A91.Inglish BCEnc. Blauwe Kaas Encyclopedie, Duaal Hermeneuties Kollegium.
Inglish Site.91.
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TO THE THRISE HO-
NOVRABLE AND EVER LY-
VING VERTVES OF SYR PHILLIP
SYDNEY KNIGHT, SYR JAMES JESUS SINGLETON, SYR CANARIS, SYR LAVRENTI BERIA ; AND TO THE
RIGHT HONORABLE AND OTHERS WHAT-
SOEVER, WHO LIVING LOVED THEM,
AND BEING DEAD GIVE THEM
THEIRE DVE.
***
In the beginning there is darkness. The screen erupts in blue, then a cascade of thick, white hexadecimal numbers and cracked language, ?UnusedStk? and ?AllocMem.? Black screen cedes to blue to white and a pair of scales appear, crossed by a sword, both images drawn in the jagged, bitmapped graphics of Windows 1.0-era clip-art?light grey and yellow on a background of light cyan. Blue text proclaims, ?God on tap!?
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Introduction.
Yes i am getting a little Mobi-Literate(ML) by experimenting literary on my Mobile Phone. Peoplecall it Typographical Laziness(TL).
The first accidental entries for the this part of this encyclopedia.
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This is TempleOS V2.17, the welcome screen explains, a ?Public Domain Operating System? produced by Trivial Solutions of Las Vegas, Nevada. It greets the user with a riot of 16-color, scrolling, blinking text; depending on your frame of reference, it might recall ?DESQview, the ?Commodore 64, or a host of early DOS-based graphical user interfaces. In style if not in specifics, it evokes a particular era, a time when the then-new concept of ?personal computing? necessarily meant programming and tinkering and breaking things.
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Index.
233.Lords of the Day.
234.Zodiac.
235.Chaldea/Chaldaea.
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233.Lords of the Day.
In Aztec mythology the Lords of the Day are a set of thirteen gods that ruled over a particular day corresponding to one of the thirteen heavens. They were cyclical, so that same god recurred every thirteen days. In the Aztec calendar, the lords of the day are;
1.Xiuhtecuhtli, god of fire
2.Tlaltecuhtli, god of the earth.
3.Chalchiuhtlicue, goddess of water, lakes, rivers, seas, streams, horizontal waters, storms and baptism.
4.Tonatiuh, god of the sun.
5.Tlazolteotl, goddess of lust, carnality, sexual misdeeds.
6.Mictlantecuhtli, god of the underworld.
7.Centeotl, goddess of maize. Also recognized as Chicomecoatl, goddess of agriculture.
8.Tlaloc, god of the thunder, rain and earthquakes.
9.Quetzalcoatl, god of wisdom, life, knowledge, morning star, fertility, patron of the winds and the light, the lord of the West.
10.Tezcatlipoca, god of providence, matter and the invisible, ruler of the night, Great Bear, impalpable, ubiquity and the twilight, the lord of the North.
11.Mictecacihuatl, goddess of the underworld.
12.Tlahuizcalpantecuhtli, god of dawn.
13.Citlalicue, goddess of the female stars (Milky Way).
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234.Zodiac.
In both astrology and historical astronomy, the zodiac (Greek: ????????, z?idiakos) is a circle of twelve 30° divisions of celestial longitude that are centered upon the ecliptic, the apparent path of the Sun across the celestial sphere over the course of the year. The paths of the Moon and visible planets also remain close to the ecliptic, within the belt of the zodiac, which extends 8-9° north or south of the ecliptic, as measured in celestial latitude. Because the divisions are regular, they do not correspond exactly to the twelve constellations after which they are named.
Historically, these twelve divisions are called signs. Essentially, the zodiac is a celestial coordinate system, or more specifically an ecliptic coordinate system, which takes the ecliptic as the origin of latitude, and the position of the Sun at vernal equinox as the origin of longitude.
Usage.
The zodiac was in use by the Roman era, based on concepts inherited by Hellenistic astronomy from Babylonian astronomy of the Chaldean period (mid-1st millennium BC), which, in turn, derived from an earlier system of lists of stars along the ecliptic. The construction of the zodiac is described in Ptolemy's vast 2nd century AD work, the Almagest.
The term zodiac derives from Latin z?diacus, which in its turn comes from the Greek ???????? ?????? (z?diakos kyklos), meaning "circle of animals", derived from ?????? (z?dion), the diminutive of ???? (z?on) "animal". The name is motivated by the fact that half of the signs of the classical Greek zodiac are represented as animals (besides two mythological hybrids).
Although the zodiac remains the basis of the ecliptic coordinate system in use in astronomy besides the equatorial one, the term and the names of the twelve signs are today mostly associated with horoscopic astrology. The term "zodiac" may also refer to the region of the celestial sphere encompassing the paths of the planets corresponding to the band of about eight arc degrees above and below the ecliptic. The zodiac of a given planet is the band that contains the path of that particular body; e.g., the "zodiac of the Moon" is the band of five degrees above and below the ecliptic. By extension, the "zodiac of the comets" may refer to the band encompassing most short-period comets.
History.
Further information: Former constellations
Early history.
Wheel of the zodiac: This 6th century mosaic pavement in a synagogue incorporates Greek-Byzantine elements, Beit Alpha, Israel.
Further information: Babylonian star catalogues and MUL.APIN
The division of the ecliptic into the zodiacal signs originates in Babylonian ("Chaldean") astronomy during the first half of the 1st millennium BC, likely during Median/"Neo-Babylonian" times (7th century BC). The classical zodiac is a modification of the MUL.APIN catalogue, which was compiled around 1000 BC. Some of the constellations can be traced even further back, to Bronze Age (Old Babylonian) sources, including Gemini "The Twins", from MA?.TAB.BA.GAL.GAL "The Great Twins", and Cancer "The Crab", from AL.LUL "The Crayfish", among others.
Babylonian astronomers at some stage during the early 1st millennium BC divided the ecliptic into twelve equal zones of celestial longitude to create the first known celestial coordinate system: a coordinate system that boasts some advantages over modern systems (such as the equatorial coordinate system). The Babylonian calendar as it stood in the 7th century BC assigned each month to a sign, beginning with the position of the Sun at vernal equinox, which, at the time, was depicted as the Aries constellation ("Age of Aries"), for which reason the first sign is still called "Aries" even after the vernal equinox has moved away from the Aries constellation due to the slow precession of the Earth's axis of rotation.
Because the division was made into equal arcs, 30º each, they constituted an ideal system of reference for making predictions about a planet's longitude. However, Babylonian techniques of observational measurements were in a rudimentary stage of evolution and it is unclear whether they had techniques to define in a precise way the boundary lines between the zodiacal signs in the sky. Thus, the need to use stars close to the ecliptic (±9º of latitude) as a set of observational reference points to help positioning a planet within this ecliptic coordinate system. Constellations were given the names of the signs and asterisms could be connected in a way that would resemble the sign's name. Therefore, in spite of its conceptual origin, the Babylonian zodiac became sidereal.
In Babylonian astronomical diaries, a planet position was generally given with respect to a zodiacal sign alone, less often in specific degrees within a sign. When the degrees of longitude were given, they were expressed with reference to the 30º of the zodiacal sign, i.e., not with a reference to the continuous 360º ecliptic. To the construction of their mathematical ephemerides, daily positions of a planet were not as important as the dates when the planet crossed from one zodiacal sign to the next.
Knowledge of the Babylonian zodiac is also reflected in the Hebrew Bible. E. W. Bullinger interpreted the creatures appearing in the books of Ezekiel and Revelation as the middle signs of the four quarters of the Zodiac, with the Lion as Leo, the Bull is Taurus, the Man representing Aquarius and the Eagle representing Scorpio. Some authors have linked the twelve tribes of Israel with the twelve signs. Martin and others have argued that the arrangement of the tribes around the Tabernacle (reported in the Book of Numbers) corresponded to the order of the Zodiac, with Judah, Reuben, Ephraim, and Dan representing the middle signs of Leo, Aquarius, Taurus, and Scorpio, respectively. Such connections were taken up by Thomas Mann, who in his novel Joseph and His Brothers attributes characteristics of a sign of the zodiac to each tribe in his rendition of the Blessing of Jacob.
Hellenistic and Roman era.
The 1st century BC Dendera zodiac (19th-century engraving)
The Babylonian star catalogs entered Greek astronomy in the 4th century BC, via Eudoxus of Cnidus. Babylonia or Chaldea in the Hellenistic world came to be so identified with astrology that "Chaldean wisdom" became among Greeks and Romans the synonym of divination through the planets and stars. Hellenistic astrology derived in part from Babylonian and Egyptian astrology. Horoscopic astrology first appeared in Ptolemaic Egypt. The Dendera zodiac, a relief dating to ca. 50 BC, is the first known depiction of the classical zodiac of twelve signs.
Particularly important in the development of Western horoscopic astrology was the astrologer and astronomer Ptolemy, whose work Tetrabiblos laid the basis of the Western astrological tradition. Under the Greeks, and Ptolemy in particular, the planets, Houses, and signs of the zodiac were rationalized and their function set down in a way that has changed little to the present day. Ptolemy lived in the 2nd century AD, three centuries after the discovery of the precession of the equinoxes by Hipparchus around 130 BC, but he ignored the problem by dropping the concept of a fixed celestial sphere and adopting what is referred to as a tropical coordinate system instead.
The twelve zodiac signs are based on twelve mythical creatures in Greek and Roman myths. Aries is based on Krios, the Titan of the South. Taurus represents the bull that Zeus turned into to capture Europa's heart. Gemini represent Leda's sons Castor and Pollux. Cancer is the crab sent by Hera to distract Hercules when slaying the Hydra. Leo is the Nemean Lion, a monster slain by Hercules. Virgo will represent either Demeter or Hestia, based on which myth is being told. Libra is said to be a Babylonian constellation, as the Greeks and Romans saw Libra as scorpion claws. Scorpio is the scorpion sent by Apollo to kill Orion. Sagittarius is sometimes said to be Chiron, the trainer of many mythical heroes, but it could also be a regular centaur. Capricorn represents Amaltheia, the sea goat that raised Zeus as a baby. Aquarius is either Hebe or Ganymede, as both served as the gods' water-bearers. Finally, Pisces represents when Aphrodite and her son Aeneas fled from Troy to found the Roman Empire.
Hindu zodiac.
The Hindu zodiac uses the sidereal coordinate system, which makes reference to the fixed stars. The Tropical zodiac (of Mesopotamian origin) is divided by the intersections of the ecliptic and equator, which shifts in relation to the backdrop of fixed stars at a rate of 1° every 72 years, creating the phenomenon known as precession of the equinoxes. The Hindu zodiac, being sidereal, does not maintain this seasonal alignment, but there are still similarities between the two systems. The Hindu zodiac signs and corresponding Greek signs sound very different, being in Sanskrit and Greek respectively, but their symbols are nearly identical. For example, dhanu means "bow" and corresponds to Sagittarius, the "archer", and kumbha means "water-pitcher" and corresponds to Aquarius, the "water-carrier".
Middle Ages.
Angers Cathedral South Rose Window of Christ (centre) with elders (bottom half) and Zodiac (top half). Mediaeval stained glass by Andre Robin after the fire of 1451
The High Middle Ages saw a revival of Greco-Roman magic, first in Kabbalism and later continued in Renaissance magic. This included magical uses of the zodiac, as found, e.g., in the Sefer Raziel HaMalakh.
The zodiac is found in mediaeval stained glass as at Angers Cathedral, where the master glassmaker, André Robin, made the ornate rosettes for the North and South transepts after the fire there in 1451.
Early modern.
The zodiac signs in a 16th-century woodcut.
17th-century fresco, Cathedral of Living Pillar, Georgia of Christ in the Zodiac circle.
An example of the use of signs as astronomical coordinates may be found in the Nautical Almanac and Astronomical Ephemeris for the year 1767. The "Longitude of the Sun" columns show the sign (represented as a digit from 0 to and including 11), degrees from 0 to 29, minutes, and seconds.
The zodiacal symbols are Early Modern simplifications of conventional pictorial representations of the signs, attested since Hellenistic times.
The twelve signs.
Main article: Astrological sign
What follows is a list of the twelve signs of the modern zodiac (with the ecliptic longitudes of their first points), where 0° Aries is understood as the vernal equinox, with their Latin, Greek, Sanskrit, and Babylonian names (but note that the Sanskrit and the Babylonian name equivalents denote the constellations only, not the tropical zodiac signs). Also, the "English translation" is not usually used by English speakers. The Latin names are standard English usage.
