The Making of the Chaldeans

Abstract

This paper investigates the emergence of the Chaldeans in the Achaemenid Empire. I start from the Persian conquest of Babylon under Cyrus, the uprisings under Darius and Xerxes, and the reprisals that ended attempts to restore indigenous rule in Babylon. I then consider the beginnings of horoscopy and mathematical astronomy in Achaemenid Babylon, alongside the earliest evidence for the Chaldeans in Greek authors such as Herodotus, Ctesias, and Philip of Opus. The Chaldeans, I suggest, emerged as an internationally recognized ethno-caste of philosopher priests precisely during the period of political and intellectual re-orientation that followed after the ‘end of archives’ in Babylon (Waerzeggers). Finally, I revisit ‘Zoroaster the Chaldean’ as the figurehead of this new, culturally composite, tradition; and consider attempts, after the fall of the Achaemenid Empire, to reassert the specifically Babylonian character of Chaldean scholarship. The picture that emerges is one of complex interactions between Babylonian, Persian, and Greek thinkers– interactions that decisively shaped the course of intellectual history in the Mediterranean basin and the Near East.