Persian Empire Founded

In 559 BCE, Cyrus II, later known as Cyrus the Great, became king of Anshan, a small kingdom in the southwest of what is now Iran. Over the next three decades he and his successors built the Achaemenid Persian Empire, which grew into the largest state the world had yet seen, stretching at its height from the Aegean coast and Egypt to the Indus valley. The date marks the start of that rise rather than the empire's completion, which came gradually through conquest.

Cyrus came from the Teispid line, a Persian ruling family in Anshan that acknowledged the overlordship of the Medes. The Median kingdom, centered at Ecbatana in northwestern Iran, had joined the Babylonians in destroying the Assyrian Empire in the late seventh century BCE and had become one of the great powers of the Near East, alongside Babylon, Lydia, and Egypt. Persians were then a regional people with a modest kingdom, and nothing suggested they were about to eclipse their neighbors.

The sources for Cyrus's early career are frustratingly uneven. Greek writers such as Herodotus offer colorful stories about his birth and his relationship to the Median king Astyages, but these accounts contain legendary elements and cannot be taken at face value. The Babylonian Nabonidus Chronicle is more sober and records that around 550 BCE Astyages's army turned against him and Cyrus took the Median capital. Rather than destroying the Median state, Cyrus appears to have absorbed its elites and administration, so Persians and Medes shared power in a joint kingdom. This is why Greeks often spoke of "Medes" when they meant Persians.

Expansion followed quickly. Cyrus defeated Croesus of Lydia, probably in the 540s BCE, bringing Anatolia and its Greek coastal cities under Persian control. In 539 BCE he took Babylon, apparently with little resistance, and presented himself as a legitimate ruler who honored local gods and customs. The Cyrus Cylinder, a clay artifact from Babylon, reflects this policy, and the Hebrew Bible praises him for allowing exiled Jews to return to Judah. Modern historians debate how far the cylinder should be read as a broad charter of tolerance, but it clearly shows a deliberate strategy of conciliation.

Cyrus died in battle around 530 BCE, and his son Cambyses added Egypt. Darius I later organized the empire into provinces called satrapies, built the Royal Road, and standardized taxation and coinage. The Persian model of governing a vast, diverse realm through local traditions under a central authority influenced later empires, while conflicts with Greek city-states shaped the history of the Mediterranean world. Persian rule lasted until Alexander the Great overthrew it in the 330s BCE.