Death of Cyrus the Great (530 BC) and Queen Tomyris

Cyrus the Great, founder of the Persian Empire, died in 530 BC while campaigning in Central Asia, after a reign of about 29 years. The best-known account, by the Greek historian Herodotus, says he was killed in battle by the Massagetae, a nomadic people led by Queen Tomyris. Other ancient writers tell very different stories, and the true circumstances of his death remain uncertain.

Background: the north-eastern frontier

By 539 BC Cyrus ruled an empire stretching from the Aegean Sea to Central Asia, having conquered Media, Lydia and Babylon, as told in Fall of Babylon to Cyrus the Great. His remaining frontier problems lay in the north-east, where settled lands bordered the steppe of Central Asia.

The Massagetae were nomadic horse-riding people, related to the Scythians and Saka, who lived east of the Caspian Sea. Herodotus places them beyond a river he calls the Araxes, which in this passage probably means the Amu Darya (Oxus) or the Syr Darya (Jaxartes). Modern historians cannot locate them precisely.

Herodotus’s account

Herodotus says that the Massagetae were ruled by Tomyris, a widow. Cyrus first offered to marry her, but she understood that he wanted her kingdom rather than herself and refused. Cyrus then marched to the river and began building bridges to cross it.

Tomyris sent a message telling Cyrus to stop, and offered to fight on either side of the river. On the advice of Croesus, the former king of Lydia who now served at his court, Cyrus crossed into Massagetae territory. He then set a trap: he left behind a weak part of his army in a camp stocked with food and wine and withdrew with his best troops.

A Massagetae force led by Tomyris’s son Spargapises attacked the camp, killed its defenders and feasted. Unused to wine, they fell asleep, and the Persians returned, killed many and captured Spargapises. When he sobered up, he asked to be freed from his chains and then killed himself.

Tomyris then gathered all her forces. Herodotus calls the battle that followed the fiercest ever fought between non-Greeks. Most of the Persian army was destroyed and Cyrus himself was killed. Herodotus says that Tomyris filled a wineskin with human blood and put Cyrus’s head into it, saying that she was giving him his fill of blood.

Herodotus himself notes that many stories were told about Cyrus’s death and that he chose the one he found most credible.

Other ancient versions

The Greek physician Ctesias, who lived at the Persian court around 400 BC, says Cyrus was wounded fighting the Derbices, another Central Asian people, and died of his wounds three days later. In his version Cyrus had time to arrange the succession before he died.

Xenophon, in his Cyropaedia, describes Cyrus dying peacefully in old age in Persia, surrounded by his sons and friends, after giving a long final speech. The Cyropaedia is an idealised portrait of a model ruler rather than a reliable history, and this scene is generally regarded as fiction.

The Babylonian priest Berossus, writing in the 3rd century BC, is reported by later authors to have said that Cyrus died fighting the Dahae, another people of the Central Asian steppe. Most of these accounts agree that Cyrus died on or after a campaign in the north-east.

What can be said with confidence

Babylonian legal and business documents were dated by the year of the reigning king. The last documents dated to Cyrus and the first dated to his son Cambyses II show that the change of reign took place in the summer of 530 BC, without any sign of a break in government.

Cyrus was buried in a stone tomb at Pasargadae, his capital in Persia, described in Pasargadae and the Tomb of Cyrus. This means his body was most likely returned home, which is hard to square with Herodotus’s story of his head being kept by Tomyris.

Historians therefore generally accept that Cyrus died in 530 BC on or after a campaign against Central Asian nomads, while treating the details of Herodotus’s story, including the wineskin of blood, as legend.

Consequences and legacy

Cambyses II succeeded his father smoothly and soon turned west, conquering Egypt in 525 BC, as told in Battle of Pelusium. The empire Cyrus had created survived his death intact.

Tomyris became a popular figure in European art from the late Middle Ages onwards. She was shown as a symbol of justice or of the triumph of the weak over the proud, most famously in paintings by Peter Paul Rubens. Her story also appeared in tapestries, prints and decorative objects such as porcelain.

Timeline

• c. 559 BC: Cyrus becomes king of Anshan in Persia.
• c. 550 BC: Cyrus overthrows Astyages and takes over the Median kingdom.
• c. 547-546 BC: Cyrus conquers Lydia.
• 539 BC: Cyrus takes Babylon.
• 530 BC: Cyrus dies on campaign in Central Asia; Cambyses II becomes king.
• 525 BC: Cambyses conquers Egypt.
• 324 BC: Alexander the Great visits and restores the Tomb of Cyrus at Pasargadae.

Why it matters

The death of Cyrus ended the career of one of the most successful conquerors in history, but not his empire, which lasted for two more centuries. The competing stories about his end show how quickly legend gathered around him. Herodotus’s tale of Tomyris, in particular, became a lasting lesson about the limits of ambition, retold in art and literature for more than two thousand years.