Median Empire
The Median Empire was an ancient empire centered on the Iranian plateau.
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History
The Medes were a tribal society that was settled in the Iranian plateau by the 1st millennium BCE. The earliest records are from the Neo-Assyrian Empire, which by the reign of Sargon II in the 720s BCE controlled all of Media.
Mythically Deioces united the Medes and established a Median kingdom.
When Ashurbanipal died in 631 BCE, the empire began to dissolve. A Median kingdom certainly emerged by this time, and Cyaxares built it into a massive empire that stretched from the Halys River in Anatolia, south to the Persian Gulf, and east into Central Asia.