Chaldea refers to a region probably located in the marshy land of southern Mesopotamia. It is mentioned, with varying meaning, in Neo-Assyrian cuneiform, the Hebrew Bible, and in classical Greek texts. The Hebrew Bible uses the term כשדים (Kaśdim), and this is translated as Chaldaeans in the Christian Greek Old Testament.
During a period of weakness in the East Semitic-speaking kingdom of Babylonia, new tribes of West Semitic-speaking migrants arrived in the region from the Levant between the 11th and 9th centuries BC. The earliest waves consisted of Suteans and Arameans, followed a century or so later by the Kaldu, a group who became known later as the Chaldeans or the Chaldees. These migrations did not affect the powerful kingdom and empire of Assyria in Upper Mesopotamia, which repelled these incursions.
These nomadic Chaldeans settled in the far southeastern portion of Babylonia, chiefly on the left bank of the Euphrates. Though for a short time the name commonly referred to the whole of southern Mesopotamia in Hebraic literature, this was a geographical and historical misnomer as Chaldea proper was in fact only the plain in the far southeast formed by the deposits of the Euphrates and the Tigris, extending about 640 kilometres (400 mi) along the course of these rivers and averaging about 160 km (100 mi) in width. There were several kings of Chaldean origins who ruled Babylonia. From 626 BC to 539 BC, a ruling dynasty in later times referred to as the "Chaldean dynasty", named after their possible Chaldean origin, ruled the kingdom at its height under the Neo-Babylonian Empire, although the final ruler of this empire, Nabonidus (556–539 BC) (and his son and regent Belshazzar) was a usurper of Assyrian ancestry.
Despite the similarity in name, Chaldea is not to be confused with the modern Chaldean Catholic Church or its adherents, who are predominantly ethnic Assyrians. Members of the Assyrian community have noted that Mandaeans hold a stronger demographic connection to the ancient inhabitants of the region.
Name
The name Chaldaea is a latinization of the Greek Khaldaía (Χαλδαία), a hellenization of Akkadian māt Kaldu or Kašdu, suggesting an underlying /kaɬdu/. The term Chaldea appears in Hebrew in the Bible as Kaśdim (כַּשְׂדִּים), while Chaldeans are Hebrew Kaśdim (כַּשְׂדִּים) and Aramaic Kaśdā'in (כַּשְׂדָּאִין).
Genesis 22:22 lists Kesed (כֶּשֶׂד, reconstructed /kaɬd/), perhaps a singular form of Kasdim, as son of Abraham's brother Nahor (and brother of Kemuel the father of Aram), residing in Aram Naharaim. Jubilees 11:7 claims that "Ur son of Kesed built the city of Ur-Kasdim, and he named it after himself and his father".
Jewish historian Flavius Josephus (37–c. 100) links Arpachshad and Chaldaea in his Antiquities of the Jews: "Arphaxad named the Arphaxadites, who are now called Chaldeans." Umberto Cassuto suggests that the name "Arpachshad" (ארפכשד) may be compounded from Arapcha-Kesed.
Land
In the early period, between the early 9th century and late 7th century BC, mat Kaldi was the name of a small sporadically independent migrant-founded territory under the domination of the Neo-Assyrian Empire (911–605 BC) in southeastern Babylonia, extending to the western shores of the Persian Gulf.
The expression mat Bit Yâkin is also used, apparently synonymously. Bit Yâkin was the name of the largest and most powerful of the five tribes of the Chaldeans, or equivalently, their territory.
The original extension of Bit Yâkin is not known precisely, but it extended from the lower Tigris into the Arabian Peninsula. Sargon II mentions it as extending as far as Dilmun or "sea-land" (littoral Eastern Arabia). "Chaldea" or mat Kaldi generally referred to the low, marshy, alluvial land around the estuaries of the Tigris and Euphrates, which at the time discharged their waters through separate mouths into the sea.
The tribal capital Dur Yâkin was the original seat of Marduk-Baladan.
The king of Chaldea was also called the king of Bit Yakin, just as the kings of Babylonia and Assyria were regularly styled simply king of Babylon or Assur, the capital city in each case. In the same way, what is now known as the Persian Gulf was sometimes called "the Sea of Bit Yakin", and sometimes "the Sea of the Land of Chaldea".
"Chaldea" came to be used in a wider sense, of Southern Mesopotamia in general, following the brief ascendancy of the Chaldeans during 608–557 BC. This is especially the case in the Hebrew Bible, which was substantially composed during this period (roughly corresponding to the period of Babylonian captivity). The Book of Jeremiah makes frequent reference to the Chaldeans (King James Version Chaldees following LXX Χαλδαίοι; in Biblical Hebrew as Kasdîm כַּשְׂדִּים).
