Without now going into the subject of the relative age of the Egyptian and Chaldean cults, I will remind you that the secret wisdom of one race was not excelled by that of the other. The Chaldean races are undoubtedly of Turanian origin, and their form of religion was peculiar to the Ural-Altaic stock and the Turkic races, who originated the Cuneiform writing. Their most ancient writings represented evil spirits as coming from the desert in groups of seven, and contained formulas for exorcising them; they were presided over by the heavens, while from the higher spirits evolved Gods and Goddesses in countless number. Upon the original ground work of Chaldean ideas a Semitic race built a superstructure, and the first traces of the Babylonians and Assyrians appeared some four thousand years B. C. Their highest God was an individual whom they named Baal, while the sun and moon were his images. As in Egypt the priests were held in great reverence, standing next after the king, who was _ex officio_ high priest; they too had a secret doctrine withheld from the vulgar. Although the Chaldeans were astrologers rather than astronomers, they were yet familiar enough with the heavens to estimate astral phenomena for what they really were, instead of holding them to be Gods, though they may have represented them as such to the common people. Their literature contained numerous mythological poems, so obscure that to understand them a key was required, which key was only in the possession of the priests. Inasmuch as Abraham came from Ur in Chaldea, with him crept into biblical literature much of the Chaldean tradition and folklore. The Chaldeans had also their Noah, and their deluge, in which the dove figured as in the biblical account. When the proprietor of the Ark finally freed the animals he erected an altar and offered sacrifice, to which the Gods gathered "like masses of flies." This story contributes but one section of the great Chaldean epic in which are recounted the exploits of a hero corresponding with the Nimrod of the Hebrew Bible, dating from the twenty-third century B. C., and reminding one forcibly of the Herculean and many other myths recounted in other ancient languages.