Ur of the Chaldees

“ If thou deignest to hear me I shall tell thee truth of this people that dwelleth in the mountains, and there shall not issue out of my mouth one false word. This people dwelled first in Mesopotamia, and was of the progeny of the Chaldees, but would not dwell there for they would not follow the gods of their fathers that were in the land of Chaldees, and going and leaving the ceremonies of their fathers, which was in the multitude of many gods, they honored one, God of heaven, which commanded them to go thence that they should dwell in Canaan. ”

“ Kasdiymah; towards the Kasdites: into Chaldea) , patronymically from Kesed (only in the plural) ; a Kasdite, or descendant of Kesed; by implication, a Chaldaean (as if so descended) ; also an astrologer (as if proverbial of that people:--Chaldeans, Chaldees, inhabitants of Chaldea.
3779 כַּשְׂדָּי (kas-dah'-ee) : (Aramaic) corresponding to כַּשְׂדִּי; a Chaldaean or inhabitant of Chaldaea; by implication, a Magian or professional astrologer: Chaldean.
3780 כָּשָׂה (kaw-saw') : a primitive root; to grow fat (i.e. be covered with flesh) : be covered. Compare כָּסָה. ”

“ The ultimate scourge of God to the guilty people and the guilty city was not to be the Assyrian, nor the Scythian, nor the Egyptian, nor any of the old Canaanite or Semitic foes of Israel, nor the Phœnician, nor the Philistine. With all these she had long contended, and held her own. It was before the Chaldee that she was doomed to fall, and the Chaldee was a new phenomenon of which the existence had hardly been recognised as a danger till the warning prophecy of Isaiah to Hezekiah after the embassy of the rebel viceroy Merodach-Baladan. ”

“ What is true of one Chaldæan city is equally true of all of them, and the dynasties of Uruk and of Lagash, like those of Uru, can be reconstructed from the revelations of their brickwork. The lords of heaven promised to the lords of the earth, as a reward of their piety, both glory and wealth in this life, and an eternal fame after death: they have, indeed, kept their word. ”

“ The general character of this remarkable people will best appear from the account, presently to be given, of their manners, their mode of life, their arts, their science, their religion, and their history. It is not convenient to forestall in this place the results of almost all our coming inquiries. Suffice it to observe that, though possessed of not many natural advantages, the Chaldaean people exhibited a fertility of invention, a genius, and an energy which place them high in the scale of nations, and more especially in the list of those descended from a Hamitic stock. ”

“ Equally fully has the Babylonian tradition reached us from the Chaldee history of the old priest of Bel, Berosus (B.C. 260) . The Chaldees had placed ten kings at the head of this mystic history, which answer to the ten generations in Genesis before the Flood. The last of these patriarchs was called Xisuthrus, who is the same as the Biblical Noah. ”

“ But let the prince, the inviolable envoy, guarded alike by Persian and Chaldee gods, endure one hour of prison, and only heaven shall judge the war. Do not think my father is all blind. The moon cannot fall from the sky, and no man marvel. This is the moment, and the last when you may choose,—the moment which we Persians say to every man is granted,—to make choice of the Right Mind or the Wrong [227] Mind, the great spirits ever at strife. I do not pray this for myself, nor for the son of Hystaspes, but for you, O king of the Chaldees, whom I would honour as husband if I might. ”

“ But it came to pass in the seventh month, that Ismael, the son of Nathanias, the son of Elisama, of the seed royal came, and ten men with him, and smote Godolias; so that he died: and also the Jews and the Chaldees that were with him in Maspha.
25:26. And all the people, both little and great, and the captains of the soldiers, rising up, went to Egypt, fearing the Chaldees. ”

“ Although the Chaldeans were astrologers rather than astronomers, they were yet familiar enough with the heavens to estimate astral phenomena for what they really were, instead of holding them to be Gods, though they may have represented them as such to the common people. Their literature contained numerous mythological poems, so obscure that to understand them a key was required, which key was only in the possession of the priests. Inasmuch as Abraham came from Ur in Chaldea, with him crept into biblical literature much of the Chal [Pg 105] dean tradition and folklore. ”

