Mandane of Media (590–558 BCE)
Born 590 BCE, died 558 BCE.
Mandane (Greek: Μανδάνη, Mandánē) was a Median princess and, later, the queen consort of the Persian king Cambyses I and the mother of Cyrus the Great, the founder of the Achaemenid Empire. The name likely originates from the Old Iranian *Mandanā-, which means “delighting, cheerful”. Mandane was the daughter of Astyages, but the name of her mother is not mentioned. It is said that Astyages married Aryenis in 585 BC, but it is unlikely that Aryenis was the mother of Mandane. She possibly was the daughter of a previous wife of Astyages. According to the Greek historian Herodotus, Astyages had a dream in which his daughter stood before him, and suddenly a vine began to grow from her back, extending its tendrils to cover all of Asia. He called upon the Magi and priests to interpret the dream, and they explained that the vine represented his grandson, the son of Mandane, who would take his place on the throne and rule over all of Asia. In 577 BC, when Mandane reached marriageable age, Astyages gave her in marriage to Cambyses I, a Persian with noble ancestry who was mild-mannered and held a lower position than the Medes.
Text from the Wikipedia article Mandane_of_Media, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0.