Revision of the sources; critical analysis of Greek narratives of the death of Cyrus II

Cyrus the Great has been always considered as the founder of Achaemenid Empire. Whereas there is no significant source in his homeland about him and the researches about his life and death can be only found in foreign sources. The most important sources which provide a clear picture of his life, are the Greek historians’ works and their posterities’ in the next periods. However, these sources have been wrapped in a halo of myths and consequently have problems and ambiguities. Cyrus’s death is also a complicated issue in Achaemenid period and in addition to above mentioned problems, there is a contradiction in the sources. From various reports, two general contents can be resulted. One is death in the final conflict and the second is natural death. The fundamental question of this research is how to analyze the contradictions of the texts about Cyrus II’s death. Accordingly, in this research, it is aimed to study the sources with a critical approach by analyzing each narration in context of time, place and discourse. The findings of this study show that the various narrations about Cyrus’s death are just reports among the other reports that had different elements and origins for each of them. Also by critical analysis of each narration, it tries to assess the credential characteristics of each report. The research method is descriptive-analytical in library style.