Darius the Great was a Persian ruler who served as the third King of Kings of the Achaemenid Empire, reigning from 522 BCE until he died in 486 BCE. He ruled the empire at its territorial peak when it included much of Western Asia, parts of the Balkans (Thrace–Macedonia, and Paeonia) and the Caucasus, most of the Black Sea's coastal regions, Central Asia, the Indus Valley in the far east, and portions of North Africa and Northeast Africa including Egypt, eastern Libya, and coastal Sudan.