Chaldea or Chaldaea ( /kælˈdiːə/), from Greek Χαλδαία, Chaldaia; Akkadian māt Kaldu; Hebrew כשדים, Kaśdim;Aramaic: ܟܐܠܕܘ, Kaldo) was a marshy land located in modern-day southern Iraq which came to rule Babylon briefly. Tribes of settlers who arrived in the region from the 8th Century BC became known as the Chaldeans or the Chaldees. The Hebrew Bible uses the term כשדים (Kaśdim) and this is translated as Chaldaeans in the Septuagint.

The short-lived 11th dynasty of the Kings of Babylon (6th century BC) is conventionally known to historians as the Chaldean Dynasty, although only the first four rulers of this dynasty were known to be Chaldeans, and the last ruler was known not to be. Their kingdom in the southern portion of Babylonia lay chiefly on the right bank of the Euphrates. Though the name came to be commonly used to refer to the whole of southern Mesopotamia, Chaldea proper was in fact the vast plain in the far south east formed by the deposits of the Euphrates and the Tigris, extending to about four hundred miles along the course of these rivers, and about a hundred miles in average width.

Gaston Camille Charles Maspero (June 23, 1846 – June 30, 1916) was a French Egyptologist.

Gaston Maspero was born in Paris to parents of Lombard origin. While at school he showed a special taste for history, and by the age of fourteen he was already interested in hieroglyphic writing. It was not until his second year at the École Normale in 1867 that Maspero met fellow Egyptologist Auguste Mariette, who was in Paris as commissioner for the Egyptian section of the Exposition Universelle. Mariette gave him two newly discovered hieroglyphic texts of considerable difficulty to study, and the young self-taught scholar produced translations of them in less than a fortnight, a great feat in those days when Egyptology was still almost in its infancy. The publication of these texts in the same year established his academic reputation.

A short time was spent in assisting a gentleman in Peru who was seeking to prove an Aryan affinity for the dialects spoken by the Indians of that country to publish his research, but in 1868 Maspero was back in France at more profitable work. In 1869 he became a teacher (répétiteur) of Egyptian language and archeology at the École Pratique des Hautes Études, and in 1874 he was appointed to the chair of Champollion at the Collège de France.

Transglobal Underground (sometimes written as Trans-Global Underground or simply as TGU) is a London-based music collective who specialise in a fusion of western, oriental and African music styles (sometimes labelled as "world fusion" or "ethno-techno"). Their first four albums featured Natacha Atlas as lead singer and their single "Temple Head" was used in a Coca-Cola advertising campaign for the 1996 Olympic Games. In 2008 they won the BBC Radio 3 Award for World Music after the release of their seventh official album, Moonshout. Their eighth album, The Stone Turntable, was released in May 2011 and their most recent release is an EP of remixes from the album, titled We Come To Tear Your Wall Down.

Although Transglobal Underground has always had a fluid line-up, the two core members of the group are Tim Whelan (keyboards, guitar, flute, melodica, programming, vocals) and Hamilton Lee (percussion, drums, keyboards, programming). Throughout the group's history, Whelan and Lee have deliberately clouded their identities via multiple pseudonyms and obscure credits - Whelan generally operating under the alias of "Alex Kasiek" and Lee under the alias of "Hamid Mantu" (also "Man Tu" or "Chris Hamilton"). Whelan has also used his "Alex Kasiek" pseudonym outside TGU work (sometimes combining it with his real name, as he did for his guest appearance on the 2002 Project Dark album Gramophone De Luxe) and has sometimes implied that Kasiek is a separate person. (For the purposes of this article, Whelan and Lee will be predominantly referred to by their main pseudonyms of Alex Kasiek and Hamid Mantu.)

Raphael Saadiq (born Charles Ray Wiggins, May 14, 1966) is an American singer, songwriter, musician, guitarist, and record producer. Saadiq has been a standard bearer for "old school" R&B since his early days as a member of the multiplatinum group Tony! Toni! Toné! He also produced songs of such artists as TLC, Joss Stone, D'Angelo, Mary J. Blige, and John Legend.

He and D'Angelo were occasional members of The Ummah, a music production collective, composed of members Q-Tip and Ali Shaheed Muhammad of A Tribe Called Quest, and J Dilla of the Detroit-based group Slum Village.

Saadiq's critically acclaimed album, The Way I See It, released on September 16, 2008, featuring artists Stevie Wonder, Joss Stone, and Jay-Z, received three Grammy Award Nominations and was voted Best Album on iTunes of 2008. His fourth studio album, Stone Rollin', was released on March 25, 2011. For the album, Saadiq worked with steel guitarist Robert Randolph; former Earth, Wind & Fire keyboardist Larry Dunn; Swedish/Japanese indie rock songstress Yukimi Nagano (of Little Dragon fame); Funk legend Larry Graham (on the bonus cut Perfect Storm) plus soul newcomer Taura 'Aura Jackson' Stinson.