The Persians were located between Media and the Persian Gulf, but very little is known of their history until the time of Cyrus, when the kingdoms of Israel and Judah had been brought to an end. 2Ch 36:22-23. Apparently they were a union of tribes, the ancestors of Cyrus being the chiefs of the leading clan. They conquered Elam (’ANSHAM’ on the monuments). Media ruled them in early times, but under Cyrus the yoke was shaken off, and, together with the Medes, they formed the second Gentile empire, succeeding that of Babylon. In the great image of Dan. 2 Nebuchadnezzar was represented by the head of gold. The empire that followed was an ’inferior’ one, represented by the breast and arms of silver. Dan 2:31-39. This refers to the Medo-Persian kingdom. It was inferior in that the nobles concurred in the king’s laws, and the king could not alter them: the power was depreciated from gold. It is further described as a bear, and it raised up itself on one side, and it had three ribs in its mouth between the teeth, an emblem of its power and rapacity. To it was said, "Arise, devour much flesh. " Dan 7:5.
The history in Dan. 5 relates that it was Darius the Mede that ’took the kingdom.’ He was the first head of the empire, and his taking the kingdom does not clash with Cyrus taking the city of Babylon, which is implied in Isa 45:1-2. See BABYLON. On the death of Darius, Cyrus succeeded and reigned in Babylon, and from thence the Persian element prevailed in the empire. The Persians are mentioned before the Medes in Est 1:19. This agrees also with the above passage in Dan. 7 which represents the bear as raising itself on one side.
The Medo-Persian empire is further represented as a ram with two horns, one higher than the other, though it came up last. It pushed westward, northward, and southward, and no beast could stand before it, nor deliver out of its hand. This again exactly corresponds with the above description; the one horn higher than the other representing Persia. The same chapter (Dan 8:6-7) speaks of a he-goat that rushed upon the ram and smote it and cast it to the ground and stamped upon it; and none could deliver it. This foretold the destruction of the Persian empire by that of Greece in the person of Alexander the Great.
For the dealings of the Persian kings with Israel, see AHASUERUS, and the names of the other kings mentioned in Ezra, Nehemiah, and Esther. The following table gives the succession of the kings, with approximate dates:
Historical Names. Began to reign about B.C. Scripture Names.
1. Cyaxares, king of Media 633 Ahasuerus: Dan 9:1.
2. Astyages, his son, last king of Media 593 Probably Darius the Mede.
3. Cyrus, king of Persia 558 Cyrus: 2Ch 36:20-23.
Babylon taken 538
Cyrus reigns at Babylon 536 Cyrus: Ezr 1:1.
4. Cambyses, his son 529 Ahasuerus: Ezr 4:6.
5. Gomates, a Mede,
who personified Smerdis 522 Artaxerxes: Ezr 4:7.
6. Darius Hystaspes 521 Darius: Ezr 5:5; Hag 1:1 etc.
7. Xerxes, his son 485 Ahasuerus of Esther.
8. Artabanus (seven mouths) 475
9. Artaxerxes, Longimanus 474 Artaxerxes: Ezr 7:1; Neh 2:1.
10. Xerxes 2. (two months) 425
11. Sogdianus 425
12. Darius 2, Ochus or Nothus 424 Darius: Neh 12:22.
13. Artaxerxes 2, Mnemon 405
14. Ochus, or Artaxerxes 3 359
15. Arses 338
16. Darius 3. (Codomanus) 336
Defeated by Alexander 331 end of the Persian empire.
The above dates are those usually given to the kings of Persia, except Nos. 8 and 9, the common dates of which Usher and Hengstenberg have proved to be incorrect. See SEVENTY WEEKS. The kingdom of Babylon was smaller in extent than that of Persia. This latter included what is now known as Turkey in Asia, Persia, Afghanistan and Baluchistan, as far as the river Indus, with a good portion of Egypt. According to the language of scripture it had ’devoured much flesh.’ Est 1:1 speaks of a hundred and twenty-seven provinces. See DANIEL and ESTHER.
PERSIA, PERSIANS.—The Persians, when they appeared first in history, were the southern branch of the Iranians who had migrated, in the 10th or 9th cent. b.c., from the tableland of Turkestan westward and southward. They were for long subject to the more numerous and powerful northern branch (see Medes), from whom, however, they were separated by the country of Elam, through their settlement in the district later called Persis, east of the Persian Gulf. Southern Elam they acquired before b.c. 600. Their prince, Cyrus, the second of that name among the ruling family of the Achæmenides, threw off the Median yoke and deposed his sovereign Astyages in b.c. 550. In 545 the kingdom of Lydia fell to him by the capture of Sardis under its king Crœsus. In 539 Babylon surrendered to his troops without fighting, after a two weeks’ campaign, and became thenceforth one of the Persian capitals. Thus the Babylonian empire was added to the Medo-Persian. Cf. Is 13, 14, 21 (where in v. 6 ‘Elam’ stands for Persia, into which it was incorporated; see above) 41, 44–47, Jer 50:1-46; Jer 51:1-64.
Thus was founded the greatest W. Asian empire of antiquity, whose power, moreover, was upon the whole consistently employed for the protection of the subject peoples, including in the great satrapy ‘beyond the River’ the Hebrew community in Palestine which was reestablished by the generosity of Cyrus himself (see Ezra and Neh. passim). Of the kings who succeeded Cyrus there are named in OT, Darius Hystaspis (b.c. 521–486), his son Xerxes (486–465, the ‘Ahasuerus’ of Esther), Artaxerxes i. (465–424). See these names in their alphabetic places. To them is possibly to be added Cambyses, son of Cyrus the Great, made king of Babylon in 538, and thus corresponding to the misnomer’ Darius the Mede’ of Dan 6:1 ff; Dan 9:1; Dan 11:1.
J. F. M‘Curdy.