CHALDZEANS (a+It,m). The origin and con dition of the people to whom this name is assigned in Scripture have been subjects of dispute among the learned. Probably, however, they were the same people that are described in Greek writers as having originally been an uncultivated tribe of mountaineers, placed on the Carduchian moun tains, in the neighbourhood of Armenia, whom Xenophon describes as brave and fond of freedom (Cyrop. i. 31 ; Anaf. iv. 3, 4, 7, 8, 25). In Hab. i. 6–so the Chaldans are spoken of in corresponding terms : Lo, I raise up the Chad dans, that bitter and hasty nation, which shall march through the breadth of the land to possess the dwelling-places that are not theirs ; they are terrible and dreadful ; their horses are swifter than leopards and more fierce than evening wolves ; their horsemen shall spread themselves ; they shall fly as the eagle that hasteth to eat.' They are also mentioned in Job i. 17 Chaldans fell upon the camels (of Job) and carried them away.' These passages shew not only their warlike and predatory habits, but, especially that in Job, the early period in history at which they were known.
As in all periods of history hardy and brave tribes of mountaineers have come down into the plains and conquered their comparatively civilized and effeminate inhabitants, so these Armenian Chaldxans appear to have descended on Babylon, made themselves masters of the city and the go vernment, and eventually founded a dominion, to which they gave their name, as well as to the in habitants of the city and the country tributary to it, infusing at the same time young blood and fresh vigour into all the veins and members of the social frame. What length of time the changes herein implied may have taken cannot now be ascertained. Winer (RealwOrterbnch, s. v. Chal doer) conjectures that the Chaldirans were at first subjects of the Assyrian monarchy, which, from 2 Kings xvii. 24, etc., also 2 Chron. xxxiii. i 1, ap pears to have been established in Babylon ; and that, while subjects of that empire, tfiey became civilized, gained for themselves the government, and founded the Chaldee-Babylonian kingdom or dynasty.
Authentic history affords no information as to the time when the Chaldrean immigration took place. It is possible that, at a very early period, a tribe of Chaldees wandered into Babylon and gave to the land the seven Chaldee kings men tioned by Berosus ; but it is possible also that the Chaldans entered in a mass into the Baby lonian territory for the first time not long before the era of Nabonassar (B.c. 747), which Michaelis and others have thought the words of Isaiah ren der probable, ch. xxiii. 13—' Behold the land of the Chaldmeans, this people was not, till the Assyrian founded it for them that dwell in the wilderness.' The circumstance, moreover, that a Shemitic dialect is found to have prevailed in Babylon, corroborates the idea that the Chaldxans were immigrants, since the northern Chaldxans must, from their position, have spoken a different form of speech.
The kingdom of the Chaldees is found among the four thrones' spoken of by Daniel (vii. 3, sq.), and is set forth under the symbol of a lion having eagles' wings. The government was de spotic, and the will of the monarch, who bore the title of King of Kings' (Dan. ii. 37), was supreme law, as may be seen in Dan. iii. 12 ; vi. 24. The kings lived inaccessible to their subjects in a well-guarded palace, denominated, as with the ancient Persians (Xenoph. Cyrop. 1), the gate of the king' (Dan. ii. 49, compared with Esther ii. 19, 21, and iii. 2). The number of court and state servants was not small; in Dan. vi, I, Darius is said to have set over the whole kingdom no fewer than an hundred and twenty princes.' The
chief officers appear to have been a sort of mayor of the palace,' or prime minister to which high office Daniel was appointed (Dan. ii. 49), a master of the eunuchs' (Dan. i. 3), a captain of the king's guard' (Dan. ii. 14), and a master of the magicians,' or president of the Magi (Dan. iv. 9). Distinct probably from the foregoing was the class termed (Dan. iii. 24, 27) the king's counsel lors,' who seem to have formed a kind of privy council,' or even cabinet,' for advising the monarch and governing the kingdom. The entire empire was divided into several provinces (Dan. ii. 48 ; r), presided over by officers of various ranks. An enumeration of several kinds may be found in Dan. iii. 2, 3. The head officers, who united in themselves the highest civil and military power, were denominated inn-rivnN, 'presidents' (Dan. vi. 2) ; those who presided over single provinces or districts bore the title of norm (Flagg. i. 1 ; ii. 2), in the Chaldee dialect NnInD, 'governors.' The administration of criminal justice was rigorous and cruel, will being substituted for law, and human life and human suffering being totally disregarded. Nebuchadnezzar (Dan. ii. 5) declares to the college of the Magi—' If ye will not make known unto me the dream with the interpretation thereof, ye shall be cut in pieces, and your houses shall be made a dunghill' (see also Dan. iii. 19 ; vi. 8 ; Jer. xxix. 22). The religion of the Chaldees was, as with the ancient Arabians and Syrians, the worship of the heavenly bodies ; the planets Jupi ter, Mercury, and Venus were honoured as Bel, Nebo, and Meni, besides Saturn and Mars (Gesen ius Ozt Isaiah). Astrology was naturally con nected with this worship of the stars, and the astronomical observations which have made the Chaldrean name famous were thereby guided and advanced. The language spoken in Babylon was what is designated Chaldee, which is Shemitic in its origin, belonging to the Aramaic branch. The immigrating Chalckeans spoke probably a quite different tongue, which the geographical position of their native country spews to have belonged to the Medo-Persian stock.
The term Chaldzeans represents also a branch of the order of Babylonian Magi (Hesych. XaX Scam -yepos Mctycov). In Dan. ii. 2 they appear among the magicians, and the astrologers, and the sorcerers,' who were ' called for to shew the king his dream.' In the toth verse of the same chapter they are represented as speaking in the name of the rest ; or otherwise theirs was a gene ral designation which comprised the entire class (Dan. iv. 7 ; v. 7) ; a general description of these different orders is found in Dan. v. S,. as the king's wise men.' In the Greek and Roman writers the term Chalckeanr describes the whole order of the learned men of Babylon (Strabo. xv. p. soS ; Diod. Sic. ii. 29 ; Cic. De Div. I. I. 2). In later periods the name Chaldans seems, with out reference to place of birth, to have been applied in the western parts of the world to per sons who lived by imposing on the credulity of others, going from place to place professing to in terpret dreams and disclose the future. Iu this sense the word is obviously used by Joseph's (De Bell. yird. ii. 7. 3), when `diviners and some Chaldaeans' are said to have been called in by Archelaus to expound what was `portended' by a dream he had ; and by Ephraem Syrus in his con troversial works, where a Chaldean is an astrologer and fortune-teller. Winer's Realwgrterbuch ; Real Encydopcidie der Class. Alterthum, W. von Pauly; Ideler, Handbuch as Chron. [BABYLON.]— J. R. B.