Achaemenid Empire Was The World’s Largest Ancient Empire

A. Sutherland - AncientPages.com - First Persian Empire also known as the Achaemenid Empire was founded by Cyrus the Great, one of the most outstanding figures in human history.

By 546 BC, Cyrus the Great had defeated the Lydian king, Croesus, and had secured control of the Aegean coast of Asia Minor, Armenia, and the Greek colonies along the Levant. Moving east, he took the land of the Arsacids, known as Parthia, Chorasmis, and Bactria.

Map of Achaemenid Empire in Russian, 500 BC.

Cyrus the Great became king of Persia in 559 B.C and created the largest empire of ancient history. The Achaemenid Empire included parts of Central Asia, the Mediterranean, North Africa, and even European territories such as ancient Thrace and Macedonia. In 480 B.C, the empire accounted for approximately 49.4 million of the world’s 112.4 million people.

At that time, the number was equal to 44% of the world’s entire population!

Cyrus the Great’s military tactics were different in a number of ways. He developed a reputation for sparing conquered rulers so he could ask their advice on how best to govern their lands. He considered co-operation to be not a sign of weakness, but strength. Cyrus the Great did not take the world’s greatest ancient city Babylon by force. Instead, he fought a propaganda campaign to exploit the unpopularity of the last king, Nabonidus, a tyrant with odd religious ideas.

The Persian Empire was created by nomadic Persians who originally referred to themselves as parsua. The name Persia is a Greek and Latin pronunciation of the name Parsua, referring to people originating from Persis (or in Persian, Pars), their home territory located north of the Persian Gulf in southwestern Iran.

Achaemenid Empire Was The World’s Largest Ancient Empire. Image credit: Cyrus Shamiri

Despite its success and rapid expansion, the Achaemenid Empire was not the first Iranian empire.

By the 6th century BC, another group of ancient Iranian peoples had already established the Median Empire. The Medes had originally been the dominant Iranian group in the region, rising to power at the end of the 7th century BC and incorporating the Persians into their empire.

The Iranian people had arrived in the region c. 1000 BC and had initially fallen under the domination of the Assyrian Empire (911–609 BC). However, the Medes and Persians (together with the Scythians and Babylonians) played a major role in the defeat of the Assyrians and the establishment of the first Persian empire - the Achaemenid Empire.

Written by – A. Sutherland  - AncientPages.com Senior Staff Writer

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