THE PEOPLE.
“A mighty nation, an ancient nation.”--JEREM. v. 15.
That the great alluvial plain at the mouth of the Euphrates and Tigris
was among the countries first occupied by man after the Deluge, is
affirmed by Scripture, and generally allowed by writers upon ancient
history. Scripture places the original occupation at a time when
language had not yet broken up into its different forms, and when,
consequently, races, as we now understand the term, can scarcely have
existed. It is not, however, into the character of these primeval
inhabitants that we have here to inquire, but into the ethnic affinities
and characteristics of that race, whatever it was, which first
established an important kingdom in the lower part of the plain--a
kingdom which eventually became an empire. According to the ordinary
theory, this race was Aramaic or Semitic. “The name of Aramaeans,
Syrians, or Assyrians,” says Niebuhr, “comprises the nations extending
from the mouth of the Euphrates and Tigris to the Euxine, the river
Halys, and Palestine. They applied to themselves the name of Aram, and
the Greeks called them Assyrians, which is the same as Syrians(?).
Within that great extent of country there existed, of course, various
dialectic differences of language; and there can be little doubt but that
in some places the nation was mixed with other races.” The early
inhabitants of Lower Mesopotamia, however, he considers to have been pure
Aramaeans, closely akin to the Assyrians, from whom, indeed, he regards
them as only separate politically.
Similar views are entertained by most modern writers. Baron Bunsen, in
one of his latest works, regards the fact as completely established by
the results of recent researches in Babylonia. Professor M. Muller,
though expressing himself with more caution, inclines to the same
conclusion. Popular works, in the shape of Cyclopaedias and short
general histories, diffuse the impression. Hence a difficulty is felt
with regard to the Scriptural statement concerning the first kingdom in
these parts, which is expressly said to have been Cushite or Ethiopian.
“And _Cush begat Nimrod:_ (he began to be a mighty one in the earth;
he was a mighty hunter before the Lord; wherefore it is said, Even as
Nimrod, the mighty hunter before the Lord;) and the beginning of his
kingdom was Babel, and Erech, and Accad, and Calneh, in the land of
Shinar.” According to this passage the early Chaldaeans should be
Hamites, not Semites--Ethiopians, not Aramaans; they should present
analogies and points of connection with the inhabitants of Egypt and
Abyssinia, of Southern Arabia and Mekran, not with those of Upper
Mesopotamia, Syria, Phoenicia, and Palestine. It will be one of the
objects of this chapter to show that the Mosaical narrative conveys the
exact truth--a truth alike in accordance with the earliest classical
traditions, and with the latest results of modern comparative philology.
It will be desirable, however, before proceeding to establish the
correctness of these assertions, to examine the grounds on which the
opposite belief has been held so long and so confidently. Heeren draws
his chief argument from the supposed character of the language. Assuming
the form of speech called Chaldee to be the original tongue of the
people, he remarks that it is “an Aramaean dialect, differing but
slightly from the proper Syriac.” Chaldee is known partly from the
Jewish Scriptures, in which it is used occasionally, partly from the
Targums (or Chaldaean paraphrases of different portions of the Sacred
Volume), some of which belong to about the time of the Apostles. and
partly from the two Talmuds, or collections of Jewish traditions, made in
the third and fifth centuries of our era. It has been commonly regarded
as the language of Babylon at the time of the Captivity, which the Jews,
as captives, were forced to learn, and which thenceforth took the place
of their own tongue. But it is extremely doubtful whether this is a true
account of the matter. The Babylonian language of the age of
Nebuchadnezzar is found to be far nearer to Hebrew than to Chaldee, which
appears therefore to be misnamed, and to represent the western rather
than the eastern Aramaic. The Chaldee argument thus falls to the ground:
but in refuting it an admission has been made which may be thought to
furnish fully as good proof of early Babylonian Semitism as the rejected
theory.
