Cyrus the Great: The Persian King Who United an Empire and Freed the Captive (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9798189162473)

In 1879, an archaeologist digging through the ruins of Babylon uncovered a small clay cylinder that would confirm what historians had long suspected but could never prove. A Persian king, buried more than two thousand years earlier, had left behind his own account of conquering one of the ancient world's greatest cities, and instead of describing plunder and destruction, he wrote of freeing captives and restoring the gods of a people he had just defeated.

That king was Cyrus the Great, and this book tells the story of how he built the largest empire the ancient world had yet seen, and did it in less than a single generation. Beginning with the older powers that shaped the region long before Cyrus was born, the rise and fall of Assyria, the slow emergence of the Medes and Persians from the margins of Near Eastern politics, this book follows Cyrus from his modest beginnings as a vassal king to his overthrow of his own grandfather, his defeat of the fabulously wealthy Croesus of Lydia, and his historic, nearly bloodless conquest of Babylon.

Along the way, readers will meet the wise adviser who tried to warn Croesus against war, the queen who may have brought Cyrus's remarkable career to its end, and the scribes, historians, and scripture writers across three different civilizations who all found reason to admire a conqueror they might otherwise have feared. Drawing on Babylonian chronicles, the writings of Herodotus and Xenophon, biblical testimony, and the Cyrus Cylinder itself, this book traces both what Cyrus accomplished and how historians have pieced his story together from sources that do not always agree.

Cyrus's reign matters for reasons that extend well beyond the size of the empire he built. He offers a genuinely rare case of a conqueror remembered fondly even by the descendants of those he conquered, a ruler whose approach to power still raises questions worth asking today about tolerance, governance, and what it actually takes to hold together an empire built from dozens of different peoples and beliefs. Readers will come away with a clearer understanding of the ancient Near East before Persia's rise, a grounded sense of what can and cannot be verified about Cyrus's life, and a genuine appreciation for why this particular king was remembered so differently from nearly every other conqueror of his age.

Whether you are new to ancient Persian history or already familiar with the broader sweep of the ancient Near East, this book offers a clear, engaging, and carefully sourced account of the man who founded the Achaemenid Empire and the world that made his rise possible. Step into the story of Cyrus the Great, and discover why, twenty five centuries later, his reputation still endures.