Chaldea : From The Earliest Times To The Rise Of Assyria

From Ancient Times, Biblical Times and in Modern Times.. Chaldea.. the Land of the Chaldees has been the source of esoteric mysteries, home of the Magi, the beginning of Judaism and many other religions. It is a habitual hotbed of wars and conquests. What is it about this mysterious desert land that attracts the attention of world powers and religions?

EXCERPT 1

1. The Bible says (Genesis xi. 2): "And it came to pass, as they journeyed in the east, that they found a plain in the land of Shinar; and they dwelt there."

Shinar-or, more correctly, Shineâr-is what may be called Babylonia proper, that part of Mesopotamia where Babylon was, and south of it, almost to the Gulf. "They" are descendants of Noah, long after the Flood. They found the plain and dwelt there, but they did not find the whole land desert; it had been occupied long before them. How long? For such remote ages an exact valuation of time in years is not to be thought of.

2. What people were those whom the descendants of Noah found in the land to which they came from the East? It seems a simple question, yet no answer could have been given to it even as lately as fifteen or sixteen years ago, and when the answer was first suggested by unexpected discoveries made in the Royal Library at Nineveh, it startled the discoverers extremely. The only indication on the subject then known was this, from a Chaldean writer of a late period: "There was originally at Babylon" (i.e., in the land of Babylon, not the city alone) "a multitude of men of foreign race who had settled in Chaldea." This is told by Berosus, a learned priest of Babylon, who lived immediately after Alexander the Great had conquered the country, and when the Greeks ruled it (somewhat after 300 B.C.). He wrote a history of it from the most ancient times, in which he gave an account of the oldest traditions concerning its beginnings. As he wrote his book in Greek, it is probable that his object was to acquaint the new masters with the history and religion of the land and people whom they had come to rule. Unfortunately the work was lost-as so many valuable works have been, as long as there was no printing, and books existed only in a few manuscript copies-and we know of it only some short fragments, quoted by later writers, in whose time Berosus' history was still accessible. The above lines are contained in one such fragment, and naturally led to the question: who were these men of foreign race who came from somewhere else and settled in Chaldea in immemorial times?

3. One thing appears clear: they belonged to none of the races classed in the Bible as descended from Noah, but probably to one far older, which had not been included in the Flood.

EXCERPT 2

1. In or about the year before Christ 606, Nineveh, the great city, was destroyed. For many hundred years had she stood in arrogant splendor, her palaces towering above the Tigris and mirrored in its swift waters; army after army had gone forth from her gates and returned laden with the spoils of conquered countries; her monarchs had ridden to the high place of sacrifice in chariots drawn by captive kings. But her time came at last.

The nations assembled and encompassed her around. Popular tradition tells how over two years lasted the siege; how the very river rose and battered her walls; till one day a vast flame rose up to heaven; how the last of a mighty line of kings, too proud to surrender, thus saved himself, his treasures and his capital from the shame of bondage. Never was city to rise again where Nineveh had been. 2. Two hundred years went by. Great changes had passed over the land.

The Persian kings now held the rule of Asia. But their greatness also was leaning towards its decline and family discords undermined their power. A young prince had rebelled against his elder brother and resolved to tear the crown from him by main force. To accomplish this, he had raised an army and called in the help of Grecian hirelings. They came, 13,000 in number, led by brave and renowned generals, and did their duty by him; but their valor could not save him from defeat and death. Their own leader fell into an ambush, and they commenced their retreat under the most disastrous circumstances and with little hope of escape.

3. Yet they accomplished it. Surrounded by open enemies and false friends, tracked and pursued, through sandy wastes and pathless mountains, now parched with heat, now numbed with cold, they at last reached the sunny and friendly Hellespont. It was a long and weary march from Babylon on the Euphrates, near which city the great battle had been fought.

They might not have succeeded had they not chosen a great and brave commander, Xenophon, a noble Athenian, whose fame as scholar and writer equals his renown as soldier and general. Few books are more interesting than the lively relation he has left of his and his companions' toils and sufferings in this expedition, known in history as "The Retreat of the Ten Thousand"-for to that number had the original 13,000 been reduced by battles, privations and disease. So cultivated a man could not fail, even in the midst of danger and weighed down by care, to observe whatever was noteworthy in the strange lands which he traversed. So he tells us how one day his little army, after a forced march in the early morning hours and an engagement with some light troops of pursuers, having repelled the attack and thereby secured a short interval of safety, travelled on till they came to the banks of the Tigris.

On that spot, he goes on, there was a vast desert city. Its wall was twenty-five feet wide, one hundred feet high and nearly seven miles in circuit. It was built of brick with a basement, twenty feet high, of stone. Close by the city there stood a stone pyramid, one hundred feet in width, and two hundred in height. Xenophon adds that this city's name was Larissa and that it had anciently been inhabited by Medes; that the king of Persia, when he took the sovereignty away from the Medes, besieged it, but could not in any way get possession of it, until, a cloud having obscured the sun, the inhabitants forsook the city and thus it was taken.

4. Some eighteen miles further on (a day's march) the Greeks came to another great deserted city, which Xenophon calls Mespila. It had a similar but still higher wall. This city, he tells us, had also been inhabited by Medes, and taken by the king of Persia. Now these curious ruins were all that was left of Kalah and Nineveh, the two Assyrian capitals. In the short space of two hundred years, men had surely not yet lost the memory of Nineveh's existence and rule, yet they trod the very site where it had stood and knew it not, and called its ruins by a meaningless Greek name, handing down concerning it a tradition absurdly made up of true and fictitious details, jumbled into inextricable confusion.

For Nineveh had been the capital of the Assyrian Empire, while the Medes were one of the nations who attacked and destroyed it. And though an eclipse of the sun-(the obscuring cloud could mean nothing else)-did occur, created great confusion and produced important results, it was at a later period and on an entirely different occasion. As to "the king of Persia," no such personage had anything whatever to do with the catastrophe of Nineveh, since the Persians had not yet been heard of at that time as a powerful people, and their country was only a small and insignificant principality, tributary to Media. So effectually had the haughty city been swept from the face of the earth!

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