Ecbatana accounts, and local informants. This theory was also promoted by other historians such as Sir William Jones and the chief French orientalists. Ecbatana is the supposed capital of Astyages ("Istuvegü"), which was taken by the Persian emperor Cyrus the Great in the sixth year of Nabonidus (550/549 BC). "Please update as needed." 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
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