) is supposed to be the capital of Astyages (Istuvegü), which was taken by the Persian emperor Cyrus the Great in the sixth year of Nabonidus (549 BC).

The Greeks supposed it to be the capital of Media, and ascribed its foundation to Deioces (the Daiukku of the cuneiform inscriptions), who is said to have surrounded his palace in it with seven concentric walls of different colours.

So far no evidence of Median existence in Hagmatana hill has been attested. The only evidence observed in the area belongs to the Parthian era afterwards. There is no mention of Hagmatana/Ecbatana in Assyrian sources at all. Some scholars have suggested the Sagbita/Sagbat frequently mentioned in Assyrian texts in fact has been an earlier form of the Ecbatana/Hagmatana mentioned in later Greek and Achaemenid sources, as Indo-Iranian /s/ turned into /h/ in many Iranian languages. Sagbita mentioned by Assyrian sources was located in proximity of cities of Kishesim (Kar-Nergal) and Harhar (Kar-Sharrukin) . Under the Persian kings, Ecbatana, situated at the foot of Mount Alvand, became a summer residence. Later, it became the capital of the Parthian kings.

Sir Henry Rawlinson attempted to prove that there was a second and older Ecbatana in Media Atropatene on the site of the modern Takht-i-Suleiman, but the cuneiform texts imply that there was only one city of the name, and Takht-i Suleiman is the Gazaca of classical geography. Ecbatana was the main mint of the Parthians, it produced drachm, tetradrachm, and assorted bronze denominations. It is also mentioned in the Bible (Ezra, vi. 2).

Ecbatana/Hamedan (Iran) is not to be confused with Ecbatana/Hamath (Syria) where Cambyses II is supposed to have died according to Herodotus.

Notes

References

See Perrot and Chipiez, History of Art in Persia (Eng. trans., 1892); M Dieulafoy, L'Art antique de Ia Perse, pt. i. (1884); J. de Morgan, Mission scientifique en Perse, ii. (1894).
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