It has been said that the Babylonian language in the time of
Nebuchadnezzar is found to be far nearer to Hebrew than to Chaldee. It
is, in fact, very close indeed to the Hebrew. The Babylonians of that
period, although they did not speak the tongue known to modern linguists
as Chaldee, did certainly employ a Semitic or Aramaean dialect, and so
far may be set down as Semites. And this is the ground upon which such
modern philologists as still maintain the Semitic character of the
primitive Chaldaeans principally rely. But it can be proved from the
inscriptions of the country, that between the date of the first
establishment of a Chaldaean kingdom and the reign of Nebuchadnezzar, the
language of Lower Mesopotamia underwent an entire change. To whatever
causes this may have been owing--a subject which will be hereafter
investigated--the fact is certain; and it entirely destroys the force of
the argument from the language of the Babylonians at the later period.
Another ground, and that which seems to have had the chief weight with
Niebuhr, is the supposed identity or intimate connection of the
Babylonians with the Assyrians. That the latter people were Semites has
never been denied; and, indeed, it is a point supported by such an amount
of evidence as renders it quite unassailable. If, therefore the
primitive Babylonians were once proved to be a mere portion of the far
greater Assyrian nation, locally and politically, but not ethnically
separate from them, their Semitic character would thereupon be fully
established. Now that this was the belief of Herodotus must be at once
allowed. Not only does that writer regard the later Babylonians as
Assyrians--“Assyrians of Babylon,” as he expresses it--and look on
Babylonia as a mere “district of Assyria,” but, by adopting the mythic
genealogy, which made Ninus the son of Belus, he throws back the
connection to the very origin of the two nations, and distinctly
pronounces it a connection of race. But Herodotus is a very weak
authority on the antiquities of any nation, even his own; and it is not
surprising that he should have carried back to a remote period a state of
things which he saw existing in his own age. If the later Babylonians
were, in manners and customs, in religion and in language, a close,
counterpart of the Assyrians, he would naturally suppose them descended
from the same stock. It is his habit to transfer back to former times
the condition of things in his own day. Thus he calls the inhabitants of
the Peloponnese before the Dorian invasion “Dorians,” regards Athens as
the second city in Greece when Creesus sent his embassies, and describes
as the ancient Persian religion that corrupted form which existed under
Artaxerxes Longimanus. He is an excellent authority for what he had
himself seen, or for what he had laboriously collected by inquiry from
eye witnesses; but he had neither the critical acumen nor the linguistic
knowledge necessary for the formation of a trust worthy opinion on a
matter belonging to the remote history of a distant people. And the
opinion of Herodotus as to the ethnic identity of the two nations is
certainly not confirmed by other ancient writers. Berosus seems to have
very carefully distinguished between the Assyrians and the Babylonians or
Chaldaeans, as may be seen even through the doubly-distorting medium of
Polyhistor and the Armenian Eusebius. Diodorus Siculus made the two
nations separate and hostile in very early times. Pliny draws a clear
line between the “Chaldaean races,” of which Babylon was the head, and
the Assyrians of the region above them. Even Herodotus in one place
admits a certain amount of ethnic difference; for, in his list of the
nations forming the army of Xerxes, he mentions the Chaldaeans as serving
with, but not included among, the Assyrians.
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.
Now a large amount of tradition--classical and other--brings Ethiopians
into these parts, and connects, more or less distinctly, the early
dwellers upon the Persian Gulf with the inhabitants of the Nile valley,
especially with those upon its upper course. Homer, speaking of the
Ethiopians, says that they were “divided,” and dwelt “at the ends of
earth, towards the setting and the rising sun.” This passage has been
variously apprehended. It has been supposed to mean the mere division of
the Ethiopians south of Egypt by the river Nile, whereby some inhabited
its eastern and some its western bank. Again it has been explained as
referring to the east and west coasts of Africa, both found by voyagers
to be in the possession of Ethiopians, who were “divided” by the vast
extent of continent that lay between them. But the most satisfactory
explanation is that which Strabo gives from Ephorus, that the Ethiopians
were considered as occupying all the south coast both of Asia and Africa,
and as “divided” by the Arabian Gulf (which separated the two continents)
into eastern and western-Asiatic and African. This was an “old opinion”
of the Greeks, we are told; and, though Strabo thinks it indicated their
ignorance, we may perhaps be excused for holding it that it might not
improbably have arisen from real, though imperfect, knowledge.
