A Short History of the Middle East by Gordon Kerr

as the First Persian Empire, the Achaemenid actually followed an empire created by another Iranian people, the Medes. They had risen to pre-eminence towards the end of the seventh century BC and the Persians became part of their empire, helping them to defeat the Assyrians. Cyrus led his men in a rebellion against the Medes in 550 BC, defeating King Astyages (r. 585-550 BC) and uniting the Achaemenid kingdoms of Parsa and Ansan into one Persian state. A number of years later, the Lydian Empire, ruled by King Croesus (r. 560-547 BC), attempted to take advantage of the instability in the region, pushing eastwards and threatening Persian cities. In response, Cyrus led an army into Lydian territory, taking the Lydian capital, Sardis, and completing the conquest of the region in 546 BC. It was now the turn of the Babylonians and the Egyptians who had been allies of Lydia. By 540 BC, Cyrus had taken Elam and the following year routed the Babylonian army at the Battle of Opis. After capturing the city of Babylon itself, Cyrus proclaimed himself ‘king of Babylon, king of Sumer and Akkad, king of the four corners of the world’. By the time of his death in 530 BC, he had created the greatest empire the world had ever seen, stretching from Asia Minor to northwest India. Cyrus’s son Cambyses (r. 530-522) conquered Egypt in 525 BC and when Darius I ‘the Great’ (r. 522 BC-486 BC) came to the throne, his empire included most of West Asia, Thrace-Macedonia and Paeonia in the Balkans, much of