and clanic onomastics of the Arameans do present a Southern Semitic flavour (Lipinski
2000 : 422 – 424 ).
Now for the Chaldeans (Kaldu), not attested in the written sources before 878 BC.
Their place names, and especially those of their vast territorial and political enclaves,
were characterized by the noun Bît, ‘household’, followed by the linguistically West
Semitic personal name of an eponymic ancestor figure, exactly as in the case of the
contemporary Aramean states of the Jezirah and Transeuphratene. This feature allows
us to postulate a connection of the Chaldeans with the northern and western Arameans
in the general perspective of a shared heritage of ethnicity; while some slight hints
in the texts might more specifically point to political affiliations of long standing
with the Aramean tribes of the Middle Euphrates area. On the other hand, no direct
similarities between the two large and important allogenous groupings interspersed
in the Babylonian area may be traced. The Chaldeans, quite differently from their
Aramean neighbours, seem to have embraced Babylonian ways from virtually all
points of view quite soon after their arrival. Both Chaldean leaders and commoners
mentioned in the texts bore fully Babylonian personal names, with devotional reference
to the traditional Sumero–Akkadian pantheon of the region; and although they
nominally retained a social and political structure based on kinship ties, they appear
to have taken on a basically sedentary way of life in their southern Euphrates enclaves,
with occupations in agriculture, stock raising, and intra-regional trade (Brinkman
1984 ; Cole 1996 a). The natural development of this situation, that of entering into
the arena of outright territorial-military appropriation and political supremacy in the
local context, would not have been long in coming, under the specific stimulus
provided by continuous Assyrian interference in Babylonian affairs.
THE NATURAL AND HUMAN ‘LANDSCAPE’The southern Mesopotamian alluvium represents an extremely complex territory
from an ecological viewpoint; a reconstruction of ancient living conditions here must
therefore take into account a variety of interconnected factors, with alternatively
positive or negative implications as regards anthropic settlement and the ensuing
opportunities for the development of plant and animal husbandry. As is well known,
the overall ecological ‘profile’ of this area, per se geographically and climatically arid
(between 100 and 200 mm of yearly rainfall), and yet potentially open to intensive
and wealth-producing primary production like no other in Western Asia (due to the
combined action of the Twin Rivers which formed it and traverse it with yearly
floodings of silt- and salt-ridden discharge), has been modelled and modified over
time by a series of natural and man-made dynamics involving the interaction of
water and soil.
This is especially true for the course of the Euphrates, which may be proved to
have significantly shifted during history, with the natural or man-aided formation
of ‘dead’ meanders, swampy niches, new channels, and offshoots toward the more
stable bed of the Tigris; and such shifts, in their turn, have influenced in the short
or the long run the human settlement patterns in the adjacent catchment areas. This
is demonstrated not only by the stratigraphically recorded history of occupation
within the archaeological sites themselves, but also by the criss-cross pattern of the
canals for irrigation, navigation and military-strategic purposes, which – as aerial and
— Frederick Mario Fales —