s. It is possible that Casdim, the Hebrew word translated
"Chaldees" or "Chaldaeans" in the Authorised Version, is the Babylonian
_casidi_, or "conquerors," a title which continued to cling to them in
consequence of their conquest.

The Accadians had been the inventors of the pictorial hieroglyphics which
afterwards developed into the cuneiform or wedge-shaped system of writing;
they had founded the great cities of Chaldea, and had attained to a high
degree of culture and civilisation. Their cities possessed libraries,
stocked with books, written partly on papyrus, partly on clay, which was,
while still soft, impressed with characters by means of a metal stylus.
The books were numerous, and related to a variety of subjects. Among them
there were more particularly two to which a special degree of sanctity was
attached. One of these contained magical formulae for warding off the
assaults of evil spirits; the other was a collection of hymns to the gods,
which was used by the priests as a kind of prayer-book. When the Semitic
Babylonians, the kinsmen of the Hebrews, the Aramaeans, the Phoenicians and
the Arabs, conquered the old population, they received from it, along with
other elements of culture, the cuneiform system of writing and the
literature written in it. The sacred hymns still continued to serve as a
prayer-book, but they were now provided with interlinear translations into
the Babylonian (or, as it is usually termed, the Assyrian) language. Part
of the literature consisted of legal codes and decisions; and since the
inheritance and holding of property frequently depended on a knowledge of
these, it became necessary for the conquerors to acquaint themselves with
the language of the people they had conquered. In course of time, however,
the two dialects of Sumir and Accad ceased to be spoken; but the necessity
for learning them still remained, and we find accordingly that down to the
latest days of both Assyria and Babylonia the educated classes were taught
the old extinct Accadian, just as in modern Europe they are taught Latin.
From time to time, indeed, the scribes of Sennacherib or Nebuchadnezzar
attempted to write in the ancient language, and in doing so sometimes made
similar mistakes to those that are made now-a-days by a schoolboy in
writing Latin.

The Accadians were, like the Chinese, pre-eminently a literary people.
Their conception of chaos was that of a period when as yet no books were
written. Accord