What is happening in Middle East in 500BCE
The history of the Middle East over the past 500 years or so has been one of the imperial powers following one another in succession: first the Assyrians, then the Babylonians and Medes, and now the Persian empire, the largest state in the history of the Ancient World.
The conquest of this huge empire was the achievement of the Persian king Cyrus the Great, the first great ruler of the Achaemenid dynasty (hence another common name for the state he founded is the Achaemenid empire).
His successor, Darius the Great now sits on the Persian throne and is reorganizing the empire along more centralized lines. The Persian empire now covers the entire region and beyond. The Lydians, Phrygians and Ionian Greeks of Asia Minor, the Phoenicians and Jews (newly restored to their homeland) of Syria and the Levant, the Egyptians, the Babylonians of Mesopotamia, and the different Iranian peoples, are now all under one regime.
This succession of great empires – and the policy that the Assyrians and Babylonians pursued of re-settling conquered peoples in scattered groups throughout their territories – has resulted in the upheaval of populations on a vast scale. As a result, old languages have vanished and Aramaean has become the lingua-franca of the region. With its simple-to-learn alphabet, this has greatly stimulated international trade and inter-regional communications.
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