Translation – K. Leonov
The oldest book in which the word "magic" is contained, says the Christian Orientalist François Lenormand, magnificently forgetting about Vedic and Zoroastrian writings, is the Bible. The first people to practice it, he adds, were the Chaldeans. But who were they? Neither philology nor ethnology is capable of giving us any definite answer; and whether geographically or ethnographically, Chaldea is the subject of the most controversial statements from the time of Herodotus to the present day.
The geographer Ptolemy tells us that Chaldea was the name of the southwestern part of Babylonia, limited by the borders of Arabia. At the same time, hardly a quarter of a century earlier, many critics believed that “Ur of the Chaldeans” or Hasdim of Abraham was located on the site of Mesopotamia, and a certain castle with that name was mentioned by Ammianus and placed by him between Nisib and the Tigris. Just as little is known in history about the Chaldeans as a people. Strabo calls them a "tribe" living on the border of Arabia. Herodotus mentions them as a division in the army of the Assyrians, although the latter conquered them many centuries after the Chaldeans had become a civilized kingdom; and Xenophon, in the story of the retreat of the ten thousand, sees in them “a free and warlike people on the Kardushian hills,” and then somewhere not far from the mountains of Armenia. Even the very language of Cushitic Chaldea - the language in which the interlinear translation of the Akkadian inscriptions on cylinders excavated on the site of ancient Chaldea was made - is usually called "Assyrian" by our philologists, whereas this language already existed in those times when the name itself had not yet been invented Assur in the genealogy of Noah. Thus, since no branch of science is able to tell the world anything definite about the Chaldeans, we had to make our own assumptions. Therefore, we will try to at least find out what these people couldn't be, since we cannot know exactly who they were.
In the history of Moses we first read of Chaldea (Genesis x. 10), when Nimrod, son of Cush and grandson of Ham, conquered four cities, respectively called "Babylon, Erech, Akkad and Calneh, in the land of Shinar"; and again when we are told that Abraham "went out of Ur of the Chaldeans" (Genesis xi. 31). The Bible states that the world was created in Julian 710 (4004 BC), the flood occurred in 2348 and Abraham was born in 1996 BC (which would leave only a period of 289 years for the development of the Chaldean or Akkadian civilization, which was preceded by another, even more ancient!), ultimately becomes completely entangled in its own chronology and thus, thanks to its own contradictions and lapsus calami[misprints], proves exactly the opposite of what she intended to prove at the beginning. It clearly shows the existence of another and special element in Chaldea, a race, neither Hamitic nor Semitic, but what is today called Akkadian. Since the Bible mentions that the city of Akkad was conquered by Nimrod, whose nationality is determined from his genealogy, this city must have existed before him; and as the Cushitic or Hamitic Nimrod himself was not a Chaldean by birth, it is evident that they could not have been so called before his appearance. This people then undoubtedly preceded the wild race of the "mighty hunter before God." And they were a highly developed nation long before the days of the "general" Noah's flood (of which no geological traces remain), since it is well established that Nimrod, who is today identified with Sargon I, having arrived there, discovered a people whose high culture was then at the point its highest development. This nation, which long before that time had abandoned the nomadic pastoral state with which the patriarchal descendants of Shem were subsequently content for many centuries, were those “mysterious” Akkadians, or Chaldeans, whose name classical and biblical authorities designated not only the people, but also a special priestly a caste initiated into the sciences of astrology and magic and completely devoted to them. Remaining sacred in all ages, this peculiar doctrine was concentrated in Babylon and is known in the most remote periods of history as a system of religious worship and Science which brought glory to the Chaldeans.
According to some Orientalists, this people belonged to the Indo-European, or Caucasian, race, while others - no less authorities in science - consider them as Mongols or Turanians - a deep veil of mystery has descended on this people. The Assyriologists tell us that they were the inventors of cuneiform inscriptions, the authors of the great and elaborate literature so mysteriously preserved on the thousands of cylinders now unearthed by George Smith, Layard, and others. But, on the other hand, we know that the Akkadians themselves, whether they belonged to the Turanian or Indo-European race, preceded by another even more mysterious a people “…probably of a darker race than they were,” whose descendants are to be found here and there today in isolated groups around the Persian Gulf, suggests Professor Rawlinson (“Five Great Monarchies”). There are no memories left of this people today. Its very name has disappeared, although “we must recognize its existence in our explanations of the ethnographic elements of ancient Chaldea,” says the author of “Essays on Chaldean Culture.”
For a better understanding of this theory, which destroys the last traces of belief in a “general” flood and denies its very possibility, we will briefly compare several opinions of such men of science as our late Assyriologists, and add to them information that we ourselves found in ancient authors. Our Orientalists believe that the Turanians were not the first inhabitants of the Tigris and Euphrates valleys. They were not themselves some pure, primitive race, since they are the result of a mixture of the white and yellow races, and the peoples belonging to them give us an infinite number of shades and types, gradually passing from the purely European to the Chinese type. Despite all this, their common origin is visible in the similarities of language, religion and customs. The languages of the Turanian peoples lack that stable and definite form of a certain type that would allow us to call them a step towards the formation of human speech, says Max Müller (“Languages of the Hotbed of War in the East,” p. 88). As for their religions, they “never rose above a certain form of crude naturalism, which transforms all natural phenomena into two countless armies of spirits of good and evil, and all the cults of which invariably consist of magic and spells,” says F. Lenormand ( "La Magie chez les Chaldeens" pp. 184ff).
As for the origin and ancient country of residence of the Turans, as a certain race, our people of science are even less sure. The Turks and Mongols have a common tradition that their race arose somewhere not far from the southern slopes of the Altai Mountains, in a valley surrounded by inaccessible mountains full of minerals. Thanks to the fire that one day appeared from the bowels of the earth, one side of the mountains was destroyed, and the ancient people went out into the wide world. This tradition is consistent with another, according to which the eastern peoples of Syria and Mesopotamia believe that the place of their origin is to the east of their settlements, and the Persian-Medians believe that it is to the north. The Tibetans claim that the ancestors of their khubilgans and chaberons, or high and dedicated lamas, were those amazing people who lived on a beautiful island, a kind of Eden in the center of the Gobi, when this terrible desert was still a boundless sea. They were giants in which, moving from one to another, the spirit of Fo, or Buddha (the highest wisdom), constantly moved. As for the rest of the Lamas and Tibetans, their ancestors were created first from bits of every plant, mineral and animal, a theory that is suspiciously similar to that of our modern evolutionists. In turn, our men of science, who until quite recently had to at least officially admit that they believe in the fable of Eden, once unanimously declared that the cradle of humanity was the Pamir plateau, from where flow the four great rivers: Indus, Helmund, Oxus , or Yekhuna, and Yaxartes, or Syr-Darya, ancient Sikhon. The division of the Turanians took place in two directions: one branch rose to the north and settled in the Altai region, the Aral Sea and the valleys of the Ural Mountains, from where they subsequently dispersed throughout the northern regions of Europe and Asia to the Baltic in one direction, and to the Amur in the other. At the same time, other and equally numerous tribes of the Turanians chose the southern and western directions, and some of them reached Armenia and Asia Minor, while others settled at the foot of the mountainous Iranian plateau in the valleys of Susiana and on the banks of the Tigris and Euphrates, where they remained for centuries expected the appearance of Semites and Cushites.
