Topic: the royal house (3)

• PersonAtossa

  Atossa (Old Persian *Utauθā, corresponding to Avestan Hutaosā; lived c. 550 to after 480 BCE) was an Achaemenid queen, the daughter of Cyrus the Great and the mother of Xerxes I. She married in turn her brother Cambyses II, the usurper Bardiya (the 'Smerdis' of the Greek writers), and Darius I,…

• PersonParysatis

  Parysatis (Babylonian Purušatu; Iranian name reconstructed as *Paurušātiš) was a royal woman of the later fifth and early fourth centuries BCE. Ctesias's dynastic tradition makes her a daughter of Artaxerxes I by Andia and the wife and paternal half-sister of Darius II. Xenophon independently…

• Survey essayThe Achaemenid dynasty

  The Achaemenid dynasty was the royal house that ruled the first Persian empire from its founding by Cyrus the Great about 550 BCE to its conquest by Alexander of Macedon in 330 BCE. Thirteen kings ruled across those two centuries, from Cyrus and his son Cambyses, through Darius the Great and…