| Millennium: | 1st millennium BC |
|---|---|
| Centuries: | |
| Decades: | |
| Years: |
| 539 BC by topic |
| Politics |
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| Categories |
| Gregorian calendar | 539 BC DXXXVIII BC |
| Ab urbe condita | 215 |
| Ancient Egypt era | XXVI dynasty, 126 |
| - Pharaoh | Amasis II, 32 |
| Ancient Greek era | 60th Olympiad, year 2 |
| Assyrian calendar | 4212 |
| Balinese saka calendar | N/A |
| Bengali calendar | −1131 |
| Berber calendar | 412 |
| Buddhist calendar | 6 |
| Burmese calendar | −1176 |
| Byzantine calendar | 4970–4971 |
| Chinese calendar | 辛酉年 (Metal Rooster) 2158 or 2098 — to — 壬戌年 (Water Dog) 2159 or 2099 |
| Coptic calendar | −822 – −821 |
| Discordian calendar | 628 |
| Ethiopian calendar | −546 – −545 |
| Hebrew calendar | 3222–3223 |
| Hindu calendars | |
| - Vikram Samvat | −482 – −481 |
| - Shaka Samvat | N/A |
| - Kali Yuga | 2562–2563 |
| Holocene calendar | 9462 |
| Iranian calendar | 1160 BP – 1159 BP |
| Islamic calendar | 1196 BH – 1195 BH |
| Javanese calendar | N/A |
| Julian calendar | N/A |
| Korean calendar | 1795 |
| Minguo calendar | 2450 before ROC 民前2450年 |
| Nanakshahi calendar | −2006 |
| Thai solar calendar | 4–5 |
| Tibetan calendar | 阴金鸡年 (female Iron-Rooster) −412 or −793 or −1565 — to — 阳水狗年 (male Water-Dog) −411 or −792 or −1564 |
The year 539 BC was a year of the pre-Julian Roman calendar. In the Roman Empire, it was known as year 215 Ab urbe condita . The denomination 539 BC for this year has been used since the early-medieval period, when the Anno Domini calendar era became the prevalent method in Europe for naming years.
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The 6th century BC started on the first day of 600 BC and ended on the last day of 501 BC.
Opis was an ancient Babylonian city near the Tigris, not far from modern Baghdad. Akkadian and Greek texts indicate that it was located on the east side of the Tigris, near the Diyala River. The precise site of the city has been uncertain for a long time, though at one point thought to be near or under the city of Seleucia. Recent geographical surveys of ancient Mesopotamia tentatively identify Opis with the mound called Tall al-Mujailāt, 20 miles (32 km) southeast in a straight line from central Baghdad and 47 miles (76 km) northeast in a straight line from ancient Babylon.
Belshazzar was the son and crown prince of Nabonidus, the last king of the Neo-Babylonian Empire. Through his mother, he might have been a grandson of Nebuchadnezzar II, though this is not certain and the claims to kinship with Nebuchadnezzar may have originated from royal propaganda.
Nabonidus was the last king of the Neo-Babylonian Empire, ruling from 556 BC to the fall of Babylon to the Achaemenid Empire under Cyrus the Great in 539 BC. Nabonidus was the last native ruler of ancient Mesopotamia, the end of his reign marking the end of thousands of years of Sumero-Akkadian states, kingdoms and empires. He was also the last independent king of Babylon. Regarded as one of the most vibrant and individualistic rulers of his time, Nabonidus is characterised by some scholars as an unorthodox religious reformer and as the first archaeologist.
Cyrus II of Persia, commonly known as Cyrus the Great, was the founder of the Achaemenid Empire, the First Persian Empire. Under his rule the empire embraced all of the previous civilized states of the ancient Near East, expanded vastly and eventually conquered most of Western Asia and much of Central Asia. Spanning from the Mediterranean Sea and Hellespont in the west to the Indus River in the east, the empire created by Cyrus was the largest the world had yet seen. At its maximum extent under his successors, the Achaemenid Empire stretched from parts of the Balkans and Southeast Europe proper in the west to the Indus Valley in the east.
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, 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 Neo-Babylonian Empire or Second Babylonian Empire, historically known as the Chaldean Empire, was the last polity ruled by monarchs native to Mesopotamia. Beginning with the coronation of Nabopolassar as the King of Babylon in 626 BC and being firmly established through the fall of the Neo-Assyrian Empire in 612 BC, the Neo-Babylonian Empire was conquered by the Achaemenid Persian Empire in 539 BC, marking the collapse of the Chaldean dynasty less than a century after its founding.
