Polities
The Achaemenid Empire
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The Achaemenid Empire, founded by Cyrus the Great in 550 BC, was the first Persian empire and at its height the largest empire the world had yet seen, stretching from the Balkans and Egypt in the west to the Indus Valley in the east. Ruled from a succession of capitals, including Pasargadae, Susa, Ecbatana and the ceremonial city of Persepolis, it organized its territory into provinces called satrapies under a common administrative and legal framework and built the Royal Road to connect them. Alexander the Great conquered the empire in its entirety by 330 BC, ending two centuries of Achaemenid rule.
Facts
Government Type CapitalPasargadae, later Susa, Ecbatana and the ceremonial capital Persepolis 1 Cross-Tradition Connections
In Era
Why this is disputed. Classical antiquity periodization is usually centered on Greece and Rome, but historians commonly include the Achaemenid Empire as the major contemporary Near Eastern power shaping and shaped by the classical world.
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Alexander conquered and assumed kingship of the Achaemenid realm in 330 BC, though his rule was brief and the empire fragmented among his successors after his death in 323 BC.
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