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Cyrus
I
640 - 600 B.C.
Cyrus enlarged the Median Empire by seizing the kingdom of Lydia around 545 B.C. and gradually absorbing Greek colonies in Ionia, in western Asia Minor. He called this the Achaemenid Empire, after his ancestor, Achaemenes. He conquered Babylonia in 539 B.C. and freed the Jews in captivity there. They returned to Palestine. Cyrus was killed in 530 B.C. He had created an empire that extended from the Mediterranean Sea and western Asia Minor to the upper Indus River in what is now northern Pakistan, and from the Gulf of Oman to the Aral Sea.
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Senior Project : 2001-2002 The Great Persian Empire Website
