Key learning points

1. In Mesopotamia, where Sumer had once flourished, warring city-states continued to vie for supremacy.
2. Cyrus, king of Persian Achaemenids, conquered the kingdom of Medes and the city of Babylon, creating the Persian Empire.
3. Cyrus' son Cambyses went on to conquer Egypt, so that the pharoahs were now controlled by Persia.
4. By 490 BCE, a king named Darius ruled over the Persian Empire, adding to it with territory in the Indus Valley.
5. Darius wanted to add the Greek city-states to his empire and so the two civilisations went to war.

Keywords

• Mesopotamia - meaning 'between two rivers', Mesopotamia is the name given to the region between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers

• Sumer - Sumer was the earliest ancient civilisation to be known about and was located in the south of Mesopotamia

• Persian Empire - the civilisation that rivalled Ancient Greece to its east was Persia, all the lands they ruled were the Persian Empire

• Territory - a territory is an area of land that is far away from a country but is still ruled by the country

• Indus Valley - the Indus Valley surrounds the River Indus, a powerful river that flows through India and Pakistan

Common misconception