Achaemenid Empire
The Achaemenid Empire was an ancient Iranian empire founded by Cyrus the Great of the Achaemenid dynasty in 550 BC. At peak, its territorial extent was roughly, making it the largest empire of its time. Based in the Iranian plateau, it stretched from the Balkans and Egypt in the west to the Indus Valley in the east, including Anatolia, Cyprus, Mesopotamia, the Levant, parts of Eastern Arabia, and large parts of Central Asia.
By the 7th century BC, the region of Persis, located in the southwestern part of the Iranian plateau, had been settled by Persians. From Persis, Cyrus rose and defeated Media, Lydia, and the Neo-Babylonian Empire, thus marking the establishment of a new imperial polity in the ancient Near East. While its conquests were largely successful in most regions, the Achaemenid Empire's attempts to expand into Greece proved extremely difficult over the course of decades of wars and multiple kings, ultimately resulting in its defeat in the Greek mainland.
In 330 BC, amidst a military campaign that began in 336 BC, the Achaemenid Empire was conquered in its entirety by Alexander the Great, who annexed it to his Macedonian Empire. Upon Alexander's death, which sparked the beginning of the Hellenistic period in 323 BC, the majority of the former Achaemenid Empire's territories came under the rule of the Seleucid Empire and the Ptolemaic Kingdom. Almost a century later, Iranian elites in the central plateau successfully reclaimed power from the Seleucids and established the Parthian Empire, which would continue to exist for nearly half a millennium before being succeeded by the Iranian Sasanian Empire.
In the modern era, the Achaemenid Empire has been recognized for its centralized bureaucracy and administration; its multicultural policy and religious tolerance, especially under Cyrus; its complex infrastructure projects, such as the Royal Road and an organized postal system; the use of official languages across its territories; and the development of a civil service and a large, professional army and navy. Many of these systems were adopted and expanded upon by a variety of later empires in the Greco-Roman world and beyond.
Etymology
The Achaemenid Empire is named after Achaemenes, who is credited as the progenitor of the Achaemenid dynasty. The term Achaemenid means "of the family of the Achaemenis/Achaemenes". Achaemenes was himself a minor seventh-century ruler of the Anshan in southwestern Iran, and a vassal of Assyria.Around 850 BC the original nomadic people who began the empire called themselves the Parsa and their constantly shifting territory Parsua, for the most part localized around Persis. The name "Persia" is a Greek and Latin pronunciation of the native word referring to the country of the people originating from Persis. The Persian term ???, literally meaning "The Kingdom", was used to refer to the Empire formed by their multinational state.
History
Timeline
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from: -675 till: -550 text:Origins
bar:Period color:age
from: -550 till: -499 shift: text:Expansion
from: -499 till: -449 shift: text:Greco-Persian wars
from: -449 till: -358 text:Cultural
from: -358 till: -330 text:Decline
bar:Rulers color:era
from:-675 till:-640 text: Teispes
from:-640 till:-600 text: Cyrus I
from:-600 till:-559 text: Cambyses I
from:-559 till:-530 shift: text: Cyrus II
from:-530 till:-522 shift: text: Cambyses II
from:-522 till:-522 shift: text: Smerdis
from:-522 till:-486 shift: text: Darius I
from:-486 till:-465 text: Xerxes I
from:-465 till:-424 shift: text: Artaxerxes I
from:-424 till:-424 shift: text: Xerxes II
from:-424 till:-424 shift: text:Sogdianus
from:-424 till:-404 shift: text: Darius II
from:-404 till:-358 shift: text: Artaxerxes II
from:-358 till:-338 shift: text: Artaxerxes III
from:-338 till:-336 shift: text: Arses
from:-336 till:-330 shift: text: Darius III
from:-330 till:-329 shift: text: Bessus
bar: color:pink
from: -675 till: -480 text:Early
from: -480 till: -380 text:Middle
from: -380 till: -330 text:Late
Origin of the Achaemenid dynasty
The Achaemenid Empire was created by nomadic Persians. The Persians were Iranian people who arrived in what is today Iran and settled a region including north-western Iran, the Zagros Mountains and Persis alongside the native Elamites. The Persians were originally nomadic pastoralists in the western Iranian Plateau. The Achaemenid Empire may not have been the first Iranian empire, as the Medes, another group of Iranian people, possibly established a short-lived empire when they played a major role in overthrowing the Assyrians.The Achaemenids were initially rulers of the Elamite city of Anshan near the modern city of Marvdasht; the title "King of Anshan" was an adaptation of the earlier Elamite title "King of Susa and Anshan". There are conflicting accounts of the identities of the earliest Kings of Anshan. According to the Cyrus Cylinder the kings of Anshan were Teispes, Cyrus I, Cambyses I and Cyrus II, also known as Cyrus the Great, who founded the empire. The later Behistun Inscription, written by Darius the Great, claims that Teispes was the son of Achaemenes and that Darius is also descended from Teispes through a different line, but no earlier texts mention Achaemenes. In Herodotus' Histories, he writes that Cyrus the Great was the son of Cambyses I and Mandane of Media, the daughter of Astyages, the king of the Median Empire.
