Over the course of years, groups of people have developed ways of living together. One of the “types” of communities is an empire, which includes several nations living together to be ruled by an emperor. Several empires have existed throughout history and one such empire was the great Persian Empire.

The Persian Empire stretched from India to Europe from 550 B.C to 331 B.C. A group of people from central Europe and southern Russia immigrated to Persia in around 1000 B.C. These people were horse breeders, traveled with a large livestock and eventually started to shift farther into different regions of the land.

The people, Medes of the state Media united themselves under one king in the Northern Persia in 710 B.C and started conquering other regions of Persia. In the mid 6th century around 559 B.C., Cyrus, the king of the Persians, defeated the Medians, and formed the Achaemenid Empire. Cyrus later joined forces with the Medians in order to conquer the land of Babylon. Cyrus appeared at the gates of the rich city of Babylon and exploiting the unpopularity of the king Nabonidus, he was able to conquer it.

Cyrus’s son Cambyses II (529 – 522 BC) added Egypt to the empire. However, a revolt broke out when Cambyses was on the battlefield. He was killed on the way back home and was replaced by Darius. Even though being the distant uncle of Cambyses, Darius deserved to inherit the throne. But many people challenged his claim to the throne. Looking at the chaos over sovereignty, several regions of the empire started revolting for independence.

Darius saw all of the accomplishments that Cyrus had made slipping out of his hands. He came up with the idea of satrapies (provinces) and appointed the people he trusted to rule over those satraps. Darius also introduced the gold coin in Persia that made transactions easier and allowed him to collect taxes enabling greater control over the empire.

The decline of the empire came when Alexander the Great of Macedon invaded the empire in 334 B.C. Revolts had started to break out in several regions. The chaos was becoming increasingly difficult to control, even after several attempts of doing so were made by Darius and his son Xerxes. It was time for the Persian Empire to end. 

About the Author: Amita Vadlamudi takes interest in reading and writing about ancient cultures. Some of the subjects that Amita Vadlamudi had written about in the past include the ancient Greek, Roman and Egyptian cultures.