Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume IV.djvu/237

 CHALDEA 229 high degree of culture, might, and glory hefore it was conquered by the warlike tribe who made Babylon the centre of greater conquests, power, and civilization, "the beauty of the Chaldees' excellency," as it is called in Scrip- ture, the Chaldaicarum gentium caput, as Pliny calls it. Thus the history of this nation, as masters of Babylonia, would be dated either from the year 747 B. C., the first of the so- called Chaldean era of Nabonassar in the astro- nomical canon of Ptolemy, who makes him the first of a series of 19 princes of this nation who ruled the great city after the fall of the first Assyrian empire ; or from the reign of Nabo- polassar, who in alliance with Oyaxares, king of the Medes, broke the yoke and conquered the capital of the Assyrian state, thus founding the independence of Babylonia, and its pre- dominance in western Asia, which his son Nebuchadnezzar so vastly extended. But this conclusion is weakened by the circumstance that Babylon is known to have been already in the most remote periods of history the seat of a system of religious worship and science, which in antiquity was generally attributed to the genius and made the glory of the Chaldeans, whose name both in Biblical and classical an- tiquity designates not only the nation, but also the peculiar priest caste devoted to the sacred science of astrology; it being also mentioned that Callisthenes, who accompanied Alexander on his expedition to Persia, sent Aristotle a collection of astronomical observations made by the Chaldeans in the temple of Belus, their observatory, during a period of no less than 1,903 years. It is moreover shaken by the contents of the fragments of the Babylonian historian Berosus, which though full of extrav- agant legends, at least prove a very ancient be- lief that the Chaldeans were the earliest or among the earliest organizers of Babylonian society. Berosus speaks of an antediluvian dynasty of Chaldean kings, during the early time of which Cannes, an extraordinary being, half man, half fish, speaking with a human voice, came out of the waves of the Erythraean sea to teach the inhabitants of the shore reli- gion and laws, science, art, and industry, retir- ing every evening into the sea and reappearing every morning. He and his successors became the civilizers of the people of Babylonia. Some critics have seen in this myth of Cannes a con- firmation of a relation of Diodorus, according to which a colony from Egypt headed by Belus, the son of Poseidon and Libya, carried the sci- ence of their land ove.r the sea to the inhabi- tants of the Babylonian plains, which served to vindicate the claims of the Egyptians for the priority of their astronomical knowledge over that of their great Asiatic rivals; while others regarded the Chaldeans as the fathers of astron- omy, and their country as the focus of this sci- ence, whence it spread to India, Egypt, and the West. The third dynasty of the postdiluvian kings of Berosus is also Chaldean. The most plausible way of reconciling the discrepancies in the testimony of the ancients seemed to the critics of the school of Gesenius, whose disser- tation on the Chaldeans in the Encyklopadie of Ersch and Gruber was long regarded as the best solution, to be to sum up the history of the Chaldeans as follows : Their first home is ei- ther in the mountains of Armenia, or some- what further N. in those of the Caucasus, or further S. in those of Kurdistan ; their Scrip- tural ancestor being either Arphaxad, son of Shem, or Chesed, son of Nahor, likewise a Shemite. They spread over Mesopotamia and made incursions into Babylonia. A colony of them, soon after the foundation of Babylon, establishes the influence of their priest caste in that state. Like the Brahmans of India, they rule the public worship, and through it the laws and manners of the Babylonians. They develop art, industry, and commerce, but above all the science of astronomy and as- trology. They occupy the highest rank in the state, and its governors or viceroys in the pe- riod of subjection to Assyria are chosen from their body, of which is also Nabonassar, who heads the series of Ptolemy's 19 Chaldean princes, probably vassals of the Assyrian em- pire. One of these princes is Merodach-bala- dan (mentioned also under this name by Bero- sus, and under that of Mardokempad by Ptol- emy), who in the time of Sennacherib sends ambassadors to Hezekiah, king of Judah, prob- ably with the object of forming an alliance against the common oppressor. His successor, Belibus, is carried away as captive by Sennach- erib, who makes his own son Esarhaddon (the Asordon of Berosus) viceroy of Babylonia. In the mean time the stock of the Chaldean' na- tion remains in their native mountains, war- like, fierce, and predatory. They appear as plundering invaders in the book of Job, and at a later period as Persian soldiers in the history of Herodotus, and as a warlike mountain tribe in Xenophon's Anabasis. Strengthened by new immigrations of this warlike people, Na- bopolassar, the Chaldean viceroy of Babylonia, shakes off the yoke of New Assyria, destroys Nineveh with Cyaxares, and thus becomes the founder of the Chaldean empire, now properly so called. Its limits, power, and glory are vastly extended by his son Nebuchadnezzar, who leads his fierce armies and the hosts of his vassals as far as Egypt, or, according to the legend, as far as the pillars of Hercules, peo- ples his provinces with nations carried into captivity, and adorns his enlarged capital with the treasures of destroyed cities and sanctuaries, with palaces, temples, and magnificent gardens. The Chaldeans are now the nation of Babylo- nia, though their priests appear also under this name as a caste, or at least as a numerous col- lege, similar to that of the magi of the Medes, devoted to the science of the stars and to the religious practices connected with it. Through Nebuchadnezzar's conquests Babylon is made "the mistress of kingdoms," who says in her heart, " I am, and there is nothing else beside