The natural inference is, that those Aryan tribes who were subsequently called Persians, had not yet descended so far to the south, but were still clinging to the steeps of the Taurus. A little later, the inscriptions of Shalmaneser shew that they had reached Armenia, but, as only petty chiefs recorded, it is probable that their government had not yet crystallized into a settled monarchy. Later however, under Sennacherib, the Perso-Aryans had reached the Zagros, and, thence, their further descent by the denies of the Bakhtyari mountains into Persis was comparatively easy and rapid, though their migrations perhaps ( il not ceas'e till near the close of the great empire of Assyria.
The Aryan Medes had, on the other hand, held for many years a prominent place among the Western Asiatic populations, and it is likely that the Persian tribes acknowledged the superiority of the Median monarch, much as at the present day the Khedive of Egypt acknowledges the supreme rule of the Sultan of Turkey, in other words, that the ruler of Persis was the chief feudatory of the Median empire. It must not however be forgotten, that Darius the son of Hystaspes claims for his own house, the possession of a kingdom with eight immediate predecessors, he himself being the ninth, a claim he could hardly have put forth publicly had there been at the time any doubt about it. The Median empire appears to have been established about B.C. 647, just when the adjoining nations were marshalling their forces to put an end to Nineveh, which had so long ruled them with a rod of iron ; while, from this state- ment of Darius, it is further probable that there were tributary kings in Persis up to about the same period.
Darius himself asserts that the first king of Persia was called Achaemenes, a statement confirmed by the well- known fact that the Achaemenidae were acknowledged as the leading family among the Persians. Indeed, aS Professor Rawlinson has well remarked, in the East, an ethnic name is very often derived from that of one person, as in the case of Midianite, Moabite, from Midian and Moab. But though there can be little doubt that Persian history may be deemed historical from the time of Cambyses, the father of Cyrus, there is nothing really worth recording till we come to Cyrus himself, under whom Persia takes the place in Western Asia, erst held by the Shemitic empires of Assyria and Babylon.
How Cyrus attained to this pre-eminence has been much discussed ; but we do not really want more than the notice in the Bible, which is remarkably clear and graphic : " Then I lifted up mine eyes, and saw, and, behold, there stood before the river a ram which had two horns : and the two horns were high ; but one was higher than the other, and the higher came up last. I saw the ram pushing westward, and northward, and southward ; so that no beasts might stand before him, neither was there any that could deliver out of his hand ; but he did according to his will, and became great. " And again, " The ram which thou sawest having two horns are the kings of Media and Persia."
Growing Human Population in Iran Plateau
