one out of the many Cushite tribes inhabiting the great
alluvial plain known afterwards as Chaldea or Babylonia. In process of
time as the Kaldi grew in power, their name prevailed over that of the
other tribes inhabiting the country; and by the era of the Jewish
captivity it had begun to be used generally for all the inhabitants of
Babylonia. It had thus come by this time to have two senses, both
ethnic: in the one, it was the special appellative of a particular race
to whom it had belonged from the remotest times; in the other, it
designated the nation at large in which the race was predominant.
Afterwards it was transferred from an ethnic to a mere restricted sense,
from the name of a people to that of a priest caste or sect of
philosophers. The Kaldi proper belonged to the Cushite race. While both
in Assyria and in Babylonia, the sernitic type of speech prevailed for
special purposes, the ancient Cushite dialect was purely reserved for
scientific and religious literature. This is no doubt the "learning" and
the "tongue" to which reference is made in the Bible (Dan. I. 4). It
became gradually inaccessible to the great mass of people who had
emigrated by means, chiefly, of Assyrian influence. But it was the
Chaldean learning in the old Chaldean or Cushite language. Hence all who
studied it, whatever their origin or race, were, on account of their
knowledge, termed Chaldeans. In this sense Daniel himself, "the master
of Chaldeans" (Dan. V. 11.), would, no doubt, have been reckoned among
them, and so we find Seleucas, a Greek, called a Chaldean by Strabo
(XVI. 1, Sec. 6). The Chaldeans were really a learned class, who by their
acquaintance with the language of science became its depositaries. They
were priests, magicians or astronomers, as their preference for one or
other of those occupations inclined them; and in the last of these three
capacities they probably effected discoveries of great importance. The
Chaldeans, it would appear, congregated into bodies forming what we may
perhaps call universities, and they all engaged together in it for their
progress. They probably mixed up to some extent astrology with their
astronomy, even in the earlier times, but they certainly made great
advance in astronomical science to which their serene sky and
transparent atmosphere specially invited them. In later times they seem
certainly to have degenerated into mere fortune-tellers (_vide_ Smith's
Dict. of the Bible, Art. _Chaldean