Chaldea - The Land

The Land

Chaldea as the name of a country is used in two different senses. In the early period it was the name of a small territory in southern Babylonia extending along the northern and probably also the western shores of the Persian Gulf. It is called in Assyrian mat Kaldi "land of Chaldea". The expression mat Bit Yakin is also used, apparently synonymously. It would appear that Bit Yakin was the chief or capital city of the land; and the king of Chaldea is also called the king of Bit Yakin, just as the kings of Babylonia are regularly styled simply king of Babylon, 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."

It is impossible to define narrowly the boundaries of this early land of Chaldea, and one may only locate it generally in the low, marshy, alluvial land about the estuaries of the Tigris and Euphrates, which then discharged their waters through separate mouths into the sea. In a later time, when the Chaldean tribe had burst their narrow bonds and obtained the ascendency over all Babylonia, they gave their name to the whole land of Babylonia, which then was called Chaldea for a short time.

The Chaldeans, 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 vast Assyrian Empire, based in northern Mesopotamia.

The Chaldean king Merodach-Baladan allied with the Elamites during the 8th century BC in numerous failed attempts to wrest Babylon from the Assyrians.

In 626 BC, following the death of Ashurbanipal, a series of bitter wars broke out in the Assyrian Empire over who should rule. These wars greatly weakened the empire. Sensing this weakness, the Chaldeans, Babylonians, Medes and Persians, Scythians and Cimmerians formed a coalition and attacked the Assyrian Empire in 616 BC. In 612 BC they destroyed Nineveh, Harran fell in 609 BC, and the last Assyrian army at Carchemish in 605 BC.

The Old Testament book of the prophet Habbakuk describes the Chaldeans as "a bitter and swift nation".