Thus, the traditions of complete savages and civilized but "inferior" races, as well as the scientific theories of European or "superior" races, amazingly agree on this. Wherever the cradle of humanity is located, here or there, it is in any case limited to the borders of Central Asia. And, although the catechism of science admits the doctrine of many and simultaneously existing "cradles" in which a multi-colored humanity developed each of its special types and colors - a theory that would further weaken the beautifully concocted fable of Eden and original sin, or at least If it were to limit it only to the ancestors of the Semites, we - the “superior” white races - will have to admit, among other unpleasant things, the truth that our ancestors were as black or even blacker than those of any of those whom we look at now as races that are lower than us, for - they were ASIAN ETHIOPIANS!
This is a simple and logical consequence, emanating from the opinion of scientists, no matter how numerous and contradictory their theories may be. These are the facts arising from the latest achievements of philology and ethnology. And if we are to accept the truth, wherever it comes from, and stick to the facts, then we will have to believe that at one time a black, or very dark, race inhabited Western Europe, and they were, simply speaking, the aborigines of Europe. “The Asiatic Ethiopians,” writes Professor Rawlinson, “by their very name, which closely connects them with the Cushitic people inhabiting the country not far from Egypt, may be classified as belonging to the Hamitic family, and this connection is confirmed by the unanimous opinion of antiquity, which speaks of the Ethiopians as a single race living along the shores of the Southern Ocean from India to the Pillars of Hercules...” “It is obvious that the first man who appeared on the scene of civilization seemed to belong to that family which we call, in a somewhat indiscriminate manner, the Hamitic, Cushitic and Ethiopian,” says Dr. A. Wilder in his book “The Black Peoples of Europe.” The area of their stay did not have clear boundaries... Their ethnic names are very numerous. In ancient times, Egypt was called the “land of Ham” [ Psalter, CV, 22] named Khema, their chief deity. Susiana and Arabia were called Kissoya and Cush, and the countries of the Hamitic races were called Ethiopia. Herodotus repeatedly mentions the Ethiopians of Asia, placing their country in the south of modern Afghanistan, today Kerman and Balochistan. Homer speaks of Memnon as the son of Eos, or the dawn, and Diodorus claims that he was king of the Ethiopians and built a palace at Susa, the biblical Shushan. The traditional idea that the Ethiopian race possessed Media, Babylonia, Assyria, Armenia and Asia Minor, including Iberia and Georgia, appears to be confirmed by recent discoveries. Rawlinson believes that their first centers were Balochistan and Kerman, but J. D. Baldwin, in his Prehistoric Nations, states that ancient Ethiopia was Arabia. Finally, Long's Classical Atlas places the Arabs at the mouth of the Indus, on its western banks. Eusebius states that the Ethiopians came from India, and he does not mention whether they came from the East or the West.
India, or Hoddu from the Book of Esther, was Udom, or Punjab, but the name "India" itself is very vague and denotes only a certain country located on the river. Sir W. Jones considers Iran, or Bactria, to be the original source of these peoples and suggests that the black or Ethiopian kingdom once ruled the whole of South Asia, having Sidon as its metropolis. Godfrey Higgins suggests in the Anakalypse that this was Babylon... The domain of Nimrod (Sargon I of the Assyrian cylinders, or tablets) obviously corresponds to this. (“The Black Peoples of Europe.”)
Finally, Strabo, quoting Ephorus, says:
It was believed that the Ethiopians inhabited all the eastern coasts of Asia and Africa and were divided by the Red Sea into eastern and western Asian and African.
All such associations of peoples under the same name of Ethiopians do not give us any definite information about who this “black race” was, which, according to Prof. Rawlinson, Lenormand and others were preceded by the Turano-Akkadians, who in turn preceded the appearance of the Hamitic people brought by Nimrod; but this indisputably proves that they were dark-skinned, although not necessarily blacks or even Hamites. This clear scientific and ethnographic interpretation seems even darker and more confusing to everyone thanks to the philological attempts of Prof. Rawlinson to resolve these contradictions. Recognizing in this the authority of Max Müller, who himself only sanctifies the assumption of Professor Oppert, attributing the invention of cuneiform signs and the creation of “a certain civilization that preceded the civilization of Babylon and Nineveh, to the Turanian or Scythian race,” Rev. George Rawlinson, brother of our famous archaeologist, Sir Henry, tries to give these Ethiopians a Turanian, or Scytho-Tatar, origin. “Hamitism,” he says, “though it is undoubtedly the linguistic form from which Semitism developed, is itself Turanian rather than Semitic,” and then adds, by way of some more detailed explanation, that: “the Turanian language “This is an early stage of the Hamitic language.”
Next we will turn to this Scythian-Tatar race and see if we can find in them something that connects them with the Turanian Chaldeans, or with the ancient “black race” to which the creators of ancient history belonged, and with the inscriptions depicting the “religion of magic ", now translated from Assyrian cylinders.
Based on a quotation given by Justin from a certain historical book of Trogus Pompey, lost after the second century AD, which states that originally all the border regions of Asia were in the possession of the Scythians, who also, as shown, must be older than the Egyptians, and in fact, the most ancient people in the world - due to this quotation and the confusion contained in the Bible, as we suppose, it is customary everywhere in our days to confuse these Asiatic Scythians with the Turanian peoples, attributing to them the invention of cuneiform letters and talking about the Akkadian language in which they wrote that, like Sanskrit, it remained a literary language long after it had ceased to be spoken and had become a dead language.
Could this help us learn more about who the Chaldeans were? Not at all. For we know as little, if not less, about the Scythians—that general generic name given to all the Asiatic tribes of antiquity, whose history remains unknown to us—as we do about the Akkadians, whose language has been at least approximately discovered by our philologists. From the reports of Herodotus and Hippocrates we learn almost nothing about the Scythians, and it becomes almost impossible to connect them with the Chaldeans with any more certainty than with any other people who lived before the seventh century BC. Speaking of them, Hippocrates describes their appearance as different from the appearance inherent in the rest of humanity, and says that “they are not like anyone but themselves.” Producing a disgusting impression, “their bodies are rough and fleshy, their joints are loose and supple, their bellies are saggy... and they all look alike.” A certain semi-nomadic people, barbaric in those times that we are accustomed to consider as such; Is it not about them that our modern Assyriologists say that “they took part and helped in the creation of the most ancient culture of our human races”?
Isn’t this the people whose origin and development of culture, in the opinion of our Orientalists, dates back to such ancient times of hoary antiquity that the memory of them disappeared even from the most ancient written monuments of mankind, and their language - and today it has been proven that it was a language , in which a huge literature was written – “was a dead language at least two thousand years before our era”?
Historically, our sources do not go back earlier than the first centuries BC. While the poet Aristaeus depicts the "Griffins" of the extreme North, who expel the Cimmerians from their country and end up by mistake in Media instead of Asia Minor, Niebuhr, contradicting the message Herodotus, who quotes Aristeas, shows how the Median king Cyaxares, who besieged Nineveh, encountered an unexpected invasion of the Scythians, who, having defeated him, proclaimed themselves masters of “the lands as far as Palestine and the outskirts of Egypt.” On the one hand, Niebuhr, Boeck, Thirlwall and Grote assert that the Scythians of Herodotus were Mongols, and on the other hand, such authorities as Humboldt, Griem, Klaproth and Sir H. Rawlinson try to prove that they belonged to the Indo-European race.
