Eber-Nari in the context of "Nimrud"

Cambyses II was the second King of Kings of the Achaemenid Empire, reigning 530 to 522 BCE. He was the son of and successor to Cyrus the Great (r. 550 – 530 BC); his mother was Cassandane. His relatively brief reign was marked by his conquests in North Africa, notably Egypt, which he took by defeating pharaoh Psamtik III (r. 526–525 BC) at the battle of Pelusium in 525 BC. After his victory in Egypt, he expanded the empire's holdings in Africa by taking Cyrenaica, the coastal region of eastern Libya. In the spring of 522 BC, Cambyses had to leave Egypt hastily to put down a revolt in Persia.

En route in Syria (Eber-Nari), Cambyses somehow received a thigh wound; it soon became gangreneous. Cambyses died three weeks later in Agbatana, likely the modern city of Hama. He died childless, and was thus succeeded by his younger brother Bardiya. Bardiya ruled for a short time, and was then overthrown by Darius the Great (r. 522–486 BC), who went on to increase the power of the Achaemenids even further.

Athura (Old Persian: 𐎠𐎰𐎢𐎼𐎠 Aθurā Persian pronunciation: [aθuɾaː]), also called Assyria, was a geographical area within the Achaemenid Empire in Upper Mesopotamia from 539 to 330 BC as a military protectorate state. Although sometimes regarded as a satrapy, Achaemenid royal inscriptions list it as a dahyu (plural dahyāva), a concept generally interpreted as meaning either a group of people or both a country and its people, without any administrative implication.

It mostly incorporated the territories of Neo-Assyrian Empire corresponding to what is now northern Iraq in the upper Tigris, the middle and upper Euphrates, parts of modern-day northwestern Iran, modern-day northeastern Syria (Eber-Nari) and part of southeast Anatolia (now Turkey). However, Egypt and the Sinai Peninsula were separate Achaemenid territories. The Neo-Assyrian Empire collapsed after a period of violent civil wars, followed by an invasion by a coalition of some of its former subject peoples, the Iranian peoples (Medes, Persians and Scythians), Babylonians and Cimmerians in the late seventh century BC, culminating in the Battle of Nineveh, and Assyria had fallen completely by 609 BC.