|Part of a series on| |Jews and Judaism| ||This article needs
additional citations for verification. (May 2013)| The Jewish
diaspora (or simply the Diaspora; Hebrew Galut גלות; Yiddish
Golus) was the historical exile and dispersion of Jews from the
region of the Kingdom of Judah and Roman Judaea, as well as the
later emigration from wider Eretz Israel. The diaspora began
with the 6th century BCE conquest of the ancient Kingdom of
Judah by Babylon, the destruction of the First Temple (c. 586
BCE), and the expulsion of the population, as recorded in the
Bible. The Babylonian ruler, Nebuchadnezzar, allowed the Jews to
remain in a unified community in Babylon. Another group of Jews
fled to Egypt, where they settled in the Nile delta. From 597
BCE onwards, there were three distinct groups of Hebrews: a
group in Babylon and other parts of the Middle East, a group in
Judaea, and another group in Egypt. While Cyrus the Persian
allowed the Jews to return to their homeland in 538 BCE, most
chose to remain in Babylon, b