Formation and expansion
550s BC
Cyrus revolted against the Median Empire in 553 BC, and in 550 BC succeeded in defeating the Medes, capturing Astyages and taking the Median capital city of Ecbatana. Once in control of Ecbatana, Cyrus styled himself as the successor to Astyages and assumed control of the entire empire. By inheriting Astyages' empire, he also inherited the territorial conflicts the Medes had with both Lydia and the Neo-Babylonian Empire.540s BC
King Croesus of Lydia sought to take advantage of the new international situation by advancing into what had previously been Median territory in Asia Minor. Cyrus led a counterattack which not only fought off Croesus' armies, but also led to the capture of Sardis and the fall of the Lydian Kingdom in 546 BC. Cyrus placed Pactyes in charge of collecting tribute in Lydia and left, but once Cyrus had left Pactyes instigated a rebellion against Cyrus. Cyrus sent the Median general Mazares to deal with the rebellion, and Pactyes was captured. Mazares, and after his death Harpagus, set about reducing all the cities which had taken part in the rebellion. The subjugation of Lydia took about four years in total.When the power in Ecbatana changed hands from the Medes to the Persians, many tributaries to the Median Empire believed their situation had changed and revolted against Cyrus. This forced Cyrus to fight wars against Bactria and the nomadic Saka in Central Asia. During these wars, Cyrus established several garrison towns in Central Asia, including the Cyropolis.
530s BC
Nothing is known of Persia–Babylon relations between 547 and 539 BC, but it is likely that there were hostilities between the two empires for several years leading up to the war of 540–539 BC and the Fall of Babylon. In October 539 BC, Cyrus won a battle against the Babylonians at Opis, then took Sippar without a fight before finally capturing the city of Babylon on 12 October, where the Babylonian king Nabonidus was taken prisoner. Upon taking control of the city, Cyrus depicted himself in propaganda as restoring the divine order which had been disrupted by Nabonidus, who had promoted the cult of Sin rather than Marduk, and he also portrayed himself as restoring the heritage of the Neo-Assyrian Empire by comparing himself to the Assyrian king Ashurbanipal. Cyrus is credited with freeing the people of Judah from their exile and with authorizing the reconstruction of much of Jerusalem, including the Second Temple.File:Pasargad_Tomb_Cyrus3.jpg|thumb|Cyrus the Great's tomb, located at Pasargadae
520s BC
In 530 BC, Cyrus died and was succeeded by his eldest son Cambyses II, while his younger son Bardiya received a large territory in Central Asia. By 525 BC, Cambyses had successfully subjugated Phoenicia and Cyprus and was making preparations to invade Egypt with the newly created Persian navy. Pharaoh Amasis II had died in 526, and had been succeeded by Psamtik III, resulting in the defection of key Egyptian allies to the Persians. Psamtik positioned his army at Pelusium in the Nile Delta. He was soundly defeated by the Persians in the Battle of Pelusium before fleeing to Memphis, where the Persians defeated him and took him prisoner. After attempting a failed revolt, Psamtik III promptly committed suicide.Herodotus depicts Cambyses as openly antagonistic to the Egyptian people and their gods, cults, temples, and priests, in particular stressing the murder of the sacred bull Apis. He says that these actions led to a madness that caused him to kill his brother Bardiya, his own sister-wife and Croesus of Lydia. He then concludes that Cambyses completely lost his mind, and all later classical authors repeat the themes of Cambyses' impiety and madness. However, this is based on spurious information, as the epitaph of Apis from 524 BC shows that Cambyses participated in the funeral rites of Apis styling himself as pharaoh.
