The Persians began as nomadic herders in the Zagros Mountains of the western Iranian plateau and by the mid sixth century BC were vassals of the Median Empire, with local kings at Anshan. Around 550 BC Cyrus, king of Anshan, revolted, defeated the Medes and took their capital Ecbatana, inheriting their rivalries with Lydia and Babylon. He defeated King Croesus of Lydia and captured Sardis, then in 539 BC took Babylon largely through propaganda: King Nabonidus had promoted the moon god Sin over the city’s patron Marduk, so Cyrus worked with resentful priests, presented himself as Marduk’s chosen liberator, entered the city without a long siege and funded repairs to Marduk’s temples.
His decree let the Jewish exiles return to Judah and helped fund the rebuilding of the temple in Jerusalem, part of a tolerance policy far cheaper than the Assyrian model of terror and mass deportation. After Cyrus died on campaign in Central Asia in 530 BC, his son Cambyses II conquered Egypt in 525 BC; Herodotus accused him of stabbing the sacred Apis bull, but an epitaph from 524 BC shows he took part in its funeral rites. Cambyses died rushing home to crush a man claiming to be his brother Bardiya, and the throne passed to Darius. The model Cyrus founded outlived the dynasty: Alexander the Great kept its satrapies and court customs, and the Seleucids, Romans and Abbasids drew on it.
- At its height the Achaemenid Empire covered about 5.5 million square kilometers.
- Herodotus claimed Cyrus fought his own grandfather when he overthrew the Median king.
- The Edict of Cyrus is recorded in Judeo-Christian texts.
- Persepolis blended Median, Assyrian, Asiatic Greek and Egyptian styles into one Persian identity.
- Many scholars call Alexander the last of the Achaemenids.
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