Cyrus the Great

Cyrus II came from the royal house of Anshan in south-western present-day Iran. His birth year is disputed: around 600 BCE is often given, but estimates run to about 576 BCE. According to his own cylinder inscription he was the son of Cambyses, king of Anshan, and grandson of Cyrus I; in this way he stressed his royal descent.

Herodotus relates that Cyrus' mother Mandane was a daughter of the Median king Astyages and that the child was exposed after an ominous dream and raised by a herdsman. This story follows a familiar legendary pattern and is not confirmed by contemporary sources. Almost nothing reliable is therefore known about his youth and education.

Cyrus succeeded his father around 559 BCE as king of Anshan, at that time still a vassal of the Medes. According to the Nabonidus Chronicle, a war with the Median king Astyages broke out around 550 BCE, in which his army defected and Ecbatana was taken. Cyrus thus joined the Persian and Median lands and from then on bore the title king of Persia.

He then defeated Croesus of Lydia; Sardis fell around 546 BCE, although the precise year is uncertain. His generals went on to subdue the Greek cities on the west coast of Asia Minor. In the east he campaigned in regions including Bactria and Sogdia, but the sources on these campaigns are scarce and not always consistent.

In 539 BCE he defeated the Babylonian army at Opis. According to the Nabonidus Chronicle, Sippar fell without a fight, troops under General Gubaru occupied Babylon around 12 October, and Cyrus himself entered the city on 29 October. He took the titles king of Babylon and king of Sumer and Akkad.

The Cyrus Cylinder, a clay cylinder in Akkadian cuneiform, was intended as a foundation deposit in Babylon and was recovered in 1879; it is now in the British Museum. The text denounces Nabonidus as impious, shows Cyrus as chosen by Marduk, and mentions the restoration of temples and the return of displaced peoples.

Around 550 BCE the Near East was dominated by four powers: Media, Lydia, Babylonia and Egypt. Persia was a vassal state of the Medes. Babylonia under Nabonidus was strained, partly by the religious policy of a king who favoured the moon god Sîn and spent a long time at Tayma in Arabia; the Cyrus Cylinder describes him as impious.

Like earlier Mesopotamian rulers, Cyrus presented himself in Babylon as chosen by the local god Marduk; in the Book of Isaiah he is an instrument of Yahweh. How far he himself was a Zoroastrian is unknown and disputed. Babylonian and Jewish sources record his policy towards local cults favourably, but those texts also served their own purposes.

Under Cyrus an empire arose stretching from Asia Minor to Central Asia. He left local rulers, temples and customs largely in place and demanded tribute and troops. The division into satrapies is mostly credited to Darius I; under Cyrus' successors the empire was extended further.

According to the Book of Ezra, Cyrus allowed Jewish exiles to return to Judah and to rebuild the temple in Jerusalem; Isaiah calls him an anointed one ('messiah'). Historians dispute the authenticity of the decree; some assume a general policy that let displaced peoples restore their sanctuaries. The return was gradual.

According to Babylonian documents Cyrus died around December 530 BCE. Accounts of the circumstances differ: Herodotus has him fall against the Massagetae under Queen Tomyris, Ctesias names the Derbices, Berossus the Dahae, and Xenophon has him die peacefully. His son Cambyses II succeeded him and conquered Egypt in 525 BCE.

Greek writers, above all Xenophon in the Cyropaedia, portrayed Cyrus as an exemplary ruler, so the image in Europe is strongly idealised. In the twentieth century the shah of Iran used the Cyrus Cylinder as a symbol and it was presented as the 'first charter of human rights'. Many historians consider this anachronistic; the British Museum places the text in an old Mesopotamian tradition of reform declarations.

No authentic portrait of Cyrus is known. The image with this dossier therefore shows the tomb at Pasargadae, which many scholars attribute to him; a relief of a winged figure once taken as his portrait is now doubted. Pasargadae, including the tomb, is on the UNESCO World Heritage List.