The traditions with respect to Memnon serve very closely to connect Egypt
and Ethiopia with the country at the head of the Persian Gulf. Memnon,
King of Ethiopia, according to Hesiod and Pindar, is regarded by
‘Eschylus as the son of a Cissian woman, and by Herodotus and others as
the founder of Susa. He leads an army of combined Susianians and
Ethiopians to the assistance of Priam, his father’s brother, and, after
greatly distinguishing himself, perishes in one of the battles before
Troy. At the same time he is claimed as one of their monarchs by the
Ethiopians upon the Nile, and identified by the Egyptians with their
king, Amunoph III., whose statue became known as “the vocal Memnon.”
Sometimes his expedition is supposed to have started from the African
Ethiopia, and to have proceeded by way of Egypt to its destination.
There were palaces, called “Memnonia,” and supposed to have been built
by him, both in Egypt and at Susa; and there was a tribe, called
Memnones, near Meroe. Memnon thus unites the Eastern and the Western
Ethiopians; and the less we regard him as an historical personage, the
more must we view him as personifying the ethnic identity of the two
races.
The ordinary genealogies containing the name of Belus point in the same
direction, and serve more definitely to connect the Babylonians with the
Cushites of the Nile. Pherecydes, who is an earlier writer than
Herodotus, makes Agenor, the son of Neptune, marry Damno, the daughter of
Belus, and have issue Phoenix, Isaea, and Melia, of whom Melia marries
Danaus, and Isaea Aegyptus. Apollodorus, the disciple of Eratosthenes,
expresses the connection thus:--“Neptune took to wife Libya (or Africa),
and had issue Belus and Agenor. Belus married Anchinoe, daughter of
Nile, who gave birth to AEgyptus, Danaus, Cepheus, and Phineus. Agenor
married Telephassa, and had issue Europa, Cadmus, Phoenix, and Cilix.”
Eupolemus, who professes to record the Babylonian tradition on the
subject, tells us that the first Belus, whom he identifies with Saturn,
had two sons, Belus and Canaan. Canaan begat the progenitor of the
Phoenicians (Phoenix?), who had two sons, Chum and Mestraim, the
ancestors respectively of the Ethiopians and the Egyptians. Charax of
Pergamus spoke of AEgyptus as the son of Belus. John of Antioch agrees
with Apollodorus, but makes certain additions. According to him, Neptune
and Lybia had three children, Agenor, Belus, and Enyalius or Mars. Belus
married Sida, and had issue AEgyptus and Danaus; while Agenor married
Tyro, and became the father of five children--Cadmus, Phoenix, Syrus,
Cilix, and Europa.
Many further proofs might be adduced, were they needed, of the Greek
belief in an Asiatic Ethiopia, situated somewhere between Arabia and
India, on the shores of the Erythraean Sea. Herodotus twice speaks of
the Ethiopians of Asia, whom he very carefully distinguishes from those
of Africa, and who can only be sought in this position. Ephorus, as we
have already seen, extended the Ethiopians along the whole of the coast
washed by the Southern Ocean. Eusebius has preserved a tradition that,
in the reign of Amenophis III., a body of Ethiopians migrated from the
country about the Indus, and settled in the valley of the Nile. Hesiod
and Apollodorus, by making Memnon, the Ethiopian king, son of the Dawn
(Greek) imply their belief in an Ethiopia situated to the east rather
than to the south of Greece. These are a few out of the many similar
notices which it would be easy to produce from classical writers,
establishing, if not the fact itself, yet at any rate a full belief in
the fact on the part of the best informed among the ancient Greeks.
The traditions of the Armenians are in accordance with those of the
Greeks. The Armenian Geography applies the name of Cush, or Ethiopia, to
the four great regions, Media, Persia, Susiana or Elymais, and Aria, or
to the whole territory between the Indus and the Tigris. Moses of
Chorene, the great Armenian historian, identifies Belus, King of Babylon,
with Nimrod; while at the same time he adopts for him a genealogy only
slightly different from that in our present copies of Genesis, making
Nimrod the grandson of Cush, and the son of Mizraim. He thus connects,
in the closest way, Babylonia, Egypt, and Ethiopia Proper, uniting
moreover, by his identification of Nimrod with Belus, the Babylonians of
later times who worshipped Belus as their hero-founder, with the
primitive population introduced into the country by Nimrod.
