se also appears in the
classical authors, notably in Herodotus, Strabo and Diodorus. In Daniel
i. 4, by the expression "tongue of the Chaldaeans," the writer evidently
meant the language in which the celebrated Babylonian works on astrology
and divination were composed. It is now known that the literary idiom of
the Babylonian wise men was the non-Semitic Sumerian; but it is not
probable that the late author of Daniel (c. 168 B.C.) was aware of this
fact.

The word "Chaldaean" is used in Daniel in two senses. It is applied as
elsewhere in the Old Testament as a race-name to the Babylonians (Dan.
iii. 8, v. 30, ix. 1); but the expression is used oftener, either as a
name for some special class of magicians, or as a term for magicians in
general (ix. 1). The transfer of the name of the people to a special
class is perhaps to be explained in the following manner. As just shown,
"Chaldaean" and "Babylonian" had become in later times practically
synonymous, but the term "Chaldaean" had lived on in the secondary
restricted sense of "wise men." The early _Kaldi_ had seized and held
from very ancient times the region of old Sumer, which was the centre of
the primitive non-Semitic culture. It seems extremely probable that
these Chaldaean Semites were so strongly influenced by the foreign
civilization as to adopt it eventually as their own. Then, as the
Chaldaeans soon became the dominant people, the priestly caste of that
region developed into a Chaldaean institution. It is reasonable to
conjecture that southern Babylonia, the home of the old culture,
supplied Babylon and other important cities with priests, who from their
descent were correctly called "Chaldaeans." This name in later times,
owing to the racial amalgamation of the Chaldaeans and Babylonians, lost
its former national force, and became, as it occurs in Daniel, a
distinctive appellation of the Babylonian priestly class. It is
possible, though not certain, that the occurrence of the word _kalu_
(priest) in Babylonian, which has no etymological connexion with
_Kaldu_, may have contributed paronomastically towards the popular use
of the term "Chaldaeans" for the Babylonian Magi. (See also ASTROLOGY.)

LITERATURE.--Delattre, _Les Chaldeens jusqu'a la fond. de l'emp. de
Nebuch._ (1889); Winckler, _Untersuchungen zur altor. Gesch._ (1889),
pp. 49 ff.; _Gesch. Bab. u. Assyr._ (1892), pp. 111 ff.; Prince,
_Commentary on Daniel_ (1899), pp. 59-61; see also BABYLONI