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Updated: May 15, 2025
The god of light had slit her in two, "as you do a dried fish," they said, and made the plain of the earth with one half and the blue arch of the heavens with the other. So Chaldaea lived out its 5000 years without discovering the universe. Egypt adopted the idea from more scientific Babylon.
This, it is true, exceeds the area of all ancient Greece, including Thessaly, Acarnania, and the islands; it nearly equals that of the Low Countries, to which Chaldaea presents some analogy; it is almost exactly that of the modern kingdom of Denmark; but it is less than Scotland, or Ireland, or Portugal, or Bavaria; it is more than doubled by England, more than quadrupled by Prussia, and more than octupled by Spain, France, and European Turkey.
Perhaps the latter is the more probable supposition; for the builders of the great fabrics in Babylonia and Chaldaea do not seem to have left behind them any character of oppressiveness, such as attaches commonly to those monarchs who have ground down their own people by servile labor. The great buildings of Urukh appear to have been all designed for temples.
The countries included within the limits thus indicated, and subject during the period in question to Assyrian influence, were chiefly the following: Susiana, Chaldaea, Babylonia, Media, Matiene or the Zagros range, Mesopotamia; parts of Armenia, Cappadocia, and Cilicia; Syria, Phoenicia, Palestine. Idummaea, a portion of Arabia, and almost the whole of Egypt.
But if the satellites of Saturn are really mentioned, as it is thought that they are, upon some of the tablets, it will follow strange as it may seem to us that the Babylonians possessed optical instruments of the nature of telescopes, since it is impossible, even in the clear and vapor-loss sky of Chaldaea, to discern the faint moons of that distant planet without lenses.
The inhabitants of Chaldaea must always have been familiar with inundations; probably no generation failed to witness an inundation which rose unusually high, or was rendered serious by coincident atmospheric or other disturbances. And the memory of the general features of any exceptionally severe and devastating flood, would be preserved by popular tradition for long ages.
This track differs from the Chaldaean lowland, by being at once less flat and more elevated. Geologically it is of secondary formation, while Chaldaea proper is tertiary or post-tertiary. It is fairly watered towards the north, but below the Sinjar is only very scantily supplied.
And similarly Tyre had friendly relations with Syria and Greece, with Mesopotamia and Assyria, with Babylonia and Chaldaea.
The worship of Bel-Nimrod in Chaldaea extends through the whole time of the monarchy. It has been shown that he was probably the deified Nimrod, whose apotheosis would take place shortly after his decease. Urukh, the earliest monumental king, built him a temple at Niffer; and Kurri-galzu, one of the latest, paid him the same honor at Akkerkuf.
The tract between the Euphrates and Arabia was at all times smaller than this, and in the most flourishing period of Chaldaea must have fallen short of 10,000 square miles. We have no evidence that the natural division of Chaldaea here indicated was ever employed in ancient times for political purposes.
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