Book of Habakkuk 1:6 calls them "that bitter and hasty nation" (הַגֹּוי הַמַּר וְהַנִּמְהָר). Book of Isaiah 23:13 DRB states, “Behold the land of the Chaldeans, there was not such a people, the Assyrians founded it: they have led away the strong ones thereof into captivity, they have destroyed the houses thereof, they have brought it to ruin.”
Ancient Chaldeans
Unlike the East Semitic Akkadian-speaking Akkadians, Assyrians and Babylonians, whose ancestors had been established in Mesopotamia since at least the 30th century BC, the Chaldeans were not a native Mesopotamian people, but were late 10th- or early 9th-century BC West Semitic Levantine migrants to the southeastern corner of the region, who had played no part in the previous three millennia of Sumero-Akkadian and Assyro-Babylonian Mesopotamian civilization and history.
The ancient Chaldeans seem to have migrated into Mesopotamia sometime between c. 940 and 860 BC, a century or so after other new Semitic arrivals, the Arameans and the Suteans, appeared in Babylonia, c. 1100 BC. According to Ran Zadok, they first appear in written record in cylinder inscriptions of the King of Mari Aššur-ketta-lēšir II (late 12th-early 11th century BC), which record them reaching Mesopotamia as early as the 11th century BC. They later appear in the annals of the Assyrian king Shalmaneser III during the 850s BC. This was a period of weakness in Babylonia, and its ineffectual native kings were unable to prevent new waves of semi-nomadic foreign peoples from invading and settling in the land.
Though belonging to the same West Semitic speaking ethnic group and migrating from the same Levantine regions as the earlier arriving Aramaeans, they are to be differentiated; the Assyrian king Sennacherib, for example, carefully distinguishes them in his inscriptions.
The Chaldeans were for a time able to keep their identity despite the dominant native Assyro-Babylonian (Sumero-Akkadian-derived) culture although, as was the case for the earlier Amorites, Kassites and Suteans before them, by the time Babylon fell in 539 BC, perhaps before, the Chaldeans ceased to exist as a specific ethnic group.
In the Hebrew Bible, "Ur of the Chaldees" (Ur Kaśdim) is cited as the starting point of the patriarch Abraham's journey to Canaan.
Language
Ancient Chaldeans probably spoke a West Semitic language similar to Old Aramaic.
During the Neo-Assyrian Empire, Imperial Aramaic became the lingua franca of the empire under the rule of the Assyrian king Tiglath-Pileser III in the mid-8th century BC. As a result, in late periods both the Babylonian and Assyrian dialects of Akkadian became marginalized, and Aramaic took its place across Mesopotamia, including among the Chaldeans, and later, also the southern Levant. One form of this once widespread Aramaic language was used in some books of the Hebrew Bible (the Book of Daniel and the Book of Ezra). The use of the name "Chaldean" (Chaldaic, Chaldee) to describe it, first introduced by Jerome of Stridon (d. 420), became common in early Aramaic studies, but that misnomer was later corrected, when modern scholars concluded that the Aramaic dialect used in the Hebrew Bible was not closely related to the ancient Chaldean language.
History
The region that the Chaldeans eventually made their homeland was in relatively poor southeastern Mesopotamia, at the head of the Persian Gulf. They appear to have migrated into southern Babylonia from the Levant at some unknown point between the end of the reign of Ninurta-kudurri-usur II (a contemporary of Tiglath-Pileser II) circa 940 BC, and the start of the reign of Marduk-zakir-shumi I in 855 BC, although there is no historical proof of their existence prior to the late 850s BC.
For perhaps a century or so after settling in the area, these semi-nomadic migrant Chaldean tribes had no impact on the pages of history, seemingly remaining subjugated by the native Akkadian speaking kings of Babylon or by perhaps regionally influential Aramean tribes. The main players in southern Mesopotamia during this period were Babylonia and Assyria, together with Elam to the east and the Aramaeans, who had already settled in the region a century or so prior to the arrival of the Chaldeans.
The very first written historical attestation of the existence of Chaldeans occurs in 852 BC, in the annals of the Assyrian king Shalmaneser III, who mentions invading the southeastern extremes of Babylonia and subjugating one Mushallim-Marduk, the chief of the Amukani tribe and overall leader of the Kaldu tribes, together with capturing the town of Baqani, extracting tribute from Adini, chief of the Bet-Dakkuri, another Chaldean tribe.
