| A | B |
|---|
| empires | Territories governed by a single nation or ruler. |
| smelting | The process of heating iron ore to pound out the impurities and rapidly cool it in order to shape it |
| provinces | political districts |
| caravans | A group of traveling merchants |
| astronomers | People who collect, study, and explain facts about the heavenly bodies. |
| Ashurbanipal | An Assyrian king; credited with starting one of the world's first libraries |
| Nebuchadnezzar | Chaldean king; built the Hanging Gardens of Babylon for his wife |
| Cyrus | Persian king who overthrew the Medes and extended the Persian empire |
| Darius | Persian king who built a palace for himselgf at Persepolis |
| Zoroaster | A religious leader who told the Persians about two gods, Ahura Mazda and Ahriman |
| Ninevah | The Assyrian captial city |
| Babylon | The Chaldean capital city; the wealthiest city in the world at the time |
| Persepolis | The Persian capital city under Darius |
| Lydia | A region of Asia Minor where the Persians got the idea of using coins for trade after conquering them |
| Hittites | Invented smelting, which the Assyrians borrowed |
| hanging gardens | Layered beds of earth planted with large trees and massess of glowering vines and shubs that seemed to hang in mid-air. |
| Marduk | god of Babylon; later, main god |
| Iran | modern-day Persia; "land of the Aryans" |
| Eyes and Ears of the King | Inspectors who traveled throughout the Persian empire making sure things ran well |
| litter | a carriage without wheels that was carried by servants |
| Ahura Mazda | Zoroastrian god of good things and light |
| Ahriman | Zoroastrian god of all evil things and darkness |
| Aryan | Catter herders from the grasslands of central Asia from whom the Persians are descended |
| ziggurat | A temple made up of a series of square levels, each smaller than the one below it. |
| Immortals | The best fighters in the Perian army, whose numbers never fell below 10,000 |