Having these on hand positive data, we have no choice but to squeeze everything possible from the only impeccable source we have - the autobiography of this people, captured by their own hands over countless generations.
As a result of the incessant efforts of the Orientalists, a series of unexpected, startling discoveries have been made over the past few years. Beneath the piles of rubbish and mountains of ruined ruins, an entire library has recently been unearthed, which, when translated, will amount to many thousands of volumes. The subject matter of these records for the most part relates to the development of religious ideas of the aborigines of these areas, in which the world sees, if not even a cradle, then at least one of the cradles, and, moreover, the main one from which humanity developed into its modern form. But they also contain the history of peoples and races, about which modern people have no idea. In fact, this is only a very fragmentary history, many lines of which are now lost, since so many of the tablets are broken or crumbled to dust; but still they are sufficient to show that although cities, kingdoms and peoples, and entire races, some of them having the highest civilization, grew and developed, they also degraded and declined, and religions and philosophies, arts and sciences, passing like Chinese shadows along the walls of Time, they appeared - like all real and temporary things - but only then to disappear into the abyss of motionless Eternity; there are abstract ideas that never die. Such ideas today are classified as superstitions of the crudest kind, called witchcraft, belief in good and evil demons, in short, MAGIC, and are rejected in the most decisive manner. On the one hand, it is Christians who arrogate to themselves the monopoly right to teach the world about angels and devils using their own method; but on the other hand, this happens thanks to scientists who do not believe in anything and would destroy with one blow all faith except faith in themselves.
Orientalists believe that when the Turanians, the predecessors of Nimrod, came to the Tigris-Euphrates valley, they already possessed a certain culture that they brought with them from other places. In addition to the cuneiform form of writing, which they invented before their appearance in these places, either they themselves or the “black race” they discovered there had written signs of a different kind, ideographic icons, a simplified form of hieroglyphs, which were used to express the symbolic image of a particular object or abstract idea. When these signs acquired a phonetic meaning, the ideographic forms gradually lost their character, and the signs no longer represented the objects they symbolized, but became a simple combination of various wedge-shaped strokes, mainly horizontal ones. They were read from left to right, were either embossed or carved, and are found on tablets, carved in rocks, on stone slabs, on bas-reliefs, on Assyrian winged bulls, on shards and small cylinders dried in the sun or baked in ovens, on seals, Moreover, some of these inscriptions are so miniature that a microscope is required to make out them. All these systems of signs fully correspond to the agglutinative language of the Turanians and were adopted by the Cushites of the Tigris and Euphrates valley in a later period. Research into these elementary cuneiform signs and their connections with material objects led to the important result that the cuneiform letters known today arose in a region more northern than Chaldea, in a certain country with a completely different fauna and flora, where, for example, there were no lions, but wolves and bears lived in abundance, where neither palm trees nor grapes were known, but there were plenty coniferous trees, pine and fir (J. Smith, “Phonetic Meanings of Cuneiform Letters,” p. 4).
While paleography has proved so much through paleology, archeology has discovered that “the most ancient tombs in Chaldea take us back to times as ancient as the Egyptian sarcophagi” (Lenormand, "Les Premieres Civilisations" volume I, page 118). The religion of the local inhabitants who preceded the supposed Turanians, despite the contrary claims of some Orientalists, did not differ significantly from the later forms of Chaldean-Babylonian beliefs, as shown today by tablets and monuments. If one of them was a "crude form of primitive fetishism," so must the other be, although we are personally inclined to believe that both of these religions were as philosophical in their basis as any of the religious systems of antiquity, or, in particular, she who pursued them and helped to exterminate them with fire and sword. The suggestive fact that the Chaldeans, whose mathematical and astronomical knowledge had brought them fame since the dawn of history, could not at the same time have been superstitious and fetish-worshipping fools, seems never to have occurred to the Orientalists. It is not known that any of them ever noticed that the people who received from Aristotle the opportunity to conduct highest degree accurate astronomical observations for at least 1903 years, could not at the same time believe in "magic" and spells, talismans and amulets, as they did, unless there was a more philosophical basis of truth in all this than is supposed in regarding these terms in our century. If the student of such a religious system does not make a special study of it in the light of the occult sciences, then he risks never rising above the superficial level of literal understanding. It is unlikely that in modern circumstances and in view of those accusations which are based on the claims of psychology and on the misunderstood phenomena of spiritualism and occultism especially, the Orientalists would go so far. Their sincere, though hitherto unacknowledged, guides to their views on the "magic" of the ancients are magical rituals and the belief in good and evil demons as practiced under the name of religious doctrines in the Roman Catholic and Greek-Eastern churches. For everything that concerns the literal understanding of Chaldean magic - useless and absurd spells, ceremonial prayers and talismans - passed for the most part into Catholic Christian Church under the name of "exorcism", holy water, ceremonies, amulets blessed by the pope and images of angels and saints.
It is therefore rather amusing to hear Mr. F. Lenormand, a zealous papist, expressing his opinion of the religion of the Chaldeans, asserting that, like all other ancient beliefs, it “never rose above the worship of nature.” The single fact that the Akkadians depicted the earth in the form of a boat, not oblong, like those with which we are familiar, but completely round, like a slightly flattened ball with the top cut off, such as the Chaldeans used, in constant circular motion in the ocean of space, already proves that their ancient magicians were far ahead of the Christian fathers of the Middle Ages. We doubt whether any of the ideas of the former, with their vast knowledge of astronomy, can be compared with the denial of the sphericity of the earth by Augustine on the ground that this would prevent the antipodes from seeing the Lord Christ at his second coming; or Lactantius, who believed that this would make people on the other side of the earth walk upside down; or, finally, the holy sages who just recently burned Galileo for his anti-spiritual blasphemy. And we still doubt whether such prejudice against “magic” will dissipate at least in our days? The fact that these magicians lived and worked among the Chaldeans was known from time immemorial to both the Egyptians, Greeks, Aryans, and many other peoples. But what, due to prejudice, remains in vain is - what exactly is such magic? And even today, having at their disposal a whole library of inscriptions revealing this theme, found by Layard and Smith in the ruins of the ancient cities of Chaldea, unless scholars try to read them in the light of other similar writings, they will never understand their true meaning. For they already have the Vedas, the Zend-Avesta and the [Egyptian] Book of the Dead”, but they find in them only the literal meaning of a dead letter - the spirit invariably eludes them.
Chaldea is a country that was once located in the lower reaches of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, at their confluence. Next to them, in the southern part of Mesopotamia (Interfluve), lived the Sumerian (Sumerian) tribes, known for their city-states: Uruk, Lagash, Mari, Suz, Ur. The Semitic tribes of Akkad lived in the north of the fertile plain, which was also called the Old Garden of God (according to legend, this is where Eden was located, where the first people, Adam and Eve, saw the light), and then Babylonia. To the east of the Tigris stretched the mountainous country of the Assyrians.
