capture Nineveh in 612 BC, which resulted in the eventual collapse of the Neo-Assyrian
Empire by 605 BC.[65] The Medes were subsequently able to establish their Median
kingdom (with Ecbatana as their royal centre) beyond their original homeland and had
eventually a territory stretching roughly from northeastern Iran to the Halys
River in Anatolia. After the fall of the Assyrian Empire, between 616 BC and 605 BC, a
unified Median state was formed, which, together with Babylonia, Lydia, and Egypt,
became one of the four major powers of the ancient Near East
Later on, in 550 BC, Cyrus the Great, would overthrow the leading Median rule, and
conquer Kingdom of Lydia and the Babylonian Empire after which he established
the Achaemenid Empire (or the First Persian Empire), while his successors would
dramatically extend its borders. At its greatest extent, the Achaemenid Empire would
encompass swaths of territory across three continents, namely Europe, Africa and Asia,
stretching from the Balkans and Eastern Europe proper in the west, to the Indus
Valley in the east. The largest empire of ancient history, with their base
in Persis (although the main capital was located in Babylon) the Achaemenids would
rule much of the known ancient world for centuries. This First Persian Empire was
equally notable for its successful model of a centralised, bureaucratic administration
(through satraps under a king) and a government working to the profit of its subjects,
for building infrastructure such as a postal system and road systems and the use of
an official language across its territories and a large professional army and civil
services (inspiring similar systems in later empires),[66] and for emancipation of slaves
including the Jewish exiles in Babylon, and is noted in Western history as the antagonist
of the Greek city states during the Greco-Persian Wars. The Mausoleum at
Halicarnassus, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, was built in the empire
as well.
The Greco-Persian Wars resulted in the Persians being forced to withdraw from
their European territories, setting the direct further course of history of Greece and the
rest of Europe. More than a century later, a prince of Macedon (which itself was a
subject to Persia from the late 6th century BC up to the First Persian invasion of Greece)