An old image of a possible tomb of Cassandane in Pasargad Archaeological Site Suleiman Prison (Pasargad) 1906 image taken from the book Persia past and present by AV Williams Jackson (1906)
She was a daughter of Pharnaspes. She had four children with Cyrus: Cambyses II, who succeeded his father and conquered Egypt; Smerdis (Bardiya), who also reigned as the king of Persia for a short time; a daughter named Atossa, who later wed Darius the Great; and another daughter named Roxana.[1]
Her daughter Atossa later played an important role in the Achaemenid royal family, as she married Darius the Great and bore him the next Achaemenid king, Xerxes I.[2]
When Cassandane died, all the nations of Cyrus' Persian empire observed "a great mourning". This is reported by Herodotus. According to the Nabonidus Chronicle, there was a public mourning after her death in Babylonia lasting for six days. Cassandane reportedly stated that it was more bitter to leave Cyrus's side than to die.[3][4] The six days of mourning are identified as 21–26 March 538 BC.[5] According to a suggestion by M. Boyce, Cassandane's tomb is located at Pasargadae.[1]
Xerxes I, commonly known as Xerxes the Great, was a Persian ruler who served as the fourth King of Kings of the Achaemenid Empire, reigning from 486 BC until his assassination in 465 BC. He was the son of Darius the Great and Atossa, a daughter of Cyrus the Great. In Western history, Xerxes is best known for his invasion of Greece in 480 BC, which ended in Persian defeat. Xerxes was designated successor by Darius over his elder brother Artobazan and inherited a large, multi-ethnic empire upon his father's death. He consolidated his power by crushing revolts in Egypt and Babylon, and renewed his father's campaign to subjugate Greece and punish Athens and its allies for their interference in the Ionian Revolt. In 480 BC, Xerxes personally led a large army and crossed the Hellespont into Europe. He achieved victories at Thermopylae and Artemisium before capturing and razing Athens. His forces gained control of mainland Greece north of the Isthmus of Corinth until their defeat at the Battle of Salamis. Fearing that the Greeks might trap him in Europe, Xerxes retreated with the greater part of his army back to Asia, leaving behind Mardonius to continue his campaign. Mardonius was defeated at Plataea the following year, effectively ending the Persian invasion.
Cambyses II was the second King of Kings of the Achaemenid Empire from 530 to 522 BC. He was the son and successor of Cyrus the Great and his mother was Cassandane.
Darius I, commonly known as Darius the Great, was a Persian ruler who served as the third King of Kings of the Achaemenid Empire, reigning from 522 BCE until his death in 486 BCE. He ruled the empire at its territorial peak, when it included much of Western Asia, parts of the Balkans and the Caucasus, most of the Black Sea's coastal regions, Central Asia, the Indus Valley in the far east, and portions of North Africa and Northeast Africa including Egypt (Mudrâya), eastern Libya, and coastal Sudan.
Arses, known by his regnal name Artaxerxes II, was King of Kings of the Achaemenid Empire from 405/4 BC to 358 BC. He was the son and successor of Darius II and his mother was Parysatis.
Bessus or Bessos, also known by his throne name Artaxerxes V, was a Persian satrap of the eastern Achaemenid satrapy of Bactria, as well as the self-proclaimed King of Kings of the Achaemenid Empire from 330 to 329 BC.
Atossa was an Achaemenid empress. She was the daughter of Cyrus the Great, and the wife of Darius the Great.
Cyrus I or Cyrus I of Anshan or Cyrus I of Persia, was King of Anshan in Persia from c. 600 to 580 BC or, according to others, from c. 652 to 600 BC. Cyrus I of Anshan is the grandfather of Cyrus the Great, also known as Cyrus II. His name in Modern Persian is کوروش, Kūroš, while in Greek he was called Κῦρος, Kȳros.
Achaemenes was the progenitor of the Achaemenid dynasty of rulers of Persia.