These lands are described by the historian Georg Schuster: “From the high mountains of Armenia, the waters of two powerful rivers, the Euphrates and the Tigris, fall into the vast lowlands stretching to the south; they surround the famous “Interfluve” (Mesopotamia), form fertile valleys abounding in flowers and luxurious vegetation of the most varied and vibrant colors, and, finally, draining their waters, rush to the Persian Gulf. This lowland, the extreme fertility of which the ancient writers, Herodotus and Xenophon, describe in the most bright colors... called the country of Sinear, the old garden of God, and also Chaldea and Babylonia. Its nature resembles that of Egypt. Just as the Nile is there, so here the Tigris and Euphrates give life and fertility to the country.” A Sumerian myth tells how the god Enki made the soil of Mesopotamia fertile:
“Before him, the land was covered with impenetrable thickets and swamps - you couldn’t walk through it, you couldn’t ride through it. There was no escape from snakes and scorpions. Packs of ferocious beasts prowled everywhere, driving mortals into dark caves. Standing behind the plow, Enki uprooted the bushes. He filled the Tigris and Euphrates with life-giving water and did everything to ensure that they served fertility. I planted the banks with reeds and filled the waters with fish.”
However, this fabulous country is a thing of the past. Traveler Karl Ritter described what he saw in Mesopotamia this way: “Among the eternal, solemn silence of this world of ruins, the traveler’s gaze reveals the wide mirror surface of the Euphrates stretching into the distance; full of calm grandeur, the Euphrates quietly flows through this lifeless desert and, like a royal wanderer, passes through the silent ruins of its destroyed kingdom.”
Almost nothing is known about the origin of the Kashdim people (the Babylonians called them Kaldu, the Greeks called them Chaldeans). It is believed that they came to Mesopotamia in time immemorial from the south, perhaps fleeing from the sunken continent of Lemuria.
In 2231 BC. e. The Babylonian ruler Hammurabi seized power over all the peoples of Mesopotamia, established uniform laws, and introduced the Babylonian religion and culture. Neither then nor later, during the time of Assyrian rule, did the Chaldeans lose their identity. The basis of their worldview was the belief that the surrounding nature was inhabited by entire hordes of good and evil spirits warring among themselves. Even the gods are subject to the laws of nature. Magicians could control spirits with the help of special formulas, talismans and amulets, and astrologers could accurately predict future events.
The Babylonian priests treated the Chaldean magicians without any respect and only after the religious reformation that occurred in the 20th century. BC, agreed to accept them into their union, but to the lowest positions. However, the Chaldeans did not consider their position humiliating: they were confident in the effectiveness of secret science and they turned out to be right. The Babylonian cult remained just a national religion, now forgotten, and magical art became increasingly popular, spreading from Babylonia to Assyria, Media and Persia, then to Asia Minor, Greece and Italy, to Carthage and even to the distant northern country inhabited by the Finns .
In subsequent times, soothsayers of all nations used the experience of the Chaldean magicians. Rain, the shape and color of clouds, earthquakes, flashes of lightning, rumbles of thunder, the rustle of wind in the treetops, even random movements of visible objects - everything gave rise to mystical prophecies. The biblical book of Job records that the lines of a person’s hand depict his entire destiny. Another Old Testament prophet, David, made predictions by the noise of a mulberry tree, and Deborah prophesied by the movement of a sacred palm tree. IN Ancient Greece“talking oaks” in Dodona, prophetic laurel trees in Delphi and on the island of Delos were held in high esteem. The Etruscans in Italy, like the Druids of the Celts, spoke of “auspicious” and “unfavourable” trees. Dreams were considered direct prophetic omens: the Assyrians recorded them with the greatest care, as the most important historical events.
The extensive knowledge and skillful techniques of magicians were kept secret. It took years of apprenticeship to fully master. However, some formulas are known, written in the secret Sumerian language: “Talisman, talisman, a limit that cannot be removed, a limit that the gods cannot cross, a boundary stone between heaven and earth that cannot be moved, the depths of which no god has measured, which neither God nor man can comprehend, a constipation that cannot be opened, a constipation that preserves from evil forces, which you all avoid, evil spirits, you wicked geniuses! Good God, close to the spirit of the earth! The calling of god, strong, strong, strong. So be it!” One of these talismans mentioned in the conspiracy was a magic wand, the primary source of the power of magicians.
The Chaldeans divided the week into seven days, where each was dedicated to a specific deity-planet. Monday was ruled by the Moon, Tuesday by Mars, Wednesday by the sky in general, Thursday by Meradach (Babylonian by Marduk, Greek by Jupiter), Friday by Ishtar-Venus, Saturday, with which the week began in Mesopotamia, by Adar-Saturn - beautiful, glorious ( The sixth month of the civil and twelfth month of the sacred calendar, corresponding to the last part of our February - the beginning of March, was dedicated to him. Sunday was patronized by the Sun God. We find the same idea in the German name for Sunday - sontag - day of the sun.
To what has been said, we can add that the ancient art of Chaldean astrologers has found a second life in our days.
Since ancient times, historians have established that the term “Chaldeans” has two meanings: it defines a nationality and a caste of priests. Even in ancient times, the geographer Strabo wrote about this:
“In Babylonia, a special settlement was allocated for local philosophers, the so-called Chaldeans, who are mainly engaged in astronomy; Moreover, some of them pose as fortune tellers. There is also a tribe of Chaldeans, and the territory occupied by them is adjacent to the Arabs and the Persian Sea...”
The first mention of the Chaldeans is contained in the testimony of the Assyrian king Shalmaneser III and dates back to the 9th century BC. These documents report the ancient tribal division of the Chaldeans. The most significant tribes were the Bit-Dakuri in the north and the Bit-Yakin in the south. By the time of Shalmaneser III, these tribes had formed small independent states that paid taxes to Assyria.
"ROBERS ATTACKING VILLAGES"
This is exactly how the biblical Book of Job characterizes the Chaldeans, indicating their nomadic lifestyle. Very little is known about the Chaldeans as a people. In addition, the information that has reached us is very contradictory.
According to some sources, the Chaldeans are Semitic tribes or Semitic-Aramaic people who lived in the 1st millennium BC near the Persian Gulf. According to others, these are people of more ancient origin who inhabited the area between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers.
Some researchers suggest that the Chaldeans were a nomadic people and moved to the southern regions of ancient Mesopotamia from the mountainous northern regions.
The Chaldeans lived primarily in clans, the so-called “houses,” headed by independent princes.
Given the harsh living conditions in the mountains, they existed mainly through robberies and robberies. Chaldean tribes constantly attacked Assyrian settlements and even small ancient cities, plundering them. At the same time, they were particularly belligerent and cruel.
Apparently, the Assyrian king Tiglath-pileser III (745-727 BC) included the Chaldean kingdoms in Babylonia, which was subject to him. During the reign of his successors Sargon II and Sancheriv (722-680 BC), the Bi-Yakin king Marduk-apla-iddin (biblical Merodach-Baladan) strengthened, who seized power in Babylon several times, but was eventually forced to flee to Elam .
