capacity. Cyrus is also recognized for his achievements in human rights, politics, and military strategy, as well as his influence on both Eastern and Western civilizations. The Achaemenid influence in the ancient world would eventually extend as far as Athens, where upper-class Athenians adopted aspects of the culture of the ruling class of Achaemenid Persia as their own. Having originated from Persis, roughly corresponding to the modern-day Fars Province of Iran, Cyrus has played a crucial role in defining the national identity of modern Iran. He remains a cult figure amongst modern Iranians, with his tomb serving as a spot of reverence for millions of people. In the 1970s, the last Shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, identified Cyrus' famous proclamation inscribed onto the Cyrus Cylinder as the oldest-known declaration of human rights, and the Cylinder has since been popularized as such. This view has been criticized by some Western historians as a misunderstanding of the Cylinder's generic nature as a traditional statement that new monarchs make at the beginning of their reign. Etymology The name Cyrus is a Latinized form derived from the Greek-language name Κῦρος (Kỹros), which itself was derived from the Old Persian name Kūruš. The name and its meaning have been recorded within ancient inscriptions in different languages. The ancient Greek historians Ctesias and Plutarch stated that Cyrus was named from the Sun (Kuros), a concept which has been interpreted as meaning "like the Sun" (Khurvash) by noting its relation to the Persian noun for Sun, khor, while using -vash as a suffix of likeness. Karl Hoffmann has suggested a translation based on the meaning of an Indo-European root "to humiliate", and accordingly, the name "Cyrus" means "humiliator of the enemy in verbal contest". Another possible Iranian derivation would mean "the young one, child", related to Kurdish kur ("son, little boy") or Ossetian i-gur-un ("to be born") and kur (young bull). In the Persian language and especially in Iran, Cyrus' name is spelled as (, ). In the Bible, he is referred to in the Hebrew language as Koresh (). Some pieces of evidence suggest that Cyrus is Kay Khosrow, a legendary Persian king of the Kayanian dynasty and a character in Shahnameh, a Persian epic. Some scholars, however, believe that neither Cyrus nor Cambyses were Iranian names, proposing that Cyrus was Elamite in origin and that the name meant "he who bestows care" in the