Following the conquest of Egypt, the Libyans and the Greeks of Cyrene and Barca in present-day eastern Libya surrendered to Cambyses and sent tribute without a fight. Cambyses then planned invasions of Carthage, the oasis of Ammon and Ethiopia. Herodotus claims that the naval invasion of Carthage was canceled because the Phoenicians, who made up a large part of Cambyses' fleet, refused to take up arms against their own people, but modern historians doubt whether an invasion of Carthage was ever planned at all. However, Cambyses dedicated his efforts to the other two campaigns, aiming to improve the Empire's strategic position in Africa by conquering the Kingdom of Meroë and taking strategic positions in the western oases. To this end, he established a garrison at Elephantine consisting mainly of Jewish soldiers, who remained stationed at Elephantine throughout Cambyses' reign. Herodotus claims that the invasion of Ethiopia was a failure due to the madness of Cambyses and the lack of supplies for his men, but archaeological evidence suggests that the expedition was not a failure, and a fortress at the Second Cataract of the Nile, on the border between Egypt and Kush, remained in use throughout the Achaemenid period. Furthermore, in two inscriptions of Darius, Nubia is listed as one of the lands in the empire, and a Nubian delegation is depicted in Persepolis on the Apadana reliefs which visually present the lands of Darius’ empire. These suggest that Cambyses saw success in subduing Nubia.
The events surrounding Cambyses's death and Bardiya's succession are greatly debated as there are many conflicting accounts. According to Herodotus, as Bardiya's assassination had been committed in secret, the majority of Persians still believed him to be alive. This allowed two Magi to rise up against Cambyses, with one of them sitting on the throne able to impersonate Bardiya because of their remarkable physical resemblance and shared name. Ctesias writes that when Cambyses had Bardiya killed he immediately put the magus Sphendadates in his place as satrap of Bactria due to a remarkable physical resemblance. Two of Cambyses' confidants then conspired to usurp Cambyses and put Sphendadates on the throne under the guise of Bardiya. According to the Behistun Inscription, written by the following king Darius the Great, a magus named Gaumata impersonated Bardiya and incited a revolution in Persia. Whatever the exact circumstances of the revolt, Cambyses heard news of it in the summer of 522 BC and began to return from Egypt, but he was wounded in the thigh in Syria and died of gangrene, so Bardiya's impersonator became king. The account of Darius is the earliest, and although the later historians all agree on the key details of the story, that a magus impersonated Bardiya and took the throne, this may have been a story created by Darius to justify his own usurpation. Iranologist Pierre Briant hypothesises that Bardiya was not killed by Cambyses, but waited until his death in the summer of 522 BC to claim his legitimate right to the throne as he was then the only male descendant of the royal family. Briant says that although the hypothesis of a deception by Darius is generally accepted today, "nothing has been established with certainty at the present time, given the available evidence".
According to the Behistun inscription, Gaumata ruled for seven months before being overthrown in 522 BC by Darius the Great. The Magi, though persecuted, continued to exist, and a year following the death of the first pseudo-Smerdis, saw a second pseudo-Smerdis attempt a coup. The coup, though initially successful, failed.
Herodotus writes that the native leadership debated the best form of government for the empire.