The existence of these and several other great cities is an important item to be taken in, in our conception of the old Assyria: Opis on the Tigris, and Sittakê on one of the canals very near the Tigris, can be identified (Xenoph. Anab. ii, 4, 13-25): compare Diodor. ii, 11.
[552] Herodot. i, 72; iii, 90-91; vii, 63; Strabo, xvi, p. 736, also ii, p. 84, in which he takes exception to the distribution of the οἰκουμένη (inhabited portion of the globe) made by Eratosthenês, because it did not include in the same compartment (σφραγὶς) Syria proper and Mesopotamia: he calls Ninus and Semiramis, Syrians. Herodotus considers the Armenians as colonists from the Phrygians (vii, 73).
The Homeric names Ἀρίμοι, Ἐρεμβοὶ (the first in the Iliad, ii, 783, the second in the Odyssey, iv, 84) coincide with the Oriental name of this race Aram; it seems more ancient, in the Greek habits of speech, than Syrians (see Strabo, xvi, p. 785).
The Hesiodic Catalogue too, as well as Stêsichorus, recognized Arabus as the son of Hermês, by Throniê, daughter of Bêlus (Hesiod, Fragm. 29, ed. Marktscheffel; Strabo, i, p. 42).
[553] Heeren, in his account of the Babylonians (Ideen über den Verkehr der Alten Welt, part i, Abtheilung 2, p. 168), speaks of this conquest of Babylon by Chaldæan barbarians from the northern mountains as a certain fact, explaining the great development of the Babylonian empire under Nabopolasar and Nebuchadnezzar from 630-580 B. C.; it was, he thinks, the new Chaldæan conquerors who thus extended their dominion over Judæa and Phenicia.
I agree with Volney (Chronologie des Babyloniens, ch. x, p. 215) in thinking this statement both unsupported and improbable. Mannert seems to suppose the Chaldæans of Arabian origin (Geogr. der Gr. und Röm., part v, s. 2, ch. xii, p. 419). The passages of Strabo (xvi, p. 739) are more favorable to this opinion than to that of Heeren; but we make out nothing distinct respecting the Chaldæans except that they were the priestly order among the Assyrians of Babylon, as they are expressly termed by Herodotus—ὡς λέγουσι οἱ Χαλδαῖοι, ἐόντες ἱρέες τούτου τοῦ θεοῦ (of Zeus Bêlus) (Herodot. i, 181).
The Chalybes and Chaldæi of the northern mountains seem to be known only through Xenophon (Anab. iv, 3, 4; v, 5, 17; Cyrop. iii, 2, 1); they are rude barbarians, and of their exploits or history no particulars reach us.
[554] The earliest Chaldæan astronomical observation, known to the astronomer Ptolemy, both precise and of ascertained date to a degree sufficient for scientific use, was a lunar eclipse of the 19th March 721 B. C.—the 27th year of the era of Nabonassar (Ideler, Ueber die Astronomischen Beobachtungen der Alten, p. 19, Berlin, 1806). Had Ptolemy known any older observations conforming to these conditions, he would not have omitted to notice them: his own words in the Almagest testify how much he valued the knowledge and comparison of observations taken at distant intervals (Almagest, b. 3, p. 62, ap. Ideler, l. c. p. 1), and at the same time imply that he had none more ancient than the era of Nabonassar (Alm. iii, p. 77, ap. Idel. p. 169).
That the Chaldæans had been, long before this period, in the habit of observing the heavens, there is no reason to doubt; and the exactness of those observations cited by Ptolemy implies (according to the judgment of Ideler ib. p. 167) long previous practice. The period of two hundred and twenty-three lunations, after which the moon reverts nearly to the same positions in reference to the apsides and nodes, and after which eclipses return nearly in the same order and magnitude, appears to have been discovered by the Chaldæans (“Defectus ducentis viginti tribus mensibus redire in suos orbes certum est,” Pliny, H. N. ii, 13), and they deduced from hence the mean daily motions of the moon with a degree of accuracy which differs only by four seconds from modern lunar tables (Geminus, Isagoge in Arati Phænomena, c. 15; Ideler, l. c. pp. 153, 154, and in his Handbuch der Chronologie, vol. i, Absch. ii, p. 207).
There seem to have been Chaldæan observations, both made and recorded, of much greater antiquity than the era of Nabonassar; though we cannot lay much stress on the date of 1903 years anterior to Alexander the Great, which is mentioned by Simplicius (ad Aristot. de Cœlo, p. 123) as being the earliest period of the Chaldæan observations sent from Babylon by Kallisthenês to Aristotle. Ideler thinks that the Chaldæan observations anterior to the era of Nabonassar were useless to astronomers from the want of some fixed era, or definite cycle, to identify the date of each of them. The common civil year of the Chaldæans had been from the beginning (like that of the Greeks) a lunar year, kept in a certain degree of harmony with the sun by cycles of lunar years and intercalation. Down to the era of Nabonassar, the calender was in confusion, and there was nothing to verify either the time of accession of the kings, or that of astronomical phenomena observed, except the days and months of this lunar year. In the reign of Nabonassar, the astronomers at Babylon introduced (not into civil use, but for their own purposes and records) the Egyptian solar year,—of three hundred and sixty-five days, or twelve months of thirty days each, with five added days, beginning with the first of the month Thoth, the commencement of the Egyptian year,—and they thus first obtained a continuous and accurate mode of marking the date of events. It is not meant that the Chaldæans then for the first time obtained from the Egyptians the knowledge of the solar year of three hundred and sixty-five days, but that they then for the first time adopted it in their notation of time for astronomical purposes, fixing the precise moment at which they began. Nor is there the least reason to suppose that the era of Nabonassar coincided with any political revolution or change of dynasty. Ideler discusses this point (pp. 146-173, and Handbuch der Chronol. pp. 215-220). Syncellus might correctly say—Ἀπὸ Ναβονασάρου τοὺς χρόνους τῆς τῶν ἄστρων παρατηρησέως Χαλδαῖοι ἠκρίβωσαν (Chronogr. p. 207).