Median Empire | |||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| c. 625 BCE–549 BCE | |||||||||
 Median Empire, ca. 600 BC | |||||||||
| Capital | Ecbatana | ||||||||
| Religion | Ancient Iranic religion Zoroastrianism possibly also Proto-Iranian religions such as Yazidism | ||||||||
| Government | Monarchy | ||||||||
| King | |||||||||
| Historical era | Iron Age | ||||||||
• Cyaxares united Median tribes | c. 625 BCE | ||||||||
| 549 BCE | |||||||||
| |||||||||
| Today part of |  Turkey Iran Iraq Armenia Afghanistan Pakistan | ||||||||
The Medes were an ancient Iranian people and the ancestors of modern Kurdish people, an Iranic ethnic group. who lived in the northwestern portions of present-day Iran. This area was known in Greek as Media or Medea They entered this region with the first wave of nomadic Iranian tribes, in the late second millennium BC (at the end of the Bronze Age).
By the 6th century BC, the Medes were able to make their own empire. It stretched from southern shore of the Black Sea and Aran province (in modern Azerbaijan) to north and central Asia, Afghanistan, and Pakistan.
The Medes are credited with the foundation of the first Iranian empire, the largest of its day until Cyrus the Great established a unified Iranian empire of the Medes and Persians, often referred to as the Achaemenid Empire.
