FOREWORD
For money has been the ruin of many
and has misled the minds of Kings.
Ecclesiacticus 8, Verse 2.
When I originally approached my study as best as I might, dealing with the
growth in pre-antiquity and antiquity of what is known as the International
Money Power, and the particular derivative of the money creative activities
of such International Money Power that might be defined as the Life
Alternative Factor, I did so with some diffidence. Perhaps I was overly
conscious of what seemed to be the inadequateness of my preliminary training
in these matters and that in no way could I describe myself as deeply
conversant with the languages of ancient times, or, in the case of
Mesopotamia, their scripts.
However, in my preliminary studies involving checking through the indices of
a number of those standard books of reference dealing with the ancient
civilizations, I soon found that any feelings of inferiority in so far as
the adequacy of my scholarship relative to my particular subject was
concerned were unwarranted, and that qualms in these respects were by no
means justified...
In almost all of such books of reference, except those that classified
themselves as economic or monetary histories, was practically no clear
approach to the subject of money and finance, or to those exchange systems
that must have existed in order that the so-called civilizations might come
to be. In the odd case where the translations of the texts might reveal some
key clue, no more special emphasis was placed herein than might have been
placed on the mention of a gold cup, a ring, a seal, or some exquisite piece
of stone work.
In Jastrow’s Assyria there was no reference to money at all; in Breasted’s
History of Egypt a volume of six hundred pages or so, only brief mention on
pages 97-98. In A History of Egypt by Sir William M. Flinders-Petrie, in the
records of Sir John Marshall and E.J.C. McKay in respect to the diggings at
Mohenjo-Daro, and in the writings of Sir Charles L. Woolley and others on
their findings from their studies of the exhumed archives of the city states
of ancient Mesopotamia, little enough information exists on the matters
referred to above.
In Christopher Dawson who wrote widely on ancient times,
particularly in the
Age of the Gods which dealt with most cultures until the
commencement of that period known as antiquity, there is only one reference
to money, casual and not conveying much to the average reader; this
reference to be found on page 131...
In King’s History of Babylon there was
practically nothing on these matters.
Thus in almost all of the works of the great archaeologists and scholars
specializing in the ancient civilizations, there is a virtual silence on
that all important matter, the system of distribution of food surpluses, and
surpluses of all those items needed towards the maintenance of a good and
continuing life so far as were required by climate and custom.
In all the writings of these great and practical scholars, the workings of
that mighty engine which injects the unit of exchange amongst the peoples,
and without which no civilization as we know it can come to be, is only
indicated by a profound silence. Of the systems of exchanges, of the unit of
exchange and its issue by private individuals, as distinct from its issue as
by the authority of sovereign rule, on this all important matter governing
in such totality the conditions of progression into the future of these
peoples, not a word to speak of...
While it is true that the average archaeologist, in being primarily
concerned with the results of the forces that gave rise to the human
accretions known as civilizations, has little enough time to meditate on
these forces themselves, especially since so little evidence exists of what
created them, or of how they provided guidance to men in the earlier days,
the widespread character of this omission borders on the mystifying.
Virtual
failure to speculate on those most important matters of all: the structure
of the machinery of the systems of exchanges which undoubtedly had given
rise to the ancient city civilizations, and the true nature of the energy
source by which such machinery was driven, whether by injections of money as
known this last three thousand years or so, or by injections of an exchange
medium of which little significant evidence or memory remains, is cause for
concern.
The truth of the lines as quoted herein from Boeckh’s
Public
Economy of Athens (p.ii, present work) is immediately clear to all and that
the physical force underlying all civilizations must have been the system
whereby surpluses were allocated to the people according to their place in
the pyramid of life and to their need; thus, when being controlled by the
benevolent law of a dedicated ruler, maintaining at all times the true and
natural order of life.
It must not be supposed, therefore, that there is lack of understanding of
the importance of these matters; nor that there is any special conspiracy of
silence, even though there might indeed be temptation to arrive at such a
conclusion.1
Rather it were better to accept things as they appear, and
assume that these scholars merely present the fragments of fact as they
unearth them; leaving speculation of the true significance of such fragments
of fact in relation to the weft and warp of life, to those considered to be
particularly specialized in the various fields represented. In the case of
money and finance, the scholars concerned would be classified as economic or
monetary historians.
