The Greatest Empires & Civilizations of the Ancient East: Egypt, Babylon, The Kings of Israel and Judah, Assyria, Media, Chaldea, Persia, Parthia & Sasanian Empire. George Rawlinson
of the nexus of the Mosaic narrative that the traditions above mentioned originated. Nimrod, “the mighty hunter before the Lord,” had not in the days of Moses that ill reputation which attached to him in later ages, when he was regarded as the great Titan or Giant, who made war upon the gods, and who was at once the builder of the tower, and the persecutor who forced Abraham to quit his original country. It is at least doubtful whether we ought to allow any weight at all to the additions and embellishments with which later writers, so much wiser than Moses, have overlaid the simplicity of his narrative.
Urukh, whose fame may possibly have reached the Romans, was the great Chaldaean architect. To him belongs, apparently, the conception of the Babylonian temple, with its rectangular base, carefully placed so as to present its angles to the four cardinal points, its receding stages, its buttresses, its drains, its sloped walls, its external staircases for ascent, and its ornamental shrine crowning the whole. At any rate, if he was not the first to conceive and erect such structures, he set the example of building them on such a scale and with such solidity as to secure their long continuance, and render them well-nigh imperishable. There is no appearance in all Chaldaea, so far as it has been explored, of any building which can be even probably assigned to a date anterior to Urukh. The attempted tower was no doubt earlier; and it may have been a building of the same type, but there is no reason to believe that any remnant, or indeed any trace, of this primitive edifice, has continued to exist to our day. The structures of the most archaic character throughout Chaldaea are, one and all, the work of King Urukh, who was not content to adorn his metropolitan city only with one of the new edifices, but added a similar ornament to each of the great cities within his empire.
The great builder was followed shortly by the great conqueror. Kudur-Lagamer, the Elamitic prince, who, more than twenty centuries before our era, having extended his dominion over Babylonia and the adjoining regions, marched an army a distance of 1200 miles from the shores of the Persian Gulf to the Dead Sea, and held Palestine and Syria in subjection for twelve years, thus effecting conquests which were not again made from the same quarter till the time of Nebuchadnezzar, fifteen or sixteen hundred years afterward, has a good claim to be regarded as one of the most remarkable personages in the world’s history-being, as he is, the forerunner and proto-type of all those great Oriental conquerors who from time to time have built up vast empires in Asia out of heterogeneous materials, which have in a longer or a shorter space successively crumbled to decay. At a time when the kings of Egypt had never ventured beyond their borders, unless it were for a foray in Ethiopia, and when in Asia no monarch had held dominion over more than a few petty tribes, and a few hundred miles of territory, he conceived the magnificent notion of binding into one the manifold nations inhabiting the vast tract which lies between the Zagros mountain-range and the Mediterranean. Lord by inheritance (as we may presume) of Eliun and Chaldaea or Babylonia, he was not content with these ample tracts, but, coveting more, proceeded boldly on a career of conquest up the Euphrates valley, and through Syria, into Palestine. Successful here, he governed for twelve years dominions extending near a thousand miles from east to west, and from north to south probably not much short of five hundred. It was true that he was not able to hold this large extent of territory; but the attempt and the success temporarily attending it are memorable circumstances, and were probably long held in remembrance through Western Asia, where they served as a stimulus and incentive to the ambition of later monarchs.
These, then, are the great men of the Chaldaean empire. Its extent, as we have seen, varied greatly at different periods. Under the kings of the first dynasty—to which Urukh and Ilgi belonged—it was probably confined to the alluvium, which seems then to have been not more than 300 miles in length along the course of the rivers, and which is about 70 or 80 miles in breadth from the Tigris to the Arabian desert. In the course of the second dynasty it received a vast increase, being carried in one direction to the Elamitic mountains, and in another to the Mediterranean, by the conquest of Kudur-Nakhunta and Chedor-laomer. On the defeat of the latter prince it again contracted, though to what extent we have no means of determining. It is probable that Elam or Susiana, and not unlikely that the Euphrates valley, for a considerable distance above Hit, formed parts of the Chaldaean Empire after the loss of Syria and Palestine. Assyria occupied a similar position, at any rate from the time of Ismi-dagon, whose son built a temple at Kileh-Sherghat or Asshur. There is reason to think that the subjection of Assyria continued to the very end of the dynasty, and that this region, whose capital was at Kileh-Sherghat, was administered by viceroys deriving their authority from Chaldaean monarchs. These monarchs, as has been observed, gradually removed their capital more and more northwards; by which it would appear as if their empire tended to progress in that direction.
The different dynasties which ruled in Chaldaea prior to the establishment of Assyrian influence, whether Chaldaean, Susianian, or Arabian, seem to have been of kindred race; and, whether they established themselves by conquest, or in a more peaceful manner, to have made little, if any, change in the language, religion, or customs of the Empire. The so-called Arab kings, if they are really (as we have supposed), Khammurabi and his successors, show themselves by their names and their inscriptions to be as thoroughly proto-Chaldaaan as Urukh or Ilgi. But with the commencement of the Assyrian period the case is altered. From the time of Tiglathi-Nin (about B.C. 1300), the Assyrian conqueror who effected the subjugation of Babylon, a strong Semitizing influence made itself felt in the lower country—the monarchs cease to have Turanian or Cushite and bear instead thoroughly Assyrian names; inscriptions, when they occur, are in the Assyrian language and character. The entire people seems by degrees to have been Assyrianized, or at any rate Semitized-assimilated, that is, to the stock of nations to which the Jews, the northern Arabs, the Aramaeans or Syrians, the Phoenicians, and the Assyrians belong. Their language fell into disuse, and grew to be a learned tongue studied by the priests and the literati; their Cushite character was lost, and they became, as a people, scarcely distinguishable from the Assyrians. After six centuries and a half of submission and insignificance, the Chaldaeans, however, began to revive and recover themselves—they renewed the struggle for national independence, and in the year B.C. 625 succeeded in establishing a second kingdom, which will be treated of in a later volume as the fourth or Babylonian Monarchy. Even when this monarchy met its death at the hands of Cyrus the Great, the nationality of the Chaldaeans was not swept away. We find them recognized under the Persians, and even under the Parthians, as a distinct people. When at last they cease to have a separate national existence, their name remains; and it is in memory of the successful cultivation of their favorite science by the people of Nimrod from his time to that of Alexander, that the professors of astronomical and astrological learning under the Roman Emperors receive, from the poets and historians of the time, the appellation of “Chaldaeans.” poets and historians of the time, the appellation of “Chaldaeans.”
Assyria
Chapter I. Description of the Country
Chapter II. Climate and Productions
Chapter V. Language and Writing
Chapter VI. Architecture and Other Arts
Chapter VII. Manners and Customs
Chapter IX. Chronology and History