?SymbolLong.Latin nameEnglish translationGreek nameSanskrit nameSumero-Babylonian name
1?0°AriesThe Ram????? (Krios)Me?ha (???)MUL LU.?U?.GA "The Agrarian Worker", Dumuzi
2?30°TaurusThe Bull?????? (Tavros)V?i?habha (????)MULGU4.AN.NA "The Steer of Heaven"
3?60°GeminiThe Twins??????? (Didymoi)Mithuna (?????)MULMA?.TAB.BA.GAL.GAL "The Great Twins" (Castor and Pollux)
4?90°CancerThe Crab???????? (Karkinos)Karka?a (?????)MULAL.LUL "The Crayfish"
5?120°LeoThe Lion???? (Le?n)Si?ha (????)MULUR.GU.LA "The Lion"
6?150°VirgoThe Maiden???????? (Parthenos)Kany? (?????)MULAB.SIN "The Furrow"; "The Furrow, the goddess Shala's ear of corn"
7?180°LibraThe Scales????? (Zygos)Tul? (????)MULZIB.BA.AN.NA "The Scales"
8?210°ScorpiusThe Scorpion??o????? (Skorpios)V??hchika (???????)MULGIR.TAB "The Scorpion"
9?240°SagittariusThe (Centaur) Archer??????? (Toxot?s)Dhanu?ha (????)MULPA.BIL.SAG, Nedu "soldier"
10?270°Capricorn"Goat-horned" (The Sea-Goat)????????? (Aigoker?s)Makara (???)MULSU?UR.MA? "The Goat-Fish" of Enki
11?300°AquariusThe Water-Bearer???????? (Hydrokhoos)Kumbha (?????)MULGU.LA "The Great One", later qâ "pitcher"
12?330°PiscesThe Fish ?????? (Ikhthyes)M?na (???)MULSIM.MA? "The Tail of the Swallow", later DU.NU.NU "fish-cord"
18th century star map illustrating how the feet of Ophiuchus cross the ecliptic
Constellations.
Equirectangular plot of declination vs right ascension of the modern constellations with a dotted line denoting the ecliptic. Constellations are colour-coded by family and year established. (detailed view)
The zodiacal signs are distinct from the constellations associated with them, not only because of their drifting apart due to the precession of equinoxes but also because the physical constellations take up varying widths of the ecliptic, so the Sun is not in each constellation for the same amount of time.:25 Thus, Virgo takes up five times as much ecliptic longitude as Scorpius. The zodiacal signs are an abstraction from the physical constellations, and each represent exactly one twelfth of the full circle, or the longitude traversed by the Sun in about 30.4 days.
Some "parazodiacal" constellations are also touched by the paths of the planets. The MUL.APIN lists Orion, Perseus, Auriga, and Andromeda. Furthermore, there are a number of constellations mythologically associated with the zodiacal ones : Piscis Austrinus, The Southern Fish, is attached to Aquarius. In classical maps, it swallows the stream poured out of Aquarius' pitcher, but perhaps it formerly just swam in it. Aquila, The Eagle, was possibly associated with the zodiac by virtue of its main star, Altair. Hydra in the Early Bronze Age marked the celestial equator and was associated with Leo, which is shown standing on the serpent on the Dendera zodiac. Corvus is the Crow or Raven mysteriously perched on the tail of Hydra.
Due to the constellation boundaries being redefined in 1930 by the International Astronomical Union, the path of the ecliptic now officially passes through thirteen constellations: the twelve traditional 'zodiac constellations' plus Ophiuchus, the bottom part of which interjects between Scorpio and Sagittarius. Ophiuchus is an anciently recognized constellation, catalogued along with many others in Ptolemy's Almagest, but not historically referred to as a zodiac constellation. The inaccurate description of Ophiuchus as a sign of the zodiac drew media attention in 1995, when the BBC Nine O'Clock News reported that "an extra sign of the zodiac has been announced by the Royal Astronomical Society". There had been no such announcement, and the report had merely sensationalized the 67-year-old 'news' of the IAU's decision to alter the number of designated ecliptic constellations.
Table of dates.
Sculpture showing Castor and Pollux the legend behind the third astrological sign in the Zodiac and the constellation of Gemini
The following table compares the Gregorian dates on which the Sun enters
a sign in the Ptolemaic tropical zodiac
a sign in the Hindu sidereal system
the astronomical constellation of the same name as the sign, with constellation boundaries as defined in 1930 by the International Astronomical Union.
The theoretical beginning of Aries is the moment of vernal equinox, and all other dates shift accordingly. The precise Gregorian times and dates vary slightly from year to year as the Gregorian calendar shifts relative to the tropical year. These variations remain within less than two days' difference in the recent past and the near-future, vernal equinox in UT always falling either on 20 or 21 March in the period of 1797 to 2043, falling on 19 March in 1796 the last time and in 2044 the next.
SignConstellation
NameSymbolTropical zodiac
(2011)Sidereal zodiac
(2011)NameIAU boundaries Solar stayBrightest star
Aries21 March ?
20 April15 April -
15 MayAries19 April ? 13 May25 daysHamal
Taurus21 April ?
21 May16 May -
15 JuneTaurus14 May ? 19 June37 daysAldebaran
Gemini22 May ?
21 June16 June -
15 JulyGemini20 June ? 20 July31 daysPollux
Cancer22 June ?
22 July16 July -
15 AugustCancer21 July ? 9 August20 daysAl Tarf
Leo23 July ?
22 August16 August -
15 SeptemberLeo10 August ? 15 September37 daysRegulus
Virgo23 August ?
23 September16 September -
15 OctoberVirgo16 September ? 30 October45 daysSpica
Libra24 September ?
23 October16 October -
15 NovemberLibra31 October ? 22 November23 daysZubeneschamali
Scorpio24 October ?
22 November16 November -
15 DecemberScorpius23 November ? 29 November7 daysAntares
Ophiuchus
n/a
Ophiuchus30 November ? 17 December18 daysRasalhague
Sagittarius23 November ?
21 December16 December -
14 JanuarySagittarius18 December ? 18 January32 daysKaus Australis
Capricorn22 December ?
20 January15 January ?
14 FebruaryCapricornus19 January ? 15 February28 daysDeneb Algedi
Aquarius21 January ?
19 February15 February -
14 MarchAquarius16 February ? 11 March24 daysSadalsuud
Pisces20 February ?
20 March15 March -
14 AprilPisces12 March ? 18 April38 daysEta Piscium
Because the Earth's axis is at an angle, some signs take longer to rise than others, and the farther away from the equator the observer is situated, the greater the difference. Thus, signs are spoken of as "long" or "short" ascension.
Precession of the equinoxes.
Further information: Axial precession, Epoch (astronomy), Sidereal and tropical astrology, Astrological age and Ayanamsa
Path taken by the point of vernal equinox along the ecliptic over the past 6000 years
The zodiac system was developed in Babylonia, some 2,500 years ago, during the "Age of Aries". At the time, it is assumed, the precession of the equinoxes was unknown, as the system made no allowance for it. Contemporary use of the coordinate system is presented with the choice of interpreting the system either as sidereal, with the signs fixed to the stellar background, or as tropical, with the signs fixed to the point of vernal equinox.
Western astrology takes the tropical approach, whereas Hindu astrology takes the sidereal one. This results in the originally unified zodiacal coordinate system drifting apart gradually, with a clockwise(westward) precession of 1.4 degrees per century.
For the tropical zodiac used in Western astronomy and astrology, this means that the tropical sign of Aries currently lies somewhere within the constellation Pisces ("Age of Pisces").
The sidereal coordinate system takes into account the ayanamsa, a Sanskrit word where literally ayan means transit or movement and amsa means small part i.e. movement of equinoxes in small parts. It is unclear when Indians became aware of the precession of the equinoxes, but Bhaskar-ii in Siddhanta Shiromani gives equations for measurement of precession of equinoxes, and says his equations are based on some lost equations of Suryasiddhanta plus the equation of Munjaala.
It is not entirely clear how the Hellenistic astronomers responded to this phenomenon of precession once it had been discovered by Hipparchus around 130 BC. Today, some read Ptolemy as dropping the concept of a fixed celestial sphere and adopting what is referred to as a tropical coordinate system instead: in other words, one fixed to the Earth's seasonal cycle rather than the distant stars.
Some modern Western astrologers, such as Cyril Fagan, have advocated abandoning the tropical system in favour of a sidereal one.
In modern astronomy.
Further information: Epoch (astronomy)
The zodiac is a spherical celestial coordinate system. It designates the ecliptic as its fundamental plane and the position of the Sun at Vernal equinox as its prime meridian.
In astronomy, the zodiacal constellations are a convenient way of marking the ecliptic (the Sun's path across the sky) and the path of the moon and planets along the ecliptic. Modern astronomy still uses tropical coordinates for predicting the positions the Sun, Moon, and planets, except longitude in the ecliptic coordinate system is numbered from 0° to 360°, not 0° to 30° within each sign. Longitude within individual signs was still being used as late as 1740 by Jacques Cassini in his Tables astronomiques.
Zodiac is also used to refer to the zodiacal cloud of dust grains that move among the planets and the zodiacal light that originates from their scattering of sunlight.
Unlike the zodiac signs in astrology, which are all thirty degrees in length, the astronomical constellations vary widely in size. The boundaries of all the constellations in the sky were set by the International Astronomical Union (IAU) in 1930. This was, in essence, a mapping exercise to make the work of astronomers more efficient, and the boundaries of the constellations are not therefore in any meaningful sense an 'equivalent' to the zodiac signs. Along with the twelve original constellations, the boundaries of a thirteenth constellation, Ophiuchus (the serpent bearer), were set by astronomers within the bounds of the zodiac.
Determining zodiac signs of planets and the Sun.
Further information: Astrological sign
Location of the planets on 30 January 1980. The blue circle is Earth. The yellow lines represent the division of the 12 Zodiac signs, and each planet falls within one. For example, on 30 January 1980, Mercury and the Sun were in Aquarius, Venus was in Pisces, and Mars was in Virgo.
Location of the planets on 15 July 1980. Six months and 15 days later, all of the planets have continued along their orbits and the Zodiac signs changed. For someone born on 15 July 1980, Venus falls in Gemini, the Sun and Mercury are in Cancer, and Mars is in Libra.
In astrology, each planet and the Sun has a corresponding zodiac sign that is determined by its location relative to Earth at the time of one's birth.
Mnemonics.
There are many mnemonics for remembering the 12 signs of the zodiac in order. A traditional mnemonic:
The ram, the bull, the heavenly twins,
And next the crab, the lion shines,
The virgin and the scales,
The scorpion, archer, and the goat,
The man who holds the watering-pot,
And fish with glittering scales.
A less poetic, but succinct mnemonic is the following:
The Ramble Twins Crab Liverish;
Scaly Scorpions Are Good Water Fish.
Mnemonics in which the initials of the words correspond to the initials of the star signs (Latin, English, or mixed):
All The Great Constellations Live Very Long Since Stars Can't Alter Physics.
As The Great Cook Likes Very Little Salt, She Compensates Adding Pepper.
All That Gold Can Load Very Lazy Students Since Children Are at Play.
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235.Chaldea/Chaldaea.
Chaldea or Chaldaea (/kæl?di??/), from Ancient Greek: ???????, Chaldaia; Akkadian: m?t ?aldu; Hebrew: ??????, Ka?dim; Aramaic: ?????, Kaldo) was a small Semitic nation which emerged between the late 10th and early 9th century BC, surviving until the mid 6th century BC, after which it disappeared, and the Chaldean tribes were absorbed into the native population of Babylonia. It was located in the marshy land of the far south eastern corner of Mesopotamia, and briefly came to rule Babylon.
During a period of weakness in the East Semitic speaking kingdom of Babylonia, new tribes of West Semitic-speaking migrants arrived in the region from The Levant between the 11th and 10th centuries BC. The earliest waves consisted of Suteans and Arameans, followed a century or so later by the Kaldu, a group who became known later as the Chaldeans or the Chaldees. The Hebrew Bible uses the term ????? (Ka?dim) and this is translated as Chaldaeans in the Septuagint, although there is some dispute as to whether Kasdim in fact means Chaldean. These migrations did not affect Assyria to the north, which repelled these incursions.
The short-lived 11th dynasty of the Kings of Babylon (6th century BC) is conventionally known to historians as the Chaldean Dynasty, although only the first four rulers of this dynasty were positively known to be Chaldeans, and the last rulers, Nabonidus and his son and regent Belshazzar, were known to be from Assyria.
The region in which these migrant Chaldeans settled was in the far south eastern portion of Babylonia, lying chiefly on the right bank of the Euphrates. Though the name later came to be commonly used to refer to the whole of southern Mesopotamia for a short time, this was a misnomer, and Chaldea proper was in fact only the plain in the far south east formed by the deposits of the Euphrates and the Tigris, extending to about four hundred miles along the course of these rivers, and about a hundred miles in average width.
Land.
Chaldea is a name that is used in two different senses. In the early period, between the early 800's BC and late 600's BC, it was the name of a small sporadically independent territory under the domination of the Neo Assyrian Empire, in south eastern Babylonia extending to the western shores of the Persian Gulf. At some point after the Chaldean tribes settled in the region it eventually became called mat Kaldi "land of Chaldeans" by the native Mesopotamian Assyrians and Babylonians. The expression mat Bit Yakin is also used, apparently synonymously. Bit Yakin was likely the chief or capital city of the land. The king of Chaldea was also called the king of Bit Yakin, just as the kings of Babylonia and Assyria are regularly styled simply king of Babylon or Assur, the capital city. In the same way, the Persian Gulf was sometimes called "the Sea of Bit Yakin, instead of "the Sea of the Land of Chaldea."
The boundaries of the early lands settled by Chaldeans in the early 800's BC are not identified with precision by historians. Chaldea generally referred to the low, marshy, alluvial land around the estuaries of the Tigris and Euphrates, which then discharged their waters through separate mouths into the sea. In a later time, between 608 BC and 557 BC, when the Chaldean tribe had burst their narrow bonds and obtained their short lived period of ascendency over all Babylonia, they briefly gave their name to the whole land of Babylonia, which was then somewhat inaccurately called Chaldea by some peoples, particularly the Jews, for a short time, although this term eventually fell out of use.
Chaldea, like the rest of Mesopotamia and much of the ancient Near East and Asia Minor, from the 10th to late 7th centuries BC, came to be dominated by the Neo Assyrian Empire (911-608 BC), based in northern Mesopotamia.
