Following Cyrus the Great’s defeat of Babylonia in 538 B.C.E., the Achaemenid Persians built a vast empire from Egypt to Central Asia that endured until Alexander the Great’s conquest of the ancient Near East in 333 B.C.E. This map shows the the Persian Empire at its largest extent, including the names of the Persian administrative districts (satrapies) and major cities. Several biblical books portray the Persian kings as supporters of Judean religion, and much of the Hebrew Bible probably received its present shape during the two centuries of Persian rule over the province of Judea.