Cyrus the Great
601 BCE – 531 BCE Persian founder and king of the Achaemenid Persian Empire
Founder of the Persian Empire who conquered Babylon and, in biblical tradition, allowed exiled Jews to return and rebuild the Temple.
- Religion
- ancient Iranian religion
- Affiliations
- Achaemenid dynasty
Cyrus the Great founded the Achaemenid Persian Empire in the sixth century BCE and conquered Babylon in 539 BCE, a well-documented event recorded in Babylonian and Persian sources including the Cyrus Cylinder. In the Hebrew Bible he is remembered as the ruler who ended the Babylonian exile by permitting the Judean exiles to return home and rebuild the Temple in Jerusalem, and he is given unusual praise, even called an anointed one. His broad policy of allowing subject peoples to keep their local cults fits the biblical account, though historians weigh the scriptural version against the Persian records. He remains a rare foreign king honored in Jewish tradition.
In the timeline
- 560 BCE Cyrus the Great founds the Persian Empire central figure
- 550 BCE Founding of the Achaemenid Persian Empire the founder
- 546 BCE Fall of the Lydian Kingdom mentioned
- 539 BCE Fall of Babylon to Cyrus the Great central figure
- 539 BCE Cyrus the Persian takes Babylon and frees the Jews mentioned
- 538 BCE Fall of Babylon the conqueror of Babylon
- 538 BCE – 516 BCE The Persian Return and Second Temple the Persian king whose decree enabled the rebuilding
- 536 BCE The Return under Cyrus the king who allowed the exiles to return
- 517 BCE Return from exile and the Second Temple mentioned