From the middle of the 7th century BC, continuous wars between the Chaldeans and the Assyrians for the possession of Babylon began, with varying success. There was a frequent change of kings on the Babylonian throne, among whom were Chaldean princes. In 626 BC, the Chaldean ruler Nabopolassar, with the support of the Arameans and the Babylonians themselves, reigned in Babylon.
He defeated Assyria and founded the Neo-Babylonian kingdom, in whose administration the Chaldeans began to play an important role, earning the reputation of sages.
His son, King Nebuchadnezzar II, expanded the Neo-Babylonian kingdom, also conquering Judea. As a result, the Chaldeans began to lead a settled life and engage in agriculture. They adopted the ancient Sumerian-Babylonian culture and religion and turned into a distinctive caste of Chaldeans, encrypting their knowledge in magic and sorcery. The Persian king Cyrus put an end to the rule of the Chaldean kings in Babylonia.
However, he also contributed to the spread of Chaldean culture among other peoples: thanks to the wars of the Greeks with the Persians, as well as permission for the Jews to return to their homeland, it penetrated into many Mediterranean countries.
WIZARDS, SORCERERS AND FORTELLERS
The Chaldeans were known by such definitions in the Ancient World. And it’s no coincidence. Even in the Holy Scriptures they are mentioned as Babylonian sages and scientists who were primarily involved in astronomy and mathematics. And among them there were many priests and magicians, whom ordinary residents were afraid of.
They truly were the most educated people of their time and knew astronomy, agriculture, mathematics, magic, medicine, the art of spells and incantations, metrology, religion, mythology, etc. This is known thanks to numerous cuneiform tablets discovered during excavations of the library of the ancient Assyrian city of Nineveh.
On them, in particular, it was possible to read various spells, astrological calculations and healing and magical instructions.
It turned out that the priests determined the fate of peoples and states, the prospects for war, peace and harvest, the fate of rulers, future rains and floods, famine and disease by the position of the stars.
Based on long-term and amazingly accurate astronomical observations, it was concluded that the position of the sun and planets affects the change of seasons. The priests also established the duration of the solar year and the shifts lunar phases, based on these calculations, they compiled an ancient lunar-solar calendar consisting of 12 months.
Contemporaries noted the clarity of presentation of the astrological system of the Chaldeans. Therefore, it is not surprising that their astrological forecasts and horoscopes have gained particular popularity among the rulers of almost all neighboring nations. It is known, for example, that the “Chaldean soothsayers” who met Alexander the Great on the way to Babylon convinced him not to enter the city, since they learned from the stars that death awaited him there.
The Chaldeans also made predictions for Alexander's heirs Antigonus and Seleucus the Victorious. Such famous Romans as Sulla, Crassus and even Caesar believed in their predictions.
The Chaldean sages identified constellations among the stars, giving them names, determined the patterns of movement across the sky of the Sun, Earth and Moon, and learned to quite accurately predict solar and lunar eclipses, which made a special impression on their superstitious contemporaries.
Such conclusions required deep knowledge of mathematics. And the Chaldeans achieved amazing results in this science: they learned to extract square and cube roots, knew about arithmetic, geometric progressions, etc. But the exact sciences were intertwined with mystical views. They were especially attracted by the magic of numbers.
THE MAGIC OF NUMBERS: THE MYTH OF LUCKY SEVEN
The Chaldean sages were not going to reveal the secrets of mathematical puzzles to anyone. Therefore, today we can only guess what real facts and knowledge of that time they encrypted in digital magic. Nevertheless, every resident of Chaldea knew that in the first ten numbers three and seven were lucky.
The Chaldean priest-mathematicians considered the number 653 to be a symbol of eternity. The number 6532 was also sacred. Various operations were performed with them: decomposition into component parts, exponentiation, etc. The Chaldeans also treated the number 60 with special respect. During excavations of the ancient city of Nippur (the territory of modern Iraq), many tablets were discovered with mathematical exercises written on them around the number 60 and especially 604.
It was never possible to find out why exactly these numbers. Scientists only came to the conclusion that various combinations of numbers encrypted astronomical knowledge, natural and historical patterns, various
predictions and other data.
The Chaldean tribes had polytheism, and each of the celestials also had their own number. It is no coincidence that the Chaldeans are considered the founders of astrology and astronomy. But they were also mathematicians and naturalists, theosophists and philosophers, who were the first to proclaim the immortality of the soul.
There were entire occult schools of the Chaldeans. It is believed that it was at their instigation that amulets and talismans, primitive magic and primitive hypnosis, popularly known as the “evil eye,” spread throughout the Semitic East.
The Sumerian Chaldean priests were a separate class, descended from noble families. The title of priest was hereditary, and the candidate for priesthood had to be healthy and not have physical disabilities. Most often, the ruler was also the high priest - the highest priest who carried out the connection on earth between Heaven and people.
Researchers have long come to the conclusion that numerical mysticism and symbolism originated in Chaldea. But few of our contemporaries realize that some famous Russian sayings (“Seven troubles - one answer,” “Seven do not wait for one,” “Measure seven times, cut one”) have come to us from ancient times and have Chaldean roots. (
RIDDLE OF THE CHALDEANS
Who among us has not heard the biblical story of how the Chaldean magicians and eastern kings, following the instructions of the guiding star, came to Bethlehem to kneel before the newborn Messiah and give him the gifts they brought. In this article I will try to slightly lift the veil of mystery over the mysterious Chaldeans
There are many versions regarding the Chaldeans. Since ancient times, historians have divided the Chaldeans as a people and the Chaldeans as priests. The Chaldeans are a Semitic-Aramaic people who lived at the end of the 2nd - beginning of the 1st millennium BC. in the territory of Southern and Central Mesopotamia. They fought with Assyria for the possession of Babylon. In 612, the Chaldeans, in alliance with the Medes, overthrew Assyrian rule. In 626-538 BC Babylon was ruled by the Chaldean dynasty (Nebuchadnezzar II and others), which founded the Neo-Babylonian kingdom. In Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome, priests and fortune-tellers of Babylonian origin were called Chaldeans. CHALDEANS (plural, Hebrew KAS\"DIM, Greek `oi chaldaioi) were another Semitic tribe that had long lived in Mesopotamia. According to archaeological data, they came there from the southwest, from Arabia, around the middle of the era of Aries (1000 BC). These were warlike Bedouins who at one time served the Assyrian kings. In 626, the Chaldean Nabupalassar seized the Babylonian throne.
CHALDEAS is an Asian country in which Babylon was the capital, and which was therefore called Babylonia. It was irrigated by two rivers. The Tigris and Euphrates, between which it was located. The said rivers, receiving a mass of water from the Armenian mountains, very often overflowed their banks and abundantly fertilized the entire country with alluvial silt. The Babylonian Plain is about 400 miles long and 100 wide. She is very fertile. The harvest and harvest of various grain plants were rewarded here a hundredfold. Vast fields of wheat, harvested twice a year, continued to provide abundant and excellent feed for livestock. The products of the palm trees were also varied and plentiful. In 630 BC. The Chaldeans descended from the Caucasus and Taurus mountains in a stormy stream, took possession of Western Asia, destroyed Jerusalem, conquered Tire and Phenicia under their rule and founded a state that extended to the shores of the Mediterranean Sea and was named after them Chaldea. In 536 AD Chaldea united with Persia, in 640 both Persia and Chaldea fell under the rule of Mohammed, and finally in 1639 under the rule of the Turks. The two names Chaldea and Babylonia were apparently very often applied to the same country. The original name of at least the known part of Chaldea was Shinar. Since the Jews for a long time were in Babylonian captivity, they gradually adopted the language of their rulers. Knowledge of the Hebrew language has been significantly forgotten, at least among the common people, and therefore to give them the opportunity to read and understand the Sacred.
