The Persians spoke an Indo-European language and probably had their distant origins among Iranian groups who moved from Central Asia into Iran over hundreds of years. The Persians first appear in Assyrian records of 900-600 BC. These texts refer to a people called the Parsua within the Zagros Mountains, perhaps already located within the Persian homeland, roughly the modern province of Fars in southwest Iran. This had been a region dominated by the Elamites from their capital city of Anshan.

By the 7th century BC Elam had probably lost control of Fars and it may have formed itself into an independent state ruled by a Persian family. The earliest surviving evidence for royal Persian titles refer to ‘kings of Anshan’ and the Persian rulers may have considered themselves as continuing the ancient Elamite kingdom. The founder of the Persian Empire was Cyrus II (reigned 559-530 BC) who was descended from a line of local rulers. Later Greek accounts describe Persia as a client-state of the Medes, located further north, but there is no evidence to confirm this. In 550 BC Cyrus defeated the Median king Astyages and went on to conquer much of western Asia.