CHALDAEA. The expressions "Chaldaea" and "Chaldae ans" are frequently used in the Old Testament as equivalents for "Babylonia" and "Babylonians." Chaldaea was really the name of a country, used in two senses. It was first applied to the ex treme southern district, whose ancient capital was the city of Bit Makin, the chief seat of the renowned Chaldaean rebel Merodach baladan, who harassed the Assyrian kings Sargon and Sennacherib. It is not as yet possible to fix the exact boundaries of the original home of the Chaldaeans, but it may be regarded as having been the long stretch of alluvial land situated at the then separate mouths of the Tigris and Euphrates, which rivers now combine to flow into the Persian Gulf in the waters of the majestic Shatt el-`Arab.
The name "Chaldaea," however, soon came to have a more ex tensive application. In the days of the Assyrian king Adad-nirari III. (811-782 B.c.), the term mat Kaldu covered practically all Babylonia. Furthermore, Merodach-baladan was called by Sargon II. (722-705 B.c.) "king of the land of the Chaldaeans" and "king of the land of Bit Yakin" after the old capital city ; but there is no satisfactory evidence that Merodach-baladan had the right to the title "Babylonian." The racial distinction between the Chaldaeans and the Babylonians proper seems to have existed until a much later date. That they differed from the Arabs and Aramaeans appears to follow from the distinction made by Sennacherib (705-681 B.c.) between the Chaldaeans and these races. Later, during the period covering the fall of Assyria and the rise of the Neo-Babylonian empire, the term mat Kaldu was not only applied to all Babylonia, but also embraced the territory of certain foreign nations who were later included by Ezekiel (xxiii. 23) under the expression "Chaldaeans." The Chaldaeans probably first came from Arabia, the supposed original home of the Semitic races, at a very early date along the coast of the Persian Gulf and settled in the neighbourhood of Ur ("Ur of the Chaldees," Gen. xi. 28), whence they began a series of encroachments, partly by warfare and partly by immigration, against the other Semitic Babylonians. These aggressions of ter many centuries ended in the Chaldaean supremacy of Nabo polassar and his successors (from c. 625), although there is no positive proof that Nabopolassar was purely Chaldaean in blood. The sudden rise of the later Babylonian empire under Nebuchad nezzar, the son of Nabopolassar, must have tended to produce so thorough an amalgamation of the Chaldaeans and Babylonians, who had theretofore been considered as two kindred branches of the same original Semite stock, that in the course of time no per ceptible differences existed between them. The language of these Chaldaeans differed in no way from the ordinary Semitic Baby lonian idiom which was practically identical with that of Assyria. Consequently, the term "Chaldaean" came quite naturally to be used in later days as synonymous with "Babylonian," and through a misunderstanding the term Chaldee (q.v.) was subsequently applied to the Aramaic language.
The derivation of the name "Chaldaean" is uncertain. It is probably connected with the Semitic stem kasadu (conquer), in which case Kaldi-Kasdi, with the well-known interchange of 1 and would mean "conquerors." It is also possible that Kasdu Kaldfl is connected with the proper name Chesed, who is repre sented as having been the nephew of Abraham (Gen. xxii. 22). But there is no connection between the Black sea people called "Chaldaeans" by Xenophon (Anab. vii. 25) and the Chaldaeans of Babylonia. (For Chaldians see URARTU.) In Daniel, the term "Chaldaeans" commonly means "astrol ogers, astronomers," as it also does in the classical authors (Herodotus, Strabo, Diodorus, etc.). In Daniel i. 4, by the ex pression "tongue of the Chaldaeans," the writer evidently meant the language in which the celebrated Babylonian works on astrol ogy and divination were composed. It is now known that the literary idiom of the Babylonian wise men was the non-Semitic Sumerian; but it is not probable that the late author of Daniel (q.v.) was aware of this fact. The word "Chaldaean" is applied as a race-name to the Babylonians (Dan. iii. 8, v. 3o, ix. i) ; but the expression is used oftener, either as a name for some special class of magicians, or as a term for magicians in general (ix. I) . The transfer of the name of the people to a special class can per haps be explained. When in later times "Chaldaean" and "Baby lonian" became practically synonymous, the term "Chaldaean" lived on in the secondary restricted sense of "wise men." The early Kaldi had seized and held from very ancient times the region of old Sumer, which was the centre of the primitive non Semitic culture. It seems extremely probable that these Chal daean Semites were so strongly influenced by the foreign civiliza tion as to adopt it eventually as their own. Then, as the Chal daeans soon became the dominant people, the priestly caste of that region developed into a Chaldaean institution. It is reason able to conjecture that southern Babylonia, the home of the old culture, supplied Babylon and other important cities with priests, who from their descent were correctly called "Chaldaeans." This name in later times, owing to the racial amalgamation of the Chaldaeans and Babylonians, lost its former national force, and became, as it occurs in Daniel, a distinctive appellation of the Babylonian priestly class. Kalu (priest) in Babylonian, which has no etymological connection with Kaldu, may have contributed paronomastically towards the popular use of the tejm "Chal daeans" for the Babylonian magi. (See also ASTROLOGY.) See BABYLONIA AND ASSYRIA and SUMER AND SUMERIAN ; and the commentaries on the book of Daniel. (J. D. PR.)