Achaemenid Persian Empire
▶ Explore on the mapThe Achaemenid Empire was the first great empire of Persia, founded by Cyrus the Great around 550 BCE when he overthrew the Median ruler Astyages and then took the Lydian kingdom and the Greek cities of Ionia. Cyrus presented himself as a liberator rather than a conqueror: the Cyrus Cylinder records that he restored deported peoples and let the Babylonian god Marduk be worshipped, and Jewish tradition remembers him favourably. His son Cambyses added Egypt in 525 BCE. Darius I, who came to power after a civil war, reorganised the realm into provinces called satrapies, each run by a satrap, a military commander and a royal secretary who checked one another. He built the Royal Road from Sardis to Susa, struck a standard coinage of gold darics and silver sigloi, and began a canal from the Nile to the Red Sea. Inscriptions at Behistun and Naqsh-e Rostam proclaim his lineage and piety in Old Persian, Elamite and Babylonian. The empire reached from the Indus to Thrace and Libya, but the invasion of Scythia and the revolt of the Ionian cities led to the Greco-Persian Wars, and the fleet was beaten at Salamis in 480 BCE. The state stayed wealthy for another century and a half until Alexander's invasion ended it; Darius III died fleeing him in 330 BCE.