The names of Belus and Cush, thus brought into juxtaposition, have
remained attached to some portion or other of the region in question from
ancient times to the present day. The tract immediately east of the
Tigris was known to the Greeks as Cissia or Cossaea, no less than as
Elymais or Elam. The country east of Kerman was named Kusan throughout
the Sassanian period. The same region is now Beloochistan, the country
of the Belooches or Belus, while adjoining it on the east is Cutch, or
Kooch, a term standing to Cush is Belooch stands to Belus. Again, Cissia
or Cossaea is now Khuzistan, or the land of Khuz a name not very remote
from Cush; but perhaps this is only a coincidence.
To the traditions and traces here enumerated must be added, as of primary
importance, the Biblical tradition, which is delivered to us very simply
and plainly in that precious document the “Toldoth Beni Noah,” or “Book
of the Generations of the Sons of Noah,” which well deserves to be called
“the most authentic record that we possess for the affiliation of
nations.” “The sons of Ham,” we are told, “were Cush, and Mizraim, and
Phut, and Canaan . . . . And Cush begat Nimrod . . . . And the
beginning of his kingdom was Babel, and Erech, and Accad, and Calneh, in
the land of Shinar.” Here a primitive Babylonian kingdom is assigned to
a people distinctly said to have been Cushite by blood, and to have stood
in close connection with Mizraim, or the people of Egypt, Phut, or those
of Central Africa, and Canaan, or those of Palestine. It is the simplest
and the best interpretation of this passage to understand it as asserting
that the four races--the Egyptians, Ethiopians, Libyans, and
Canaanites--were ethnically connected, being all descended from Ham; and
further, that the primitive people of Babylon were a subdivision of one
of these races, namely of the Cushites or Ethiopians, connected in some
degree with the Canaanites, Egyptians, and Libyans, but still more
closely with the people which dwelt anciently upon the Upper Nile.
The conclusions thus recommended to us by the consentient primitive
traditions of so many races, have lately received most important and
unexpected confirmation from the results of linguistic research. After
the most remarkable of the Mesopotamian mounds had yielded their
treasures, and supplied the historical student with numerous and copious
documents bearing upon the history of the great Assyrian and Babylonian
empires, it was determined to explore Chaldaea Proper, where mounds of
less pretension, but still of considerable height, marked the sites of a
number of ancient cities. The excavations conducted at these places,
especially at Niffer, Senkereh, Warka, and Mugheir, were eminently
successful. Among their other unexpected results was the discovery, in
the most ancient remains, of a new form of speech, differing greatly from
the later Babylonian language and presenting analogies with the early
language of Susiana, as well as with that of the second column of the
Achoemenian inscriptions. In grammatical structure this ancient tongue
resembles dialects of the Turanian family, but its vocabulary has been
pronounced to be “decidedly Cushite or Ethiopian;” and the modern
languages to which it approaches the nearest are thought to be the Mahra
of Southern Arabia and the Galla of Abyssinia. Thus comparative philology
appears to confirm the old traditions. An Eastern Ethiopia instead of
being the invention of bewildered ignorance, is rather a reality which
henceforth it will require a good deal of scepticism to doubt; and the
primitive race which bore sway in Chaldaea Proper is with much
probability assigned to this ethnic type. The most striking physical
characteristics of the African Ethiopians were their swart complexions,
and their crisp or frizzled hair. According to Herodotus the Asiatic
Ethiopian: were equally dark, but their hair was straight and not
frizzled. Probably in neither case was the complexion what we understand
by black, but rather a dark red-brown or copper color, which is the tint
of the modern Gallas and Abyssinians, as well as of the Cha’b and
Montefik Arabs and the Belooches. The hair was no doubt abundant; but it
was certainly not woolly like that of the negroes. There is a marked
distinction between the negro hair and that of the Ethiopian race, which
is sometimes straight, sometimes crisp, but never woolly. This
distinction is carefully marked in the Egyptian monuments, as is also the
distinction between the Ethiopian and negro complexions; whence we may
conclude that there was as much difference between the two races in
ancient as in modern times. The African races descended from the
Ethiopians are on the whole a handsome rather than an ugly people; their
figure is slender and well shaped; their features are regular, and have
some delicacy; the forehead is straight and fairly high; the nose long,
straight, and fine, but scarcely so prominent as that of Europeans; the
chin is pointed and good. [PLATE VI., Fig. 2.]
