Cyrus the Great

Conquered Media, Lydia and Babylon to build the largest empire the world had yet seen, and allowed the exiled Judeans to return home.

Lived	c. 600 BC – 530 BC
Known as	Founder of the Achaemenid Persian Empire
Birthplace or main place	Pasargadae
Places on the map	Babylon

Map of the world around Cyrus the Great in 500 BC — Border map for 500 BC. See Europe in 500 BC.

See the world of Cyrus the Great in the interactive map

Embed this interactive map on your site

Free to use on blogs, school pages and course sites. Copy the code below; please keep the credit line.

<iframe src="https://chronicamaps.com/?embed=1#yBC500-h-cyrus-the-great-l-en" width="100%" height="520" style="border:0;max-width:100%" loading="lazy" title="Cyrus the Great"></iframe>
<p style="font-size:13px;margin:4px 0 0">Interactive map: <a href="https://chronicamaps.com/en/person/cyrus-the-great">Cyrus the Great</a> · Chronica Maps</p>

Cyrus the Great lived before the earliest border map (500 BC); the map above shows the oldest snapshot available.

Events in his lifetime

Year	Event	Where
539 BC	Cyrus the Great of Persia takes Babylon	Babylon
587 BC	Nebuchadnezzar destroys Jerusalem and the Judeans are deported to Babylon	Babylon

Contemporaries

Lived	Person
c. 634 BC – 562 BC	Nebuchadnezzar II	King of Babylon
c. 563 BC – 483 BC	Siddhartha Gautama, the Buddha	Founder of Buddhism
551 BC – 479 BC	Confucius	Philosopher and teacher
550 BC – 486 BC	Darius I	King of Persia

Last updated 9 November 2026. Sources: border data from historical-basemaps, land and rivers from Natural Earth; texts written for Chronica Maps from standard reference works. How we make the maps.

Cyrus the Great

Events in his lifetime

Further reading

Contemporaries