Eber-Nari, Abar-Nahara עבר-נהרה (Aramaic) or 'Ābēr Nahrā (Syriac) meaning "Beyond the River" or "Across the River" in both the Akkadian and Imperial Aramaic languages of the Neo-Assyrian Empire, i.e., the Western bank of the Euphrates from a Mesopotamian and Persian viewpoint), also referred to as Transeuphratia by modern scholars, was a region of Western Asia and a satrapy of the Neo-Assyrian Empire, Neo-Babylonian Empire and Achaemenid Empire.
Athura, also called Assyria, was a geographical area within the Achaemenid Empire in Upper Mesopotamia from 539 to 330 BC as a military protectorate state. Although sometimes regarded as a satrapy, Achaemenid royal inscriptions list it as a dahyu, a concept generally interpreted as meaning either a group of people or both a country and its people, without any administrative implication.
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 fall of Babylon was the decisive event that marked the total defeat of the Neo-Babylonian Empire to the Achaemenid Persian Empire in 539 BCE.
Babylon is an ancient city located on the lower Euphrates river in southern Mesopotamia. Babylon functioned as the main cultural and political centre of the Akkadian-speaking region of Babylonia, with its rulers establishing two important empires in antiquity, namely the 18th century BC Old Babylonian Empire and the 7th–6th century BC Neo-Babylonian Empire, and the city would also be used as a regional capital of other empires, such as the Achaemenid Empire. Babylon was one of the most important urban centres of the ancient Near East until its decline during the Hellenistic period.
Nebuchadnezzar III, alternatively spelled Nebuchadrezzar III and also known by his original name Nidintu-Bêl, was a rebel king of Babylon in late 522 BC who attempted to restore Babylonia as an independent kingdom and end the rule of the Persian Achaemenid Empire in Mesopotamia. A Babylonian noble of the Zazakku family and the son of a man by the name of Mukīn-zēri or Kîn-Zêr, Nidintu-Bêl took the regnal name Nebuchadnezzar upon his accession to the Babylonian throne and claimed to be a son of Nabonidus, Babylon's last independent king.
King of Sumer and Akkad was a royal title in Ancient Mesopotamia combining the titles of "King of Akkad", the ruling title held by the monarchs of the Akkadian Empire with the title of "King of Sumer". The title simultaneously laid a claim on the legacy and glory of the ancient empire that had been founded by Sargon of Akkad and expressed a claim to rule the entirety of lower Mesopotamia. Despite both of the titles "King of Sumer" and "King of Akkad" having been used by the Akkadian kings, the title was not introduced in its combined form until the reign of the Neo-Sumerian king Ur-Nammu, who created it in an effort to unify the southern and northern parts of lower Mesopotamia under his rule. The older Akkadian kings themselves might have been against linking Sumer and Akkad in such a way.
King of the Lands, also interpreted as just King of Lands or the more boastful King of All Lands was a title of great prestige claimed by powerful monarchs in ancient Mesopotamia. Introduced during the Neo-Assyrian Empire, the term mātāti explicitly refers to foreign lands, often beyond the confines of Mesopotamia itself, suggesting that the Assyrian king had the right to govern foreign lands as well as his own.
Akkadian or Mesopotamian royal titulary refers to the royal titles and epithets assumed by monarchs in Ancient Mesopotamia from the Akkadian period to the fall of the Neo-Babylonian Empire, with some scant usage in the later Achaemenid and Seleucid periods. The titles and the order they were presented in varied from king to king, with similarities between kings usually being because of a king's explicit choice to align himself with a predecessor. Some titles, like the Akkadian šar kibrāt erbetti and šar kiššatim and the Neo-Sumerian šar māt Šumeri u Akkadi would remain in use for more than a thousand years through several different empires and others were only used by a single king.
The Statue of Marduk, also known as the Statue of Bêl, was the physical representation of the god Marduk, the patron deity of the ancient city of Babylon, traditionally housed in the city's main temple, the Esagila. There were seven statues of Marduk in Babylon, but 'the' Statue of Marduk generally refers to the god's main statue, placed prominently in the Esagila and used in the city's rituals. This statue was nicknamed the Asullḫi and was made of a type of wood called mēsu and covered with gold and silver.
The post-imperial period was the final stage of ancient Assyrian history, covering the history of the Assyrian heartland from the fall of the Neo-Assyrian Empire in 609 BC to the final sack and destruction of Assur, Assyria's ancient religious capital, by the Sasanian Empire c. AD 240-250, though Assyria was to endure as the geopolitical entity of Asoristan until the mid 7th century AD. There was no single independent Assyrian state during this time, with Assur and other Assyrian cities instead falling under the control of the successive Median, Neo-Babylonian, Achaemenid, Seleucid and Parthian empires. The period was marked by the continuance of ancient Assyrian culture, traditions and religion, despite the lack of an Assyrian kingdom. The ancient Assyrian dialect of the Akkadian language went extinct however, completely replaced by Aramaic by the 5th century BC, a process that had begun during the Neo-Assyrian Empire.
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