Cyrus II of Persia, commonly known as Cyrus the Great, was the founder of the Achaemenid Persian Empire. Hailing from Persis, he brought the Achaemenid dynasty to power by defeating the Median Empire and embracing all of the previous civilized states of the ancient Near East, expanding vastly and eventually conquering most of West Asia and much of Central Asia to create what would soon become the largest polity in human history at the time. The Achaemenid Empire's largest territorial extent was achieved under Darius the Great, whose rule stretched from the Balkans and the rest of Southeast Europe in the west to the Indus Valley in the east.
The daric was a gold coin which, along with a similar silver coin, the siglos, represented the bimetallic monetary standard of the Achaemenid Empire.
Mandane was a Median princess and, later, the queen consort of the Persian king Cambyses I and the mother of Cyrus the Great, the founder of the Achaemenid Empire. The name likely originates from the Old Iranian *Mandanā-, which means “delighting, cheerful”.
The Nabonidus Chronicle is an ancient Babylonian text, part of a larger series of Babylonian Chronicles inscribed in cuneiform script on clay tablets. It deals primarily with the reign of Nabonidus, the last king of the Neo-Babylonian Empire, covers the conquest of Babylon by the Persian king Cyrus the Great, and ends with the start of the reign of Cyrus's son Cambyses II, spanning a period from 556 BC to some time after 539 BC. It provides a rare contemporary account of Cyrus's rise to power and is the main source of information on this period; Amélie Kuhrt describes it as "the most reliable and sober [ancient] account of the fall of Babylon."
The Achaemenid dynasty was a royal house that ruled the Persian Empire, which eventually stretched from Egypt and the Balkans in the west to Central Asia and the Indus Valley in the east.
Parmys was a Persian princess, the only daughter of Bardiya (Smerdis), son of Cyrus the Great. She was the granddaughter of Cyrus the Great, and Cassandane.
Masistes was a Persian prince of the Achaemenid Dynasty, son of king Darius I and of his wife Atossa, and full brother of king Xerxes I. He was satrap (governor) of Bactria during his brother's reign, where he attempted to start a revolt in 478 BC.
The Battle of Opis was the last major military engagement between the Achaemenid Persian Empire and the Neo-Babylonian Empire, which took place in September 539 BC, during the Persian invasion of Mesopotamia. At the time, Babylonia was the last major power in Western Asia that was not yet under Persian control. The battle was fought in or near the strategic riverside city of Opis, located north of the capital city of Babylon in modern-day Iraq, and resulted in a decisive victory for Persia. Shortly afterwards, the Babylonian city of Sippar surrendered to Persian forces, who then supposedly entered Babylon without facing any further resistance. The Persian king Cyrus the Great was subsequently proclaimed as the king of Babylonia and its subject territories, thus ending its independence and incorporating the entirety of the fallen Neo-Babylonian Empire into the greater Achaemenid Empire.
The Twenty-seventh Dynasty of Egypt, also known as the First Egyptian Satrapy, was a province (Satrapy) of the Achaemenid Persian Empire between 525 BC and 404 BC. It was founded by Cambyses II, the King of Persia, after the Battle of Pelusium and the Achaemenid conquest of Egypt, and his subsequent crowning as Pharaoh of Egypt. It was disestablished upon the rebellion and crowning of Amyrtaeus as Pharaoh. A second period of Achaemenid rule in Egypt occurred under the Thirty-first Dynasty of Egypt.
Arsames was an Achaemenid satrap of ancient Egypt during the 5th century BC, at the time of the 27th Dynasty of Egypt.
The Amyrgians were a Saka tribe.
The Achaemenid Empire or Achaemenian Empire, also known as the First Persian Empire, was the ancient Iranian empire founded by Cyrus the Great of the Achaemenid dynasty in 550 BC. Based in modern-day Iran, it was the largest empire by that point in history, spanning a total of 5.5 million square kilometres. The empire spanned from the Balkans and Egypt in the west, West Asia as the base, the majority of Central Asia to the northeast, and the Indus Valley to the southeast.
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