Ecbatana Ecbatana Ecbatana (; "Hagmatāna" or "Haŋmatāna", literally "the place of gathering", , in Aeschylus and Herodotus, Akkadian: "a-gam-ta-nu" in the Nabonidus Chronicle) was an ancient city in Media in western Iran. It is believed that Ecbatana is in Hagmatana Hill (Tappe-ye Hagmatāna), an archaeological mound in Hamedan. According to Herodotus, Ecbatana was chosen as the Medes' capital in the late 8th century BC by Deioces. Under the Achaemenid Persian kings, Ecbatana, situated at the foot of Mount Alvand, became a summer residence. Later, it became the capital of the Parthian kings, at which time it became their main mint, producing
Dvin (ancient city) produced an abundance of materials, which have shed light into the Armenian culture of the 5th to the 13th centuries. Ancient Armenian literary sources almost always give the name of the ancient city of Dvin as "Dwin" or "Duin". Later authors favored the Dvin appellation, which is the most common form given in scholarly literature. The word is of Middle Iranian origin, and means hill. The ancient city of Dvin was built by Khosrov III Kotak in 335 on a site of an ancient settlement and fortress from the 3rd millennium BC. Since then, the city had been used as