The Chaldean Empire

The Second Babylonian

Empire
(604-539 B.C.)
•Over the ruins of the Assyrian
empire arose the Chaldean
Empire
•The Mesopotamian Civilization
entered its final stage with
throw of Assyria and the
establishment of Chaldean
Supremacy.
•This stage was often called the
Neo-Babylonian.
• Nebuchanezzar and his followers
restored the capital of Babylon
and attempt to revive the culture
of Hammurabi’s time.
•He conquered Phoenicia,
Palestine, and Egypt.
• In 586 B.C., he destroyed
Jerusalem and carried the
Hebrews off into Babylonian
captivity.
• It was the religion that the
failure of Chaldean Renaissance
was most conspicuous .
• Although Marduk was restored
to his traditional place as the
head of pantheon, the system
of belief was a little more than
superficially Babylonian.
•What the Chaldeans really did was
to develop an astral religion.
•The gods were divested of their
human qualities and exalted into
transcendent, omnipotent being.
•Their were actually identified with
the planets themselves. Marduk
became Jupiter, Ishatar became
Venus,
•Two significant results flowed
from these amazing
conceptions.
•First was an attitude of fatalism,
the ways of gods were beyond
human understanding, that man
could was to resign himself to
the Gods, trust implicitly, with
hope.
•Second was the development of
a stronger spiritual
consciousness which came to
the growth of an astral religion.
The Gods were addressed as
exalted beings. The one who
conquered with justice and
righteous.
 Chaldean Achievement
•They were the most capable
Scientists particularly in the field of
Astronomy. They elaborate the
System of Recording. With their
invention of the Seven-Day week,
and the division of the day into
twelve-double hours of 120
minutes each. Their observations
of Eclipses and other celestial
occurrences for more the 350
years.
•There was evidence that the
Chaldeans knew the Principles of
Zero.
•Laid at least some of the
Foundations of Algebra.
•They had a little advancement in
Medicine. Art differed only in its
greater magnificence.
•One of their important
achievement is the invention of
the zodiac system.
• And the said greatest
achievement of the Chaldeans is
the “Hanging Garden of Babylon”
 Decline of the Chaldean Empire

•Among the nations which

occupied or settled in
Mesopotamia, the Chaldeans
were the last to possess a culture
essentially Mesopotamian.
• In the 539 B.C., the Persians
conquered the valley of two rivers
and afterwards, the whole empire
of the Chaldean Kings.
Persian Empire
(539-331 B.C.)
• The Persians before the sixth century
B.C., were believed to lead an obscure
and peaceful existence on the eastern
shore of the Persian Gulf.
• They made very little progress except
in developing an elaborate religion.
• They had no system of writing, but
they have a spoken language closely
related to Sanskrit and languages of
modern Europe.
• In 559 B.C., a prince by the name
of Cyrus became a king of the
Southern Persian tribe.
• Five years later he was able to put
Persia under his rule and then
developed his ambition of the
dominion over neighbouring
peoples.
• Through military superiority and
tolerant policies towards their
subject.
•The Persians slowly began annexing
new kingdoms to their empire.
• They replied primarily upon the
bow instead of the lance or spear.
• They won the allegiance of the
conquered by allowing them to
keep their own religion and by
adopting many of their customs.
•In 539 B.C., Cyrus of the discontent
and conspiracies in the Chaldean
Empire capture the city of Babylon.
•His victory was not difficult as he
himself declared “without a battle
and without fighting”
 Persian rulers conquer a vast
territory
•The Chaldean lands were soon
threatened by the Persians, one of
the several Aryans peoples who has
settled in the area east of
Mesopotamia.
•About 547 B.C led by Cyrus the
Great, the Persian began to build
largest empire that had yet existed
in the ancient near east.
•Cyrus conquered his neighbours,
the Medes and the Chaldeans
and released the Hebrews from
their captivity in Babylon.
•He then took over the rest of
Fertile crescent and Asia Minor;
his son brought Egypt into the
empire.
•The next ruler, Darius the great
extended the Persian conquest into
northern India. Darius’s only failure
was his invasion of Greece in 490 B.C
.
•His son Xerxes also failed to conquer
Greece. Although stopped in their
move west ward, the Persians,
Babylonians, Assyrians, Hebrews,
Phoenicians, Hittites and Lydian's
under one rule and blended together
the many different cultures.
Xerxes
Persian Kings organize and unite their
Empire
•Persian rulers sought ways to tie
the vast empire together.
•They improved and extended the
Assyrians roads to link distinct
cities and speed travel soldiers,
merchants and messengers.
•Everywhere in the empire the same
coins and the same system of
weights and measures were used.
•To govern the empire, Darius divided
it into twenty provinces and
appointed governors to supervise
them. Through inspectors-spies
known as “ Eyes of the King”, rulers
kept track of these governors.
•The Persians allowed the
different peoples in their
empire to keep their local
customs, beliefs, and
traditions.
•They had only to pay their
taxes and provide recruits for
the army.
 Contribution to Civilization

• The most significant and enduring

influence left by the Persians was
their religion.
• Their system of faith was of
ancient origin.
• So strong was its appeal, and so
ripe were conditions for its
acceptance.
 Founding of Zoroastrianism

• The founder of Zoroastrianism is

Zoroaster who appeared to live in
the 6th Century B.C.,
• He seemed to have conceived it as
his mission to purify traditional
beliefs of his people , to eradicate
polytheism, animal sacrifices and
magic and to establish their
worship on a more spiritual and
ethical plane.
Zoroaster
 Dualism
• Persian believed that two great
deities ruled over the universe:
Ahura-Mazda, supremely good and
incapable of any wickedness,
embodied the principles of light,
truth and righteousness; the other,
Ahriman, treacherous and
malignant, presided over the forces
of darkness and evil.
 Eschatological
• Doctrine of last or final
things. It included such ideas
as the coming of Messiah the
resurrection of the dead, the
last judgement, and the
translation redeemed into an
internal paradise.
 An Ethical Religion

• Although in the contained

suggestions of predestination of the
election of some from all eternity
to be saved, in the main it rested
upon the assumption that men
possessed free will, that they were
free to sin, and that they would be
rewarded or punished in the
afterlife in accordance with their
conduct to earth.
 Revealed Religion
• The followers of this religion
were believed to be the
exclusive possessors of truth not
because they shared the secrets
of the Gods. Part of it was in the
form of scared writing, the
Avesta, believed to have been
sent from heaven.
 Politics and Economy

• Although the Persian governments

had its defects, it was certainly
superior compared to others that
had existed in the Near Orient.
• They levied tribute upon
conquered peoples, but they
generally allowed them to keep
their own customs, religions and
laws.
• Indeed it may be said that the
chief significance of the Persian
Empire laid in the fact that it
resulted in the syntheses of the
Near Eastern cultures including
those of Persia itself,
Mesopotamia, Asia Minor, the
Syria-Palestine coast and Egypt.
• In theory, the Persian king was
an absolute monarch ruling a
country by the grace of the
gods.
• The Persian Empire decline
because of the invasion of the
Greeks led by Alexander the
Great