Gide. I'm Gary Stevens.

And welcome to the second series of the History in the Bible podcast.

More of the history in more of the books in all the Bibles.

Episode 2.4, Leaving Babylon Part 2.

Cyrus and the Mystery of Shesh Bazaar.

In the last episode of the History in the Bible, I introduced our main sources for the return,

the books of Ezra and Nehemiah and their complex textual history.

Let's get into the history of the return in detail.

Our first players are the Medes and Persians, Indo-Europeans who emerged from the Iranian plateau

south of the Caspian Sea.

The Medes only appear on the historical stage late in Assyrian times, after 800 BC.

According to the Greek historian Herodotus, at their height, the Medes controlled a region extending from Afghanistan, through the area north

of Assyria, to parts of Anatolia, modern Turkey. The Medes and Persians were so closely related

that later Greek historians had difficulty telling them apart. In 550 BC, the king of the Median Empire, Astiagis, fell out with his grandson and vassal, Cyrus II,

king of his small southern neighbour, Persia.

To everyone's surprise, Cyrus won the subsequent battles and emerged as the ruler of a unified empire

of the Medes and Persians. He was to become known to history as Cyrus the Great. To his friends,

he was known as King of the Universe, the Great King, the powerful king, king of Babylon, king of Schumer and Akkad,

king of the four quarters of the world, king of the city of Anshan, the perpetual seed of kingship,

whose reign Marduk and Nabu love, and with whose kingship to their joy, they concern themselves.

He also had an extensive McDonald's franchise and ran the finest hotel chain in the entire Middle East.

Cyrus moved further west into Anatolia, conquering the old kingdom of Lydia and its king Cresas, he of unimaginable wealth.

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