Yehud Medinata, also called Yehud Medinta (Jewish Babylonian Aramaic: יְהוּד מְדִינְתָּא, romanized: Yəhūḏ Məḏīntā) or simply Yehud, was an autonomous province of the Achaemenid Empire. Located in Judea, the territory was distinctly Jewish, with the High Priest of Israel emerging as a central religious and political leader. It lasted for just over two centuries before being incorporated into the Hellenistic empires, which emerged following the Greek conquest of the Persian Empire.
Upon the Persian conquest of Babylon in 539 BCE, the Achaemenid Empire established its own Yehud province to absorb the Babylonian province of Yehud, which, in turn, had been established by the Neo-Babylonian Empire to absorb the Kingdom of Judah upon the Babylonian conquest of Jerusalem in 587 BCE. Around this time, the Persian king Cyrus the Great issued what is commonly known as the Edict of Cyrus, which is described in the Hebrew Bible as a royal proclamation that ended the Babylonian captivity and initiated the return to Zion. In the new province, repatriated Jews began to revive their national identity and reconstruct the Temple in Jerusalem.
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