A Critical Analysis of Histories of Herodotus Regarding the Ancestry of the Founder of the Achaemenid Civilization

Achaemenids founded an integrated civilization including Babylon, Assyria, Elam, Lydia, Media, Egypt, Greeks of Asia Minor and some parts of India during the sixth to fourth century BC.  The founder of the Achaemenid civilization, Cyrus II, came to power in 559 BC. During 559 to 539 BC, by conquering Ecbatana, Sardis, Babylon and coasts of Asia Minor, Cyrus became the heir of great civilizations of West Asia. Ancestry of Persian Cyrus II, has been one of the most controversial issues of the Achaemenid civilization in the last decades, which brought about different and sometimes opposite ideas. Roots of this challenge would be found in the fundamental written sources related to this period, because in addition to deficiency and limitation, which are characteristics of classical texts of the ancient period, narratives have other problems such as contradiction and paradox; so that, at least, three general different contents would be seen in narratives on this issue. Some narratives consider Cyrus as a Median-Persian. Others believe that his father was a bandit and his mother was a goatherd. Archeological sources call him “Cyrus, King of Anshan”. One of the most important sources about Cyrus II’s ancestry is Herodotus Halicarnassus’s narrative in his first book called Clio, in which he is considered as Persian-Median. This research aims to study and analyze Herodotus’s narrative about the Persian-Median ancestry of Cyrus II. The research method was library descriptive-analytic, using archeological and literary evidence.