Ancient Babylonia Glossary - Chaldea
Chaldea, properly the southernmost portion of the valley of the Tigris and the
Euphrates rivers. Sometimes it is extended to include Babylonia and thus
comprises all S Mesopotamia, as in the Bible. The Chaldaeans were a Semitic people
who first came into S Babylonia c.1000 B.C. With the death of Assurbanipal (626
B.C.), Nabopolassar seized the throne and established a new Babylonian or
Chaldaean empire. The empire flourished under Nabopolassar's son Nebuchadnezzar II,
but it declined rapidly thereafter and came to an end when Babylon fell to
Cyrus the Great in 539 B.C. The study of astronomy and astrology was developed in
this period, and "Chaldaean" came to mean simply "astrologer", as in the book of
Daniel and among the Romans. The term is also understood in the Bible to mean
Aramaean.
Ancient Babylonia
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