Thus little enough seems to be available on the subject of money and finance
in ancient days. Nor seems to exist examination of the significance of such
money and finance relative to the progress about which so much has been
written in modern times. Apart from that of Alexander Del Mar who wrote in
relatively recent days, and apart from that of the philosophers of antiquity
such as Plato, Aristotle, Socrates, Zeno, etc., almost no speculation seems
to be available from scholarly sources in regards to the unprejudiced
PHILOSOPHY of money, in ancient times.
On the all important subject of the
consequences of the creation and issuance of money by private persons as
opposed to its creation and issuance according to the will of a benevolent,
instructed and dedicated ruler, almost no speculation seems to exist in
ancient or in modern times. Of those forces that sought throughout history
to undermine any ruler who may have been firmly in the saddle because of his
exercise of that prerogative which is the foundation of the State Power or
God-Will of which he is the living evincement, insomuch as he maintained
firm control of the original issuance of money and its injection into
circulation amongst the people as against State expenditures, almost nothing
seems to be known.
Very little information is available of the means those
forces employed towards this purpose through injection into circulation
amongst the peoples of silver and gold, and of instruments indicating
possession of the same.
Practically no information seems to exist of the growth of private money
creation in the days of the
ancient city states of Mesopotamia, of which,
because of their records being preserved on fire-baked clay, more is known
than of more recent civilizations; and the gap must necessarily be filled by
a certain amount of speculation.
Little is known of the beginnings of the
fraudulent issuance by private persons of the unit of exchange, as in
opposition to the law of the gods from whom kings in ancient times claimed
to derive their divine origin; nor is there any information on the
significance of such practice relative to the continued stability of the
natural order of life in which obtained that system wherein the fount of all
power was the God; such power descending to man by way of king and
priesthood and directing him as he proceeded about his everyday affairs,
content that God’s in his Heaven and all’s right with the world.
The use of tools of hardened iron in the mining industry about the beginning
of the first millennium B.C., together with a changed attitude towards slave
labor in which the slave, so far as mining was concerned, was assessed at
cost per life, must have brought relatively a very flood of silver into the
circulation of the cities of the Near East.
Such flood of silver injected into the circulation largely by private
business houses who no doubt controlled the mines, however distant,
especially after the institution of coinage in which a piece of silver of
known weight and fineness passed from hand to hand, must finally and forever
have broken that control of exchanges previously exercised by the god of the
city through priest king, and priest.
Thus all, priest-kings and priests, came to forget that the foundations of
the power given to them from on High towards the maintenance of the right
living and tranquil procession through life, of their peoples, were the laws
of distribution of surpluses as written on the scribes tablet; laws
instituted by the god himself each ordering a specified dispensation from
the surpluses in his warehouses in the Ziggurat, to the holder of the
tablet.
They too fell into the error of believing that silver with value
created as a result of its being used as a balancing factor in international
exchange could become a perpetual storehouse of value... They themselves
became consumed in the scramble for this gleaming metal, so conceding it,
through its controllers the power to set itself up in opposition to the law
of the gods; to raise itself up in its own right, god in itself.
In its exercise, the fiat of the internationally minded group of merchants
or bullion brokers that arbitrarily dictated the exchange value of such
silver, being in actuality determination internationally of the value of
money, placed such groups controlling silver exchanges above and beyond
local law and the law of the local god, and indeed conferred on them the
power to influence kingly appointment.
It made of them the servants of a one
god, a god above all gods; thereby somewhat relegating the god whose order
on the state warehouses as inscribed on clay by scribe or priest, had been
the law governing exchanges, to the place of their servant, the
instrument...
"I have however, kept before me as a guiding principle, in this as other
historical works I have written, the maxim that the complexity of life
should never be forgotten, and that no single feature should be regarded as
basic and decisive",2 wrote Professor Rostovtsev, scholar and Economic
Historian of renown.
It is true that while no single feature in the progression of history might
be regarded as basic and decisive, it is certain that neither money nor
treasure will protect the weak and disarmed in the face of a brutal and
determined conqueror beyond whose successful achievements, can be no
decision more final.
It is also certain that the money accumulation mania
injected by fame into the minds of the people as a replacement to their
concern with those natural qualities endeavoring to color the current of
human life through time, amongst which are numbered virtue, honor, and
godliness, destroys equally as any other debilitating disease, and will
surely and speedily drag any people down to degeneracy and decay... A great
army could not be more efficient in its power of destruction.