The Old Testament book of the prophet Habbakuk describes the Chaldeans as "a bitter and swift nation".
Chaldean people.
Unlike the East Semitic Akkadian-speaking Akkadians, Assyrians and Babylonians whose ancestors had been established in Mesopotamia since the 30th century BC, the Chaldeans (not to be confused with the unrelated modern Chaldean Catholics of northern Iraq) were certainly not a native Mesopotamian people, but were late 10th or early 9th century BC West Semitic migrants from the south eastern Levant to the far south eastern corner of the region, and thus had played no part in the previous 3,000 years of Mesopotamian civilisation and history. They seem to have appeared there some time between c. 940 - 860 BC, a century or so after other new Semitic peoples, the Arameans and the Suteans appeared in Babylonia, c. 1100 BC. This was a period of weakness in Babylonia, and its ineffectual native kings were unable to prevent new waves of semi-nomadic foreign peoples invading and settling in the land.
Though belonging to the same West Semitic ethnic group, and migrating from the same Levantine regions as the earlier arriving Arameans, they are to be differentiated from them; and the Assyrian king Sennacherib, for example, is careful in his inscriptions to distinguish them.
When they came to briefly possess the whole of southern Mesopotamia, the name "Chaldean" became synonymous with "Babylonian" for a short time, particularly to the Greeks and Jews, this despite the Chaldeans not being Babylonians, and their tenure as rulers of Southern Mesopotamia lasting a mere five decades or so.
Though foreign immigrants, and for a brief period rulers of Babylonia, the Chaldeans were rapidly and completely assimilated into the dominant East Semitic Akkadian Assyro-Babylonian culture, as the Amorites, Kassites, Suteans and Arameans before them had been. By the time Babylon fell in 539 BC, the Chaldean tribes had already disappeared as a distinct race, becoming completely absorbed into the general population of southern Mesopotamia, and the term "Chaldean" was no longer used or relevant in describing a specific ethnicity. However the term lingered for a while, but being used specifically and only in relation to describing a socio-economic class of astrologers, and not a race of men. The nation of Chaldea in south east Mesopotamia seems to have disappeared even before the fall of Babylon (whose final two rulers were not Chaldeans), and the succeeding Achaemenid Empire did not retain a province or land called Chaldea, and makes no mention of a Chaldean race in its annals.
The Chaldeans originally spoke a West Semitic language similar to Aramaic, however they eventually adopted the Babylonian dialect of Akkadian, the same East Semitic language, save for slight peculiarities in sound and in characters, as Assyrian Akkadian. During the Assyrian Empire, the Assyrian king Tiglath-Pileser III introduced an Akkadian infused Eastern Aramaic as the lingua franca of his empire. In late periods both the Babylonian and Assyrian dialects of Akkadian ceased to be spoken, and Mesopotamian Aramaic took its place across Mesopotamia, including among the Chaldeans. The still Akkadian influenced language remains the mother tongue of the Assyrian (also known as Chaldo-Assyrian) Christians of northern Iraq and its surrounds to this day. One form of this widespread language is used in Daniel and Ezra, but the use of the name "Chaldee" to describe it, first introduced by Jerome, is incorrect and a misnomer.
In the Hebrew Bible, the prophet Abraham is stated to have originally been from "Ur of the Chaldees" (Ur Ka?dim); if this city is to be identified with the ancient Sumerian city state of Ur, it would be within what would many centuries later become the Chaldean homeland south of the Euphrates, although it must be pointed out that the Chaldeans certainly did not exist in Mesopotamia (or anywhere else in historical record) at the time that Abraham is believed to have existed (circa 1800-1700 BC), arriving some eight or nine hundred years later. This fact casts serious doubt on the chronological accuracy and historicity of the Abrahamic story. On the other hand, the traditional identification with a site in Assyria (a nation in Upper Mesopotamia both predating Chaldea by well over one thousand three hundred years, and one which was never recorded in historical annals as ever having been inhabited by the much later arriving Chaldeans) would then imply the later sense of "Babylonia". Some interpreters have additionally identified Abraham's birthplace with Chaldia in Asia Minor on the Black Sea, a distinct region utterly unrelated geographically, culturally and ethnically to the south east Mesopotamian Chaldea. According to the Book of Jubilees, Ur Ka?dim (and Chaldea) took their name from Ura and Kesed, descendants of Arpachshad. However, by the beginning of the 21st century, and despite sporadic attempts by more conservative theologically minded scholars such as Kenneth Kitchen to save these Biblical patriarchal narratives as actual true history, many modern archaeologists, orientalists and historians had "given up hope of recovering any context that would make Abraham, Isaac or Jacob credible or realistic 'historical figures'.
The term "Chaldean" has fairly recently been revived, being used (historically, ethnically and geographically wholly inaccurately) to describe those Assyrians who broke from the Church of the East in the 16th and 17th centuries AD, and entered communion with the Roman Catholic Church. After pointedly initially calling it "The Church of Assyria and Mosul" in 1553 AD, and its first leader Patriarch of the East Assyrians. it was much later renamed as the Chaldean Catholic Church, in 1683 AD. However this line too reverted to the Assyrian church, and the modern Chaldean Catholic Church was only founded in 1830 AD. The term Chaldean Catholic is inaccurate in ethnic, historical and geographic senses, and should be taken purely as a Christian denominational rather than a racial term, as the modern Chaldean Catholics are in fact ethnically Assyrian people, converts to Catholicism, long indigenous to the Assyrian homeland in the North of Mesopotamia, rather than the long extinct Chaldeans who hailed from The Levant, and settled in the far Southeast of Mesopotamia before wholly disappearing during the 6th century BC. There has been no accredited academic study nor historical evidence which links the modern Chaldean Catholics to the ancient Chaldeans, in other words no Chaldean continuity. The evidence conclusively points to them being one and the same people as, and hailing from the same region as the Assyrians, in other words they are in fact a part of the Assyrian continuity. The naming by Rome is believed to be due to the misinterpretation of Ur Kasdim the supposed north Mesopotamian birthplace of Abraham in Hebraic tradition as Ur of the Chaldees, and an unwillingness to use the original and earlier terms the Catholic Church had used such as Assyrians, East Assyrians, East Syrians and Nestorians due to their connotations with the Assyrian Church of the East and Syriac Orthodox Church.
It is noteworthy that term Chaldeans already had a history of being used in an ethnically and geographically inaccurate sense by Rome, having been previously officially used by the Council of Florence in 1445 as a new name for a group of Greek Nestorians of Cyprus who entered in Full Communion with the Catholic Church. Rome followed to use the term Chaldeans to indicate the members of the Church of the East in Communion with Rome (mainly not to use the term Nestorian that was theologically unacceptable) also in 1681 for Joseph I and later in 1830 when Yohannan Hormizd, of the line of Alqosh, became the first so called "Patriarch of Babylon of the Chaldeans" of the modern Chaldean Catholic Church. In addition, Rome had also long misapplied the name Chaldea to the completely unrelated Chaldia in Asia Minor on the Black Sea.
History.
Further information: Neo-Babylonian Empire.
The region that the Chaldeans settled in, and eventually made their homeland, was in the relatively poor country in the far south east of Mesopotamia, at the head of the Persian Gulf. They appear to have migrated into southern Babylonia from The Levant at some unknown point between the end of the reign of Ninurta-kudurri-usur II (a contemporary of Tiglath-Pileser II) circa 940 BC, and the start of the reign of Marduk-zakir-shumi I in 855 BC, although there is no historical proof of their existence prior to the late 850's BC.
For perhaps a century or so after settling in the area, these semi nomadic migrant Chaldean tribes had no impact upon the pages of history, seemingly remaining subjugated by the native Akkadian speaking kings of Babylon, or perhaps regionally influential Aramean tribes. The main players in southern Mesopotamia during this period were the indigenous Babylonians and Assyrians, together with the Elamites to the east, and Aramean tribes which had already settled in the region a century or so prior to the arrival of the Chaldeans.
The very first historical attestation of the Chaldeans occurs in 852 BC, in the annals of the Assyrian king Shalmaneser III who mentions invading the south eastern extremes of Babylonia and subjugating one Mushallim-Marduk, the chief of the Amukani tribe and overall leader of the Kaldu tribes, together with capturing the town of Baqani, extracting tribute from Adini, chief of the Bet-Dakkuri, another Chaldean tribe.
Shalmanesser III had invaded Babylonia at the request of its own king, Marduk-zakir-shumi I. The Babylonian king being threatened by his own rebellious relations, together with powerful Aramean tribes. The subjugation of the Chaldean tribes appears to have been an aside, as they were not at that time a powerful force, or a threat to the native Babylonian king.
Important Kaldu regions in south eastern Babylonia were; Bit-Yâkin (the original area the Chaldeans settled in, on the Persian Gulf), Bet-Dakuri, Bet-Adini, Bet-Amukkani, and Bet-Shilani.
Chaldean leaders had by this time already adopted native Assyro-Babylonian names, religion, language and customs, indicating that they had become firmly Akkadianized to a great degree.
The Chaldeans remained quietly ruled by the native Babylonians (who were in turn subjugated by their Assyrian relations) for the next seventy two years, only coming to historical prominence in Babylonia in 780 BC, when a previously unknown Chaldean named Marduk-apla-usur usurped the throne from the native Babylonian king Marduk-bel-zeri (790-780 BC), the latter being a vassal of the Assyrian king Shalmaneser IV (783-773 BC), who was otherwise occupied quelling a civil war in Assyria at the time.
This was to set a precedent for all future Chaldean aspirations on Babylon during the Neo Assyrian Empire; always too weak to confront a strong Assyria alone and directly, the Chaldeans would await periods when Assyrian kings were distracted elsewhere, or engaged in internal conflicts, then, in alliance with other powers stronger than themselves (usually Elam), they would make a bid for control over Babylonia.
Shalmaneser IV attacked and defeated Marduk-apla-usur, retaking northern Babylonia, and forcing a border treaty in Assyria's favour upon him. However he was allowed to remain on the throne by the Assyrians, though subjected to Assyria. Eriba-Marduk, another Chaldean, succeeded him in 769 BC and his son, Nabu-shuma-ishkun in 761 BC, with both also being dominated by the new Assyrian king Ashur-Dan III (772-755 BC). Babylonia appears to have been in a state of chaos during this time, with the north occupied by Assyria, its throne occupied by foreign Chaldeans, and continual civil unrest extant throughout the land.
However, Chaldean rule proved short lived. A native Babylonian king named Nabonassar (748-734 BC) defeated and overthrew the Chaldean usurpers in 748 BC, restored indigenous rule, and successfully stabilised Babylonia. The Chaldeans once more faded into obscurity for the next three decades. During this time both the Babylonians and the Chaldean and Aramean migrant groups settled within their land once more fell completely under the yoke of the powerful Assyrian king Tiglath-Pileser III (745-727 BC), a ruler who introduced Imperial Aramaic as the lingua franca of his empire. The Assyrian king at first made Nabonassar and his successor native Babylonian kings Nabu-nadin-zeri, Nabu-suma-ukin II and Nabu-mukin-zeri his subjects, but decided ruled Babylonia directly from 729 BC. He was followed by Shalmaneser V (727-722 BC), who also ruled Babylon in person.
However, when Sargon II (722-705 BC) ascended the throne of the Assyrian Empire in 722 BC after the death of Shalmaneser V, he was forced to launch a major campaign in Persia and Media in Ancient Iran, defeating and driving out the Scythians and Cimmerians who had attacked Assyria's Persian and Median vassal colonies in the region, whilst at the same time Egypt began encouraging and supporting rebellion against Assyria in Israel and Canaan.
These events allowed the Chaldeans to once more attempt to assert themselves. While the Assyrian king was otherwise occupied defending his Iranian colonies, Marduk-apla-iddina II (the Biblical Merodach-Baladan) of Bit-Yâkin, allied himself with the powerful Elamite kingdom and the native Babylonians, briefly seizing control of Babylon between 721 and 710 BC. With the Scythians and Cimmerians vanquished and the Egyptians defeated and ejected from southern Canaan, Sargon II was free at last to deal with the Chaldeans, Babylonians and Elamites. He attacked and deposed Marduk-apla-iddina II in 710 BC, also defeating his Elamite allies in the process. After defeat by the Assyrians, Merodach-Baladan fled to his protectors in Elam.
In 703 Merodach-Baladan very briefly regained the throne from a native Akkadian-Babylonian ruler Marduk-zakir-shumi II who was a puppet of the new Assyrian king, Sennacherib (705-681 BC). He was once more soundly defeated at Kish, and once again fled to Elam where he died in exile after one final failed attempt to raise a revolt against Assyria in 700 BC, this time not in Babylon, but in the Chaldean tribal land of Bit-Yâkin. A native Babylonian king named Bel-ibni (703-701 BC) was placed on the throne as a puppet of Assyria.
The next challenge to Assyrian domination was to come from the Elamites in 694 BC, with Nergal-ushezib deposing and murdering Ashur-nadin-shumi (700-694 BC), the Assyrian prince who was king of Babylon, and son of Sennacherib. The Chaldeans and Babylonians again allied themselves with their more powerful Elamite neighbours in this endeavour. This led to the infuriated Assyrian king Sennacherib invading and subjugating Elam and Chaldea, and sacking Babylon, laying waste to and largely destroying the city. Babylon was regarded as a sacred city by all Mesopotamians, including the Assyrians, and this act eventually led Sennacherib to be murdered by his own sons while praying to the god Nisroch in Nineveh.
