Ecbatana
— — the summer capital that became a city.
Not only on a wall.
“The ancient capital of Media sat where Hamadan sits now, on a plain ringed by the Zagros at about 1,850 metres. Cyrus kept his summer court here. Herodotus described seven concentric walls in seven colours, each ring crowned with a different metal. Most of it is still under the modern city. The mound at Hegmataneh holds what archaeology has been allowed to reach.
Ecbatana, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
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The place, in three passes.
Hamadan sits in northwestern Iran in Hamadan Province, on a plateau at roughly 1,850 metres at the eastern foot of the Alvand massif in the Zagros range. The ancient city of Ecbatana, capital of the Medes from the late seventh century BCE, lay on this same ground. After Cyrus the Great took the city in 550 BCE it served the Achaemenid kings as a summer residence. The archaeological zone at Hegmataneh, in the centre of the modern city, preserves the surviving Median and Parthian remains.
The Hegmataneh mound covers roughly thirty hectares near Hamadan's bazaar and remains the only large fragment of Ecbatana that has been excavated, since the rest of the ancient capital lies beneath the modern city. Excavations begun by Charles Fossey in 1913 and continued by Iranian teams since the 1980s have exposed mudbrick walls on a regular grid, dated mainly to the Parthian and Sasanian periods. A small museum on the site holds finds in stone and bronze. The seven coloured walls Herodotus described in Book I have not been found.
Ecbatana was named in Median sources from the late seventh century BCE and falls to Cyrus around 550 BCE, after which it serves as the Achaemenid summer capital and a Seleucid, then Parthian, royal seat. The book of Ezra records the discovery in Ecbatana of the decree of Cyrus authorising the rebuilding of the Jerusalem temple. The traditional Tomb of Esther and Mordechai, a brick-domed shrine restored in the thirteenth century, stands a few blocks from the Hegmataneh site and draws Jewish pilgrims through the year.