Achaemenid Empire

"Persian Empire" redirects here. For other uses, see Persian Empire (disambiguation).

Achaemenid Empire
𐎧𐏁𐏂
Xšāça
550 BC–330 BC
Flag of Persia
The Achaemenid Empire at its greatest territorial extent, under the rule of Darius the Great (522–486 BC)[2][3][4][5]
The Achaemenid Empire at its greatest territorial extent, under the rule of Darius the Great (522–486 BC)[2][3][4][5]
Capital
Common languages
Religion
Zoroastrianism (official)
GovernmentMonarchy
Monarchs[b] 
• 559–530 BC
Cyrus the Great
• 530–522 BC
Cambyses II
• 522–522 BC
Bardiya (perhaps Gaumata)
• 522–486 BC
Darius the Great
• 486–465 BC
Xerxes I
• 465–424 BC
Artaxerxes I
• 424–424 BC
Xerxes II
• 424–423 BC
Sogdianus
• 423–405 BC
Darius II
• 405–358 BC
Artaxerxes II
• 358–338 BC
Artaxerxes III
• 338–336 BC
Arses
• 336–330 BC
Darius III
Historical eraClassical antiquity
550 BC
547 BC
539 BC
535–518 BC
525 BC
513 BC
499–449 BC
484 BC
395–387 BC
372–362 BC
343 BC
330 BC
Area
500 BC[12][13]5,500,000 km2 (2,100,000 sq mi)
Population
• 500 BC[14]
17 million to 35 million
CurrencyDaric, siglos
Preceded by		 Succeeded by
Median Empire
Elam
Neo-Babylonian Empire
Lydia
Lycia
Twenty-sixth Dynasty of Egypt
Cyrenaica
Gandhāra
Sogdia
Massagetae
Persis
Macedonian Empire
Twenty-eighth Dynasty of Egypt

The Achaemenid Empire or Achaemenian Empire,[16] also known as the Persian Empire[16] or First Persian Empire[17] (/əˈkiːmənɪd/; Old Persian: 𐎧𐏁𐏂, Xšāça, lit. 'The Empire'[18] or 'The Kingdom'[19]), was an Iranian empire founded by Cyrus the Great of the Achaemenid dynasty in 550 BC. Based in modern-day Iran, it was the largest empire by that point in history, spanning a total of 5.5 million square kilometres (2.1 million square miles). The empire spanned from the Balkans and Egypt in the west, West Asia as the base, the majority of Central Asia to the northeast, and the Indus Valley to the southeast.[12][13]

Around the 7th century BC, the region of Persis in the southwestern portion of the Iranian plateau was settled by the Persians.[20] From Persis, Cyrus rose and defeated the Median Empire as well as Lydia and the Neo-Babylonian Empire, marking the establishment of a new imperial polity under the Achaemenid dynasty.

In the modern era, the Achaemenid Empire has been recognized for its imposition of a successful model of centralized bureaucratic administration, its multicultural policy, building complex infrastructure such as road systems and an organized postal system, the use of official languages across its territories, and the development of civil services, including its possession of a large, professional army. Its advancements inspired the implementation of similar styles of governance by a variety of later empires.[21]

By 330 BC, the Achaemenid Empire was conquered by Alexander the Great, an ardent admirer of Cyrus; the conquest marked a key achievement in the then-ongoing campaign of his Macedonian Empire.[22][23] Alexander's death marks the beginning of the Hellenistic period, when most of the fallen Achaemenid Empire's territory came under the rule of the Ptolemaic Kingdom and the Seleucid Empire, both of which had emerged as successors to the Macedonian Empire following the Partition of Triparadisus in 321 BC. Hellenistic rule remained in place for almost a century before the Iranian elites of the central plateau reclaimed power under the Parthian Empire.[20]