Esarhaddon (681?669 BC) succeeded Sennacherib as ruler of the Assyrian Empire, and completely rebuilt Babylon and brought peace to the region, allowing him to conquer Egypt, Nubia and Libya and entrench his mastery over the Persians, Medes, Scythians and Cimmerians. For the next 60 or so years Babylon and Chaldea remained under direct Assyrian control. The Chaldeans remained subjugated and quiet during this period, and the next major revolt in Babylon against the Assyrian empire was fermented not by a Chaldean, Babylonian or Elamite, but by Shamash-shum-ukin, who was an Assyrian king of Babylon, and elder brother of Ashurbanipal, the ruler of the Neo Assyrian Empire.
Shamash-shum-ukin (668-648 BC) had become infused with Babylonian nationalism after sixteen years peacefully subject to his brother, and despite being Assyrian himself, declared that the city of Babylon and not Nineveh should be the seat of empire.
In 652 BC he raised a powerful coalition of peoples, resentful of their subjugation to Assyria, against his own brother Ashurbanipal. The alliance included the Babylonians, Persians, Chaldeans, Medes, Elamites, Suteans, Arameans, Israelites, Arabs and Canaanites, together with some disaffected Assyrian elements. After a bitter struggle lasting five years the Assyrian king triumphed over his rebellious brother in 648 BC, Elam was destroyed, and the Babylonians, Persians, Chaldeans, Arabs and others were savagely punished. An Assyrian governor named Kandalanu was then placed on the throne of Babylon to rule on behalf of Ashurbanipal. The next 22 years were peaceful, and neither the Babylonians nor Chaldeans posed any threat to the dominance of Ashurbanipal.
However, after the death of Ashurbanipal (and Kandalanu) in 627 BC, the Neo Assyrian Empire descended into a series of bitter internal dynastic civil wars which were to be the cause its downfall.
Ashur-etil-ilani (626-623 BC) ascended to the throne of the empire in 626 BC, but was immediately engulfed in rebellions from rival claimants, being deposed in 623 BC by a rebellious Assyrian general (turtanu) named Sin-shumu-lishir (623-622 BC), who was also declared king of Babylon. Sin-shar-ishkun (622-612 BC), the brother of Ashur-etil-ilani, took the throne of empire from Sin-shumu-lishir in 622 BC, but was then himself faced with unremitting rebellions against his rule by his own people. The continual brutal and draining conflicts among the Assyrians led to a myriad of subject peoples from Cyprus to Persia and The Caucasus to Egypt, quietly reasserting their independence, and ceasing to pay tribute to Assyria.
Nabopolassar, a previously obscure and unknown Chaldean chieftain, following the opportunistic tactics laid down by previous Chaldean leaders, took advantage of the violent chaos and anarchy gripping Assyria and Babylonia, and seized the city of Babylon in 620 BC, with the help of its native Babylonian inhabitants.
Sin-shar-ishkun amassed a powerful army and marched into Babylon to regain control of the region. However, Nabopolassar was saved from likely destruction, as yet another massive Assyrian rebellion broke out in Assyria proper, including the capital Nineveh, and the Assyrian king was forced to turn back in order to quell the revolt. Nabopolassar once more took advantage of this situation, seizing the ancient city of Nippur in 619 BC, a mainstay of pro-Assyrianism in Babylonia, and thus Babylonia as a whole.
However, his position was still far from secure, and bitter fighting continued in the Babylonian heartlands from 620 to 615 BC, with Assyrian forces encamped in Babylonia in an attempt to eject Nabopolassar. Nabopolassar attempted a counterattack, he marched his army into Assyria proper in 616 BC and tried to besiege Assur and Arrapha (Kirkuk), but was defeated by Sin-shar-ishkun and chased back into Babylonia. A stalemate seemed to have ensued, with Nabopolassar unable to make any inroads into Assyria despite its greatly weakened state, and Sin-shar-ishkun unable to eject Nabopolassar from Babylonia due to constant fighting and civil war among his own people.
Nabopolassar's position, and the fate of the Assyrian empire, was sealed when he entered into an alliance with another of Assyria's former vassals, the Medes, the now dominant people of what was to become Persia. The Median Cyaxares had also recently taken advantage of the anarchy in the Assyrian Empire to free the Iranian peoples, the Medes, Persians and Parthians, from Assyrian rule, moulding them into a large and powerful Median dominated force. The Medes, Persians, Parthians, Chaldeans and Babylonians formed an alliance, which also included the Scythians and Cimmerians to the north.
While Sin-shar-ishkun was fighting both the rebels in Assyria and the Chaldeans and Babylonians in southern Mesopotamia, Cyaxares (hitherto a vassal of Assyria), in an alliance with the Scythians and Cimmerians, launched a surprise attack on the civil war bleaguered Assyria in 615 BC, sacking Kalhu (the Biblical Calah/Nimrud) and taking Arrapkha (modern Kirkuk). Nabopolassar, still pinned down in southern Mesopotamia, was completely uninvolved in this major breakthrough against Assyria.
However, from this point, the alliance of Medes, Persians, Chaldeans, Babylonians, Scythians and Cimmerians fought in unison against Assyria.
Despite the sorely depleted state of Assyria, bitter fighting ensued; throughout 614 BC the alliance of powers continued to make inroads into Assyria itself, however in 613 BC the Assyrians somehow rallied against the odds and scored a number of counterattacking victories over the Medes-Persians, Babylonians-Chaldeans and Scythians-Cimmerians. This led to the coalition of forces ranged against it to unite and launch a massive combined attack in 612 BC, finally besieging and sacking Nineveh in late 612 BC, killing Sin-shar-ishkun in the process.
However, a new Assyrian king Ashur-uballit II (612-605 BC) took the crown amidst the house to house fighting in Nineveh, and refused a request to bow in vassalage to the rulers of the alliance. He somehow managed to fight his way out of Nineveh, and battle his way to the northern Assyrian city of Harran where he founded a new capital. Assyria resisted for another seven years, until 605 BC, when the remnants of the Assyrian Army and the army of the Egyptians (whose dynasty had also been installed as puppets by the Assyrians) were defeated at Karchemish. Nabopolassar and his Median, Scythian and Cimmerian allies were now in possession of much of the huge Neo Assyrian Empire. The Egyptians had belatedly come to the aid of Assyria, fearing that without Assyrian protection they would be next to succumb to the new powers, having already been raided by the Scythians.
The Chaldean king of Babylon now ruled all of southern Mesopotamia (although Assyria in the north was ruled by the Medes as Athura), and the former Assyrian possessions of Aram (Syria), Phoenicia, Israel, Cyprus, Edom, Philistia, and parts of Arabia, while the Medes took control of the former Assyrian colonies in Iran, Asia Minor and the Caucasus.
Nabopolassar, was not able to enjoy his success for long, dying in 604 BC, only one year after the victory at Carchemish. He was succeeded by his son, who took the name Nebuchadnezzar II, after the unrelated 12th century BC native Akkadian-Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar I, indicating the extent to which the migrant Chaldeans had become infused with native Mesopotamian culture.
Nebuchadnezzar II and his allies may well have been forced to deal with remnants of Assyrian resistance based in and around Dur-Katlimmu, as Assyrian imperial records continue in this region between 604 and 599 BC, in addition the Egyptians remained in the region, possibly in an attempt to aid their former masters, and to carve out an empire of their own.
Nebuchadnezzar II was to prove himself to be the greatest of the Chaldean rulers, rivaling another non-native ruler, the 18th century BC Amorite king Hammurabi, as the greatest king of Babylon. He was a patron of the cities and a spectacular builder. He rebuilt all of Babylonia's major cities on a lavish scale. His building activity at Babylon, expanding on the earlier major and impressive rebuilding of the Assyrian king Esarhaddon, helped in turning it into the immense and beautiful city of legend. Babylon covered more than three square miles, surrounded by moats and ringed by a double circuit of walls. The Euphrates flowed through the center of the city, spanned by a beautiful stone bridge. At the center of the city rose the giant ziggurat called Etemenanki, "House of the Frontier Between Heaven and Earth," which lay next to the Temple of Marduk. He is also believed by many historians to have built The Hanging Gardens of Babylon (although many others believe these gardens were in fact built much earlier, by an Assyrian king in Nineveh), for his wife, a Median princess from the mountains so that she would feel at home.
A capable leader, Nabuchadnezzar II, conducted successful military campaigns, cities like Tyre, Sidon and Damascus were also subjugated. He also conducted numerous campaigns in Asia Minor against the Scythians, Cimmerians, and Lydians. Like their Assyrian relations, the Babylonians had to campaign yearly in order to control their colonies.
In 601 BC Nebuchadnezzar II was involved in a major, but inconclusive battle, against the Egyptians. In 599 BC he invaded Arabia and routed the Arabs at Qedar. In 597 BC he invaded Judah, captured Jerusalem, and deposed its king Jehoiachin. Egyptian and Babylonian armies fought each other for control of the near east throughout much of Nebuchadnezzar's reign, and this encouraged king Zedekiah of Judah to revolt. After an eighteen-month siege Jerusalem was captured in 587 BC, thousands of Jews were deported to Babylon and Solomon's Temple was razed to the ground.
Nebuchadnezzar successfully fought the Pharaohs Psammetichus II and Apries throughout his reign, and during the reign of Pharaoh Amasis in 568 BC it is rumoured that he may have briefly invaded Egypt itself.
By 572 Nebuchadnezzar was in full control of Babylonia, Chaldea, Aramea (Syria), Phonecia, Israel, Judah, Philistia, Samarra, Jordan, northern Arabia, and parts of Asia Minor. Nebuchadnezzar died of illness in 562 BC after a one-year co-reign with his son, Amel-Marduk, who was deposed in 560 BC after a reign of only two years.
End of the Chaldean dynasty.
Neriglissar succeeded Amel-Marduk. It is unclear as to whether he was in fact an ethnic Chaldean or a native Babylonian nobleman, as he was not related by blood to Nabopolassar's descendants, having married into the ruling family. He conducted successful military campaigns against the Hellenic inhabitants of Cilicia, which had threatened Babylonian interests.
Neriglissar however reigned for only four years, being succeeded by the youthful Labashi-Marduk in 556 BC. Again it is unclear as to whether he was a Chaldean or a native Babylonian.
Labashi-Marduk reigned only for a matter of months, being deposed by Nabonidus in late 556 BC. Nabonidus, was certainly not a Chaldean, ironically he was an Assyrian from Harran, the last capital of Assyria. Nabonidus proved to be the final native Mesopotamian king of Babylon, he and his son, the regent Belshazzar, being deposed by the Persians under Cyrus II in 539 BC.
When the Babylonian Empire was absorbed into the Persian Achaemenid Empire, the name "Chaldean" completely lost its meaning in reference a particular ethnicity, and came to be applied only to a socioeconomic class of astrologers and astronomers. The actual Chaldean tribe had long ago became Akkadianized, adopting Assyro-Babylonian culture, religion, language and customs, blending into the majority native population, and they eventually wholly disappeared as a distinct race of people, much as other fellow preceding migrant peoples, such as the Amorites, Kassites, Suteans and Arameans of Babylonia had also done.
The Persians found this so-called Chaldean societal class masters of reading and writing, and especially versed in all forms of incantation, in sorcery, witchcraft, and the magical arts. They spoke of astrologists and astronomers as Chaldeans; consequently, Chaldean came to mean simply astrologist rather than an ethnic Chaldean. It is used with this specific meaning in the Book of Daniel (Dan. i. 4, ii. 2 et seq.) and by classical writers such as Strabo.
The disappearance of the Chaldeans as an ethnicity and Chaldea as a land is evidenced by the fact that the Persian rulers of the Achaemenid Empire (539 - 330 BC) did not retain a province called Chaldea, nor did they refer to Chaldeans as a race of people in their written annals. This is in contrast to Assyria, and for a time Babylonia also, where the Persians retained Assyria and Babylonia as distinct and named geo-political entities within the Achaemenid Empire, and in the case of the Assyrians in particular, Achaemenid records show Assyrians holding important positions within the empire, particularly with regards to the military and civil administration.
This complete absence of Chaldeans from historical record also continues throughout the Seleucid Empire, Parthian Empire, Roman Empire, Sassanid Empire, Byzantine Empire and after the Arab Islamic conquest and Mongol Empire.
By the time of Cicero in the 2nd century BC, Chaldean appears to have completely disappeared even as a societal term for Babylonian astronomers and astrologers; Cicero refers to "Babylonian astrologers" rather than Chaldean astrologers. Horace does the same, referring to "Babylonian horoscopes" rather than Chaldean in his famous Carpe Diem ode; Cicero views the Babylonian astrologers as holding obscure knowledge, while Horace thinks that they are wasting their time and would be happier "going with the flow".
The terms Chaldee and Chaldean were henceforth only found only in Hebraic and Biblical sources dating from the 6th and 5th centuries BC, and referring specifically to the period of the Chaldean Dynasty of Babylon.
After an absence from history of two thousand two hundred and thirty six years, the name was revived by the Roman Catholic Church, in the form of the Chaldean Catholic Church in the 1683 AD, as the new name for the Church of Assyria and Mosul (so named in 1553 AD). However, this was a church founded and populated not by the long extinct Chaldean tribe of south eastern extremes Mesopotamia who had disappeared from the pages of history over twenty two centuries previously, but founded in northern Mesopotamia by a breakaway group of ethnic Assyrians long indigenous to Upper Mesopotamia (Assyria) who had hitherto been members of the Assyrian Church of the East before entering communion with Rome.
