Darius I (Old Persian: Dārayava(h)uš, c. 550–486 BCE) was the third king of the Persian Achaemenid Empire. Also called Darius the Great, he ruled the empire at its peak, when it included much of West Asia, the Caucasus, Central Asia as far as the Indus Valley, the eastern Balkans (Thrace and Macedonia) and Pannonia, portions of north and northeast Africa including Egypt (Mudrâya), eastern Libya and coastal Sudan.