The main discussion of the
Artha-Sastra of Kautilya, Hindu classic
instructing kings and rulers as to their proper conduct towards good
government, was as to whether financial or military organization came first
of all as the root of strength and power in any organized state.3 Clearly in
that day no less than in this day, financial organization preceded military
organization; therefore there is not much point really in discussion of so
obvious a fact and truth.
While an effete people, though money as it is known, is in their hands, soon
give way to vigor; nevertheless vigor, without strict organization of its
finances, which, while constituting strict organization of its labor, also
enables it to create, or to obtain by purchase from elsewhere the finest of
weapons, will not much avail...
Thus, and it has been demonstrated through
history over and over again, it is clear there is one feature basic and
decisive in the progression of human life; certainly during the latter years
of which memory exists.
That feature, particularly in relatively modern
societies from the bronze age onwards, and during that period of the rapid
perfection of the mass production of weapons, is monetary organization, and
what precious metals are available for purposes of international exchange as
against the purchase of those finest of weapons and essential materials of
war only obtainable abroad, and as wages for the most skilled men at arms
from wherever obtainable, abroad or otherwise...
The gates of Egypt stand fast like Inmutet
They open not to the Westerners,
They open not to the Easterners,
They open not to the Northerners,
They open not to the Southerners,
They open not to the enemy who dwells within.4
Much of history as we know it is the record of civilizations to counter and
evade destruction of themselves from without or within, or is the record of
their efforts to destroy other seemingly competing civilizations or peoples
attacking them from without or within.
War is as inevitable as is peace as the result of the exhaustion of war, and
there are few peoples that escape; but wars of the last three thousand years
have not been relatively infrequent occurrences, and have been an
incessantly recurring evil... It is no chance that; the growth of warfare
into a very cancer eating into the vitals of mankind, and more particularly
the white races is parallel to the growth of that other cancer which is
private, and therefore irresponsible, money creation and emission...
It seems that almost none of the scholars make any serious effort to throw
light on the real meaning of this matter of private monetary emission, and
the disastrous effects that it has had, and in finality, will have, towards
the defining of the remaining period of time of man upon this earth, as
being brief and uncertain.
Those strange decisions of kings signaling the opening of wars as frightful
and disastrous to the European peoples, as the last two so-called "World
Wars," decisions so abnegatory of self, but more than that, abnegatory of
the best interests of the peoples they represented before God, far from
being the directives of benevolent force, are the directives of a force
which cannot but be described in any way but as being wholly malevolent.5
The great engine which is the international control of monetary emission and
regulation, driven as it was until recently by the catalytic fuel of gold
alone, is now almost world embracing in the scope of its operations. It
seems there is no change in the attitude of those its guides, nor any
admission of the folly of their misuse of this God-Power which they direct
towards the good of themselves and their friends.
Their obsession, despite
ruin for all looming on every horizon, seems to remain the same narrow
vision of the day of their own world supremacy wherein they will rule as
absolute lords over all; although by now it should be apparent to them, no
less than to all thinking people, that if this madness concealed within the
much talked about conception known as progress is not brought to a complete
arrestment, nothing remains but an end wherein shall be silence and no song,
for indeed there will be no singer, nor any to sing to...
As it looks today, it may be the end for the Indo-European peoples whose
diligent labors made so much of this world of today... It may be the end,
final and absolute for all men for that matter... it may be the end for this
our Earth, our only place and home and hope in the awful endlessness of
space and time...
It should be more than apparent that in the relatively recent day when
kingship and god-ship were one, so far as the simple souls were concerned,
and the god and his viceroy on earth, the priest-king, were creators and
controllers of the economic good, exchanges were created in order that the
people might live a fuller life, and not so much to benefit any secret
society or interlocked group standing aside from the main paths of mankind,
but to benefit all who kneeled humbly before the Almighty, each fully in
acceptance of himself as part of the god-wish, eternal and infinite; each
one in his time an integral unit carefully placed in the pyramid of life
itself.
History over these last three thousand years particularly, has largely been
the interweaving of both a witting, and an unwitting distortion of the
truth, with all the inevitable consequences which have been expected 6 and
now are but a little way ahead.
Kings largely became the mouthpiece and
sword arm of those semi-secret societies that controlled the material of
money as its outward and visible symbols came to be restricted to gold,
silver, and copper...