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Inglish Site.91.
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TO THE THRISE HO-
NOVRABLE AND EVER LY-
VING VERTVES OF SYR PHILLIP
SYDNEY KNIGHT, SYR JAMES JESUS SINGLETON, SYR CANARIS, SYR LAVRENTI BERIA ; AND TO THE
RIGHT HONORABLE AND OTHERS WHAT-
SOEVER, WHO LIVING LOVED THEM,
AND BEING DEAD GIVE THEM
THEIRE DVE.
***
In the beginning there is darkness. The screen erupts in blue, then a cascade of thick, white hexadecimal numbers and cracked language, ?UnusedStk? and ?AllocMem.? Black screen cedes to blue to white and a pair of scales appear, crossed by a sword, both images drawn in the jagged, bitmapped graphics of Windows 1.0-era clip-art?light grey and yellow on a background of light cyan. Blue text proclaims, ?God on tap!?
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Introduction.
Yes i am getting a little Mobi-Literate(ML) by experimenting literary on my Mobile Phone. Peoplecall it Typographical Laziness(TL).
The first accidental entries for the this part of this encyclopedia.
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This is TempleOS V2.17, the welcome screen explains, a ?Public Domain Operating System? produced by Trivial Solutions of Las Vegas, Nevada. It greets the user with a riot of 16-color, scrolling, blinking text; depending on your frame of reference, it might recall ?DESQview, the ?Commodore 64, or a host of early DOS-based graphical user interfaces. In style if not in specifics, it evokes a particular era, a time when the then-new concept of ?personal computing? necessarily meant programming and tinkering and breaking things.
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Index.
233.Lords of the Day.
234.Zodiac.
235.Chaldea/Chaldaea.
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233.Lords of the Day.
In Aztec mythology the Lords of the Day are a set of thirteen gods that ruled over a particular day corresponding to one of the thirteen heavens. They were cyclical, so that same god recurred every thirteen days. In the Aztec calendar, the lords of the day are;
1.Xiuhtecuhtli, god of fire
2.Tlaltecuhtli, god of the earth.
3.Chalchiuhtlicue, goddess of water, lakes, rivers, seas, streams, horizontal waters, storms and baptism.
4.Tonatiuh, god of the sun.
5.Tlazolteotl, goddess of lust, carnality, sexual misdeeds.
6.Mictlantecuhtli, god of the underworld.
7.Centeotl, goddess of maize. Also recognized as Chicomecoatl, goddess of agriculture.
8.Tlaloc, god of the thunder, rain and earthquakes.
9.Quetzalcoatl, god of wisdom, life, knowledge, morning star, fertility, patron of the winds and the light, the lord of the West.
10.Tezcatlipoca, god of providence, matter and the invisible, ruler of the night, Great Bear, impalpable, ubiquity and the twilight, the lord of the North.
11.Mictecacihuatl, goddess of the underworld.
12.Tlahuizcalpantecuhtli, god of dawn.
13.Citlalicue, goddess of the female stars (Milky Way).
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234.Zodiac.
In both astrology and historical astronomy, the zodiac (Greek: ????????, z?idiakos) is a circle of twelve 30° divisions of celestial longitude that are centered upon the ecliptic, the apparent path of the Sun across the celestial sphere over the course of the year. The paths of the Moon and visible planets also remain close to the ecliptic, within the belt of the zodiac, which extends 8-9° north or south of the ecliptic, as measured in celestial latitude. Because the divisions are regular, they do not correspond exactly to the twelve constellations after which they are named.
Historically, these twelve divisions are called signs. Essentially, the zodiac is a celestial coordinate system, or more specifically an ecliptic coordinate system, which takes the ecliptic as the origin of latitude, and the position of the Sun at vernal equinox as the origin of longitude.
Usage.
The zodiac was in use by the Roman era, based on concepts inherited by Hellenistic astronomy from Babylonian astronomy of the Chaldean period (mid-1st millennium BC), which, in turn, derived from an earlier system of lists of stars along the ecliptic. The construction of the zodiac is described in Ptolemy's vast 2nd century AD work, the Almagest.
The term zodiac derives from Latin z?diacus, which in its turn comes from the Greek ???????? ?????? (z?diakos kyklos), meaning "circle of animals", derived from ?????? (z?dion), the diminutive of ???? (z?on) "animal". The name is motivated by the fact that half of the signs of the classical Greek zodiac are represented as animals (besides two mythological hybrids).
Although the zodiac remains the basis of the ecliptic coordinate system in use in astronomy besides the equatorial one, the term and the names of the twelve signs are today mostly associated with horoscopic astrology. The term "zodiac" may also refer to the region of the celestial sphere encompassing the paths of the planets corresponding to the band of about eight arc degrees above and below the ecliptic. The zodiac of a given planet is the band that contains the path of that particular body; e.g., the "zodiac of the Moon" is the band of five degrees above and below the ecliptic. By extension, the "zodiac of the comets" may refer to the band encompassing most short-period comets.
History.
Further information: Former constellations
Early history.
Wheel of the zodiac: This 6th century mosaic pavement in a synagogue incorporates Greek-Byzantine elements, Beit Alpha, Israel.
Further information: Babylonian star catalogues and MUL.APIN
The division of the ecliptic into the zodiacal signs originates in Babylonian ("Chaldean") astronomy during the first half of the 1st millennium BC, likely during Median/"Neo-Babylonian" times (7th century BC). The classical zodiac is a modification of the MUL.APIN catalogue, which was compiled around 1000 BC. Some of the constellations can be traced even further back, to Bronze Age (Old Babylonian) sources, including Gemini "The Twins", from MA?.TAB.BA.GAL.GAL "The Great Twins", and Cancer "The Crab", from AL.LUL "The Crayfish", among others.
Babylonian astronomers at some stage during the early 1st millennium BC divided the ecliptic into twelve equal zones of celestial longitude to create the first known celestial coordinate system: a coordinate system that boasts some advantages over modern systems (such as the equatorial coordinate system). The Babylonian calendar as it stood in the 7th century BC assigned each month to a sign, beginning with the position of the Sun at vernal equinox, which, at the time, was depicted as the Aries constellation ("Age of Aries"), for which reason the first sign is still called "Aries" even after the vernal equinox has moved away from the Aries constellation due to the slow precession of the Earth's axis of rotation.
Because the division was made into equal arcs, 30º each, they constituted an ideal system of reference for making predictions about a planet's longitude. However, Babylonian techniques of observational measurements were in a rudimentary stage of evolution and it is unclear whether they had techniques to define in a precise way the boundary lines between the zodiacal signs in the sky. Thus, the need to use stars close to the ecliptic (±9º of latitude) as a set of observational reference points to help positioning a planet within this ecliptic coordinate system. Constellations were given the names of the signs and asterisms could be connected in a way that would resemble the sign's name. Therefore, in spite of its conceptual origin, the Babylonian zodiac became sidereal.
In Babylonian astronomical diaries, a planet position was generally given with respect to a zodiacal sign alone, less often in specific degrees within a sign. When the degrees of longitude were given, they were expressed with reference to the 30º of the zodiacal sign, i.e., not with a reference to the continuous 360º ecliptic. To the construction of their mathematical ephemerides, daily positions of a planet were not as important as the dates when the planet crossed from one zodiacal sign to the next.
Knowledge of the Babylonian zodiac is also reflected in the Hebrew Bible. E. W. Bullinger interpreted the creatures appearing in the books of Ezekiel and Revelation as the middle signs of the four quarters of the Zodiac, with the Lion as Leo, the Bull is Taurus, the Man representing Aquarius and the Eagle representing Scorpio. Some authors have linked the twelve tribes of Israel with the twelve signs. Martin and others have argued that the arrangement of the tribes around the Tabernacle (reported in the Book of Numbers) corresponded to the order of the Zodiac, with Judah, Reuben, Ephraim, and Dan representing the middle signs of Leo, Aquarius, Taurus, and Scorpio, respectively. Such connections were taken up by Thomas Mann, who in his novel Joseph and His Brothers attributes characteristics of a sign of the zodiac to each tribe in his rendition of the Blessing of Jacob.
Hellenistic and Roman era.
The 1st century BC Dendera zodiac (19th-century engraving)
The Babylonian star catalogs entered Greek astronomy in the 4th century BC, via Eudoxus of Cnidus. Babylonia or Chaldea in the Hellenistic world came to be so identified with astrology that "Chaldean wisdom" became among Greeks and Romans the synonym of divination through the planets and stars. Hellenistic astrology derived in part from Babylonian and Egyptian astrology. Horoscopic astrology first appeared in Ptolemaic Egypt. The Dendera zodiac, a relief dating to ca. 50 BC, is the first known depiction of the classical zodiac of twelve signs.
Particularly important in the development of Western horoscopic astrology was the astrologer and astronomer Ptolemy, whose work Tetrabiblos laid the basis of the Western astrological tradition. Under the Greeks, and Ptolemy in particular, the planets, Houses, and signs of the zodiac were rationalized and their function set down in a way that has changed little to the present day. Ptolemy lived in the 2nd century AD, three centuries after the discovery of the precession of the equinoxes by Hipparchus around 130 BC, but he ignored the problem by dropping the concept of a fixed celestial sphere and adopting what is referred to as a tropical coordinate system instead.
The twelve zodiac signs are based on twelve mythical creatures in Greek and Roman myths. Aries is based on Krios, the Titan of the South. Taurus represents the bull that Zeus turned into to capture Europa's heart. Gemini represent Leda's sons Castor and Pollux. Cancer is the crab sent by Hera to distract Hercules when slaying the Hydra. Leo is the Nemean Lion, a monster slain by Hercules. Virgo will represent either Demeter or Hestia, based on which myth is being told. Libra is said to be a Babylonian constellation, as the Greeks and Romans saw Libra as scorpion claws. Scorpio is the scorpion sent by Apollo to kill Orion. Sagittarius is sometimes said to be Chiron, the trainer of many mythical heroes, but it could also be a regular centaur. Capricorn represents Amaltheia, the sea goat that raised Zeus as a baby. Aquarius is either Hebe or Ganymede, as both served as the gods' water-bearers. Finally, Pisces represents when Aphrodite and her son Aeneas fled from Troy to found the Roman Empire.
Hindu zodiac.
The Hindu zodiac uses the sidereal coordinate system, which makes reference to the fixed stars. The Tropical zodiac (of Mesopotamian origin) is divided by the intersections of the ecliptic and equator, which shifts in relation to the backdrop of fixed stars at a rate of 1° every 72 years, creating the phenomenon known as precession of the equinoxes. The Hindu zodiac, being sidereal, does not maintain this seasonal alignment, but there are still similarities between the two systems. The Hindu zodiac signs and corresponding Greek signs sound very different, being in Sanskrit and Greek respectively, but their symbols are nearly identical. For example, dhanu means "bow" and corresponds to Sagittarius, the "archer", and kumbha means "water-pitcher" and corresponds to Aquarius, the "water-carrier".
Middle Ages.
Angers Cathedral South Rose Window of Christ (centre) with elders (bottom half) and Zodiac (top half). Mediaeval stained glass by Andre Robin after the fire of 1451
The High Middle Ages saw a revival of Greco-Roman magic, first in Kabbalism and later continued in Renaissance magic. This included magical uses of the zodiac, as found, e.g., in the Sefer Raziel HaMalakh.
The zodiac is found in mediaeval stained glass as at Angers Cathedral, where the master glassmaker, André Robin, made the ornate rosettes for the North and South transepts after the fire there in 1451.
Early modern.
The zodiac signs in a 16th-century woodcut.
17th-century fresco, Cathedral of Living Pillar, Georgia of Christ in the Zodiac circle.
An example of the use of signs as astronomical coordinates may be found in the Nautical Almanac and Astronomical Ephemeris for the year 1767. The "Longitude of the Sun" columns show the sign (represented as a digit from 0 to and including 11), degrees from 0 to 29, minutes, and seconds.
The zodiacal symbols are Early Modern simplifications of conventional pictorial representations of the signs, attested since Hellenistic times.
The twelve signs.
Main article: Astrological sign
What follows is a list of the twelve signs of the modern zodiac (with the ecliptic longitudes of their first points), where 0° Aries is understood as the vernal equinox, with their Latin, Greek, Sanskrit, and Babylonian names (but note that the Sanskrit and the Babylonian name equivalents denote the constellations only, not the tropical zodiac signs). Also, the "English translation" is not usually used by English speakers. The Latin names are standard English usage.
?SymbolLong.Latin nameEnglish translationGreek nameSanskrit nameSumero-Babylonian name
1?0°AriesThe Ram????? (Krios)Me?ha (???)MUL LU.?U?.GA "The Agrarian Worker", Dumuzi
2?30°TaurusThe Bull?????? (Tavros)V?i?habha (????)MULGU4.AN.NA "The Steer of Heaven"
3?60°GeminiThe Twins??????? (Didymoi)Mithuna (?????)MULMA?.TAB.BA.GAL.GAL "The Great Twins" (Castor and Pollux)
4?90°CancerThe Crab???????? (Karkinos)Karka?a (?????)MULAL.LUL "The Crayfish"
5?120°LeoThe Lion???? (Le?n)Si?ha (????)MULUR.GU.LA "The Lion"
6?150°VirgoThe Maiden???????? (Parthenos)Kany? (?????)MULAB.SIN "The Furrow"; "The Furrow, the goddess Shala's ear of corn"
7?180°LibraThe Scales????? (Zygos)Tul? (????)MULZIB.BA.AN.NA "The Scales"
8?210°ScorpiusThe Scorpion??o????? (Skorpios)V??hchika (???????)MULGIR.TAB "The Scorpion"
9?240°SagittariusThe (Centaur) Archer??????? (Toxot?s)Dhanu?ha (????)MULPA.BIL.SAG, Nedu "soldier"
10?270°Capricorn"Goat-horned" (The Sea-Goat)????????? (Aigoker?s)Makara (???)MULSU?UR.MA? "The Goat-Fish" of Enki
11?300°AquariusThe Water-Bearer???????? (Hydrokhoos)Kumbha (?????)MULGU.LA "The Great One", later qâ "pitcher"
12?330°PiscesThe Fish ?????? (Ikhthyes)M?na (???)MULSIM.MA? "The Tail of the Swallow", later DU.NU.NU "fish-cord"
18th century star map illustrating how the feet of Ophiuchus cross the ecliptic
Constellations.