The principal defect is in the mouth, which has lips too thick and full
for beauty, though they are not turned out like a negro’s. We do not
possess any representations of the ancient people which can be distinctly
assigned to the early Cushite period. Abundant hair has been noticed in
an early tomb; and this in the later Babylonians, who must have been
descended in great part from the earlier, was very conspicuous; but
otherwise we have as yet no direct evidence with respect to the physical
characteristics of the primitive race. That they were brave and warlike,
ingenious, energetic, and persevering, we have ample evidence, which will
appear in later chapters of this work; but we can do little more than
conjecture their physical appearance, which, however, we may fairly
suppose to have resembled that of other Ethiopian nations.
When the early inhabitants of ChaldAea are pronounced to have belonged to
the same race with the dwellers upon the Upper Nile, the question
naturally arises, which were the primitive people, and which the
colonists? Is the country at the head of the Persian Gulf to be regarded
as the original abode of the Cushite race, whence it spread eastward and
westward, on the one hand to Susiana, Persia Proper, Carmania, Gedrosia,
and India itself; on the other to Arabia and the east coast of Africa?
Or are we to suppose that the migration proceeded in one direction
only--that the Cushites, having occupied the country immediately to the
south of Egypt, sent their colonies along the south coast of Arabia,
whence they crept on into the Persian Gulf, occupying Chaldaea and
Susiana, and thence spreading into Mekran, Kerman, and the regions
bordering upon the Indus? Plausible reasons maybe adduced in support of
either hypothesis. The situation of Babylonia, and its proximity to that
mountain region where man must have first “increased and multiplied”
after the Flood, are in favor of its being the original centre from
which the other Cushite races were derived. The Biblical genealogy of
the sons of Ham points, however, the other way; for it derives Nimrod
from Cush, not Cush from Nimrod. Indeed this document seems to follow
the Hamites from Africa--emphatically “the land of Ham”--in one line
along Southern Arabia to Shinar or Babylonia, in another from Egypt
through Canaan into Syria. 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. On the whole, therefore, it seems most probable
that the race designated in Scripture by the hero-founder Nimrod, and
among the Greeks by the eponym of Belus, passed from East Africa, by way
of Arabia, to the valley of the Euphrates, shortly before the opening of
the historical period.
Upon the ethnic basis here indicated, there was grafted, it would seem,
at a very early period, a second, probably Turanian, element, which very
importantly affected the character and composition of the people. The
_Burbur_ or _Akkad,_ who are found to have been a principal tribe under
the early kings, are connected by name, religion, and in some degree by
language, with an important people of Armenia, called _Burbur_ and
_Urarda,_ the Alarodians (apparently) of Herodotus. It has been
conjectured that this race at a very remote date descended upon the plain
country, conquering the original Cushite inhabitants, and by degrees
blending with them, though the fusion remained incomplete to the time of
Abraham. The language of the early inscriptions, though Cushite in its
vocabulary, is Turanian in many points of its grammatical structure, as
in its use of post-positions, particles, and pronominal suffixes; and it
would seem, therefore, scarcely to admit of a doubt that the Cushites of
Lower Babylon must in some way or other have become mixed with a Turanian
people. The mode and time of the commixture are matters altogether
beyond our knowledge. We can only note the fact as indicated by the
phenomena, and form, or abstain from forming, as we please, hypotheses
with respect to its accompanying circumstances.
