text: Science_rebel said in response to a question:\nThe Persian Empire was a series of historical empires that ruled over the Iranian plateau. The political entity which was ruled by these kingdoms is the country now known as Iran (literally "Land of Aryans"). Generally, the earliest entity considered a part of the Persian Empire is Persia's Achaemenid dynasty (648–330 BC), a united Aryan-indigenous kingdom that originated in the region now known as Fars and was formed under Cyrus the Great. Successive states in Iran prior to 1935 are collectively called the Persian Empire by Western historians