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Cyrus the Great

Cyrus the Great

600 BCE530 BCE · Anshan (Tall-e Malyan), Fars

Cyrus the Great (died 530 BCE) founded the Achaemenid Persian Empire, the largest the world had yet seen, conquering the Median, Lydian, and Neo-Babylonian kingdoms; Babylon fell to him in 539 BCE. He is significant in Jewish tradition for ending the Babylonian exile: his edict permitted the exiled Judeans to return to Jerusalem and authorized the rebuilding of the Temple. Later Persian and Greek writers alike remembered him as a model of just and tolerant rule.

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Stop 1 of 6600 BCE–559 BCEPrince, Then King Of Anshan

Anshan (Tall-e Malyan), Fars

What they did here

Born to Cambyses I into the Achaemenid line ruling Anshan, a Persian kingdom in Fars with a mixed Persian-Elamite population. He succeeded his father as a vassal king under Median overlordship.

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Thinkers, teachers, and rulers whose lives overlapped with Cyrus the Great’s — a glimpse of the wider world they lived in. Drawn purely from recorded birth and death years.

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