The Chaldeans: The History and Legacy of the People Who Ruled Babylon in the Iron Age

Today, Babylon has become a byword for greed, excess, and licentiousness, mostly due to its mention in the Bible, but a closer examination reveals that Babylon was so much more, and even perhaps the most important city in the ancient world. Ancient Babylon was home to great dynasties that produced some of the world’s most influential leaders, most notably Hammurabi and Nebuchadnezzar, and these rulers invoked their wills on the entire ancient Near East and have been remembered as both progressive and cruel all at the same time. Babylon was also the seat of culture in ancient Mesopotamia and the place where scholars made amazing scientific advances that would not be eclipsed for several centuries. Babylon was also instrumental in the development of the region’s religions, and naturally, Westerners have been fascinated by the close connections between some of the Mesopotamian religious texts, which include a flood story, a creation story and a story of the righteous sufferer, and their parallels in the Hebrew Bible.

The Chaldeans were among the last of the native Mesopotamian peoples to rule ancient Babylon. Before them, Akkadians, Kassites, Assyrians, and others ruled the land situated in the middle of Mesopotamia, and before them, the Sumerians ruled southern Mesopotamia and briefly most of the region in the late 3rd millennium BCE. Understanding ancient Mesopotamia requires knowing studying how different city-states and ethnic groups were often vying for power, asserting themselves and their ethnic identities while simultaneously accepting core elements of Mesopotamian culture – notably language, science, religion, and historiography – as they played a role in the region’s development.

What makes the Chaldeans unique, however, is that they can be traced to the Levant. Sometime in the late 2nd millennium BCE, the Chaldeans began a trek across the region, as many people did at that time, and eventually occupied land along the Euphrates River.