Editing Chaldea (section)

==Land==
[[File:Chaldea - Map - Chaldea and Neighboring Countries.png|thumb|Chaldea and neighboring countries]]In the early period, between the early 9th century and late 7th century BC, ''mat Kaldi'' was the name of a small sporadically independent migrant-founded territory under the domination of the [[Neo-Assyrian Empire]] (911–605 BC) in southeastern Babylonia, extending to the western shores of the [[Persian Gulf]].{{sfn|McCurdy|Rogers|1902|pp=661–662}}

The expression '' mat Bit Yâkin'' is also used, apparently synonymously. ''Bit Yâkin'' was the name of the largest and most powerful of the five tribes of the Chaldeans, or equivalently, their territory.<ref>''bit'' is the "house of" tribal denominator, ''Yâkin'' (''Ia-kin'') is presumably the name of a king of the Arabian Sealand. Sargon mentions ''Yakini'' as the name of the [[Marduk-Baladan]]'s father. G. W. Bromiley (ed.), ''The International Standard Bible Encyclopedia'' (1995), [https://books.google.com/books?id=Zkla5Gl_66oC&pg=PA325  p. 325].</ref>
The original extension of ''Bit Yâkin'' is not known precisely, but it extended from the lower Tigris into the [[Arabian Peninsula]]. [[Sargon II]] mentions it as extending as far as [[Dilmun]] or "sea-land" (littoral Eastern Arabia).<ref>Raymond Philip Dougherty, ''The Sealand of Ancient Arabia'', Yale University Press, 1932, 66ff.</ref> "Chaldea" or ''mat Kaldi'' generally referred to the low, marshy, alluvial land around the estuaries of the Tigris and Euphrates,<ref>{{Cite book |last1=FREEDMAN |first1=ed |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=P9sYIRXZZ2MC&pg=PA229 |title=Eerdmans Dictionary of the Bible |last2=Freedman |first2=David Noel |date=2000 |publisher=Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing |isbn=978-0-8028-2400-4 |pages=229 |language=en}}</ref> which at the time discharged their waters through separate mouths into the sea.

The tribal capital ''Dur Yâkin'' was the original seat of [[Marduk-Baladan]].<ref>Trevor Bryce, ''The Routledge Handbook of the Peoples and Places of Ancient Western Asia: From the Early Bronze Age to the Fall of the Persian Empire'' (2009), [https://books.google.com/books?id=QD9GrxiILH8C&pg=PA130  p. 130].</ref>

The king of Chaldea was also called the king of Bit Yakin, just as the kings of Babylonia and Assyria were regularly styled simply king of [[Babylon]] or [[Assur]], the capital city in each case. In the same way, what is now known as the Persian Gulf was sometimes called "the Sea of Bit Yakin", and sometimes "the Sea of the Land of Chaldea".

"Chaldea" came to be used in a wider sense, of Southern Mesopotamia in general, following the brief ascendancy of the Chaldeans during 608–557 BC. This is especially the case in the [[Hebrew Bible]], which was substantially composed during this period (roughly corresponding to the period of [[Babylonian captivity]]). The [[Book of Jeremiah]] makes frequent reference to the Chaldeans ([[King James Version]] ''Chaldees'' following [[Septuagint|LXX]] {{lang|grc|Χαλδαίοι}}; in [[Biblical Hebrew]] as ''Kasdîm'' {{lang|he|כַּשְׂדִּים}}). 
[[Book of Habakkuk]] 1:6 calls them  "that bitter and hasty nation" ({{lang|he|הַגֹּוי הַמַּר וְהַנִּמְהָר}}). [[Book of Isaiah]] 23:13 [[Douay–Rheims Bible|DRB]] states, “Behold the land of the Chaldeans, there was not such a people, the [[Assyrian people|Assyrians]] founded it: they have led away the strong ones thereof into captivity, they have destroyed the houses thereof, they have brought it to ruin.”