“ When we examine into the religion of the Babylonians we find that they believed in the existence of angels—minis-, ters of the Supreme—intelligences,—unseen by man, yet powerful to act in his favour, or against him. If we rightly interpret many of the engraved gems which were executed by the Chaldees, we can only come to the conclusion that they believed in a Devil, a Typhon, or spirit of destruction. ”

“ The Chaldæans were accustomed to torture their prisoners in the fashion we frequently see represented on the monuments of Nineveh, and whenever an unexpected stroke of good fortune brings to light any decorative bas-relief from their palaces, we shall see represented on it the impaling stake, rebels being flayed alive, and chiefs having their tongues torn out. ”

“ The influence of the Chaldee mode of interpretation seems now to become more apparent in the Christian Church. Aponius, who is quoted by the venerable Bede, and must therefore have lived in the seventh century, regards the Song of Songs as describing what the Logos has done for the Church from the beginning of the world, and what he will do to the end of it; thus, like the Chaldee, he takes the book as a historico-prophetical description of the dealings of God with his people, only that the Chaldee takes the Jews as the object of the description, but Aponius substitutes the Gentile Church. ”

“ The infant was born their slave, and continued in this condition of slavery until his life’s end: the star which was in the ascendent at the instant of his birth became his star, and ruled his destiny. The Chaldæans, like the Egyptians, fancied they discerned in the points of light which illuminate the nightly sky, the outline of a great number of various figures—men, animals, monsters, real and imaginary objects, a lance, a bow, a fish, a scorpion, ears of wheat, a bull, and a lion. The majority of these were spread out above their heads on the surface of the celestial vault ”

“ For if their gods are unfit to look after their own safety, how shall they bestow protection upon others? Great then is the error into which the Chaldæans wandered in adoring lifeless and good-for-nothing images.
And it occurs to me as surprising, O King, how it is that their so-called philosophers have quite failed to observe that the elements themselves are perishable. And if the elements are perishable and subject to necessity, how are they gods? And if the elements are not gods, how do the images made in their honour come to be gods? ”

“ The second woe is pronounced upon the wickedness of the Chaldaean, in establishing for himself a permanent settlement through godless gain. Hab 2:9. “Woe to him who getteth a godless gain for his house, to set his nest on high, to save himself from the hand of calamity. Hab 2:10. Thou hast consulted shame to thy house, destruction of many nations, and involvest thy soul in guilt. Hab 2:11. For the stone out of the wall will cry, and the spar out of the wood will answer it.” ”

“ The antiquity of civilization in the valley of the Nile, which preceded by many centuries that even of primitive Chaldaea, is another argument in favor of the migration having been from west to east; and the monuments and traditions of the Chaldaeans themselves have been thought to present some curious indications of an East African origin. ”

“ Far better for our beloved Chaldea if the superstitious brood had been left in their own country. May the gods grant that every Hebrew office-holder may so cling to his imaginary god as to walk straight from office into sure destruction. My motto is 'Chaldeans for Chaldea!' Personally, I have no hostility toward these young men. Nay! But, O my country! my country! it is for thee my heart bleeds! Sons! ye shall do well to be on your guard, and see to it that they escape not your vigilance. If they die, their offices will be vacant, and must soon be supplied by some persons of ability. ”

“ Every part of the great whole is represented by a god, a god who is a man, a Chaldæan, who, although of a finer and more lasting nature than other Chaldæans, possesses nevertheless the same instincts and is swayed by the same passions. He is, as a rule, wanting in that somewhat lithe grace of form, and in that rather easy-going good-nature, which were the primary characteristics of the Egyptian gods: the Chaldæan divinity has the broad shoulders, the thick-set figure and projecting muscles of the people over whom he rules ”

“ The primitive civilization of Chaldæa, like that of Egypt, was cradled in the lower districts of a great alluvial basin, in which the soil was stolen from the sea by long continued deposits of river mud. In the valley of the Tigris and Euphrates, as in that of the Nile, it was in the great plains near the ocean that the inhabitants first emerged from barbarism and organized a civil life. ”

