A report on Achaemenid Empire and Cyrus Cylinder

600–530 BC; Kūruš), commonly known as Cyrus the Great and also called Cyrus the Elder by the Greeks, was the founder of the Achaemenid Empire, the first Persian empire.

In the 1970s, the last Shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, identified Cyrus' famous proclamation inscribed onto the Cyrus Cylinder as the oldest-known declaration of human rights, and the Cylinder has since been popularized as such.

Beginning with Nabopolassar's coronation as King of Babylon in 626 BC and being firmly established through the fall of the Neo-Assyrian Empire in 612 BC, the Neo-Babylonian Empire and its ruling Chaldean dynasty were short-lived, conquered after less than a century by the Persian Achaemenid Empire in 539 BC.

The permission to do so was explicitly written in a proclamation, today called the Cyrus Cylinder, wherein Cyrus also justified his conquest of Babylonia as the will of Marduk.

After the fall of the Neo-Babylonian Empire, the city came under the rule of the Achaemenid, Seleucid, Parthian, Roman, and Sassanid empires.

The text found on the Cyrus Cylinder has traditionally been seen by biblical scholars as corroborative evidence of this policy, although the interpretation is disputed because the text identifies only Mesopotamian sanctuaries but makes no mention of Jews, Jerusalem, or Judea.

After the fall of the Neo-Babylonian Empire to the Achaemenid Persian Empire and its founding king Cyrus the Great at the Battle of Opis in 539 BCE, exiled Judeans were permitted by the Persians to return to Judah.

The Cyrus Cylinder, an ancient tablet on which is written a declaration in the name of Cyrus referring to restoration of temples and repatriation of exiled peoples, has often been taken as corroboration of the authenticity of the biblical decrees attributed to Cyrus, but other scholars point out that the cylinder's text is specific to Babylon and Mesopotamia and makes no mention of Judah or Jerusalem.

The country is home to one of the world's oldest civilizations, beginning with the formation of the Elamite kingdoms in the fourth millennium BC. It was first unified by the Medes, an ancient Iranian people, in the seventh century BC, and reached its territorial height in the sixth century BC, when Cyrus the Great founded the Achaemenid Persian Empire, which became one of the largest empires in history and has been described as the world's first effective superpower.

The Cyrus Cylinder, which is known as "the first charter of human rights", is often seen as a reflection of the questions and thoughts expressed by Zoroaster, and developed in Zoroastrian schools of the Achaemenid era.

Nabonidus (Babylonian cuneiform: Nabû-naʾid, meaning "May Nabu be exalted" or "Nabu is praised") was the last king of the Neo-Babylonian Empire, ruling from 556 BC to the fall of Babylon to the Achaemenid Empire under Cyrus the Great in 539 BC. Nabonidus was the last native ruler of ancient Mesopotamia, the end of his reign marking the end of thousands of years of Sumero-Akkadian states, kingdoms and empires.

The Dynastic Prophecy and the Cyrus Cylinder offer similar accounts, criticising Nabonidus and his policies, but not characterising him as mad.

The Fall of Babylon denotes the end of the Neo-Babylonian Empire after it was conquered by the Achaemenid Empire in 539 BCE.

As Cyrus vowed in his cylinder to respect the people of Babylon, and since he liberated the incarcerated Jews to be returned to their homeland, he was viewed as the legitimate successor of the ancient Babylonian kings and became popular in Babylon itself, in contrast to Nabonidus.