Equirectangular plot of declination vs right ascension of the modern constellations with a dotted line denoting the ecliptic. Constellations are colour-coded by family and year established. (detailed view)
The zodiacal signs are distinct from the constellations associated with them, not only because of their drifting apart due to the precession of equinoxes but also because the physical constellations take up varying widths of the ecliptic, so the Sun is not in each constellation for the same amount of time.:25 Thus, Virgo takes up five times as much ecliptic longitude as Scorpius. The zodiacal signs are an abstraction from the physical constellations, and each represent exactly one twelfth of the full circle, or the longitude traversed by the Sun in about 30.4 days.
Some "parazodiacal" constellations are also touched by the paths of the planets. The MUL.APIN lists Orion, Perseus, Auriga, and Andromeda. Furthermore, there are a number of constellations mythologically associated with the zodiacal ones : Piscis Austrinus, The Southern Fish, is attached to Aquarius. In classical maps, it swallows the stream poured out of Aquarius' pitcher, but perhaps it formerly just swam in it. Aquila, The Eagle, was possibly associated with the zodiac by virtue of its main star, Altair. Hydra in the Early Bronze Age marked the celestial equator and was associated with Leo, which is shown standing on the serpent on the Dendera zodiac. Corvus is the Crow or Raven mysteriously perched on the tail of Hydra.
Due to the constellation boundaries being redefined in 1930 by the International Astronomical Union, the path of the ecliptic now officially passes through thirteen constellations: the twelve traditional 'zodiac constellations' plus Ophiuchus, the bottom part of which interjects between Scorpio and Sagittarius. Ophiuchus is an anciently recognized constellation, catalogued along with many others in Ptolemy's Almagest, but not historically referred to as a zodiac constellation. The inaccurate description of Ophiuchus as a sign of the zodiac drew media attention in 1995, when the BBC Nine O'Clock News reported that "an extra sign of the zodiac has been announced by the Royal Astronomical Society". There had been no such announcement, and the report had merely sensationalized the 67-year-old 'news' of the IAU's decision to alter the number of designated ecliptic constellations.
Table of dates.
Sculpture showing Castor and Pollux the legend behind the third astrological sign in the Zodiac and the constellation of Gemini
The following table compares the Gregorian dates on which the Sun enters
a sign in the Ptolemaic tropical zodiac
a sign in the Hindu sidereal system
the astronomical constellation of the same name as the sign, with constellation boundaries as defined in 1930 by the International Astronomical Union.
The theoretical beginning of Aries is the moment of vernal equinox, and all other dates shift accordingly. The precise Gregorian times and dates vary slightly from year to year as the Gregorian calendar shifts relative to the tropical year. These variations remain within less than two days' difference in the recent past and the near-future, vernal equinox in UT always falling either on 20 or 21 March in the period of 1797 to 2043, falling on 19 March in 1796 the last time and in 2044 the next.
SignConstellation
NameSymbolTropical zodiac
(2011)Sidereal zodiac
(2011)NameIAU boundaries Solar stayBrightest star
Aries21 March ?
20 April15 April -
15 MayAries19 April ? 13 May25 daysHamal
Taurus21 April ?
21 May16 May -
15 JuneTaurus14 May ? 19 June37 daysAldebaran
Gemini22 May ?
21 June16 June -
15 JulyGemini20 June ? 20 July31 daysPollux
Cancer22 June ?
22 July16 July -
15 AugustCancer21 July ? 9 August20 daysAl Tarf
Leo23 July ?
22 August16 August -
15 SeptemberLeo10 August ? 15 September37 daysRegulus
Virgo23 August ?
23 September16 September -
15 OctoberVirgo16 September ? 30 October45 daysSpica
Libra24 September ?
23 October16 October -
15 NovemberLibra31 October ? 22 November23 daysZubeneschamali
Scorpio24 October ?
22 November16 November -
15 DecemberScorpius23 November ? 29 November7 daysAntares
Ophiuchus
n/a
Ophiuchus30 November ? 17 December18 daysRasalhague
Sagittarius23 November ?
21 December16 December -
14 JanuarySagittarius18 December ? 18 January32 daysKaus Australis
Capricorn22 December ?
20 January15 January ?
14 FebruaryCapricornus19 January ? 15 February28 daysDeneb Algedi
Aquarius21 January ?
19 February15 February -
14 MarchAquarius16 February ? 11 March24 daysSadalsuud
Pisces20 February ?
20 March15 March -
14 AprilPisces12 March ? 18 April38 daysEta Piscium
Because the Earth's axis is at an angle, some signs take longer to rise than others, and the farther away from the equator the observer is situated, the greater the difference. Thus, signs are spoken of as "long" or "short" ascension.
Precession of the equinoxes.
Further information: Axial precession, Epoch (astronomy), Sidereal and tropical astrology, Astrological age and Ayanamsa
Path taken by the point of vernal equinox along the ecliptic over the past 6000 years
The zodiac system was developed in Babylonia, some 2,500 years ago, during the "Age of Aries". At the time, it is assumed, the precession of the equinoxes was unknown, as the system made no allowance for it. Contemporary use of the coordinate system is presented with the choice of interpreting the system either as sidereal, with the signs fixed to the stellar background, or as tropical, with the signs fixed to the point of vernal equinox.
Western astrology takes the tropical approach, whereas Hindu astrology takes the sidereal one. This results in the originally unified zodiacal coordinate system drifting apart gradually, with a clockwise(westward) precession of 1.4 degrees per century.
For the tropical zodiac used in Western astronomy and astrology, this means that the tropical sign of Aries currently lies somewhere within the constellation Pisces ("Age of Pisces").
The sidereal coordinate system takes into account the ayanamsa, a Sanskrit word where literally ayan means transit or movement and amsa means small part i.e. movement of equinoxes in small parts. It is unclear when Indians became aware of the precession of the equinoxes, but Bhaskar-ii in Siddhanta Shiromani gives equations for measurement of precession of equinoxes, and says his equations are based on some lost equations of Suryasiddhanta plus the equation of Munjaala.
It is not entirely clear how the Hellenistic astronomers responded to this phenomenon of precession once it had been discovered by Hipparchus around 130 BC. Today, some read Ptolemy as dropping the concept of a fixed celestial sphere and adopting what is referred to as a tropical coordinate system instead: in other words, one fixed to the Earth's seasonal cycle rather than the distant stars.
Some modern Western astrologers, such as Cyril Fagan, have advocated abandoning the tropical system in favour of a sidereal one.
In modern astronomy.
Further information: Epoch (astronomy)
The zodiac is a spherical celestial coordinate system. It designates the ecliptic as its fundamental plane and the position of the Sun at Vernal equinox as its prime meridian.
In astronomy, the zodiacal constellations are a convenient way of marking the ecliptic (the Sun's path across the sky) and the path of the moon and planets along the ecliptic. Modern astronomy still uses tropical coordinates for predicting the positions the Sun, Moon, and planets, except longitude in the ecliptic coordinate system is numbered from 0° to 360°, not 0° to 30° within each sign. Longitude within individual signs was still being used as late as 1740 by Jacques Cassini in his Tables astronomiques.
Zodiac is also used to refer to the zodiacal cloud of dust grains that move among the planets and the zodiacal light that originates from their scattering of sunlight.
Unlike the zodiac signs in astrology, which are all thirty degrees in length, the astronomical constellations vary widely in size. The boundaries of all the constellations in the sky were set by the International Astronomical Union (IAU) in 1930. This was, in essence, a mapping exercise to make the work of astronomers more efficient, and the boundaries of the constellations are not therefore in any meaningful sense an 'equivalent' to the zodiac signs. Along with the twelve original constellations, the boundaries of a thirteenth constellation, Ophiuchus (the serpent bearer), were set by astronomers within the bounds of the zodiac.
Determining zodiac signs of planets and the Sun.
Further information: Astrological sign
Location of the planets on 30 January 1980. The blue circle is Earth. The yellow lines represent the division of the 12 Zodiac signs, and each planet falls within one. For example, on 30 January 1980, Mercury and the Sun were in Aquarius, Venus was in Pisces, and Mars was in Virgo.
Location of the planets on 15 July 1980. Six months and 15 days later, all of the planets have continued along their orbits and the Zodiac signs changed. For someone born on 15 July 1980, Venus falls in Gemini, the Sun and Mercury are in Cancer, and Mars is in Libra.
In astrology, each planet and the Sun has a corresponding zodiac sign that is determined by its location relative to Earth at the time of one's birth.
Mnemonics.
There are many mnemonics for remembering the 12 signs of the zodiac in order. A traditional mnemonic:
The ram, the bull, the heavenly twins,
And next the crab, the lion shines,
The virgin and the scales,
The scorpion, archer, and the goat,
The man who holds the watering-pot,
And fish with glittering scales.
A less poetic, but succinct mnemonic is the following:
The Ramble Twins Crab Liverish;
Scaly Scorpions Are Good Water Fish.
Mnemonics in which the initials of the words correspond to the initials of the star signs (Latin, English, or mixed):
All The Great Constellations Live Very Long Since Stars Can't Alter Physics.
As The Great Cook Likes Very Little Salt, She Compensates Adding Pepper.
All That Gold Can Load Very Lazy Students Since Children Are at Play.
*
235.Chaldea/Chaldaea.
Chaldea or Chaldaea (/kæl?di??/), from Ancient Greek: ???????, Chaldaia; Akkadian: m?t ?aldu; Hebrew: ??????, Ka?dim; Aramaic: ?????, Kaldo) was a small Semitic nation which emerged between the late 10th and early 9th century BC, surviving until the mid 6th century BC, after which it disappeared, and the Chaldean tribes were absorbed into the native population of Babylonia. It was located in the marshy land of the far south eastern corner of Mesopotamia, and briefly came to rule Babylon.
During a period of weakness in the East Semitic speaking kingdom of Babylonia, new tribes of West Semitic-speaking migrants arrived in the region from The Levant between the 11th and 10th centuries BC. The earliest waves consisted of Suteans and Arameans, followed a century or so later by the Kaldu, a group who became known later as the Chaldeans or the Chaldees. The Hebrew Bible uses the term ????? (Ka?dim) and this is translated as Chaldaeans in the Septuagint, although there is some dispute as to whether Kasdim in fact means Chaldean. These migrations did not affect Assyria to the north, which repelled these incursions.
The short-lived 11th dynasty of the Kings of Babylon (6th century BC) is conventionally known to historians as the Chaldean Dynasty, although only the first four rulers of this dynasty were positively known to be Chaldeans, and the last rulers, Nabonidus and his son and regent Belshazzar, were known to be from Assyria.
The region in which these migrant Chaldeans settled was in the far south eastern portion of Babylonia, lying chiefly on the right bank of the Euphrates. Though the name later came to be commonly used to refer to the whole of southern Mesopotamia for a short time, this was a misnomer, and Chaldea proper was in fact only the plain in the far south east formed by the deposits of the Euphrates and the Tigris, extending to about four hundred miles along the course of these rivers, and about a hundred miles in average width.
Land.
Chaldea is a name that is used in two different senses. In the early period, between the early 800's BC and late 600's BC, it was the name of a small sporadically independent territory under the domination of the Neo Assyrian Empire, in south eastern Babylonia extending to the western shores of the Persian Gulf. At some point after the Chaldean tribes settled in the region it eventually became called mat Kaldi "land of Chaldeans" by the native Mesopotamian Assyrians and Babylonians. The expression mat Bit Yakin is also used, apparently synonymously. Bit Yakin was likely the chief or capital city of the land. The king of Chaldea was also called the king of Bit Yakin, just as the kings of Babylonia and Assyria are regularly styled simply king of Babylon or Assur, the capital city. In the same way, the Persian Gulf was sometimes called "the Sea of Bit Yakin, instead of "the Sea of the Land of Chaldea."
The boundaries of the early lands settled by Chaldeans in the early 800's BC are not identified with precision by historians. Chaldea generally referred to the low, marshy, alluvial land around the estuaries of the Tigris and Euphrates, which then discharged their waters through separate mouths into the sea. In a later time, between 608 BC and 557 BC, when the Chaldean tribe had burst their narrow bonds and obtained their short lived period of ascendency over all Babylonia, they briefly gave their name to the whole land of Babylonia, which was then somewhat inaccurately called Chaldea by some peoples, particularly the Jews, for a short time, although this term eventually fell out of use.
Chaldea, like the rest of Mesopotamia and much of the ancient Near East and Asia Minor, from the 10th to late 7th centuries BC, came to be dominated by the Neo Assyrian Empire (911-608 BC), based in northern Mesopotamia.