Scripture, paraphrastic translations of the Old Testament writings were made into the Chaldean language. Jewish Kabbalah apparently has its origins from the time of the Babylonian captivity.
It is worth noting that Europeans still traditionally sometimes call Christians living in Iran and Iraq “Chaldeans,” and their church is officially called Chaldaean Church (Catholic Chaldaean Church, union with Rome 1553, residence of the Patriarch in Baghdad). But these, of course, are not the Chaldeans we are talking about.
The ancient concept of the Chaldean priest-magician is largely erased by the concept of the Chaldean Christian (Nestorian). Nestorian Christians, at one time fleeing persecution, fled from Constantinople to Babylon and organized their own church there, which received the rights of patriarchy and was in union with Rome. Since the church is called Chaldean, the Nestorian Christians are also called Chaldeans. But it is absolutely clear that Nestorian Christians have nothing to do with the ancient Chaldean magicians.
The Chaldeans did not abolish the official cult of Marduk and other astral deities, but they also had their own esoteric tradition, obviously of an “archaic” model. It is believed that it was at their instigation that amulets and talismans, techniques of primitive magic (envolting) and primitive hypnosis (the “evil eye”) became widespread throughout the Semitic East.
The Sumerian Chaldean priests were a separate class, descended from noble families. The title of priest was hereditary; the candidate for priesthood had to be healthy and have no physical disabilities.
Most often, the ruler was also a high priest, that is, a high priest who carried out the connection on earth between Heaven and people.
The Babylonian priests were scientists and the most educated people of their time. Priests and priestesses served mainly at temples, which had the shape of stepped towers. The priests knew astronomy, agriculture, mathematics, magic, mantika, medicine, the art of spells and incantations, time calculation, metrology, religion, mythology, etc. The mystical works of the Chaldeans, written on cuneiform tablets, are still preserved in various museums around the world; these are spells against evil demons, astrological calculations, various healing and magical instructions. Chaldean astronomers knew that the solar year is 365 and 1/4 days, they were able to pre-calculate solar eclipses. The destinies of peoples and states were calculated by the position of the heavenly bodies. The stars were used to calculate the prospects for war and peace, harvest and failure, the fate of rulers and ordinary people, rains and floods, famine, disease, etc.
Babylonian priests widely used trance in harmful and military magic, for example, having made an image of the enemy, the priest went into a trance and, clearly visualizing the whole picture of the battle, imagined how the enemy retreated and died. Coming out of the trance, the priest took the image, turned it face down and burned it.
The Babylonian priests, according to legend, took with them a super-ancient secret trance culture, which they borrowed from some kind of proto-civilization that perished in the Indian Ocean twelve thousand years ago. But many researchers believe Sumer, ancient Babylon, like ancient egypt, fragments of the civilization of the disappeared Atlantis. When it comes to Sumer, one also remembers the sunken continent of Mu, the main population of which was red-skinned and black-skinned mutants. But, nevertheless, the pale-faced and black-headed Anunnaki from the planet Nubiru are considered the forefathers of the Sumerians (Yu. Kanygin).
Mi people of the Earth are most likely a wonderful mixture of several galactic races, which carries within themselves, in their physical bodies, all the information about their own cosmic past, which for some alien races, who have lost the emotional and other aspects of their existence, is the key to their future.
Part of the Chaldean trance culture was borrowed by the Jews during the Babylonian captivity (VI century BC) and later entered into Kabbalah - the ancient Jewish trance culture.
The Greeks called the Chaldeans an ancient caste of priests who belonged to the Chaldean tribe, who practiced astrology and astronomy.
When Alexander the Great was on his way to Babylon, he met "Chaldean soothsayers" who persuaded him not to enter the city, since "they knew from the stars that the king's death would occur in Babylon." The Chaldeans were priests of Bel-Marduk and they also made predictions to Alexander's heirs Antigonus and Seleucus.
Herodotus (451 BC), who mentions a group of priests of the god Bel, whom he calls "Chaldeans." (“History” I 181-183).
The way of life of these "Chaldeans." describes Strabo in “Geography” (book 16, part 1) as follows: “In Babylonia, a special settlement was allocated for local philosophers, the so-called Chaldeans, who are mainly engaged in astronomy; Moreover, some of them, not recognized by others, pose as fortune tellers. There is also a tribe of Chaldeans, and the territory they occupy is adjacent to the Arabs and the Persian Sea... There are also several tribes of Chaldean astronomers. Some, for example, are called orchens, others - borsippens and others different names, according to the division into different sects, which hold different doctrines on the same subjects. And mathematicians mention some of these people, such as Kiden, Naburian and Sudin. Seleucus from Seleucia also belongs to the Chaldeans...”
The so-called Chaldeans. Strabo all lived during the Persian and Hellenistic eras. Strabo makes a distinction between the "so-called Chaldeans", who were philosophers and astronomers (astrologers), and the Chaldean tribe, which lived in the south of Babylonia near the Persian Gulf. This distinction is correct. At the time of Nebuchadnezzar, the Chaldeans were precisely the name given to the people who lived in this southern region, and the kings of Babylon belonged to their number. Later, the name “Chaldeans” began to designate a class of priests living in Babylon who were engaged in astronomy and astrology.
The Chaldeans were active in astrology already under the Persian kings (539 - 331 BC).
The main features of the teaching of the Chaldeans from Babylon are set forth in Diodorus (II 30-31). This presentation consists of seven parts:
About the order and regularity of the Cosmos, about Divine Providence and about astrological predictions;
About the planets and their powers;
About the fixed stars and the Zodiac;
About the influence of planets on the birth and life of a person;
About the 24 most important stars outside the Zodiac;
About the Moon, eclipses and the shape of the Earth;
About observations covering 473,000 years before Alexander's campaign. Diodorus points out that his sources contained much more information.
Other indications about the astrological concepts and techniques of the Chaldeans have also been preserved.
Plutarch, in his essay “On Isis and Osiris,” reports: “The Chaldeans declare that of the planets that they call “guardian gods,” two are favorable, two are unfavorable, and the other three are average and relate to both properties.” Pliny reports (“Nat. Hist.” XVIII) that there was a “Parapegma of the Chaldeans.” Pliny gives 10 points from this star calendar. In part 2 of the essay “Isagoge” Gemin gives a description of the astrological doctrine of aspects. Geminus attributes this teaching and its application in horoscopy to the Chaldeans. Censorinus (“De die natali”, 18, 7) considers the Dodecaetheride system to be a Chaldean invention.
Researchers note the clarity of the presentation of Chaldean teachings by ancient authors, which speaks of the harmony of the astrological system of the Chaldeans.