Shalmaneser III had invaded Babylonia at the request of its own king, Marduk-zakir-shumi I, who, being threatened by his own rebellious relations, together with powerful Aramean tribes pleaded with the more powerful Assyrian king for help. The subjugation of the Chaldean tribes by the Assyrian king appears to have been an aside, as they were not at that time a powerful force or a threat to the native Babylonian king.
Important Kaldu tribes and their regions in southeastern Babylonia were Bit-Yâkin (the original area the Chaldeans settled in on the Persian Gulf), Bet-Dakuri, Bet-Adini, Bet-Amukkani, and Bet-Shilani.
Chaldean leaders had by this time already adopted Assyro-Babylonian names, religion, language, and customs, indicating that they had become Akkadianized to a great degree.
The Chaldeans remained quietly ruled by the native Babylonians (who were in turn subjugated by their Assyrian relations) for the next seventy-two years, only coming to historical prominence for the first time in Babylonia in 780 BC, when a previously unknown Chaldean named Marduk-apla-usur usurped the throne from the native Babylonian king Marduk-bel-zeri (790–780 BC). The latter was a vassal of the Assyrian king Shalmaneser IV (783–773 BC), who was otherwise occupied quelling a civil war in Assyria at the time.
This was to set a precedent for all future Chaldean aspirations on Babylon during the Neo-Assyrian Empire; always too weak to confront a strong Assyria alone and directly, the Chaldeans awaited periods when Assyrian kings were distracted elsewhere in their vast empire, or engaged in internal conflicts, then, in alliance with other powers stronger than themselves (usually Elam), they made a bid for control over Babylonia.
Shalmaneser IV attacked and defeated Marduk-apla-user, retaking northern Babylonia and forcing on him a border treaty in Assyria's favour. The Assyrians allowed him to remain on the throne, although subject to Assyria. Eriba-Marduk, another Chaldean, succeeded him in 769 BC and his son, Nabu-shuma-ishkun in 761 BC, with both being dominated by the new Assyrian king Ashur-Dan III (772–755 BC). Babylonia appears to have been in a state of chaos during this time, with the north occupied by Assyria, its throne occupied by foreign Chaldeans, and continual civil unrest throughout the land.
The Chaldean rule proved short-lived. A native Babylonian king named Nabonassar (748–734 BC) defeated and overthrew the Chaldean usurpers in 748 BC, restored indigenous rule, and successfully stabilised Babylonia. The Chaldeans once more faded into obscurity for the next three decades. During this time both the Babylonians and the Chaldean and Aramean migrant groups who had settled in the land once more fell completely under the yoke of the powerful Assyrian king Tiglath-Pileser III (745–727 BC), a ruler who introduced Imperial Aramaic as the lingua franca of the empire. The Assyrian king at first made Nabonassar and his successor native Babylonian kings Nabu-nadin-zeri, Nabu-suma-ukin II and Nabu-mukin-zeri his subjects, but decided to rule Babylonia directly from 729 BC. He was followed by Shalmaneser V (727–722 BC), who also ruled Babylon in person.
When Sargon II (722–705 BC) ascended the throne of the Assyrian Empire in 722 BC after the death of Shalmaneser V, he was forced to launch a major campaign in his subject states of Persia, Mannea and Media in Ancient Iran to defend his territories there. He defeated and drove out the Scythians and Cimmerians who had attacked Assyria's Persian and Median vassal colonies in the region. At the same time, Egypt began encouraging and supporting the rebellion against Assyria in Israel and Canaan, forcing the Assyrians to send troops to deal with the Egyptians.
These events allowed the Chaldeans to once more attempt to assert themselves. While the Assyrian king was otherwise occupied defending his Iranian colonies from the Scythians and Cimmerians and driving the Egyptians from Canaan, Marduk-apla-iddina II (the Biblical Merodach-Baladan) of Bit-Yâkin, allied himself with the powerful Elamite kingdom and the native Babylonians, briefly seizing control of Babylon between 721 and 710 BC. With the Scythians and Cimmerians vanquished, the Medes and Persians pledging loyalty, and the Egyptians defeated and ejected from southern Canaan, Sargon II was free at last to deal with the Chaldeans, Babylonians, and Elamites. He attacked and deposed Marduk-apla-adding II in 710 BC, also defeating his Elamite allies in the process. After defeat by the Assyrians, Merodach-Baladan fled to his protectors in Elam