Besides these two main constituents of the Chaldaean race, there is
reason to believe that both a Semitic and an Arian element existed in the
early population of the country. The subjects of the early kings are
continually designated in the inscriptions by the title of
_kiprat-arbat,_ “the four nations,” or _arba lisun,_ “the four tongues.”
In Abraham’s time, again, the league of four kings seems correspondent
to a fourfold ethnic division, Cushite, Turanian, Semitic, and Arian,
the chief authority and ethnic preponderance being with the Cushites.
The language also of the early inscriptions is thought to contain traces
of Semitic and Arian influence; so that it is at least probable that the
“four tongues” intended were not mere local dialects, but distinct
languages, the representatives respectively of the four great families
of human speech.
It would result from this review of the linguistic facts and other ethnic
indications, that the Chaldaeans were not a pure, but a very mixed
people. Like the Romans in ancient and the English in modern Europe,
they were a “colluvio gentium omnium,” a union of various races between
which there was marked and violent contrast. It is now generally
admitted that such races are among those which play the most
distinguished part in the world’s history, and most vitally affect its
progress.
With respect to the name of Chaldaean, under which it has been customary
to designate this mixed people, it is curious to find that in the native
documents of the early period it does not occur at all. Indeed it first
appears in the Assyrian inscriptions of the ninth century before our era,
being then used as the name of the dominant race in the country about
Babylon. Still, as Berosus, who cannot easily have been ignorant of the
ancient appellation of his race, applies the term Chaldaean to the
primitive people, and as Scripture assigns Ur to the Chaldees as early as
the time of Abraham, we are entitled to assume that this term, whenever
it came historically into use, is in fact no unfit designation for the
early inhabitants of the country. Perhaps the most probable account of
the origin of the word is that it designates properly the inhabitants of
the ancient capital, Ur or Hur-Khaldi being in the Burbur dialect the
exact equivalent of Hur, which was the proper name of the Moon-God, and
Chaldaeans being thus either “Moon-worshippers,” or simply “inhabitants
of the town dedicated to, and called after, the Moon.” Like the term
“Babylonian,” it would at first have designated simply the dwellers in
the capital, and would subsequently have been extended to the people
generally.
A different theory has of late years been usually maintained with respect
to the Chaldaeans. It has been supposed that they were a race entirely
distinct from the early Babylonians--Armenians, Arabs, Kurds, or Sclaves
--who came down from the north long after the historical period, and
settled as the dominant race in the lower Mesopotamian valley.
Philological arguments of the weakest and most unsatisfactory character
were confidently adduced in support of these views; but they obtained
acceptance chiefly on account of certain passages of Scripture, which
were thought to imply that the Chaldaeans first colonized Babylonia in
the seventh or eighth century before Christ. The most important of these
passages is in Isaiah. That prophet, in his denunciation of woe upon
Tyre, says, according to our translation,--“Behold the land of the
Chaldaeans this people was not, till the Assyrian founded it for them
that dwell in the wilderness; they set up the towers thereof, they raised
up the palaces thereof; and he brought it to ruin;” or, according to
Bishop Lowth, “Behold the land of the Chaldaeans. This people was of no
account. (The Assyrians founded it for the inhabitants of the desert,
they raised the watch-towers, they setup the palaces thereof.) This
people hath reduced her and shall reduce her to ruin.” It was argued
that we had here a plain declaration that, till a little before Isaiah’s
time, the Chaldaeans had never existed as a nation. Then, it was said,
they obtained for the first time fixed habitations from one of the
Assyrian kings, who settled them in a city, probably Babylon. 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. They are terrible and dreadful; their judgment and their
dignity shall proceed of themselves; their horses also are swifter than
the leopards, and are more fierce than the evening wolves: and their
horsemen shall spread themselves, and their horsemen shall come from far;
they shall fly as an eagle that hasteth to eat; they shall come all for
violence; their faces shall nip as the east wind, and they shall gather
the captivity as the sand. And they shall scoff at the kings, and the
princes shall be a scorn unto them; they shall deride every stronghold;
they shall heap dust and take it.” The Chaldaeans, recent occupants of
Lower Mesopotamia, and there only a dominant race, like the Normans in
England or the Lombards in North Italy, were, on a sudden, “raised”
elevated from their low estate of Assyrian colonists to the conquering
people which they became under Nebuchadnezzar.
