Timeline of the Bible · The Captivity & the Return
Darius the Median
King of Persia · 538–536 BC
The Years
- Began 538 BC
- “In the same night, that this banquet was made, was Belshasar the king of the Chaldeans slain”
- Ended 536 BC
- “Cyrus, his father Cambyses being now dead in Persia, Cyaxares in Media, held all the Empire or Monarchie of the East in his own hand”
“Darius the Median took the kingdom, being about threescore and two years old” (Daniel 5:31). Ussher takes him for Cyaxares, Cyrus’s uncle, whose death left Cyrus the whole empire.
Dated by Archbishop James Ussher’s Annals of the World (1658), quoted as printed, whose dates were printed in the margins of King James Bibles for two centuries.