The fiat of the god in heaven which had been the
decisive force behind that which brought about an equitable exchange, was
replaced by the will of those classes controlling the undertones of
civilization, leaders of the world of slave drivers, caravaneers, outcasts,
and criminals generally, such as was to be discerned on the edges of the
ancient city civilizations, and followed the trade routes between them...
The instrument of this will was precious metal, whose supply was controlled
by the leaders of these classes through their control of the slave trade,
since mining was rarely profitable in the case of the precious metals,
except with slave labor, even after the development of hardened iron tools
and efficient methods of smelting.
The power of these men, indifferent and alien to most cities as they were,
relative to that power it was replacing, which was the will of the
benevolent god of the city, had been made absolute by sowing in the minds of
men over the thousands of years, the idea of such metals having a specially
high value relative to other goods and services being offered for exchange;
indeed that they were veritable store house of value.
The law of the ruler previously exercised towards the well being of the
people in that they might live a good and honorable life accordingly became
corrupted. It became merely a symbol raised before their gaze, in order that
they might not look down and see the evil gnawing away at the roots of the
Tree of Life itself, destroying all peace and goodness.
Nor could those
semi-secret groups of persons be seen who so often were the sources of such
evil. In their contemptuous indifference to the men of the state who found
meaningfulness and tranquility through life lived in natural order under
the law of the King, they constituted hidden force deeply inimical to the
best interests of mankind.
Through stealthy issue of precious metal commodity money into circulation
amongst the peoples, replacing that money which represented the fiat or will
of the god of the city and which was merely an order on the state warehouses
through his scribes, this internationally minded group from the secrecy of
their chambers were able to make a mockery of the faith and belief of simple
people.
The line of communication from god to man through priest-king and
priest was cut, being replaced by their own twisted purposes such as they
were; not however guiding mankind into the heaven that could have been and
where all would be life, and light, and hope, but into such a hell as to
escape from which men might gladly come to accept the idea of Mass
Suicide...
My sincere acknowledgements are due to :
1. Professor Fritz Heichelheim, and Sijthoff International Publishing
Company, Leyden, for their very kind permission to use the short extracts
from Professor Heichelheim’s work: An Ancient Economic History.
2. Professor W.F. Albright, and Cambridge University Press for their very
kind permission to use the short extracts from Professor Albright’s work The
Amarna Letters from Palestine; the same being found in Volume II of the
Cambridge Ancient History.
3. G.R. Driver and John C. Miles, and the Clarendon Press, Oxford, for their
very kind permission to use the rendering of Hammurabai’s Law No. 7, as
given by G.R. Driver and John C. Miles in their joint work: Ancient Codes
and Laws of the Near East.
4. Dr. T.B.L. Webster and Messrs. Methuen Publications for their very kind
permission to use the short extracts from Dr. Webster’s work: From Mycenae
to Homer.
5. Sir Charles Leonard Woolley and Messrs. Faber & Faber Ltd. for their very
kind permission to use the short extracts from Sir Charles Leonard Woolley’s
work: Abraham.
6. Sir Charles Leonard Woolley and Messrs. Ernest Benn for their very kind
permission to use the short extracts from Sir Charles Leonard Woolley’s
work: Excavations at Ur.
7. Christopher Dawson & John Murray Publishing House for their kind
permission to use an extract from Christopher Dawson’s work: The Age of the
Gods.
8. Dr William Langer and The Houghton Mifflin Company for their very kin
permission to use the short extracts from the Encyclopaedia of World
History.
9. Dr. Charles Seltsman and the Associated Book Publishers for their very
kind permission to use the short extracts from Greek Coins.
My sincere acknowledgements are also due to all those friends and
acquaintances who in any way have assisted me in the present work.
References
1 According to
Tragedy And
Hope, the important and compendious work of Dr.
Carroll Quigley, an outstanding scholar of liberal outlook, (as interpreted
by the reviewer, W. Cleon Skousen), such conspiracy certainly exists, and is
vast in scope to say the least.
2 Mikhail I. Rostovtsev: A Social and Economic History of the Hellenistic
World, p. viii, Vol. I. (Oxford; 1941).
3 Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan and Charles Moore: A Source Book in Indian
Philosophy, pp 219- 220. Princeton; 1957.
