Cyrus the Great Founds the Persian Empire (550 BC)

Around 550 BC Cyrus II, king of the small realm of Anshan in south-western Iran, overthrew his overlord Astyages, king of the Medes, and took the Median capital Ecbatana. This victory turned the Persians from a minor people into the rulers of a great kingdom and began the conquests that created the Achaemenid Persian Empire, the largest empire the world had yet known. Cyrus, later called “the Great”, went on to conquer Lydia and Babylon before his death in 530 BC.

Background: Medes and Persians

In the seventh century BC the dominant power of western Iran was Media, centred on Ecbatana, modern Hamadan. Under King Cyaxares the Medes helped Babylon destroy the Assyrian Empire in 612 BC, then pushed west into Anatolia; their history is told in Cyaxares and the Median Kingdom. By the 580s BC the Median sphere of influence reached the Halys River, the border agreed with Lydia after the Battle of the Eclipse in 585 BC.

The Persians lived to the south-east, in the region of Persis, modern Fars. Their kings ruled from Anshan, an old Elamite city. Cyrus’ own inscription, the Cyrus Cylinder, names him as son of Cambyses, grandson of Cyrus and descendant of Teispes, all “kings of Anshan”. The Persian kings appear to have recognised Median overlordship.

Cyrus’ early life: history and legend

Cyrus was probably born in the 590s or 580s BC. Herodotus, writing about a century later, tells a famous story. Astyages, son of Cyaxares, dreamed that his daughter Mandane’s child would rule Asia, so he married her to a Persian of modest rank, Cambyses, and ordered his courtier Harpagus to kill the baby. Harpagus handed the child to a herdsman, who raised him as his own. At the age of ten, the boy’s royal bearing gave him away, and Astyages let him live, but punished Harpagus cruelly.

Herodotus himself says he knew several versions of Cyrus’ birth. Stories of a royal infant exposed and saved, like those of Sargon of Akkad or Romulus, are a common legendary pattern, and historians treat this account as legend. It is not known whether Cyrus was really Astyages’ grandson.

The war with Media

The Babylonian sources give a sober outline. A cylinder of King Nabonidus from Sippar states that in his third year, 553 BC, Cyrus, king of Anshan, with his small army scattered the large army of the Medes and took their king Astyages captive to his own land. The Nabonidus Chronicle, under the sixth year of Nabonidus, 550/549 BC, gives more detail. Astyages mustered his army and marched against Cyrus, but the army rebelled, seized him and handed him over to Cyrus.

Cyrus then marched to Ecbatana, the royal city, and carried off silver, gold, goods and property to Anshan.

Ecbatana was the richest prize in Iran. Herodotus describes it as a fortress ringed by seven concentric walls, each painted a different colour, with the innermost two plated in silver and gold. The description is probably idealised, and the ancient city lies largely beneath modern Hamadan, but the Babylonian chronicle confirms that its treasury was large enough to be worth recording. Historians reconcile the two texts by dating the war to about 553–550 BC, with the decisive campaign around 550 BC.

Greek writers add details that cannot be checked. Herodotus says Harpagus, seeking revenge, persuaded Cyrus to revolt and then deserted to him with part of the Median army. Later writers describe battles near the place where Cyrus later built his capital, Pasargadae, and the geographer Strabo says Cyrus founded the city on the site of his final victory over Astyages.

Key people

• Cyrus II, the Great (c. 590s–530 BC), king of Anshan and founder of the Achaemenid Empire.
• Astyages (reigned c. 585–550 BC), last king of Media. Herodotus says he ruled for 35 years and was spared by Cyrus.
• Harpagus, Median noble and general, who according to Herodotus betrayed Astyages and later served Cyrus, conquering the Greek cities of Ionia.
• Cambyses I, Cyrus’ father and king of Anshan.

A new kind of empire

Cyrus did not destroy Media. He took over its capital, its treasury and much of its nobility. Ecbatana remained a royal residence, and Medes held high positions in the Persian army and court. To outsiders the two peoples seemed so closely joined that Greeks often called the Persians “the Medes”, and collaboration with Persia was known in Greece as “medising”.

This approach, absorbing conquered elites instead of destroying them, became a hallmark of Cyrus’ rule.

The conquest of Media also gave Cyrus a claim to everything the Medes had ruled or influenced, from eastern Anatolia to the borders of Central Asia. Neighbouring kings saw it that way too: within a few years Lydia, Babylon and Egypt were all searching for allies against the new power.