  1. ^ "DERAFŠ". Encyclopædia Iranica. Encyclopædia Iranica Foundation. 21 November 2011. Retrieved 7 April 2019.
  2. ^ 2002 Oxford Atlas of World History p.42 (West portion of the Achaemenid Empire) Archived 29 November 2022 at the Wayback Machine and p.43 (East portion of the Achaemenid Empire).
  3. ^ O'Brien, Patrick Karl (2002). Atlas of World History. Oxford University Press. pp. 42–43. ISBN 978-0-19-521921-0.
  4. ^ Visible online: Philip's Atlas of World History (1999) Archived 17 October 2018 at the Wayback Machine
  5. ^ The Times Atlas of World History, p.79 (1989): Barraclough, Geoffrey (1997). The Times Atlas of World History. Times Books. ISBN 978-0-7230-0906-1.
  6. ^ Yarshater, Ehsan (1993). The Cambridge History of Iran, Volume 3. Cambridge University Press. p. 482. ISBN 978-0-521-20092-9. Of the four residences of the Achaemenids named by Herodotus—Ecbatana, Pasargadae or Persepolis, Susa and Babylon—the last [situated in Iraq] was maintained as their most important capital, the fixed winter quarters, the central office of bureaucracy, exchanged only in the heat of summer for some cool spot in the highlands. Under the Seleucids and the Parthians the site of the Mesopotamian capital moved slightly to the north on the Tigris—to Seleucia and Ctesiphon. It is indeed symbolic that these new foundations were built from the bricks of ancient Babylon, just as later Baghdad, a little further upstream, was built out of the ruins of the Sassanian double city of Seleucia-Ctesiphon.
  7. ^ Kittel, Harald; Frank, Armin Paul; House, Juliane; Greiner, Norbert; Schultze, Brigitte; Koller, Werner (2007). Traduction: encyclopédie internationale de la recherche sur la traduction. Walter de Gruyter. pp. 1194–95. ISBN 978-3-11-017145-7.
  8. ^ Windfuhr, Gernot. "Iran vii. Non-Iranian Languages (3) Elamite". Encyclopædia Iranica. Retrieved 8 February 2017.
  9. ^ Tucker, Elizabeth (2001). "Greek and Iranian". In Christidis, Anastasios-Phoivos (ed.). A History of Ancient Greek: From the Beginnings to Late Antiquity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-83307-3.
  10. ^ "History of Iran: Achaemenid Society and Culture". www.iranchamber.com. Retrieved 19 November 2022.
  11. ^ Boiy, T. (2004). Late Achaemenid and Hellenistic Babylon. Leuven: Peeters Publishers. p. 101. ISBN 978-90-429-1449-0.
  12. ^ a b Turchin, Peter; Adams, Jonathan M.; Hall, Thomas D (December 2006). "East-West Orientation of Historical Empires". Journal of World-Systems Research. 12 (2): 223. ISSN 1076-156X. Retrieved 12 September 2016.
  13. ^ a b Taagepera, Rein (1979). "Size and Duration of Empires: Growth-Decline Curves, 600 B.C. to 600 A.D". Social Science History. 3 (3/4): 121. doi:10.2307/1170959. ISSN 0145-5532. JSTOR 1170959.
  14. ^ Morris, Ian; Scheidel, Walter (2009). The Dynamics of Ancient Empires: State Power from Assyria to Byzantium. Oxford University Press. p. 77. ISBN 978-0-19-975834-0.
  15. ^ Wiesehöfer 2001, p. 119.
  16. ^ a b Lavan, Payne & Weisweiler 2016, p. 17.
  17. ^ Brosius 2021, p. 1.
  18. ^ Shahbazi, A. Shapour (2012). "The Achaemenid Persian Empire (550–330 bce)". In Daryaee, Touraj (ed.). The Oxford handbook of Iranian history. Oxford: Oxford University Press. p. 131. ISBN 978-0-19-973215-9. Although the Persians and Medes shared domination and others were placed in important positions, the Achaemenids did not – could not – provide a name for their multinational state. Nevertheless, they referred to it as Khshassa, "the Empire".
  19. ^ Kent, Roland G. (1954). Old Persian: grammar, texts, lexicon. American Oriental Society. p. 181. ISBN 978-0-940490-33-8.
  20. ^ a b Sacks, David; Murray, Oswyn; Brody, Lisa (2005). Encyclopedia of the Ancient Greek World. Infobase Publishing. p. 256. ISBN 978-0-8160-5722-1.
  21. ^ Schmitt, Rüdiger (21 July 2011). "Achaemenid Dynasty". Encyclopædia Iranica. Archived from the original on 29 April 2011. Retrieved 4 March 2019.
  22. ^ Wilcken, Ulrich (1967). Alexander the Great. W. W. Norton & Company. p. 146. ISBN 978-0-393-00381-9.
  23. ^ Taagepera, Rein (1979). "Size and Duration of Empires: Growth-Decline Curves, 600 B.C. to 600 A.D". Social Science History. 3 (3/4): 123. doi:10.2307/1170959. JSTOR 1170959. A superimposition of the maps of Achaemenid and Alexander's empires shows a 90% match, except that Alexander's realm never reached the peak size of the Achaemenid realm.


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