Esdras 6:2

2. Achmetha The Chaldee form of the Persian Hagmatana or Hagmatan, and the Ecbatana of the classical writers. Its site is usually identified with the modern Hamadan. Herodotus (i, 98) describes it as a great city, whose walls were built circle within circle, each wall out-topping the one beyond it by the height of its battlements. This was done by means of the conical hill on which the city was built. The circular walls were seven in number, and the royal palace and treasury were within the innermost wall. It was originally the capital of the Medes, and hence its location here noticed as in the province of the Medes, but it was subsequently made the summer residence of the Persian kings. Hither it would seem the royal records had been transferred for greater security. The Behistun inscription shows that Babylon revolted at the beginning of Darius’s reign, but was soon reconquered, and that may have been the occasion of this transfer of the archives, and among them this celebrated roll containing Cyrus’s decree for the restoration of the exiles, and the rebuilding of their temple. Perhaps, however, the record in question had never been deposited at Babylon, but placed originally among the archives kept at Achmetha.