Darius I (
Old Persian:
Darayava(h)uš, c. 550–486 BCE) was the third king of the Persian
Achaemenid Empire. Also called
Darius the Great, he ruled the empire at its peak, when it included much of
West Asia, the
Caucasus, parts of the
Balkans (
Thrace-
Macedonia and
Paeonia), most of the
Black Sea coastal regions, parts of the North Caucasus,
Central Asia, as far as the
Indus Valley in the far east, and portions of north and northeast Africa including
Egypt (Mudrâya), eastern
Libya and coastal
Sudan.