During the Late Bronze Age, from about 1500-1200 BCE, the Near East was a time and place where great kingdoms and empires vied for land and influence, playing high stakes diplomatic games, trading, and occasionally going to war with each other in the process. The Egyptians, Hittites, Babylonians, Assyrians, and several smaller Canaanite kingdoms were all part of this system, which was one of the first true “global” systems in world history and also one of the most materially prosperous eras in antiquity.

Thus, the transition from the Bronze to the Iron Age during the late 13th and early 12th centuries BCE arguably changed the structure and course of world history more fundamentally than any period before or since, and at the center of this period of turmoil was a group of people moving across the Mediterranean and known today as the Sea Peoples. Naturally, the mystery surrounding the Sea Peoples has led to all kinds of theories aiming to identify them. While plenty of theories are plausible, there are other fanciful theories that have attempted to associate the Sea Peoples with the Atlantic Ocean and even Troy. Regardless, what is clear is that the invasions created a power vacuum throughout much of the region, with the Hittite Empire collapsing and the Assyrians falling into decline, and outsiders would arrive within centuries to assert power in Babylon.

The Chaldeans were among the last of the native Mesopotamian peoples to rule ancient Babylon. Before them, Akkadians, Kassites, Assyrians, and others ruled the land situated in the middle of Mesopotamia, and before them, the Sumerians ruled southern Mesopotamia and briefly most of the region in the late 3rd millennium BCE.