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230 CHALDEA CHALDEE LANGUAGE me." But half a century later "the golden city," enervated by luxury and extravagance, becomes an easy prey to the warlike Medes, " who do not regard silver, nor delight in gold." The "bitter and hasty" nation of the Chal- deans disappears as such, and its name is pre- served for some time only in scattered tribes, and its glory in the science of its priests. The determination of the lunar periods, that of the equinoctial and solstitial points, a more precise definition of the solar year, the division of the ecliptic into 12 equal parts, that of the day into hours, the signs, names, and figures of the zodiac, the invention of the dial, are some of the improvements in astronomy attributed to the knowledge of the Chaldeans. With the decline of Babylon their science sinks, and the Chaldeans are afterward known among Greeks and Romans only as astrologers, magicians, and soothsayers, and as such despised, and finally persecuted by some of the emperors. This scheme of Chaldean history, as far as it relates to the northern origin of the people, is invali- dated, though not overthrown, by the results of the archaeological researches based on the recent discoveries among the ruins of Babylonia and Assyria. (See CUNEIFORM INSCRIPTIONS.) The main points of these results may be briefly summed up as follows: About the year 2234 B. C. the Cushite inhabitants of southern Bab- ylonia, probably a people identical with the Kaldi mentioned in Assyrian inscriptions of much later date, and of a cognate race with the primitive settlers both of Arabia and of Ethio- pia, are supposed to have first risen into im- portance. Delivered from the yoke of the Medes, whose reign is mentioned by Berosus as that of the first postdiluvian dynasty, they es- tablished a native dynasty, founding an em- pire, whose earliest capitals (the southern or lower tetrapolis) were Hur or Huruk, supposed to be the Scriptural Ur, now Mugheir ; Erech, now Warka, or Urka, the great necropolis of Babylonia; Larsa, the Scriptural Ellasar, now Senkereh ; and Nipur (perhaps identical with the Scriptural Calneh), the city of Belus, now Niffer. Another tetrapolis, in the northwest, is supposed to have been formed by Babel, Borsippa, Cutha, and Sippara. The city which the oldest inscriptions seem to mark as the Cushite capital is Hur, the southernmost of all, a little below 31 N. lat., near the W. bank of the Euphrates. Its site is presumed to have been originally on the shore of the Persian gulf, which subsequently receded. These Cush- ites introduced the worship of the heavenly bodies in place of the elemental religion of the magian Medes. In connection with this plane- tary adoration, whereof the earliest traces ap- pear in the temples of the moon at Mugheir, of the sun at Senkereh, and of Bel and Beltis (or Jupiter and Venus) at Niffer and Warka, the movements of the stars were observed and registered, astronomical tables formed, and a chronological system founded thereupon, such as continued uninterrupted to the days of Cal- listhenes and Berosus. To this primitive Cush- ite dynasty, which is probably represented in the Bible by Nimrod, the son of Cush, the two earliest of the monumental kings, Urukh or Urkham and his son Ilgi, may be assigned. The former, whose eal cylinder is preserved, ia described on the monuments as king of Hur and Kingi-Akkad (the Scriptural Accad). The next names on the monuments, in point of an- tiquity, are Sintishil-Hak and his son Kudur- mabuk or Kudur-mapula. This latter king is designated as the "ravager of the west," and may easily be identified with the Scriptural Chedorlaomer, king of Elam, or Susiana, a country inhabited by a Cnshite race ; and it is presumed that at this period the Elymseans stood at the head of a confederacy of Cush- ites, Semites, Aryans, and Turanians, of whdm Chedorlaomer, Amraphel, king of Shinar or Babylonia proper, Arioch, king of Ellasar, and Tidal, king of various Turanian "nations," were the respective national chiefs. This com- bination of races probably gave rise to the name Kiprath-arbat (four tongues), given to the Baby- lonian people in the inscriptions. Under the Elymsean dynasty, which corresponds to the second postdiluvian Chaldean of Berosus (1976 -1518 B. C.), the seat of power was removed northward to the upper tetrapolis, while on the Tigris were laid the foundations of the Semitic realm of Assyria. Several names of the Elymfflan dynasty have been recovered from the monuments, among them that of Khammarubi, the builder of temples and con- structor of the old royal canal, who gathered the people of "Sumir and Akkad," supposed to have been the chief races of Babylonia, into cities. The following dynasty is designated in Berosus as the Arabian (1518-1273 B. C.). It indicates the overthrow of the Cushite (" Chal- dean ") ascendancy by a new Semitic conquest or revolution, the origin and character of which are still matters of speculation. The end of this Arab dynasty is followed by the rise of the Assyrian power, with which Babylon long contended for independence and supremacy, until she recovered both under the properly Chaldean dynasty of Nabopolassar. This dy- nasty is believed to have reestablished the pre- dominance of the southern tribes of Babylonia, while the Semitic languages of Babylonia and Assyria remained the prevailing languages of the empire. (See ASSYRIA, BABYLON, BABY- LONIA, CUNEIFORM INSCRIPTIONS, and the au- thorities referred to under those heads.) CHALDEE LANGUAGE, the eastern dialect of the Aramaic, of which the Syriac is the west- tern, and which forms the northern branch of the Semitic tongues, the Hebrew, the Arabic, and some other minor dialects forming the southern branch. As the language or one of the languages of Babylonia in the time of its national greatness, whence it was brought by the Jews after their captivity to Palestine, it is also called Babylonic. The Chaldee is known to us only through the writings of Jews, every