From Anshan to empire
The earliest Persian kings ruled a modest realm in Fars, in south-west Iran, centred on the old Elamite region of Anshan. They lived in the shadow of larger powers. To the west were the Babylonians and, until the late seventh century BCE, the Assyrian Empire; to the north-west lay the Medes, whose kingdom had helped to destroy Assyria. Cyrus II, who came to power around the middle of the sixth century BCE, was at first a vassal of the Medes, according to most accounts.
Our sources for his early life are poor. Herodotus tells a story of Cyrus being raised as a shepherd after the Median king Astyages tried to have him killed, but this is folk tradition with parallels in other cultures, and historians treat it as legend. Cyrus himself, in a clay inscription, calls himself the son of Cambyses and describes an ancestry reaching back to a king named Teispes, which suggests a ruling family with a stake in Anshan.
The overthrow of the Medes, c. 550 BCE
Around 550 BCE Cyrus defeated Astyages and took over the Median kingdom. A Babylonian chronicle states that the Median army turned against its king, which hints that political deals mattered as much as battle. Cyrus did not destroy the Medes as a class; Median nobles and officials were absorbed into the new order, and Greek writers later spoke of “Medes” and “Persians” almost interchangeably. This habit of integrating local elites became a hallmark of Achaemenid rule.
Lydia and the Ionian cities
Cyrus then moved west. Croesus of Lydia, whose realm covered much of western Anatolia and who was famed for wealth, struck first or prepared to strike, depending on the source, and was defeated, with Sardis falling about 547 or 546 BCE. Persian rule extended over the Greek cities of the Aegean coast. The story of Sardis and Croesus was a favourite of Herodotus, who preserves tales of the king’s fate, including the oracle at Delphi that told him a great empire would fall if he crossed a river, which is a literary motif and not firm history. The wealth of Lydia contributed to the new empire, and the Lydian gold coinage that Persia inherited later shaped Persian money.
Babylon in 539 BCE
The most celebrated conquest was Babylon, then ruled by Nabonidus. Cyrus’s forces defeated the Babylonian army, and the city was entered in October 539 BCE with, according to the Nabonidus Chronicle, little fighting. Nabonidus had been unpopular with parts of the Babylonian priesthood, in part for his devotion to the moon god Sin, and Cyrus presented himself as the choice of Marduk, Babylon’s chief god. Cyrus took the title “king of Babylon” and left the temples and priesthood functioning.
The Cyrus Cylinder, a barrel-shaped clay object found in Babylon in the nineteenth century and now in the British Museum, records this narrative. It is written in Akkadian cuneiform writing in the traditional style of Mesopotamian royal inscriptions. It says Cyrus returned cult statues to their home cities and allowed displaced peoples to go back. The Hebrew Bible separately credits Cyrus with permitting the Jewish exiles to return and rebuild the temple in Jerusalem, a claim consistent in spirit with the Cylinder though not found in it by name.
The Cylinder is sometimes called the first charter of human rights. Most historians regard that label as modern and over-stated. It is best read as a royal proclamation in the Babylonian tradition, designed to win support from a new population, though the policy it reflects, of working with local religious institutions, was genuine and important.
Cyrus’s last years and the empire he left
Cyrus built a new royal centre at Pasargadae in Fars, with gardens, palaces and a tomb traditionally identified as his, a simple stepped structure on a platform. He died in 530 BCE campaigning on the north-eastern frontier, according to Herodotus against the Massagetae, and his son Cambyses II succeeded him and added Egypt in 525 BCE. By then the empire extended from the Aegean to Central Asia, a larger realm than any earlier Near Eastern state.
Cambyses and the succession problem
Cambyses died in 522 BCE and the succession was disputed. Darius I, a member of another branch of the royal family, emerged as king after defeating rebels, and the Behistun inscription is his own justification. The narrative is self-serving, and the true details of the usurper episode are debated. Whatever the truth, the dynasty needed a firm structure to survive.
Darius and the early administration
Darius is credited with the first real systematisation of the empire. Cyrus and Cambyses ruled by taking over existing arrangements. Darius organised the territory into provinces, each with a governor called a satrap, and fixed obligations of tribute and service. This satrapy system became the backbone of Persian government. He also issued a standardised gold coinage, the daric, and is associated with the use of Aramaic across the empire and with codification of laws in Egypt, reported by a later Egyptian tradition and not fully confirmed.
His building programme made the dynasty visible. He built at Susa, started the terrace at Persepolis and had his deeds carved on the cliff at Behistun in three languages. In the Behistun text and at his tomb at Naqsh-e Rustam, Darius stressed his Achaemenid descent and his support from Ahura Mazda. These reveal a ruler eager to show legitimacy after a disputed accession.
What the early empire shows
Three themes stand out from the first generation: speed, with most conquests achieved in about a quarter-century; integration, with local officials and religion left in place; and a growing emphasis on royal ideology as the state became larger. The result was a state that could hold together through shared self-interest as much as through force, although revolts show it was never free of challenge.