Nor was its unquestioned supremacy in the black art the sole legacy that Chaldaea bequeathed to the coming generations:  its language survived, and reigned for centuries afterwards in the regions subjugated by its arms.  The cultivated tongue employed by the scribes of Nineve and Babylon in the palmy days of their race, had long become a sort of literary dialect, used in writings of a lofty character and understood by a select few, but unintelligible to the common people.  The populace in town or country talked an Aramaic jargon, clumsier and more prolix than Assyrian, but easier to understand.  We know how successfully the Aramaeans had managed to push their way along the Euphrates and into Syria towards the close of the Hittite supremacy:  their successive encroachments had been favoured, first by the Assyrian, later by the Chaldaean conquests, and now they had become sole possessors of the ancient Naharaina, the plains of Cilicia, the basin of the Orontes, and the country round Damascus; but the true home of the Aramaeans was in Syria rather than in the districts of the Lower Euphrates.  Even in the time of the Sargonids their alphabet had made so much headway that at Nineveh itself and at Calah it had come into everyday use; when Chaldaean supremacy gave way to that of the Persians, its triumph—­in the western provinces, at any rate—­was complete, and it became the recognised vehicle of the royal decrees:  we come upon it in every direction, on the coins issued by the satraps of Asia Minor, on the seals of local governors or dynasts, on inscriptions or stelae in Egypt, in the letters of the scribes, and in the rescripts of the great king.  From Nisib to Baphia, between the Tigris and the Mediterranean, it gradually supplanted most of the other dialects—­Semitic or otherwise—­which had hitherto prevailed.  Phoenician held its ground in the seaports, but Hebrew gave way before it, and ended by being restricted to religious purposes, as a literary and liturgical language.  It was in the neighbourhood of Babylon itself that the Judaean exiles had, during the Captivity, adopted the Aramaic language, and their return to Canaan failed to restore either the purity of their own language or the dignity and independence of their religious life.  Their colony at Jerusalem possessed few resources; the wealthier Hebrews had, for the most part, remained in Chaldaea, leaving the privilege of repopulating the holy city to those of their brethren who were less plenteously endowed with this world’s goods.  These latter soon learned to their cost that Zion was not the ideal city whose “gates shall be open continually; they shall not be shut day nor night; that men may bring unto thee the wealth of the nations;” far from “sucking the milk of nations and the breast of kings,"* their fields produced barely sufficient to satisfy the more pressing needs of daily life.  “Ye have sown much, and bring in little,” as Jahveh declared to them “ye eat, but ye have not enough; ye drink, but ye are not filled with drink; ye clothe you, but there is none warm; and he that earneth wages earneth wages to put it into a bag with holes."**