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Cyaxares II was a king of the Medes whose reign is described by the Greek historian Xenophon. Some theories have equated this figure with the "Darius the Mede" named in the Book of Daniel. He is not mentioned in the histories of Herodotus or Ctesias, and many scholars doubt that he actually existed. The question of his existence impacts on whether the kingdom of the Medes merged peacefully with that of the Persians in about 537 BC, as narrated by Xenophon, or was subjugated in the rebellion of the Persians against Cyrus' grandfather in 559 BC, a date derived from Herodotus (1.214) and almost universally accepted by current scholarship.
The Neo-Assyrian Empire was the fourth and penultimate stage of ancient Assyrian history. Beginning with the accession of Adad-nirari II in 911 BC, the Neo-Assyrian Empire grew to dominate the ancient Near East and parts of Caucasus, North Africa and East Mediterranean throughout much of the 9th to 7th centuries BC, becoming the largest empire in history up to that point. Because of its geopolitical dominance and ideology based in world domination, the Neo-Assyrian Empire is by many researchers regarded to have been the first world empire in history. It influenced other empires of the ancient world culturally, administratively, and militarily, including the Babylonians, the Achaemenids, and the Seleucids. At its height, the empire was the strongest military power in the world and ruled over all of Mesopotamia, the Levant and Egypt, as well as parts of Anatolia, Arabia and modern-day Iran and Armenia.
Sargon of Akkad, also known as Sargon the Great, was the first ruler of the Akkadian Empire, known for his conquests of the Sumerian city-states in the 24th to 23rd centuries BC. He is sometimes identified as the first person in recorded history to rule over an empire.
The timeline of ancient Assyria can be broken down into three main eras: the Old Assyrian period, Middle Assyrian Empire, and Neo-Assyrian Empire. Modern scholars typically also recognize an Early period preceding the Old Assyrian period and a post-imperial period succeeding the Neo-Assyrian period.
Media was a political entity centered in Ecbatana that existed from the 7th century BCE until the mid-6th century BCE and is believed to have dominated a significant portion of the Iranian plateau, preceding the powerful Achaemenid Empire. The frequent interference of the Assyrians in the Zagros region led to the process of unifying the Median tribes. By 612 BCE, the Medes became strong enough to overthrow the declining Assyrian Empire in alliance with the Babylonians. However, contemporary scholarship tends to be skeptical about the existence of a united Median kingdom or state, at least for most of the 7th century BCE.
References
- ↑ History of the Ancient World: East. Greece (in Russian). Olma Media Group. p. 88. ISBN 978-5-224-02115-4.
- ↑ Watson, Charles Fulkes (1885). Darius the Median identified; or, The true chronology of the ancient monarchies recovered. p. 179.
- ↑ Lange, Johann Peter (1876). A Commentary on the Holy Scriptures: Ezekil, Daniel. C. Scribner & Company. p. 36.
- ↑ Zöckler, Otto (2007-05-01). The Books of the Prophet Daniel: an Exegetical and Doctrinal Commentary. Wipf and Stock Publishers. p. 36. ISBN 978-1-7252-1965-6.
- ↑ Diakonoff, Igor M. (1951). Assyro-Babylonian sources on the history of Urartu 257–356 / Journal of ancient history № 2 (36) (in Russian). Moscow: Academy of Sciences of the Soviet Union. pp. 322, 334.
- ↑ Abstracts of research papers (in Russian). Moscow: Academy of Sciences of the Soviet Union. 1945. p. 25.
- ↑ Dyakonov, Mikhail (1961). Outline of the history of ancient Iran (in Russian). Moscow: Academy of Sciences of the Soviet Union. p. 359.