4 Ancient Egyptian Poem; Christopher Dawson : The Age of the Gods, p. 148.
5For example, the folly of Britain in letting itself and the Empire be
stamped into these last two so-called "Great" wars, may be compared to that
of the man described by the Emperor Augustus who goes fishing with a golden
hook; he has everything lose and little to gain. (Suetonius : the Twelve
Caesars II, 25)
6 Much of this was foretold in the Revelation of St. John the Divine.
Back to Contents
IN THE BEGINNING WAS THE WORD
Every conclusion arrived at as a result of study of the fragments of
information available in respect to money and its creators in the world of
the Ancient Civilizations, indicates the existence of a far reaching
conspiracy in respect to monetary issuance influencing the progression of
man’s history in the earliest times of which written record exists. It is
also outstandingly clear that it was parent to that acknowledged and most
obvious conspiracy such as exists today. 1
The whole notion of the institution of precious metals by weight as common
denominator of exchanges, internationally and nationally, cannot but have
been disseminated by a conspiratorial organization fully aware of the extent
of the power to which it would accede, could it but maintain control over
bullion supplies and the mining which brought them into being in the first
place.
Clearly such notion had originally come into
being during that historically distant period when first of all free silver
began to be extensively used as a convenient and highly portable commodity
in settlement of balances outstanding in foreign trade; certainly as far
back as Neolithic times. This fact was indicated by the evidence existing
that values (and by inference money) were already expressed in terms of
silver by weight at the time of the Azag-Bau Dynasty at Kish
in Mesopotamia (3268-2897 B.C.); although in a sense perhaps narrow and
strictly national.
According to tablets unearthed recording a sale of land, the sellers were
known as “The eaters of the silver of the field.” 2
This expression clearly showed a connection
between the conception of money as an abstract unit in circulation, and
silver, the tangible material on which the symbols of this money were later
recorded. Such silver would then be valued according to the ancient customs
of the international trade routes which were manifested in the rules of the
travelling merchants who controlled these routes; these rules being
established towards the better regulation of exchanges between themselves.
In other words, as a result of the establishment of the custom of settlement
of balances in external trade by silver bullion by weight, it seems that a
system of values had grown up in the cities of Mesopotamia, over what period
of time it would be impossible to say for sure, in terms of those accepted
values of definite weights of silver bullion in such external trade,
relative to the staples of life: barley, dates, etc.
That sales are recorded in the 4th Millennium B.C. means that even at that
time there was a clear conception of the significance of the abstract
monetary unit, which is in itself an integral part of the law structure of
any state, for such sales were in terms of money.
The true meaning of such a concept being largely
incomprehensible to most even as in this day, except they were the truly
initiated, those controlling the internal exchanges, namely the priesthood
and scribes, might well be excused if they early fell into the error of
expressing values in terms of the standard of values in international trade.
This serious error brought about finally, not
only the collapse of that power through whose medium the god kings were best
able to serve their peoples, but also as a further consequence, the collapse
and fading of the meaning and benevolent purpose of the god kings
themselves.
With silver bullion controlled by an international and conspiratorial
minded group, as indeed it is obvious it must have been, considering the
main sources of silver supply as being far away from those centers of
civilization whose money depended on it and yet with people coming to equate
money, in actuality the law of the ruler, with value according to the law
created in the exchanges by the custom of the use of that same privately
controlled commodity, then it becomes quite clear that scarcity or plenty in
money, whatever way it was evinced in the circulation, depended on the
manipulations internationally of that group controlling the distribution of
precious metal bullion, and the plenty or scarcity they created, as was
convenient to them.
If there was no silver, why then! there was no money, and prices fell.
Substitute gold for silver, and history seeming to fast repeat itself, we
have the condition of the European world of the last 2000 years.
If there was no gold, Why then again! There was
no money!
Hence was able to develop that conspiracy against mankind most exemplified
by a continuous propaganda of hate against all authority: in pre-antiquity
and antiquity against the many city gods, and in relatively modern times
against the kings that rose out of the ruins of that which had been Rome.
As those controlling totally the economic life of a state through monetary
creation and emission, must have felt that kings and gods were more of a
nuisance than anything else, the instigators of this conspiracy in whatever
place and era, obviously were those who first did the business of bankers;
the
controllers of values, and consequently the economic life of the
states wherever the precious metal standard was used.