In the literature of late antiquity, a Chaldean is an Eastern astrologer, an astrologer who studied with Mesopotamian or other foreign masters. The Median priestly caste of magicians and the Chaldean priests were considered representatives of the Middle Eastern secret teachings, therefore their names were borrowed from ancient astrology and magic.
A. L. Chizhevsky (1897 - 1964) also notes that astronomical knowledge reached its magnificent flowering among the Chaldeans. They taught that earthly phenomena only reflect the movement of heavenly bodies, the effect of which on the Earth is different... The ancient Greeks and Romans, having become acquainted with Chaldean wisdom, responded with the greatest honor and surprise to the astronomical knowledge of the Chaldeans. The dogma of “universal sympathy” arose as a result of the wisdom of the Chaldean astrologers, refracted through the prism of the original Greek philosophy and finally took shape in the 5th and 4th centuries. BC e. “...The more the sphere of human experience increases, the more facts accumulate in science testifying to the influence of the environment on a person, on his development and behavior, the more this principle of astrology acquires in our eyes more and more importance, as a naive and at the same time the greatest guess of the ancients about the fundamental properties of our world, based on the principles of monism of the Cosmos!”
It is worth pointing out the difference between the so-called "Chaldeans", who were philosophers and astronomers (some also astrologers), and the Chaldean tribe, which lived in the south of Babylonia near the Persian Gulf. During the time of Nebuchadnezzar, Chaldeans were precisely the name given to the people living in this southern region. Later, the name “Chaldeans” began to designate a class of priests living in Babylon who practiced astronomy and astrology.
The Chaldeans were already active in astrology under the Persian kings (539-331 BC). Diodorus tells us that the Chaldeans made predictions for several kings, including Alexander, Antigonus and Seleucus the Victorious. Plutarch reports in his essay “On Isis and Osiris”: “The Chaldeans declare that of the planets that they call “guardian gods,” two are favorable, two are unfavorable, and the other three are intermediate and relate to both properties.”
There is reason to believe that all the quotations attributed to the “Chaldeans” go back to one work or group of works written in Greek, where the astronomical and astrological teachings of the Chaldeans were presented in a systematic and clear manner. This work was written at the beginning of the Hellenistic era (between 320 and 170 BC). Apparently, many later astrological works were written under the influence of this seminal book.
Researchers studying the past of human society have come to the conclusion that numerical mysticism also originated in Chaldea. On the territory of ancient Chaldea, archaeologists have found many written sources - clay plates that reveal the history and culture of the tribes that inhabited it.
Astronomy and mathematics were greatly developed among the Chaldeans. They identified constellations among the stars and gave them names; determined how the Sun moves across the sky,
Earth, Moon and planets; learned to predict solar and lunar eclipses quite accurately. All this required considerable knowledge of mathematics. The Chaldeans learned to extract square and cube roots and knew about arithmetic and geometric progressions.
The Chaldean tribes had polytheism, and each of the celestials had their own number. This was confirmed by cuneiform tablets discovered by archaeologists during excavations of the library of the ancient Assyrian city of Nineveh. “Creator of the world” Bel was designated by the number 20; the god of the moon Sin - 30, the lower spirits, in accordance with their position among the gods, were encrypted only with fractional numbers: Utuk - 30/60, Maskim - 50/60, etc.
The Chaldean priest-mathematicians considered the number 653 to be a symbol of eternity. The number 6532 was sacred. Various operations were performed with them: decomposition into component parts, exponentiation. Various combinations of numbers were used to encrypt astronomical knowledge, the history of cities, etc.
The Chaldeans treated the number 60 with special respect. During excavations of ancient Nippur (the territory of present-day Iraq), entire repositories of records were discovered with mathematical exercises written on them around the number 60 and especially 604. Why?
The Chaldean sages had no intention of explaining the meaning of mathematical puzzles to the “uninitiated,” and now we can only guess what real facts and knowledge of that time were encrypted in digital magic. The priests presented their people with the mysticism of numbers only in the most elementary form: every resident of Chaldea knew that among the first ten numbers favorable to man, three and seven were lucky. This is where the belief in the “lucky seven” came to us from ancient times!
Later, when numerical mysticism took root throughout the ancient world, this belief was unquestioned everywhere. In the number seven, the ancients saw a reflection of many phenomena of the world:
The week was divided into seven days; In those days, seven planets were known in the sky, and on earth there were seven wonders of the world: This figure occupies a large place in ancient myths. Atlas, who supported the firmament with his shoulders, had seven daughters - the Pleiades, whom Zeus later turned into a constellation; Odysseus spent seven years in captivity with the nymph Calypso on the island of Ogygia; the underground river Styx flows seven times around hell, which is in turn divided into seven regions; among the Babylonians, the underworld is surrounded by seven walls; According to Islam, there are seven heavens above us, and everyone pleasing to God goes to the seventh heaven of bliss:
Starting from Chaldea, the seven, as a good helper, appears in witchcraft conspiracies and spells. Echoes of the veneration of this number remained in spoken language many peoples to this day. And now we say: “Seven troubles - one answer”, “Seven do not wait for one”, “Measure seven times, cut one”:
Chaldean culture had a great influence on the culture of other peoples of the ancient world, and a very noticeable component of this culture, as already said, was numerical symbolism. And so we see how it migrates to the peoples of the East, to the ancient Greeks and Romans. It is curious that in Indian mythology, Chaldean magic with numbers left its mark mainly in the hobby large numbers. In the famous Indian legend about the battle between people and monkeys, it is reported, for example, that no less than 10 thousand sextillion monkeys took part in it (!); Buddha, it turns out, had 600 billion sons, and he himself was an outstanding mathematician.
There has been renewed interest in the Chaldean priests of late. Considering the fact that the Chaldean star tables contain records of cosmic observations over tens of thousands of years, this ancient knowledge in modern scientific extrapolation could help humanity avoid many mistakes on its universal path.
In conclusion of the story about the Chaldean priests, I will tell a story about three Chaldean riddles, which I took from V. Pelevin’s book “Generation P”: “Three Chaldean riddles (Three riddles of Ishtar). The legend about the three Chaldean riddles said that any resident of Babylon could become the husband of the goddess. To do this, he had to drink a special drink and climb her ziggurat. It is unknown what was meant: a ceremonial ascent to a real building in Babylon or a hallucinatory experience. The second assumption is supported by the fact that the drink was prepared according to a rather exotic recipe: it included “red donkey urine” (possibly cinnabar, traditional in ancient alchemy) and “heavenly mushrooms” (apparently fly agaric).
According to legend, the path to wealth and perfect wisdom (and the Babylonians did not separate these two concepts - they were rather considered to be mutually transforming into each other and were considered as different aspects of the same thing) lay through sexual union with the golden idol of the goddess, which was in the upper room ziggurat. It was believed that the spirit of Ishtar descends on this idol at certain hours.
To be allowed into the idol, it was necessary to solve three riddles of Ishtar. These riddles have not reached us. Let us note the controversial point of view of Claude Greco, who believes that we are talking about a set of rhythmic and very polysemantic spells in ancient Akkadian due to their homonymy, found at excavations in Nineveh.
