Tepe Nush-e Jan

Tepe Nush-e Jan

The ancient Iron Age settlement known as Tepe Nush-e Jan can be found 75 kilometers south of modern Hamadan. It is often described as a Median town, and perhaps rightly so. However, there is a problem. According to written sources, the Medes were masters of large parts of Iran and Turkey; we would expect to find more or less the same objects in the centers of government, but so far, it has been impossible to identify the objects that represent the Median state. The empire of the Medes is not an archaeological fact (yet), but exists only as something mentioned by Herodotus and texts based (directly or indirectly) upon this entertaining Greek author, like the Biblical book of Daniel.

However, there must have been a Median civilization, and it must have been like Tepe Nush-e Jan, where a fort and a palace with a hall with many columns have been excavated, and a building that is interpreted as an eighth-century fire sanctuary. The walls of the temple, the palace, and the fort are almost eight meters high, and because they are situated on a natural hill that rises about thirty-four meters above the fertile plain, Tepe Nush-e Jan is easy to find.