According to Sir Charles L. Woolley, excavator of the city of Ur in
Southern Mesopotamia, the unit of exchange in the days of the great city
states of Mesopotamia of the third and fourth Millennium B.C., and which
served, therefore, as common denominator of the value of goods and services,
was the measure of barley.
While however pointing out that gold and
silver came to pass from hand to hand, with a value dictated by their
value with reference to the constant value of a measure of barley, he
asserts that the salaries of government officials at the time of Hammurabi
(about the beginning of the second millennium B.C.) were assessed in barley
but paid in silver, such silver having neither stamp nor government
guarantee. 1
The notion therefore herein implied, of the numerous officials and laborers
of Hammurabi of Babylon waiting in line to have silver cut off from the
bullion bar, and weighed as against pay for the day, or the week, or the
month, as the case might have been, although offered with sincerity,
patently is as erroneous as that conception of the every day use in the
exchanges of the aes rude in a similar way, in which the classical
scholars and numismatists would have us believe; and which implied that the
foreman and his laborers in ancient Rome of the days of the kings also
waited in line after their day’s labor, say, on the Circus Maximus, to have
a fragment of copper cut off and weighed in order that their wives might be
able to go to the market to purchase the evening meal. 3
Clearly the word silver in the texts means no more than the word
Plata in modern day Spanish, or Argent in modern day French.
These words literally translate as silver, but as money which they are most
used to indicate, they may be anything from grimy tattered paper note, to a
silver peso, or to the brass coin which may function as divisible thereof.
Similarly the word from the texts denoting
silver may be safely said to have meant that which passed for money, perhaps
exchangeable in the temple or the money shops for silver, but being in
itself anything which circulated, denoting multiple or divisible of the unit
o exchange; be it clay or wood or glass 3 or leather or papyrus
or stone.
Thus, as was the case in
Sumeria indeed, long, long before the time
of the great Hammurabi once money had come to be more of an abstract unit of
account based for its value in desirable goods and services, on the barter
power of a certain weight of silver bullion related to the constant value of
barley, 4 it was no major advance for those who benefited most
from this conception, namely the bullion brokers and their satellites, the
money changers or barkers, to find a weak king and a corruptible priesthood,
who could be brought to lose sight of the total control of the city which
was the right of the god they served; and who might turn a blind eye to
those other more sinister activities by which the power of the Ziggurat was
further undermined.
Of those time Dawson in the Age of the Gods remarks:
“Originally the state and the temple
corporations were the only bodies which possessed the necessary
stability and resources for establishing widespread commercial
relations. Temple servants were sent on distant missions, provided with
letters of credit which enabled them to obtain supplies in other cities.
Moreover the temple was the bank of the community through which money
could be lent at interest and advances made to the farmer on the
security of his crop.
Thus in the course of the 3rd millennium
there grew up in Mesopotamia a regular money economy based on precious
metals as standards of exchange, which stimulated private wealth and
enterprise and led to real capitalist development. The temple and the
palace remained the centers of the economic life of the community but by
their side and under their shelter there developed a many sided activity
which found expression in the guilds of the free craftsmen and the
merchants, and the private enterprise of the individual capitalist.”
5
This information from Christopher Dawson
with the translation of the tablets before him, and every assistance no
doubt from those students in that particular field, is most illuminating;
but of the undertones of those highly significant years in man’s period upon
this earth, he seems to see little, or he just does not choose to speculate
as to their nature.
Principal amongst those undertones, and quite possibly the force that
brought these changes about, may safely be assumed to be the secret and
private expansion of the total money supply effected primarily by the
issuance into circulation of false receipts for silver and other valuables
supposedly being held on deposit in thief proof vaults, or otherwise, for
safe custody.
Such receipts would be accepted by merchants instead of the actual metal,
and would function as money, and would be an addition to the total money
supply, though not understood as such by the rulers who would thus easily be
inveigled into lending their sanction to seemingly harmless practices; or at
least into turning a blind eye; especially if priesthood and scribes so
advised.
With that growth of the conception of private wealth which would
automatically follow on the acceptance of the idea of buying and selling, or
perhaps better put, preceded such idea of buying and selling as according to
a silver standard internationally accepted, such involvement of priesthood
and scribe would not be hard to achieve.
