Hamadan, Hegmataneh museum

I like Hamadan. Once the main settlement of the Medians, it is now a large town that also happens to be the world’s French fries capital. I’ve been there five times now and I really came to love the museum. Consisting of two large rooms and a corridor, it is admittedly small, but Mrs Khoshmu’s team manage to have always something new to present.

The excavation near the museum is a classical example of contradictory evidence. Our written sources refer to a city with seven walls of increasing height, but archaeologists have, so far, found nothing. Maximalists will say that we will have to dig deeper or on other places, minimalists will argue that we need to read our sources differently – for example by taking the description of the seven walls as a story about a ziggurat or a fairy-tale motif. I do not know which is the more prudent way to proceed.

What I do know, on the other hand, is that so far, most excavated objects belong to the Parthian and Sasanian age. This led the late Mr Azarnoosh, one of the archaeologists, to conclude that he was excavating a town that was founded by the Parthians, but since this does not fit well with the sources, investigation has been renewed last summer. The aim is to test Azarnoosh’s interpretation: was this really a Parthian foundation? If this turns out to be the case, we will have to look elsewhere for the Achaemenid palace that is known from written sources and stray finds. The Median residence will be even harder to find, because the Medians appear essentially to have remained nomadic pastoralists.

This museum was visited in a/o 2004, 2009.

12 pictures related to this museum

Hamadan, Parthian oil lamp	Gandj Nameh, Darius' inscription, Copy	Hamadan, Sasanian flask	Arrowheads from Hamadan
Hamadan, Parthian oil lamp	Hamadan, Achaemenid column bases	Tepe Godin, Pottery from level III	Hamadan, Achaemenid column base
Hamadan, Bull's head	Hamadan, Achaemenid decoration	Hamadan, Sasanian ostracon about receiving a ration of food	Gandj Nameh, Xerxes' inscription, Copy