and Cimmerians, helped the Medes to 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) later known by the name of Alexander the Great,
overthrew the incumbent Persian king, by which the Achaemenid Empire was ended.
Old Persian is attested in the Behistun Inscription (c. 519 BC), recording a proclamation by Darius the
Great.[67] In southwestern Iran, the Achaemenid kings usually wrote their inscriptions in trilingual form
(Elamite, Babylonian and Old Persian)[68] while elsewhere other languages were used. The administrative
languages were Elamite in the early period, and later Imperial Aramaic,[69] as well as Greek, making it a
widely used bureaucratic language.[70] Even though the Achaemenids had extensive contacts with the
Greeks and vice versa, and had conquered many of the Greek-speaking area's both in Europe and Asia
Minor during different periods of the empire, the native Old Iranian sources provide no indication of
Greek linguistic evidence.[70] However, there is plenty of evidence (in addition to the accounts of
Herodotus) that Greeks, apart from being deployed and employed in the core regions of the empire,
also evidently lived and worked in the heartland of the Achaemenid Empire, namely Iran.[70] For
example, Greeks were part of the various ethnicities that constructed Darius' palace in Susa, apart from
the Greek inscriptions found nearby there, and one short Persepolis tablet written in Greek.[70]
The early inhabitants of the Achaemenid Empire appear to have adopted the religion
of Zoroastrianism.[71] The Baloch who speak a west Iranian language relate an oral tradition regarding
their migration from Aleppo, Syria around the year 1000 AD, whereas linguistic evidence
links Balochi to Kurmanji, Soranî, Gorani and Zazaki language.[72]