Cyrus the Great
c. 600–530 BCE · Middle East & Persia · Classical
Founder of the Achaemenid Empire; issued an early charter of tolerance.
Portrait: Charles Francis Horne Clarence Cook · Public domain · via Wikimedia Commons
- Birthplace
- Middle East & Persia
- Known as
- Founder of the Achaemenid Empire; issued an early charter of tolerance.
Cyrus, called the Great, was born about 600 BCE in Anshan, in what is now Fars in Iran, and founded the Achaemenid Empire — the largest the world had yet seen, reaching from the Aegean to the Indus.
Rising from a subject king, he overthrew the Median empire, took Lydia and its fabled king Croesus, and in 539 BCE entered Babylon, uniting the ancient Near East under a single crown.
He is remembered less for conquest than for how he ruled: the Cyrus Cylinder, inscribed at Babylon, proclaims his policy of returning displaced peoples to their homes and honoring their gods, and the Hebrew scriptures name him the deliverer who freed the Judeans from exile. He governed through satraps, a system of regional rule that held the empire together for two centuries.
He died about 530 BCE on campaign at the empire’s edge. Honored among the Great Ones of every civilization; kept here so the memory is never lost.
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Sources
- Encyclopædia Britannica — Cyrus the Great (www.britannica.com)
- Wikipedia — Cyrus the Great (en.wikipedia.org)
- World History Encyclopedia — Cyrus the Great (www.worldhistory.org)
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