Cyrus marked his victory with a new royal centre at Pasargadae in Persis. Its gardens, palaces and gatehouse combined Median, Elamite, Mesopotamian, Lydian and Ionian Greek styles, a mixture that announced an empire drawing on the skills of many peoples. It allowed a small Persian people to govern vast territories with the help of local rulers, administrators and traditions.

Conquests after 550 BC

Media’s fall alarmed its neighbours. Croesus of Lydia, Astyages’ brother-in-law, crossed the Halys to attack Cyrus. After an indecisive battle at Pteria, Cyrus followed him to his capital and captured it, as described in Fall of Sardis, traditionally dated about 547 BC. Harpagus and other generals then subdued the Greek cities of Ionia and the coastal peoples of Anatolia.

Cyrus campaigned in eastern Iran and Central Asia, bringing regions such as Bactria and Sogdia under Persian rule, though the details are poorly recorded. In 539 BC he invaded Babylonia, won a battle at Opis and entered Babylon without a long siege, as told in Fall of Babylon to Cyrus. This brought Mesopotamia, Syria and the Levant into the empire, and Cyrus allowed deported peoples, including the Judeans, to return home.

Cyrus died in 530 BC, according to Herodotus in battle against the Massagetae, a nomadic people of Central Asia ruled by Queen Tomyris; see Death of Cyrus the Great. He was buried in a stone tomb at Pasargadae, which still stands.

Why “Achaemenid”?

The dynasty is named after Achaemenes, a legendary ancestor. Cyrus himself, in the Cyrus Cylinder, traced his family only to Teispes. Darius I, who seized the throne in 522 BC from a different branch of the family, stressed descent from Achaemenes in his Behistun inscription. Many historians think Darius promoted this genealogy to link himself to Cyrus, and some prefer to call Cyrus’ line the “Teispids”. The empire as a whole is nevertheless known as the Achaemenid Empire.

Inscriptions at Pasargadae in which Cyrus calls himself “an Achaemenid” are generally thought to have been added later, in Darius’ reign. The question shows how much of what we know about early Persia comes from later rulers shaping their own history.

Myths and facts

• Myth: Cyrus led a national Persian uprising against foreign oppressors. The sources show a dynastic struggle within an Iranian world where Medes and Persians were closely related; Median nobles changed sides and kept their positions.
• Myth: the Cyrus Cylinder is the first charter of human rights. The cylinder, written after the conquest of Babylon in 539 BC, is a Babylonian-style royal proclamation presenting Cyrus as Marduk’s chosen king. It mentions the return of deported peoples and gods, but historians see it as political propaganda in a long Mesopotamian tradition, not a declaration of universal rights.
• Fact: the empire grew remarkably fast. In about twenty years Cyrus went from ruling one province of Iran to controlling lands from the Aegean to Central Asia.

Timeline

• c. 590s–580s BC: Probable birth of Cyrus, son of Cambyses I of Anshan.
• 585 BC: Peace between Media and Lydia; Astyages becomes king of the Medes.
• 559 BC: Cyrus becomes king of Anshan (traditional date).
• 553 BC: War between Cyrus and Astyages begins, according to the Sippar cylinder of Nabonidus.
• c. 550 BC: Astyages’ army mutinies; Cyrus captures Astyages and takes Ecbatana.
• c. 547 BC: Cyrus defeats Croesus and takes Sardis.
• 539 BC, October: Cyrus enters Babylon.
• 530 BC: Death of Cyrus in Central Asia; his son Cambyses II succeeds him.

Legacy

The empire founded by Cyrus lasted until Alexander the Great conquered it in 330 BC. Under Darius I it was organised into provinces called satrapies, linked by roads and royal messengers, and its kings built the palaces of Persepolis and Susa.

Cyrus’ reputation has outlived his empire. Greek authors admired him; Xenophon’s Cyropaedia, written in the fourth century BC, presented an idealised Cyrus as a model ruler. In the Hebrew Bible, the Book of Isaiah calls him the Lord’s “anointed” for ending the Babylonian Exile. In modern Iran he is honoured as the founder of the nation’s first great empire.

Why it matters

The overthrow of Astyages around 550 BC was the moment Persia entered world history. From it grew an empire that united the Middle East from the Mediterranean to the Indus, shaped the history of Greece, Egypt and Judah, and set a model of multi-ethnic rule that later empires would follow.