The Old Testament book of the prophet Habbakuk describes the Chaldeans as "a bitter and swift nation".
Chaldean people.
Unlike the East Semitic Akkadian-speaking Akkadians, Assyrians and Babylonians whose ancestors had been established in Mesopotamia since the 30th century BC, the Chaldeans (not to be confused with the unrelated modern Chaldean Catholics of northern Iraq) were certainly not a native Mesopotamian people, but were late 10th or early 9th century BC West Semitic migrants from the south eastern Levant to the far south eastern corner of the region, and thus had played no part in the previous 3,000 years of Mesopotamian civilisation and history. They seem to have appeared there some time between c. 940 - 860 BC, a century or so after other new Semitic peoples, the Arameans and the Suteans appeared in Babylonia, c. 1100 BC. This was a period of weakness in Babylonia, and its ineffectual native kings were unable to prevent new waves of semi-nomadic foreign peoples invading and settling in the land.
Though belonging to the same West Semitic ethnic group, and migrating from the same Levantine regions as the earlier arriving Arameans, they are to be differentiated from them; and the Assyrian king Sennacherib, for example, is careful in his inscriptions to distinguish them.
When they came to briefly possess the whole of southern Mesopotamia, the name "Chaldean" became synonymous with "Babylonian" for a short time, particularly to the Greeks and Jews, this despite the Chaldeans not being Babylonians, and their tenure as rulers of Southern Mesopotamia lasting a mere five decades or so.
Though foreign immigrants, and for a brief period rulers of Babylonia, the Chaldeans were rapidly and completely assimilated into the dominant East Semitic Akkadian Assyro-Babylonian culture, as the Amorites, Kassites, Suteans and Arameans before them had been. By the time Babylon fell in 539 BC, the Chaldean tribes had already disappeared as a distinct race, becoming completely absorbed into the general population of southern Mesopotamia, and the term "Chaldean" was no longer used or relevant in describing a specific ethnicity. However the term lingered for a while, but being used specifically and only in relation to describing a socio-economic class of astrologers, and not a race of men. The nation of Chaldea in south east Mesopotamia seems to have disappeared even before the fall of Babylon (whose final two rulers were not Chaldeans), and the succeeding Achaemenid Empire did not retain a province or land called Chaldea, and makes no mention of a Chaldean race in its annals.
The Chaldeans originally spoke a West Semitic language similar to Aramaic, however they eventually adopted the Babylonian dialect of Akkadian, the same East Semitic language, save for slight peculiarities in sound and in characters, as Assyrian Akkadian. During the Assyrian Empire, the Assyrian king Tiglath-Pileser III introduced an Akkadian infused Eastern Aramaic as the lingua franca of his empire. In late periods both the Babylonian and Assyrian dialects of Akkadian ceased to be spoken, and Mesopotamian Aramaic took its place across Mesopotamia, including among the Chaldeans. The still Akkadian influenced language remains the mother tongue of the Assyrian (also known as Chaldo-Assyrian) Christians of northern Iraq and its surrounds to this day. One form of this widespread language is used in Daniel and Ezra, but the use of the name "Chaldee" to describe it, first introduced by Jerome, is incorrect and a misnomer.
In the Hebrew Bible, the prophet Abraham is stated to have originally been from "Ur of the Chaldees" (Ur Ka?dim); if this city is to be identified with the ancient Sumerian city state of Ur, it would be within what would many centuries later become the Chaldean homeland south of the Euphrates, although it must be pointed out that the Chaldeans certainly did not exist in Mesopotamia (or anywhere else in historical record) at the time that Abraham is believed to have existed (circa 1800-1700 BC), arriving some eight or nine hundred years later. This fact casts serious doubt on the chronological accuracy and historicity of the Abrahamic story. On the other hand, the traditional identification with a site in Assyria (a nation in Upper Mesopotamia both predating Chaldea by well over one thousand three hundred years, and one which was never recorded in historical annals as ever having been inhabited by the much later arriving Chaldeans) would then imply the later sense of "Babylonia". Some interpreters have additionally identified Abraham's birthplace with Chaldia in Asia Minor on the Black Sea, a distinct region utterly unrelated geographically, culturally and ethnically to the south east Mesopotamian Chaldea. According to the Book of Jubilees, Ur Ka?dim (and Chaldea) took their name from Ura and Kesed, descendants of Arpachshad. However, by the beginning of the 21st century, and despite sporadic attempts by more conservative theologically minded scholars such as Kenneth Kitchen to save these Biblical patriarchal narratives as actual true history, many modern archaeologists, orientalists and historians had "given up hope of recovering any context that would make Abraham, Isaac or Jacob credible or realistic 'historical figures'.
The term "Chaldean" has fairly recently been revived, being used (historically, ethnically and geographically wholly inaccurately) to describe those Assyrians who broke from the Church of the East in the 16th and 17th centuries AD, and entered communion with the Roman Catholic Church. After pointedly initially calling it "The Church of Assyria and Mosul" in 1553 AD, and its first leader Patriarch of the East Assyrians. it was much later renamed as the Chaldean Catholic Church, in 1683 AD. However this line too reverted to the Assyrian church, and the modern Chaldean Catholic Church was only founded in 1830 AD. The term Chaldean Catholic is inaccurate in ethnic, historical and geographic senses, and should be taken purely as a Christian denominational rather than a racial term, as the modern Chaldean Catholics are in fact ethnically Assyrian people, converts to Catholicism, long indigenous to the Assyrian homeland in the North of Mesopotamia, rather than the long extinct Chaldeans who hailed from The Levant, and settled in the far Southeast of Mesopotamia before wholly disappearing during the 6th century BC. There has been no accredited academic study nor historical evidence which links the modern Chaldean Catholics to the ancient Chaldeans, in other words no Chaldean continuity. The evidence conclusively points to them being one and the same people as, and hailing from the same region as the Assyrians, in other words they are in fact a part of the Assyrian continuity. The naming by Rome is believed to be due to the misinterpretation of Ur Kasdim the supposed north Mesopotamian birthplace of Abraham in Hebraic tradition as Ur of the Chaldees, and an unwillingness to use the original and earlier terms the Catholic Church had used such as Assyrians, East Assyrians, East Syrians and Nestorians due to their connotations with the Assyrian Church of the East and Syriac Orthodox Church.
It is noteworthy that term Chaldeans already had a history of being used in an ethnically and geographically inaccurate sense by Rome, having been previously officially used by the Council of Florence in 1445 as a new name for a group of Greek Nestorians of Cyprus who entered in Full Communion with the Catholic Church. Rome followed to use the term Chaldeans to indicate the members of the Church of the East in Communion with Rome (mainly not to use the term Nestorian that was theologically unacceptable) also in 1681 for Joseph I and later in 1830 when Yohannan Hormizd, of the line of Alqosh, became the first so called "Patriarch of Babylon of the Chaldeans" of the modern Chaldean Catholic Church. In addition, Rome had also long misapplied the name Chaldea to the completely unrelated Chaldia in Asia Minor on the Black Sea.
History.
Further information: Neo-Babylonian Empire.
The region that the Chaldeans settled in, and eventually made their homeland, was in the relatively poor country in the far south east of Mesopotamia, at the head of the Persian Gulf. They appear to have migrated into southern Babylonia from The Levant at some unknown point between the end of the reign of Ninurta-kudurri-usur II (a contemporary of Tiglath-Pileser II) circa 940 BC, and the start of the reign of Marduk-zakir-shumi I in 855 BC, although there is no historical proof of their existence prior to the late 850's BC.
For perhaps a century or so after settling in the area, these semi nomadic migrant Chaldean tribes had no impact upon the pages of history, seemingly remaining subjugated by the native Akkadian speaking kings of Babylon, or perhaps regionally influential Aramean tribes. The main players in southern Mesopotamia during this period were the indigenous Babylonians and Assyrians, together with the Elamites to the east, and Aramean tribes which had already settled in the region a century or so prior to the arrival of the Chaldeans.
The very first historical attestation of the Chaldeans occurs in 852 BC, in the annals of the Assyrian king Shalmaneser III who mentions invading the south eastern extremes of Babylonia and subjugating one Mushallim-Marduk, the chief of the Amukani tribe and overall leader of the Kaldu tribes, together with capturing the town of Baqani, extracting tribute from Adini, chief of the Bet-Dakkuri, another Chaldean tribe.
Shalmanesser III had invaded Babylonia at the request of its own king, Marduk-zakir-shumi I. The Babylonian king being threatened by his own rebellious relations, together with powerful Aramean tribes. The subjugation of the Chaldean tribes appears to have been an aside, as they were not at that time a powerful force, or a threat to the native Babylonian king.
Important Kaldu regions in south eastern Babylonia were; Bit-Yâkin (the original area the Chaldeans settled in, on the Persian Gulf), Bet-Dakuri, Bet-Adini, Bet-Amukkani, and Bet-Shilani.
Chaldean leaders had by this time already adopted native Assyro-Babylonian names, religion, language and customs, indicating that they had become firmly Akkadianized to a great degree.
The Chaldeans remained quietly ruled by the native Babylonians (who were in turn subjugated by their Assyrian relations) for the next seventy two years, only coming to historical prominence in Babylonia in 780 BC, when a previously unknown Chaldean named Marduk-apla-usur usurped the throne from the native Babylonian king Marduk-bel-zeri (790-780 BC), the latter being a vassal of the Assyrian king Shalmaneser IV (783-773 BC), who was otherwise occupied quelling a civil war in Assyria at the time.
This was to set a precedent for all future Chaldean aspirations on Babylon during the Neo Assyrian Empire; always too weak to confront a strong Assyria alone and directly, the Chaldeans would await periods when Assyrian kings were distracted elsewhere, or engaged in internal conflicts, then, in alliance with other powers stronger than themselves (usually Elam), they would make a bid for control over Babylonia.
Shalmaneser IV attacked and defeated Marduk-apla-usur, retaking northern Babylonia, and forcing a border treaty in Assyria's favour upon him. However he was allowed to remain on the throne by the Assyrians, though subjected to Assyria. Eriba-Marduk, another Chaldean, succeeded him in 769 BC and his son, Nabu-shuma-ishkun in 761 BC, with both also being dominated by the new Assyrian king Ashur-Dan III (772-755 BC). Babylonia appears to have been in a state of chaos during this time, with the north occupied by Assyria, its throne occupied by foreign Chaldeans, and continual civil unrest extant throughout the land.
However, Chaldean rule proved short lived. A native Babylonian king named Nabonassar (748-734 BC) defeated and overthrew the Chaldean usurpers in 748 BC, restored indigenous rule, and successfully stabilised Babylonia. The Chaldeans once more faded into obscurity for the next three decades. During this time both the Babylonians and the Chaldean and Aramean migrant groups settled within their land once more fell completely under the yoke of the powerful Assyrian king Tiglath-Pileser III (745-727 BC), a ruler who introduced Imperial Aramaic as the lingua franca of his empire. The Assyrian king at first made Nabonassar and his successor native Babylonian kings Nabu-nadin-zeri, Nabu-suma-ukin II and Nabu-mukin-zeri his subjects, but decided ruled Babylonia directly from 729 BC. He was followed by Shalmaneser V (727-722 BC), who also ruled Babylon in person.
However, when Sargon II (722-705 BC) ascended the throne of the Assyrian Empire in 722 BC after the death of Shalmaneser V, he was forced to launch a major campaign in Persia and Media in Ancient Iran, defeating and driving out the Scythians and Cimmerians who had attacked Assyria's Persian and Median vassal colonies in the region, whilst at the same time Egypt began encouraging and supporting rebellion against Assyria in Israel and Canaan.
These events allowed the Chaldeans to once more attempt to assert themselves. While the Assyrian king was otherwise occupied defending his Iranian colonies, Marduk-apla-iddina II (the Biblical Merodach-Baladan) of Bit-Yâkin, allied himself with the powerful Elamite kingdom and the native Babylonians, briefly seizing control of Babylon between 721 and 710 BC. With the Scythians and Cimmerians vanquished and the Egyptians defeated and ejected from southern Canaan, Sargon II was free at last to deal with the Chaldeans, Babylonians and Elamites. He attacked and deposed Marduk-apla-iddina II in 710 BC, also defeating his Elamite allies in the process. After defeat by the Assyrians, Merodach-Baladan fled to his protectors in Elam.
In 703 Merodach-Baladan very briefly regained the throne from a native Akkadian-Babylonian ruler Marduk-zakir-shumi II who was a puppet of the new Assyrian king, Sennacherib (705-681 BC). He was once more soundly defeated at Kish, and once again fled to Elam where he died in exile after one final failed attempt to raise a revolt against Assyria in 700 BC, this time not in Babylon, but in the Chaldean tribal land of Bit-Yâkin. A native Babylonian king named Bel-ibni (703-701 BC) was placed on the throne as a puppet of Assyria.
The next challenge to Assyrian domination was to come from the Elamites in 694 BC, with Nergal-ushezib deposing and murdering Ashur-nadin-shumi (700-694 BC), the Assyrian prince who was king of Babylon, and son of Sennacherib. The Chaldeans and Babylonians again allied themselves with their more powerful Elamite neighbours in this endeavour. This led to the infuriated Assyrian king Sennacherib invading and subjugating Elam and Chaldea, and sacking Babylon, laying waste to and largely destroying the city. Babylon was regarded as a sacred city by all Mesopotamians, including the Assyrians, and this act eventually led Sennacherib to be murdered by his own sons while praying to the god Nisroch in Nineveh.