According to Sir Charles Woolley, trade
seemed to extend from the city of Ur, particularly during the
so-called IIIrd. Dynasty, over the whole known world which
certainly reached as far afield as Europe 6 being carried on by
means of letters of credit, bills of exchange, and “promises to pay” (cheques),
made out in terms of staple necessities; of life expressed in terms of
silver at valuation of barley (probably at a given season of the year).
7
There also is no doubt that the merchant as representative of the god of the
city from which he journeyed, loaned money by which his customers were able
to make their purchases, such money merely being an abstraction indicated by
the figures on the clay tablet; in earlier days being backed by the
will-force of the god of the city, and in latter days by the promises of
silver issued by one who at that time would be the equivalent of today’s
banker, and who, should such need arise, such as would be occasioned by the
temple withdrawing its sanction or permissiveness towards his activities
would be able to partially back his self-created abstract money which was
the reality of such promises, with actual silver.
Thus the caravaneer or travelling merchant gave credit. Whether his own or
that of the merchant for whom he was agent, or direct; from the Ziggurat
itself, dwelling place of the god, it functioned as a form of foreign aid
similar to the foreign aid of today.
Considering that the merchant in earlier times
operated solely with the credit of the temple that raised him up, while the
temple remained supreme, such foreign aid was instrument of state policy,
maintaining the servility of lesser states, while at the same time
maintaining the steady working capacity of the home manufactures, and
contented people in consequence.
The classes of the dominant power were content
that the manufacturies gave them daily labor, and the classes of the
subordinate power were able to buy the luxuries they craved, and the
necessities they needed as against money deducted from the credits loaned by
the dominant power. Repayment of these credits, as in today, was made by way
of return shipment of raw materials such as were needed for the
manufacturies of the dominant state.
That such raw materials were assessed in value
as according to the international value of silver related to the national
value of barley in the dominant state seems most likely.
However it is clear that with the growth of silver in circulation between
private persons, and between private persons and states, as now would become
an inevitability, that which had been total economic control from the
gods through his servants in the Ziggurat, was bypassed, and merchants
were now able to deal privately using their own credit, or powers of
abstract money creation.
They were also able, through their control of
distant mining operations, to afflict a previously dedicated priesthood with
thought of personal possession; and through the control of the manufacture
of weapons in distant places, they were able to arm warlike peoples towards
the destruction of whosoever they might choose.
Those merchants of whatever race they may have been, who voyaged to the
cities of Sumeria from places as far distant as the great cities of the
Indus valley civilization known today as
Mohenjo-Daro and Harrapa, as is clearly demonstrated by
the Sumerian seals found at Mohenjo-Daro 8 and the seals from
Mohenjo-Daro found at Ur, 9 10 and who were without a doubt one
of the main sources of precious metal supply in Sumeria, 11 came
to realize that they could actually create that which functioned as money
with but the record incised by the stylus on the clay tablet promising metal
or money.
Obviously, as a result of this discovery which
depended on the confidence they were able to create in the minds of the
peoples of their integrity, provided they banded themselves together with an
absolute secrecy that excluded all other than their proven and chosen
brethren, they could replace the god of the city himself as the giver of
all.
If so be they could institute a conception of a
one god, their god, a special god of the world, a god above all gods, then
not merely the city, be it Ur or Kish or Lagash or
Uruk, but the world itself could be theirs, and all that in it was.
A strange dream! One whose fulfillment they
never really expected!
Some evidence of the knowledge and previous existence of such practice of
issuance of false receipts as against supposed valuables on deposit for
safe-keeping clearly exists in the
Law No. 7 of the great Hammurabi, which
same law was undoubtedly intended as a preventative to this sickness in
society, which, even at that day, may very well have been the cancer that
destroyed much that has been before.
According to Professor Bright, the Code of Hammurabi was but a
revision of two legal codes promulgated in Sumerian by Lipit-Ishtar
of Isin, and in Akkadian by the King of Eshnummua during the period
of the breakup of that power formerly wielded by the God at Ur, that
is, at about the same time that Ur was sacked by the Elamites in 1950 B.C.,
and Amorite and Elamite political power was established over Northern and
Southern Mesopotamia. 12
Both of these codes are well before the Code
of Hammurabi, and are evidence of the latter being but a revision of law
codes existing in the days of UR-NAMMU, or before, UR-NAMMU being that most
outstanding ruler who reigned from 2278 B.C. to 2260 B.C. during the third
dynasty at Ur. 13
The severity of the penalty and the placing of the law so high in the code
leaves little doubt that it was directed against an evil that was by no
means new, and, who knows, may have been one of the deep seated causes of
the invasions that devastated Ur, both from the Gutim, 14 the
Elamites, the Amorites, and the Hittites; for no doubt of old, just as
today, Money Power was as busy arming the enemies of the people
amongst whom it sojourned, as that people themselves.