Such was the theory, originally advanced by Gesenius, which, variously
modified by other writers, held its ground on the whole as the
established view, until the recent cuneiform discoveries. It was, from
the first, a theory full of difficulty. The mention of the Chaldaeans in
Job, and even in Genesis, as a well-known people, was in contradiction to
the supposed recent origin of the race. The explanation of the obscure
passage in the 23d chapter of Isaiah, on which the theory was mainly
based, was at variance with other clearer passages of the same prophet.
Babylon is called by Isaiah the “_daughter_ of the Chaldaeans,” and is
spoken of as an ancient city, long “the glory of kingdoms,” the oppressor
of nations, the power that “smote the people in wrath with a continual
stroke.” She is “the lady of kingdoms,” and “the beauty of the Chaldees’
excellency.” The Chaldaeans are thus in Isaiah, as elsewhere generally
in Scripture, the people of Babylonia, the term “Babylonians” not being
used by him; Babylon is their chief city, not one which they have
conquered and occupied, but their “daughter”--“the beauty of their
excellency;” and so all the antiquity and glory which is assigned to
Babylon belong necessarily in Isaiah’s mind to the Chaldaeans. The
verse, therefore, in the 23d chapter, on which so much has been built,
can at most refer to some temporary depression of the Chaldaeans, which
made it a greater disgrace to Tyre that she should be conquered by them.
Again, the theory of Gesenius took no account of the native historian,
who is (next to Scripture) the best literary authority for the facts of
Babylonian history. Berosus not only said nothing of any influx of an
alien race into Babylonia shortly before the time of Nebuchadnezzar, but
pointedly identified the Chaldaeans of that period with the primitive
people of the country. Nor can it be said that he would do this from
national vanity, to avoid the confession of a conquest, for he admits no
fewer than three conquests of Babylon, a “Midian, an Arabian, and an
Assyrian.” Thus, even apart from the monuments, the theory in question
would be untenable. It really originated in linguistic speculations,
which turn out to have been altogether mistaken.
The joint authority of Scripture and of Berosus will probably be accepted
as sufficient to justify the adoption of a term which, if not strictly
correct, is yet familiar to us, and which will conveniently serve to
distinguish the primitive monarchy, whose chief seats were in Chaldaea
Proper (or the tract immediately bordering upon the Persian Gulf), from
the later Babylonian Empire, which had its head-quarters further to the
north. The people of this first kingdom will therefore be called
Chaldaeans, although there is no evidence that they applied the name to
themselves, or that it was even known to them in primitive times.
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. For the last 3000 years the world has been mainly
indebted for its advancement to the Semitic and Indo-European races; but
it was otherwise in the first ages. Egypt and Babylon--Mizraim and
Nimrod--both descendants of Ham--led the way, and acted as the pioneers
of mankind in the various untrodden fields of art, literature, and
science. Alphabetic writing, astronomy, history, chronology,
architecture, plastic art, sculpture, navigation, agriculture, textile
industry, seem, all of them, to have had their origin in one or other of
these two countries. The beginnings may have been often humble enough.
We may laugh at the rude picture-writing, the uncouth brick pyramid, the
coarse fabric, the homely and ill-shapen instruments, as they present
themselves to our notice in the remains of these ancient nations; but
they are really worthier of our admiration than of our ridicule. The
first inventors of any art are among the greatest benefactors of their
race; and the bold step which they take from the unknown to the known,
from blank ignorance to discovery, is equal to many steps of subsequent
progress. “The commencement,” says Aristotle, “is more than half of the
whole.” This is a sound judgment; and it will be well that we should
bear it in mind during the review, on which we are about to enter, of the
language, writing, useful and ornamental art, science, and literature of
the Chaldaeans. “The child is father of the man,” both in the individual
and the species; and the human race at the present day lies under
infinite obligations to the genius and industry of early ages.