Esarhaddon (681?669 BC) succeeded Sennacherib as ruler of the Assyrian Empire, and completely rebuilt Babylon and brought peace to the region, allowing him to conquer Egypt, Nubia and Libya and entrench his mastery over the Persians, Medes, Scythians and Cimmerians. For the next 60 or so years Babylon and Chaldea remained under direct Assyrian control. The Chaldeans remained subjugated and quiet during this period, and the next major revolt in Babylon against the Assyrian empire was fermented not by a Chaldean, Babylonian or Elamite, but by Shamash-shum-ukin, who was an Assyrian king of Babylon, and elder brother of Ashurbanipal, the ruler of the Neo Assyrian Empire.
Shamash-shum-ukin (668-648 BC) had become infused with Babylonian nationalism after sixteen years peacefully subject to his brother, and despite being Assyrian himself, declared that the city of Babylon and not Nineveh should be the seat of empire.
In 652 BC he raised a powerful coalition of peoples, resentful of their subjugation to Assyria, against his own brother Ashurbanipal. The alliance included the Babylonians, Persians, Chaldeans, Medes, Elamites, Suteans, Arameans, Israelites, Arabs and Canaanites, together with some disaffected Assyrian elements. After a bitter struggle lasting five years the Assyrian king triumphed over his rebellious brother in 648 BC, Elam was destroyed, and the Babylonians, Persians, Chaldeans, Arabs and others were savagely punished. An Assyrian governor named Kandalanu was then placed on the throne of Babylon to rule on behalf of Ashurbanipal. The next 22 years were peaceful, and neither the Babylonians nor Chaldeans posed any threat to the dominance of Ashurbanipal.
However, after the death of Ashurbanipal (and Kandalanu) in 627 BC, the Neo Assyrian Empire descended into a series of bitter internal dynastic civil wars which were to be the cause its downfall.
Ashur-etil-ilani (626-623 BC) ascended to the throne of the empire in 626 BC, but was immediately engulfed in rebellions from rival claimants, being deposed in 623 BC by a rebellious Assyrian general (turtanu) named Sin-shumu-lishir (623-622 BC), who was also declared king of Babylon. Sin-shar-ishkun (622-612 BC), the brother of Ashur-etil-ilani, took the throne of empire from Sin-shumu-lishir in 622 BC, but was then himself faced with unremitting rebellions against his rule by his own people. The continual brutal and draining conflicts among the Assyrians led to a myriad of subject peoples from Cyprus to Persia and The Caucasus to Egypt, quietly reasserting their independence, and ceasing to pay tribute to Assyria.
Nabopolassar, a previously obscure and unknown Chaldean chieftain, following the opportunistic tactics laid down by previous Chaldean leaders, took advantage of the violent chaos and anarchy gripping Assyria and Babylonia, and seized the city of Babylon in 620 BC, with the help of its native Babylonian inhabitants.
Sin-shar-ishkun amassed a powerful army and marched into Babylon to regain control of the region. However, Nabopolassar was saved from likely destruction, as yet another massive Assyrian rebellion broke out in Assyria proper, including the capital Nineveh, and the Assyrian king was forced to turn back in order to quell the revolt. Nabopolassar once more took advantage of this situation, seizing the ancient city of Nippur in 619 BC, a mainstay of pro-Assyrianism in Babylonia, and thus Babylonia as a whole.
However, his position was still far from secure, and bitter fighting continued in the Babylonian heartlands from 620 to 615 BC, with Assyrian forces encamped in Babylonia in an attempt to eject Nabopolassar. Nabopolassar attempted a counterattack, he marched his army into Assyria proper in 616 BC and tried to besiege Assur and Arrapha (Kirkuk), but was defeated by Sin-shar-ishkun and chased back into Babylonia. A stalemate seemed to have ensued, with Nabopolassar unable to make any inroads into Assyria despite its greatly weakened state, and Sin-shar-ishkun unable to eject Nabopolassar from Babylonia due to constant fighting and civil war among his own people.
Nabopolassar's position, and the fate of the Assyrian empire, was sealed when he entered into an alliance with another of Assyria's former vassals, the Medes, the now dominant people of what was to become Persia. The Median Cyaxares had also recently taken advantage of the anarchy in the Assyrian Empire to free the Iranian peoples, the Medes, Persians and Parthians, from Assyrian rule, moulding them into a large and powerful Median dominated force. The Medes, Persians, Parthians, Chaldeans and Babylonians formed an alliance, which also included the Scythians and Cimmerians to the north.
While Sin-shar-ishkun was fighting both the rebels in Assyria and the Chaldeans and Babylonians in southern Mesopotamia, Cyaxares (hitherto a vassal of Assyria), in an alliance with the Scythians and Cimmerians, launched a surprise attack on the civil war bleaguered Assyria in 615 BC, sacking Kalhu (the Biblical Calah/Nimrud) and taking Arrapkha (modern Kirkuk). Nabopolassar, still pinned down in southern Mesopotamia, was completely uninvolved in this major breakthrough against Assyria.
However, from this point, the alliance of Medes, Persians, Chaldeans, Babylonians, Scythians and Cimmerians fought in unison against Assyria.
Despite the sorely depleted state of Assyria, bitter fighting ensued; throughout 614 BC the alliance of powers continued to make inroads into Assyria itself, however in 613 BC the Assyrians somehow rallied against the odds and scored a number of counterattacking victories over the Medes-Persians, Babylonians-Chaldeans and Scythians-Cimmerians. This led to the coalition of forces ranged against it to unite and launch a massive combined attack in 612 BC, finally besieging and sacking Nineveh in late 612 BC, killing Sin-shar-ishkun in the process.
However, a new Assyrian king Ashur-uballit II (612-605 BC) took the crown amidst the house to house fighting in Nineveh, and refused a request to bow in vassalage to the rulers of the alliance. He somehow managed to fight his way out of Nineveh, and battle his way to the northern Assyrian city of Harran where he founded a new capital. Assyria resisted for another seven years, until 605 BC, when the remnants of the Assyrian Army and the army of the Egyptians (whose dynasty had also been installed as puppets by the Assyrians) were defeated at Karchemish. Nabopolassar and his Median, Scythian and Cimmerian allies were now in possession of much of the huge Neo Assyrian Empire. The Egyptians had belatedly come to the aid of Assyria, fearing that without Assyrian protection they would be next to succumb to the new powers, having already been raided by the Scythians.
The Chaldean king of Babylon now ruled all of southern Mesopotamia (although Assyria in the north was ruled by the Medes as Athura), and the former Assyrian possessions of Aram (Syria), Phoenicia, Israel, Cyprus, Edom, Philistia, and parts of Arabia, while the Medes took control of the former Assyrian colonies in Iran, Asia Minor and the Caucasus.
Nabopolassar, was not able to enjoy his success for long, dying in 604 BC, only one year after the victory at Carchemish. He was succeeded by his son, who took the name Nebuchadnezzar II, after the unrelated 12th century BC native Akkadian-Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar I, indicating the extent to which the migrant Chaldeans had become infused with native Mesopotamian culture.
Nebuchadnezzar II and his allies may well have been forced to deal with remnants of Assyrian resistance based in and around Dur-Katlimmu, as Assyrian imperial records continue in this region between 604 and 599 BC, in addition the Egyptians remained in the region, possibly in an attempt to aid their former masters, and to carve out an empire of their own.
Nebuchadnezzar II was to prove himself to be the greatest of the Chaldean rulers, rivaling another non-native ruler, the 18th century BC Amorite king Hammurabi, as the greatest king of Babylon. He was a patron of the cities and a spectacular builder. He rebuilt all of Babylonia's major cities on a lavish scale. His building activity at Babylon, expanding on the earlier major and impressive rebuilding of the Assyrian king Esarhaddon, helped in turning it into the immense and beautiful city of legend. Babylon covered more than three square miles, surrounded by moats and ringed by a double circuit of walls. The Euphrates flowed through the center of the city, spanned by a beautiful stone bridge. At the center of the city rose the giant ziggurat called Etemenanki, "House of the Frontier Between Heaven and Earth," which lay next to the Temple of Marduk. He is also believed by many historians to have built The Hanging Gardens of Babylon (although many others believe these gardens were in fact built much earlier, by an Assyrian king in Nineveh), for his wife, a Median princess from the mountains so that she would feel at home.
A capable leader, Nabuchadnezzar II, conducted successful military campaigns, cities like Tyre, Sidon and Damascus were also subjugated. He also conducted numerous campaigns in Asia Minor against the Scythians, Cimmerians, and Lydians. Like their Assyrian relations, the Babylonians had to campaign yearly in order to control their colonies.
In 601 BC Nebuchadnezzar II was involved in a major, but inconclusive battle, against the Egyptians. In 599 BC he invaded Arabia and routed the Arabs at Qedar. In 597 BC he invaded Judah, captured Jerusalem, and deposed its king Jehoiachin. Egyptian and Babylonian armies fought each other for control of the near east throughout much of Nebuchadnezzar's reign, and this encouraged king Zedekiah of Judah to revolt. After an eighteen-month siege Jerusalem was captured in 587 BC, thousands of Jews were deported to Babylon and Solomon's Temple was razed to the ground.
Nebuchadnezzar successfully fought the Pharaohs Psammetichus II and Apries throughout his reign, and during the reign of Pharaoh Amasis in 568 BC it is rumoured that he may have briefly invaded Egypt itself.
By 572 Nebuchadnezzar was in full control of Babylonia, Chaldea, Aramea (Syria), Phonecia, Israel, Judah, Philistia, Samarra, Jordan, northern Arabia, and parts of Asia Minor. Nebuchadnezzar died of illness in 562 BC after a one-year co-reign with his son, Amel-Marduk, who was deposed in 560 BC after a reign of only two years.
End of the Chaldean dynasty.
Neriglissar succeeded Amel-Marduk. It is unclear as to whether he was in fact an ethnic Chaldean or a native Babylonian nobleman, as he was not related by blood to Nabopolassar's descendants, having married into the ruling family. He conducted successful military campaigns against the Hellenic inhabitants of Cilicia, which had threatened Babylonian interests.
Neriglissar however reigned for only four years, being succeeded by the youthful Labashi-Marduk in 556 BC. Again it is unclear as to whether he was a Chaldean or a native Babylonian.
Labashi-Marduk reigned only for a matter of months, being deposed by Nabonidus in late 556 BC. Nabonidus, was certainly not a Chaldean, ironically he was an Assyrian from Harran, the last capital of Assyria. Nabonidus proved to be the final native Mesopotamian king of Babylon, he and his son, the regent Belshazzar, being deposed by the Persians under Cyrus II in 539 BC.
When the Babylonian Empire was absorbed into the Persian Achaemenid Empire, the name "Chaldean" completely lost its meaning in reference a particular ethnicity, and came to be applied only to a socioeconomic class of astrologers and astronomers. The actual Chaldean tribe had long ago became Akkadianized, adopting Assyro-Babylonian culture, religion, language and customs, blending into the majority native population, and they eventually wholly disappeared as a distinct race of people, much as other fellow preceding migrant peoples, such as the Amorites, Kassites, Suteans and Arameans of Babylonia had also done.
The Persians found this so-called Chaldean societal class masters of reading and writing, and especially versed in all forms of incantation, in sorcery, witchcraft, and the magical arts. They spoke of astrologists and astronomers as Chaldeans; consequently, Chaldean came to mean simply astrologist rather than an ethnic Chaldean. It is used with this specific meaning in the Book of Daniel (Dan. i. 4, ii. 2 et seq.) and by classical writers such as Strabo.
The disappearance of the Chaldeans as an ethnicity and Chaldea as a land is evidenced by the fact that the Persian rulers of the Achaemenid Empire (539 - 330 BC) did not retain a province called Chaldea, nor did they refer to Chaldeans as a race of people in their written annals. This is in contrast to Assyria, and for a time Babylonia also, where the Persians retained Assyria and Babylonia as distinct and named geo-political entities within the Achaemenid Empire, and in the case of the Assyrians in particular, Achaemenid records show Assyrians holding important positions within the empire, particularly with regards to the military and civil administration.
This complete absence of Chaldeans from historical record also continues throughout the Seleucid Empire, Parthian Empire, Roman Empire, Sassanid Empire, Byzantine Empire and after the Arab Islamic conquest and Mongol Empire.
By the time of Cicero in the 2nd century BC, Chaldean appears to have completely disappeared even as a societal term for Babylonian astronomers and astrologers; Cicero refers to "Babylonian astrologers" rather than Chaldean astrologers. Horace does the same, referring to "Babylonian horoscopes" rather than Chaldean in his famous Carpe Diem ode; Cicero views the Babylonian astrologers as holding obscure knowledge, while Horace thinks that they are wasting their time and would be happier "going with the flow".
The terms Chaldee and Chaldean were henceforth only found only in Hebraic and Biblical sources dating from the 6th and 5th centuries BC, and referring specifically to the period of the Chaldean Dynasty of Babylon.
After an absence from history of two thousand two hundred and thirty six years, the name was revived by the Roman Catholic Church, in the form of the Chaldean Catholic Church in the 1683 AD, as the new name for the Church of Assyria and Mosul (so named in 1553 AD). However, this was a church founded and populated not by the long extinct Chaldean tribe of south eastern extremes Mesopotamia who had disappeared from the pages of history over twenty two centuries previously, but founded in northern Mesopotamia by a breakaway group of ethnic Assyrians long indigenous to Upper Mesopotamia (Assyria) who had hitherto been members of the Assyrian Church of the East before entering communion with Rome.
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