Much more convincing, however, seems to be a version based on several sources at once: the three riddles of Ishtar were three symbolic objects that were given to a Babylonian who wished to become a Chaldean. He had to explain the meaning of these objects (the motive of the symbolic message). There were three outposts along the spiral ascent to the ziggurat, where these objects were offered in turn to the future Chaldean. Anyone who solved even one riddle incorrectly was pushed down from the ziggurat by the outpost guards, which meant certain death.
(There are grounds to derive the later cult of Cybele, based on ritual self-castration, from the cult of Ishtar: self-castration apparently played the role of a substitute sacrifice.)
Nevertheless, there were many who wanted it, since the answers that made it possible to go to the top of the ziggurat and connect with the goddess still existed. Once every few decades, someone succeeded.
The man who solved all three riddles correctly climbed to the top and met the goddess, after which he became an initiated Chaldean and her ritual earthly husband (perhaps there were several of them).
According to one version, the answers to the three riddles of Ishtar also existed in written form. In special places in Babylon, sealed tablets with answers to the goddess’s questions were sold (according to another version, we are talking about a magical seal on which the answers were carved).
The production and trade of these tablets was carried out by the priests of the main temple of Enkidu, the patron god of the Lottery. It was believed that through the mediation of Enkidu, the goddess chooses her next husband. This removed the conflict between divine predestination and free will, well known to the ancient Babylonians. Therefore, most of those who decided to climb the ziggurat bought clay tablets with answers; it was believed that the tablet could only be printed by climbing the ziggurat.
This practice was called the Great Lottery (an established term that we owe to numerous fiction writers who were inspired by this legend, but a more accurate translation is “Game Without a Name”). There was only winning and death, so in a certain sense it was a win-win game. Some daredevils decided to climb the ziggurat without a sign with a hint.
According to another interpretation, Ishtar’s three questions were not riddles, but rather symbolic guidelines pointing to certain life situations. The Babylonian had to go through them and present evidence of his wisdom to the guards of the ziggurat, which made it possible to meet the goddess.
In this case, the above-described ascent to the ziggurat seems more like a metaphor). It was believed that the answers to Ishtar's three questions were hidden in the words of the "market songs" sung every day in the Babylonian bazaar, but no information about these songs or this custom has survived.
Thus, after reading the article, readers of the newspaper learned a little more about the mysterious caste of Chaldean magician-priests. But the question of where the Chaldeans, these bearers of ancient knowledge, unknown from where they gleaned, disappeared, still remains a mystery behind “seven seals.” We can only be content with those crumbs of Chaldean mystical knowledge that are scattered in various ancient and not-so-ancient treatises and publications.
When you think about the Chaldeans, A. Panteleev’s “Shkid Stories” comes to mind, precisely at that time, and this is what students of Soviet schools in the first years after the revolution called their random charlatan teachers, rogue teachers who, due to their professional qualities, could not be called teachers. This offensive nickname for teachers came to the “Shkid Republic” from the Bursat schools, where over-aged children were forcibly driven from all the surrounding villages, and where there were very cruel rules. In those days, Chaldeans were the names of jesters and buffoons who, dressed in oriental clothes, amused people in the bazaars, not embarrassed by obscene antics, which is why it was a dirty word.
All over the world one could meet traveling charlatans who called themselves Chaldeans. They practiced prophecy, fortune telling, magic and dream interpretation. At the same time, the name of the Chaldeans is mentioned in the Holy Scriptures as the name of the Babylonian sages and scientists who studied science, especially astronomy and mathematics. Among them were priests and magicians, whom people were afraid of in those distant times. And there were soothsayers, sorcerers and healers who cast out evil spirits with spells and magical rituals. There were entire occult schools of the Chaldeans. Sulla, Crassus and even Caesar believed in the predictions of the Chaldeans.
Very little is known about the Chaldeans as a people, their ethnicity, geographical habitat, culture and traditions, and, moreover, this information is very contradictory. The Chaldeans, according to some sources, are tribes of Semitic origin who lived in the first millennium BC. e. near the Persian Gulf, according to others, the Chaldeans had a more ancient origin and inhabited the territory between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. Some researchers of ancient history suggest that the Chaldeans were a nomadic people and moved to the southern regions of ancient Mesopotamia from the mountainous northern regions. The Chaldeans lived primarily in clans, the so-called “houses,” with independent princes at the head of each clan. Given the harsh living conditions in the mountainous regions and the difficulties in obtaining food, the Chaldeans are mentioned, both in apocryphal sources and in biblical works, as a people who live mainly by robbery and robbery. And in fact, the Chaldean tribes were very warlike and cruel.
Representatives of the Chaldean tribes constantly attacked and plundered Assyrian settlements, and even small ancient cities. The continuous wars of the Chaldeans with the Assyrians for the possession of Babylon, going on with varying success, led to a frequent change of Babylonian kings, among whom were Chaldean princes. After the final defeat and capture of the Chaldean tribes by the Assyrians, some princes were brutally killed or fled to neighboring ancient states such as Elam, others were subject to tribute, and their peoples were captured and resettled in Babylonia, famous in antiquity. There they began to lead a settled life and engage in agriculture, assimilating and accepting the ancient Sumerian-Babylonian culture, priesthood and religion, turning into a kind of Chaldean caste, which would pass on their knowledge of magic and sorcery to subsequent generations from generation to generation.
After the decline of the Assyrian Empire in the 7th - 6th centuries BC. e., the Neo-Babylonian kingdom was founded, led by the Chaldean king Nabopolassar. His son, King Nebuchadnezzar, expanded the Neo-Babylonian kingdom, also conquering Judea. The Persian king Cyrus put an end to the rule of the Chaldean kings in Babylonia. However, thanks to the wars of the Greeks with the Persians, Chaldean culture and magic penetrated into the Mediterranean countries. The spread of Chaldean science among other peoples was also facilitated by the Jews, who received permission from Cyrus to return to their homeland.
On the territory of ancient Chaldea, archaeologists have found many written sources - clay plates, many of which are very well preserved, due to the fact that clay is an almost eternal material. They described not only the astronomical observations of the Chaldeans, but also recipes for magical procedures for expelling demons, fortune telling, and treating people, as well as number series and actions with them. Based on the long-term astronomical observations of the Chaldeans, amazing in their accuracy, it was concluded that the position of the sun and planets affects the change of seasons.
The Chaldeans also believed that celestial bodies are the cause of everything that happens on earth, and the relative position of the stars determines the lives of people and natural phenomena. The so-called Chaldean series of planets was compiled, which was used in astrology. Astrological forecasts and drawing up horoscopes became very popular among the rulers of almost all nations who came into contact with Chaldean magic. The Chaldean priests could calculate solar and lunar eclipses with almost perfect accuracy. They determined the duration of the solar year and the changes in lunar phases, on the basis of which an ancient lunisolar calendar consisting of 12 months was compiled.
Such calculations required thorough mathematical knowledge. The Chaldeans knew how to extract square and cubic roots, knew about arithmetic and geometric progressions, but the exact sciences were intertwined with mystical views. They were especially attracted by the magic of numbers. They assigned a certain number to each of their deities, and encrypted their astronomical knowledge and real facts into numerical combinations. Among the first ten numbers favorable to man, the Chaldeans singled out the numbers three and seven. It is to them that we owe our faith in the lucky seven!
