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
Ecbatana drachm, tetradrachm, and assorted bronze denominations. The wealth and importance of the city in the Persian empire is attributed to its location on a crucial crossroads that made it a staging post on the main East-West highway. In 330 BC, Ecbatana was the site of the murder of the Macedonian general Parmenion by order of Alexander the Great. The Tell Hagmatana, also called Tepe Hegmataneh (thought to correspond to the ancient citadel of Ecbatana) has a circumference of 1.4 kilometres with an area of about 40 hectares, which corresponds to a report from Polybius, although the ancient Greek and Roman