Achaemenid Empire

  General Description   The Achaemenid Empire was established by Cyrus II ’the Great’, who inherited the small kingdom of Persia (named after the capital city, Persis) in southwest Iran, a vassal territory of the larger Median Empire to the Northwest. From 553 to 550 BCE, Cyrus led his fellow Persians against Median hegemony (even though the Medes were ruled by his own relatives), establishing the Persians as the dominant group in Iran. His kingdom became known as the Achaemenid Empire after the legendary first King of Persia, Achaemenes, claimed to be an ancestor of the Great Cyrus himself (Achaemenid essentially translates to ’children of Achaemenes’). ^[1]
Capitalizing on these early victories, Cyrus II the Great continued his military domination, conquering the wealthy Lydian Kingdom in modern-day Turkey along with most of Asia Minor and the Neo-Babylonian Kingdom in Mesopotamia, as well as consolidating Persia’s hold over much of central Asia as far as modern Pakistan. His son and heir, Cambyses II, continued this tradition, expanding Achaemenid rule into the large and wealthy kingdom of Egypt. After Cambyses II’s death in 522 BCE, a noble Persian named Darius came to power after overthrowing an alleged usurper to the throne (Gautama, supposedly posing as Cyrus II’s son Bardiya, more commonly known by his Greek name Smerdis). ^[2] Darius I, who also took the title of ’the Great’, was a powerful ruler who inaugurated several military, administrative, and economic reforms, ^[3] though is most well known for leading the Persian army to defeat at the hands of a coalition of small Greek city-states during the famous Persian Wars of the early 5th century BCE. Despite the fact that Darius’ son and heir Xerxes I (the Great) also failed to conquer the Greek Aegean and lost a decisive battle to the same outnumbered coalition of Greeks, the Achaemenid Empire remained intact. ^[4]
In 330 BCE, Darius III became the twelfth and final emperor in the Achaemenid line when he succumbed to the conquests of Alexander the Great and his invading Macedonian army (twelfth not including the alleged usurper Bardiya/Smerdis nor the short-lived Artaxerxes V, who declared himself emperor for a brief moment after Darius III was killed as Alexander was completing his conquest). ^[5] Alexander became the ruler of all the territory formerly held by the Persians, incorporating it into the massive, though short-lived, Macedonian Empire and bringing an end to the great Persian Achaemenid Empire.
Population and political organization
The Achaemenid Empire was one of the largest empires in the pre-modern world, stretching nearly 6 million square kilometres across the Near East, Central Asia, the Indus Valley, Middle East, and into Egypt at its greatest extent. ^[6] It was a massive, multi-ethnic society made up of Medes, Persians, Lydians, Greeks, Egyptians, Babylonians, Bactrians, Sogdians, and numerous other cultural-ethnic groups; indeed, Old Persian, Elamite, Babylonian, Aramaic, hieroglyphic Egyptian, and Greek were all used in royal and provincial communication. ^[7] Between the Great rulers Cyrus II, Cambyses II, and Darius I, the Persians had stitched together an empire out of the centres of the oldest civilizations from Anatolia to Egypt, Mesopotamia and the Indus valley. Persepolis and the grand Pasargadae were large ceremonial and ritual centres in the heartland of Persia, while Susa in western Iran was the major administrative capital. At its peak under Darius I, the empire covered a huge swathe of diverse territory from the eastern Mediterranean all the way to the Indus Valley, incorporating navigable seas and rivers, protected ports and fertile agricultural land as well as rough mountainous passes. This territory held a population of between 17 and 35 million people. ^[8]

[1]: (Briant [1996] 2002) Pierre Briant. [1996] 2002. From Cyrus to Alexander: A History of the Persian Empire, translated by Peter T. Daniels. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns.

[2]: (Shayegan 2006) M. Rahim Shayegan. 2006. ’Bardiya and Gaumata: An Achaemenid Enigma Reconsidered’. Bulletin of the Asia Institute (n.s.) 20: 65-76.

[3]: (Cook 1983) J. M. Cook. 1983. The Persian Empire. London: J. M. Dent and Sons.

[4]: (de Souza 2003) Philip de Souza. 2003. The Greek and Persian Wars, 499-386 BC. Oxford: Osprey Publishing.

[5]: (Kuhrt 2001, 94) Amelie Kuhrt. 2001. ’The Achaemenid Persian Empire (c. 550 - c. 330 BCE): Continuities, Adaptations, Transformations’, in Empires: Perspectives from Archaeology and History, edited by Susan Alcock, Terence D’Altroy, Kathleen D. Morrison and Carla M. Sinopoli, 93-123. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

[6]: (Broodbank 2015, 583) Cyprian Broodbank. 2015. The Making of the Middle Sea. London: Thames & Hudson.

[7]: (Shahbazi 2012, 135) A. Shapour Shahbazi. 2012. ’The Achaemenid Persian Empire (550-330 BCE)’, in The Oxford Handbook of Iranian History, edited by Touraj Daryaee, 120-41. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

[8]: (Wiesehöfer 2009) Josef Wiesehöfer. 2009. ’The Achaemenid Empire’, in The Dynamics of Ancient Empires: State Power from Assyria to Byzantium, edited by Ian Morris and Walter Scheidel, 66-98. Oxford: Oxford University Press.