four great families
of human speech.

It would result from this review of the linguistic facts and other ethnic
indications, that the Chaldaeans were not a pure, but a very mixed
people. Like the Romans in ancient and the English in modern Europe,
they were a "colluvio gentium omnium," a union of various races between
which there was marked and violent contrast. It is now generally
admitted that such races are among those which play the most
distinguished part in the world's history, and most vitally affect its
progress.

With respect to the name of Chaldaean, under which it has been customary
to designate this mixed people, it is curious to find that in the native
documents of the early period it does not occur at all. Indeed it first
appears in the Assyrian inscriptions of the ninth century before our era,
being then used as the name of the dominant race in the country about
Babylon. Still, as Berosus, who cannot easily have been ignorant of the
ancient appellation of his race, applies the term Chaldaean to the
primitive people, and as Scripture assigns Ur to the Chaldees as early as
the time of Abraham, we are entitled to assume that this term, whenever
it came historically into use, is in fact no unfit designation for the
early inhabitants of the country. Perhaps the most probable account of
the origin of the word is that it designates properly the inhabitants of
the ancient capital, Ur or Hur-Khaldi being in the Burbur dialect the
exact equivalent of Hur, which was the proper name of the Moon-God, and
Chaldaeans being thus either "Moon-worshippers," or simply "inhabitants
of the town dedicated to, and called after, the Moon." Like the term
"Babylonian," it would at first have designated simply the dwellers in
the capital, and would subsequently have been extended to the people
generally.

A different theory has of late years been usually maintained with respect
to the Chaldaeans. It has been supposed that they were a race entirely
distinct from the early Babylonians--Armenians, Arabs, Kurds, or Sclaves
--who came down from the north long after the historical period, and
settled as the dominant race in the lower Mesopotamian valley.
Philological arguments of the weakest and most unsatisfactory character
were confidently adduced in support of these views; but they obtained
acceptance chiefly on account of certain passages of Scripture, which
were thought to imply that the Chaldaeans first colonized Babylon