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Updated: June 27, 2025
The grounds, then, upon which the supposed Semitic character of the ancient Chaldaeans has been based, fail, one and all; and it remains to consider whether we have data sufficient to justify us in determinately assigning them to any other stock.
"The Assyrian was a cedar in Lebanon, fair of branches, and with a shadowing shroud, and of high stature; and his top was among the thick boughs. . . . Nor was any tree in the garden of God like unto him in his beauty." EZEK. xxxi. 3 and 8. The ethnic character of the ancient Assyrians, like that of the Chaldaeans, was in former times a matter of controversy.
In the day-time he would wander about as if looking for something, and in the night they often heard him calling Nitetis. The physicians became very anxious about his health, but when they sent him medicine he threw it away. It was quite right of Croesus to say, as he did once 'Ye Magi and Chaldaeans! before trying to cure a sick man we must discover the seat of his disease.
It is evident, even from the mannered and conventional sculptures of Egypt, that the physiognomy was regarded as characteristic of the western Asiatic races. White in face the Assyrians appear thus to have borne a most close resemblance to the Jews, in shape and make they are perhaps more nearly represented by their descendants, the Chaldaeans of Kurdistan.
The wife of Nebo, as already observed, was Varamit or Urmit a word which perhaps means "exalted," from the root on, "to be lifted up." No special attributes are ascribed to this goddess, who merely accompanies her husband in most of the places where he is mentioned by name. Such, then, seem to have been the chief gods worshipped by the early Chaldaeans.
The metallurgy of the Chaldaeans, though indicative of a higher state of civilization and a greater knowledge of the useful arts than their stone weapons, is still of a somewhat rude character, and indicates a nation but just emerging out of an almost barbaric simplicity. Metal seems to be scarce, and not many kinds are found.
Having once established their cycle, they laid the foundation for the most sublime of all the sciences. Callisthenes transmitted from Babylon to Aristotle a collection of observations of all the eclipses that preceded the conquests of Alexander, together with the definite knowledge which the Chaldaeans had collected about the motions of the heavenly bodies.
The ancient people from whom they were in the main descended the Chaldaeans of the First Empire possessed this character to a considerable extent, since they united Cusbite with Turanian blood, and contained moreover a slight Semitic and probably a slight Arian element.
The Religion of the later Babylonians differed in so few respects from that of the early Chaldaeans, their predecessors in the same country, that it will be unnecessary to detain the reader with many observations on the subject.
Shortly afterwards, following the analogy of so many Eastern races, they suddenly sprang up to power. Here another passage of Scripture was thought to have an important bearing on their history. "Lo! I raise up the Chaldaeans," says Habakkuk, "that bitter and hasty nation, which shall march through the breadth of the land to possess the dwelling places that are not theirs.
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