[395] Chaldean Magic, p. 20.
[396] Ibid., p. 22.
[397] Lenormant remarks that the assimilation was probably made when Mardux had become emphatically the god of the planet Jupiter, “the great fortune” of the astrologers, which justified them in connecting with his other attributes the favorable and protecting office of Silik-mulu-khi. He was originally a solar deity.
[398] Chaldean Magic, p. 190.
[399] Jeremiah, v, 15.
[400] Or Shinar. See Gen., xi, 2. Essentially Babylonia.
[401] See Smith’s Chaldean Account of Genesis, p. 19. Revised edition, by Mr. Sayce, 1880.
[402] The Semitic language, called Assyrian, as the one spoken by the Babylonians, including part of the Chaldeans, before the people of Assur (see Gen., x, 11) became a nation, which was later than the time of the great King Sargon (B.C. 2000); and here I may say that cuneiform inscriptions are largely Assyrian. I may add that Lenormant takes Assur to be Nimrod, and the latter Mardux, reduced to the position of a hero.
[403] Transactions of the Society of Biblical Archæology, vol. iii, p. 466.
[404] Kaldu, or Kaldi, was the name of a tribe of Accadio-Sumerians that rose to prominence about nine centuries before our era. The title was subsequently given to the whole race.