TEHRAN-- A national conference focusing on the architectural features of ancient Hegmataneh, is set up to be kept in the historical site in west-central Hamedan province on Saturday, the director of the site has announced.Using of adobe structures in ancient cities and the checkered design of Hegmataneh, which was once the capital of Medes and later the summertime residence for Achaemenid kings, will be discussed throughout the conference, Saheb Mohammadian described on Friday.Back in May, Hamedan authorities revealed that a working group had actually formed to determine, examine and resolve prospective problems in the course of possible registration of Hegmataneh in the UNESCO World Heritage list.Earlier this year, a traffic fellow related to a close-by steel marketplace was stated as one of the significant barriers faced with the possible registration based on UNESCO criteria.Known in classical times as Ecbatana, Hamedan was one of the ancient worlds biggest cities.

Pitifully little remains from antiquity, however significant parts of the city center are provided over to excavations.

Ecbatana was the capital of Media and consequently a summertime residence of the Achaemenid kings who ruled Persia from 553 to 330 BC.Ecbatana is commonly believed to be when a mysterious capital of Medes.

According to ancient Greek writers, the city was founded in about 678 BC by Deioces, who was the very first king of the Medes.French Assyriologist Charles Fossey (1869-- 1946) directed the very first excavation in Tepe Hegmataneh for 6 months in 1913.

Erich Friedrich Schmidt (1897-- 1964), who was a German and American-naturalized archaeologist, took some aerial pictures from Hamedan between 1935 and 1937.

According to the Greek historian Xenophon of Athens (c.430-c.355), Ecbatana became the summertime home of the Achaemenid kings.

Their palace is explained by the Greek historian Polybius of Megalopolis.

He writes that the city was richer and more lovely than all other cities in the world; although it had no wall, the palace was developed on a synthetic balcony, according to Livius, a website on ancient history composed and has preserved considering that 1996 by the Dutch historian Jona Lendering.Furthermore, an inscription unearthed in 2000 suggests that Achaemenid king Artaxerxes II Mnemon (404-358) constructed a balcony with columns in Ecbatana.

Some twelve kilometers southwest of Hamedan is Ganjnameh, where Darius I and his boy Xerxes had actually inscriptions cut into the rock.Polybius, a Greek historian of the Hellenistic duration noted for his work The Histories, informs that the contractors used cedar and cypress wood, which was covered with silver and gold.

The roof tiles, columns, and ceilings were plated with silver and gold.

He adds that the palace was removed of its rare-earth elements in the intrusion of the Macedonian king Alexander the Great and that the rest was seized throughout the reigns of Antigonus and Seleucus.

Later, Ecbatana was one of the capitals of the Seleucid and the Parthian Empires, sometimes called Epiphaneia.Around 1220 Hamedan was ruined by the Mongol intruders.

In 1386 it was sacked by Timur (Tamerlane), a Turkic conqueror, and the inhabitants were massacred.

It was partly brought back in the 17th century and subsequently changed hands typically in between Iranian ruling homes and the Ottomans.ABU/ AM