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Atossa (also known as Hattuosa or Hutaosa) was a Queen consort
Queen consort

A queen consort is the title given to the wife of a reigning Monarch. Queens consort usually share their husbands' Royal and noble ranks and hold the feminine equivalent of their husbands' monarchical titles....
 of Persia
Persian Empire

The 'Persian Empire' was a series of successive Iranian or Persianization empires that ruled over the Iranian plateau, the original Persian homeland, and beyond in Southwest Asia, South Asia, Central Asia and the Caucasus....
.

She was born in 550 BCE, the daughter of Cyrus the Great
Cyrus the Great

Cyrus the Great , , also known as Cyrus II of Persia and Cyrus the Elder, was a Persian people Shah . He was the founder of the Persian Empire under the Achaemenid dynasty, an empire, perhaps the most wealthy and magnificent in history....
 and a sister (or half-sister) of Cambyses II, whom she married. Atossa then married Darius I in 522 BCE after Darius, with the help of nobelman Otanes, overthrew a man claiming to be Smerdis. Xerxes I was one of her children with Darius.

Atossa probably died before Xerxes came to power, although Herodotus
Herodotus

Herodotus of Halicarnassus was a Greeks historian who lived in the 5th century BC and is regarded as the "Father of History" in Western culture....
 believed she was still alive during Xerxes' reign.






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Atossa (also known as Hattuosa or Hutaosa) was a Queen consort
Queen consort

A queen consort is the title given to the wife of a reigning Monarch. Queens consort usually share their husbands' Royal and noble ranks and hold the feminine equivalent of their husbands' monarchical titles....
 of Persia
Persian Empire

The 'Persian Empire' was a series of successive Iranian or Persianization empires that ruled over the Iranian plateau, the original Persian homeland, and beyond in Southwest Asia, South Asia, Central Asia and the Caucasus....
.

She was born in 550 BCE, the daughter of Cyrus the Great
Cyrus the Great

Cyrus the Great , , also known as Cyrus II of Persia and Cyrus the Elder, was a Persian people Shah . He was the founder of the Persian Empire under the Achaemenid dynasty, an empire, perhaps the most wealthy and magnificent in history....
 and a sister (or half-sister) of Cambyses II, whom she married. Atossa then married Darius I in 522 BCE after Darius, with the help of nobelman Otanes, overthrew a man claiming to be Smerdis. Xerxes I was one of her children with Darius.

Atossa probably died before Xerxes came to power, although Herodotus
Herodotus

Herodotus of Halicarnassus was a Greeks historian who lived in the 5th century BC and is regarded as the "Father of History" in Western culture....
 believed she was still alive during Xerxes' reign. Aeschylus
Aeschylus

Aeschylus was an Ancient Greece playwright. He is often recognized as the father or the founder of tragedy, and is the earliest of the three Greek tragedy whose Play survive extant, the others being Sophocles and Euripides....
 also included her as a central character in his tragedy The Persians
The Persians

The Persians is an Classical Athens tragedy by the Classical Greece playwright Aeschylus. First produced in 472 BCE, it is the oldest surviving play in the history of theatre....
.

Very little is known about the real Atossa, although it is speculated that she came from a Zoroastrian
Zoroastrianism

Zoroastrianism is the religion and philosophy based on the teachings ascribed to the prophet Zoroaster, after whom the religion is named. The term Zoroastrianism is in general usage, essentially synonymous with Mazdaism, i.e., the worship of Ahura Mazda, exalted by Zoroaster as the supreme divine authority....
 family, as Atossa is a figure from Zoroastrian scripture.

Literary references

Atoosa is one of the major characters in the Gore Vidal
Gore Vidal

Gore Vidal is an United States novelist, screenwriter, playwright, essayist, short story writer and politician. Early in his career he wrote the ground-breaking The City and the Pillar , which outraged mainstream critics as one of the first major American novels to feature unambiguous homosexuality....
 work, Creation
Creation (novel)

Creation is an epic historical fiction novel by Gore Vidal which was published in 1981. In 2002, he published a restored version, adding four chapters that a previous editor had cut....
. The book's account of how Darius ascended the throne has been disputed.