Cyrus the Great 𐎤𐎢𐎽𐎢𐏁
Founder of the Persian Empire; his edict returned the Jews from exile
He took Babylon in 539 BCE, and Ecbatana and Sardis before it.
A divergence of reckonings. He stands here by the academic count: the edict falls in 3223 AM (538 BCE), while on the Jewish track the return stands at 3390 AM, by Seder Olam. The gap is about a hundred and sixty-five years and holds through the whole Persian period, closing by the time of Alexander.
His birth year is disputed: Wikipedia gives c. 600, Britannica 590–580. His death, in December 530, is fixed by cuneiform documents. And one more thing: the identification of the Persian kings of the Tanakh with the kings of the Greek and cuneiform sources is itself contested, because the tradition knows fewer kings in this period than academic history does.
On the timeline
Places
Sources
Tanakh
- Ezra 1:1–4; 2 Chronicles 36:22–23; Isaiah 45:1 — the edict of return; mashiaḥ said of a gentile king
Documents of the period
- The Cyrus Cylinder, British Museum — the restoration of the peoples' shrines — a policy, not a favour to the Jews alone
Basis: documents and evidence.