Cyrus I of Anshan

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Cyrus I of Anshan

Cyrus I (Old Persian Kuruš), was King of Anshan

Anshan (Persia)

Anshan , a site on the Iranian plateau, 36 km northwest of modern Shiraz, Iran in the Zagros mountains of the Fars province, southwestern Iran, was one of the early capitals of Elam, from the 3rd millennium BC....
from c. 600 to 580 BC or, according to others, from c. 652 to 600 BC. His name in Modern Persian

Persian language

Greek language

Greek is an Indo-European languages native to the southern Balkan peninsula, the language of the Greek people. It forms an independent branch within Indo-European....
he was called ?????.

Cyrus was an early member of the Achaemenid dynasty. He was apparently a grandson of its founder Achaemenes

Achaemenes

Achaemenes was the eponymous ancestor of the Achaemenid Empire, which ruled Persian Empire between 705 BC and 675 BC. As an eponymous ancestor of the clan, Achaemenes is very often held to be legendary....
and son of Teispes of Anšan

Teispes of Anshan

Teispes was the son of Achaemenes and a List of kings of Persia. He captured the Elamite city of Anshan and called himself "King of the City of An?an", a first step that would lead to the rise of the Persian Empire....
. Teispes' sons reportedly divided the kingdom among them after his death.

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Cyrus I (Old Persian Kuruš), was King of Anshan

Anshan (Persia)

Persian language

Greek language

Achaemenes

Teispes of Anshan

Ariaramnes of Persia

Ariaramnes was a great uncle of Cyrus II of Persia and the grandfather of Darius I, and perhaps the king of Parsa, the ancient core kingdom of Persian Empire....
.

The chronological placement of this event is uncertain. This is due to his suggested but still debated identification with the monarch known as "Kuras of Parsumas". Kuras is first mentioned c. 652 BC. At that year king Shamash-shum-ukin

Shamash-shum-ukin

Shamash-shum-ukin was king of Babylon from 668-648 BC.He was the second son of the Assyrian King Esarhaddon. His elder brother, crown prince Sin-iddina-apla had died in 672, and in his stead the third son Assurbanipal was invested as crown prince and later king of Assyria, while Shamash-shum-ukin remained crown prince of Babylonia....
, of Babylon

Babylon

Babylon was a city-state of ancient Mesopotamia, sometimes considered an empire, the remains of which can be found in present-day Al Hillah, Babil Governorate, Iraq, about 85 kilometers south of Baghdad....
(668 - 648 BC) revolted against his older brother and overlord king

Kings of Assyria

The list of Assyrian kings is compiled from the Assyrian King List, an ancient kingdom in northern Mesopotamia with information added from recent archaeological findings....
Ashurbanipal

Ashurbanipal

Ashurbanipal , the son of Esarhaddon, was the last great monarch of the Neo-Assyrian Empire. He established the first systematically organized library in the ancient Middle East, the Library of Ashurbanipal, which survives in part today at Nineveh....
, of Assyria

Assyria

Assyria was a political state centered on the Upper Tigris river, in Mesopotamia , that came to rule regional empires a number of times in history....
(668 - 627 BC). Cyrus I is mentioned being in a military alliance with the former. The war between the two brothers ended in 648 BC with the defeat and reported suicide

Suicide

Suicide is the intentional taking of one's own life. Many dictionaries also note the metaphorical sense of "willful destruction of one's self-interest"....
of Shamash-shum-ukin.

Cyrus I is mentioned again in 639 BC. At that year Ashurbanibal managed to defeat Elam and became overlord to several of its former allies. Kuras was apparently among them. His elder son "Arukku" was reportedly sent to Assyria to pay tribute

Tribute

A tribute is wealth one party gives to another as a sign of respect or, as was often case in historical contexts, of submission or allegiance....
to its King. Kuras then seems to vanish from historical record. His suggested identification with Cyrus would help connect the Achaemenid dynasty to the major events of the 7th century BC.

Ashurbanipal died in 627 BC. Cyrus presumably continued paying tribute to his sons and successors Ashur-etil-ilani

Ashur-etil-ilani

Ashur-etil-ilani was a kings of Assyria of Assyria ca. . He succeeded his father Ashurbanipal....
(627 - 623 BC) and Sin-shar-ishkun (623 BC - 612 BC). They were both opposed by an alliance led by Cyaxares

Cyaxares

Cyaxares, Hvakhshathra,Xasro or Kayxosrew , the son of King Phraortes, was the first king of Medes .He reorganized and modernized the Median Army, then joined with King Nabopolassar of Babylon....
of the Medes

Medes

The Medes were an Ancient Iranian peoples who lived in the northwestern portions of present-day Iran. This area was known in Greek as Media or Medea ....
(633

630s BC

Events and trends* 636 BC ? Duke Wen of Jin ascends to power in the Jin during the Zhou Dynasty of China.* 632 BC ? Cylon , Athens Nobility, seizes the Acropolis, Athens in a failed attempt to become king....
- 584 BC) and Nabopolassar

Nabopolassar

Nabopolassar was the first king of the Neo-Babylonian Empire.He rose into revolt against the Assyrian Empire in 626 BC, after the last significant Assyrian king, Assur-bani-pal, died in 627 BC....
of Babylon (626 - 605 BC). In 612 BC the two managed to capture the Assyrian capital Nineveh

Nineveh

Nineveh , an "exceeding great city", as it is called in the Book of Jonah, lay on the eastern bank of the Tigris in ancient Assyria, across the river from the modern-day major city of Mosul, Iraq....
. This was effectively the end of the Assyrian Empire though remnants of the Assyrian army

Army

An army , in the broadest sense, is the land-based armed forces of a nation. It may also include other branches of the military such as an air force....
under Ashur-uballit II

Ashur-uballit II

Ashur-uballit II , was the last Kings of Assyria Assyrian empire. He reigned in the last capital city of Harran from 612 BC to 609 BC, having fled Nineveh during its attack by the Babylonian-Medes army in 612 BC....
(612 - 609 BC) continued to resist from Harran

Harran

Harran, also known as Carrhae, is a district of Sanliurfa Province in the southeast of Turkey.A very ancient city which was a major Mesopotamian commercial, cultural, and religious center, Harran is a valuable archaeological site....
.

Media and Babylon soon shared the lands previously controlled by the Assyrians. Anshan apparently fell under the control of the former. Cyrus is considered to have ended his days under the overlordship of either Cyaxares or his son Astyages

Astyages

Astyages ; spelled by Herodotus as Astyages; by Ctesias as Astyigas; by Diodorus as Aspadas; Akkadian language: I?tumegu), was the last king of the Medes, r....
(584 BC - 550 BC). Cyrus was succeeded by his son Cambyses I of Anšan

Cambyses I of Anshan

Cambyses I, Old Persian: Kambujiya, 'the Elder was King of Anshan from c. 580 to 559 BC and was the father of Cyrus the Great . His name in Greek language was ?a???s??, whence the Latin Cambyses....
. His grandson would come to be known as 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....
, creator of the Persian Empire

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....
.

It has been noted that this account of his life and reign would place his early activities more than a century before those of his grandson. This would place his fathering of Cambyses very late in life and his death at an advanced age. It has been argued that Kuras and Cyrus I were separate figures of uncertain relation to each other. The later would have then reigned in the early 6th century BC and his reign would seem rather uneventful. Due to the current lack of sufficient records for this historical period it remains uncertain which theory is closer to the facts.