Or, “the remotest parts of the earth” (see ch. 51:27, 28). When the Medes and Persians overthrew Babylon in 539 B.C., their empire in its northern and eastern reaches extended beyond the limits of any previous world power. The Persian Empire, as finally constituted, reached from the border of India on the east to Thrace and Egypt on the west, south into Arabia and north into modern Turkistan and the Caucasus.
This was by far the greatest empire the world had yet known.