Overview
The Medes, an Iranian people of the northwest highlands, formed what is conventionally counted as the first Iranian empire, c. 678–550 BC, with their capital at Ecbatana (modern Hamadan). That conventional account rests heavily on Herodotus, however, and the archaeological picture of a centralized Median state is debated.
Key developments
Under Cyaxares, the Medes allied with Babylon and destroyed the Assyrian Empire — the fall of Nineveh in 612 BC — their most consequential act. Median power reached across the Iranian plateau into eastern Anatolia, and their war with Lydia ended after an eclipse during battle, traditionally linked to the eclipse of 585 BC said to have been predicted by Thales.
End and transition
In 550 BC the Persian king Cyrus the Great, whose mother was by tradition a Median princess, defeated the last Median king Astyages — his grandfather, per Herodotus — and took Ecbatana. The Persians absorbed Median administration, court customs and nobility, and the Greeks long called the Persians Medes: the Greco-Persian conflicts were known as the Median Wars.