“ Tell me therefore the dream, that I may know that you also give a true interpretation thereof.
10 Then the Chaldeains answered before the king, and said: There is no man upon earth, that can accomplish thy word, O king, neither doth any king, though great and mighty, ask such a thing of any diviner, or wise man, or Chaldean.
11 For the thing that thou askest, O king, is difficult; nor can any one be found that can shew it before the king, except the gods, whose conversation is not with men. ”

“ The Chaldæan temples, unlike those of Egypt and Greece, have succumbed to time, and the ancient texts in which they are described are short and obscure. Their ruins are little more than shapeless heaps of débris. In endeavouring to arrive at a clear understanding of the Chaldæan notions as to the gods, we are unable to study, as we did elsewhere, the forms of their religious edifices, with their plans, dimensions, and the instructive variety of decorative symbols and figures with which the sanctuary and its dependencies were overspread. ”

“ By their risings and settings, and by the colours they assume, the Chaldaeans predict great winds and storms and waves of excessive heat, comets, and earthquakes, and in general all changes fraught with weal or woe not only to nations and regions of the world, but to kings and to ordinary men and women. Beneath the Seven are thirty Gods of Counsel, half below and half above the Earth ”

“ The magicians of Chaldæa had forced the demons to obey them and to unmask themselves before them; they read with ease in the heavens the present and future of men and nations; they interpreted the will of the immortals in its smallest manifestations, and with them this faculty was not a limited and ephemeral power, quickly exhausted by use: the rites and formulas known to them enabled them to exercise it freely at all times, in all places, alike upon the most exalted of the gods and the most dreaded of mortals, without its ever becoming weakened. ”

“ CHALDEAN PHILOSOPHY claims attention on account of its very high antiquity. The most ancient people, next to the Hebrews, among the eastern nations, who appear to have been acquainted with philosophy, in its more general sense, were the Chaldeans; for though the Egyptians have pretended that the Chaldeans were an Egyptian colony, and that they derived their learning from Egypt, there is reason to believe that the kingdom of Babylon, of which Chaldea was a part, flourished before the Egyptian monarchy ”

“ The Chaldeans are a sect in politics, like to that of the Egyptian priests; for being ordained for the service of the Gods, they spend the whole time of their life in philosophy; being of exceeding great reputation in astrology, and pretending much also to prophecy, foretelling things to come by purifications and sacrifices, and to find out by certain incantations the preventing of harm, and the bringing to pass of good. ”

“ Then those who had gathered began to depart, and many resolved not to anger their ruler after that.
Khalda's crime, it had been proclaimed, was that of high sacrilege. Not only had he sought through ancient and unwholesome magic the creation of artificial life, but he had spat upon the greenstone feet of the great idol in the market place, and asserted that the deity was impotent and its priests humbug. ”

“ Nowhere, neither here nor in any other of the great Assyrian inscriptions, do we find the signs of care, the look of simple and serious sincerity, that distinguishes the ancient writing of Chaldæa. At Calah and Nineveh we have before us the work of a society already far advanced, a society which lives in the past and makes use, with mere mechanical skill, of the processes created and brought to a first perfection many centuries before. ”

“ The Chaldæan kings, unlike their contemporaries the Pharaohs, rarely put forward any pretensions to divinity. They contented themselves with occupying an intermediate position between their subjects and the gods, and for the purpose of mediation they believed themselves to be endowed with powers not possessed by ordinary mortals. ”

“ The Chaldæans a Mixed People.—In the earliest times Lower Chaldæa was known as Shumir, the Shinar of the Bible, while Upper Chaldæa bore the name of Accad. The original inhabitants of Chaldæa were of Turanian race, and are called Accadians.
ANCIENT BABYLONIAN CANALS. These people laid the basis of civilization in the Euphrates valley, so that with them the history of Asian culture begins. They brought with them into the valley the art of hieroglyphical writing, which later developed into the well-known cuneiform system. ”