When Cyrus the Great conquered the Babylonian Empire in 538 B.C.E., he issued an edict that encouraged the Jews in Mesopotamia to return to Judah, and many Jews did in fact set forth, anxious to reclaim their land and rebuild the Temple in Jerusalem. Their new nation, sometimes referred to as the Second Commonwealth (the First Commonwealth being the two kingdoms of Israel and Judah before the Babylonian exile) would survive as a tributary state to Persia until the arrival of Alexander the Great in 332 B.C.E.