While the scholars do not appear to have paid any special attention to this
particular law, or to have attached to it any special significance, its true
intent and purpose is clear to anyone conversant with the origins of private
money issuance in modern times, as indicated by the familiar story of the
goldsmith’s multiple receipts. 15
If a man buys silver or gold or slave, or
slave girl, or ox or sheep or ass or anything else whatsoever from a
[free] man’s son or a free man’s slave or has received them for safe
custody without witness or contract, that man is a thief: he shall be
put to death.16
The requisite of witnesses and contract
attesting to the true facts of valuables on deposit, would to some extent
obviate the danger of the goldsmiths, silversmiths or traders, involved in a
transaction, creating receipts for valuables that did not exist, in safe
custody or otherwise. It was equally possible in ancient times as much as in
modern times to circulate such receipts as money lawfully instituted.
Provided a corrupted priesthood turned a blind eye to this practice and
loaned their sanction thereto, such fraudulent money or, in the misleading
euphemism of a corrupted world, “credit,” would be equally effective in
foreign markets as in the home markets, if not more so because of the
greater danger of exposure of the criminal nature of this activity that
would undoubtedly exist in the home market.
The severity of the penalty required by this Law Number 7 of the Code of
Hammurabi, exercised by a strong and dedicated ruler, would have been an
absolute deterrent to such practice that since that time, and more
especially in modern times since the 16th Century A.D., has become so
indurated to a fixture. Its results are to be seen on every hand, not to
speak of the final result which though not yet arrived, else this book would
not be in existence, is clear.
The Laws of Hammurabi, King of Babylon, just the same as those more ancient
codes of which they were revision, were directed towards the regulation of
life of nobleman, as well as freeman, merchant, or slave, and no special
concessions were given to either of these stations in life, even if such
stations in life were accepted as integral part of the structure of the
state life.
Euphemistic and misleading words such as
“businessman” or “financier” had not yet, it seems, been planted in the
vocabulary.
By and large, the king still ruled in absolute,
and his law giving justice to all was carved in stone, and placed in the
market place for the highest or the lowest to understand clearly the rules
by which he must live. Merchants were unequivocally described as such, and
law ruthlessly prescribed severe penalties for their corrupt conduct.
They were kept in place as a caste, not of the
highest order, and, it would appear, somewhat similar to the Hindu system,
they served the priesthood and nobility, and were conceded a place in life
as an instrument whereby the people generally might live a better life.
The Code of Hammurabi, revision of more ancient codes as it was, does not
reveal any particular regard towards this caste of persons. However, as by
the time of its promulgation, both privet property and privately issued
money seem to have been well established, it is to be assumed that the
ignorant of noble caste or otherwise, were already deferring to that magic
known as money, in much the same manner as they did at all times through
latter history when faced with the necessity of compromise with privet money
creative power, whose activities had been permitted by foolish kings, and to
whom such kings had even committed the finances of the realm.
Such was most clearly illustrated during the
last four hundred years in England; perhaps more so than at any other time
in recorded history.
In the time of Hammurabi, King of Babylon, matters were by no means as
desperate as they are today. Merchandising was by no means regarded as an
end in itself, and a means whereby it was the right of ignoble men to
proffer any corruption to the people so long as it made “profit” for them,
and “interest” for the so-called barker who supplied the original “finances”
out of his secret and costless money- creative processes.
Money lending and merchandising as it is
known, still had not come to be a means whereby man-hating and therefore
corrupt secret societies might seek to overturn the tree of life itself by
way of sowing the seeds of decay in that true and natural order of life
which had been ordained from time immemorial.
Private money creators and the merchants their satellites, had at
that time by no means arrived at that point when they might conspire to
present complete defiance to the gods and their appointed, and as a small
matter in the way of their business, install jackasses, or whatever might
be, in the places of the mighty, as too often was the case in the latter
days.
Footnotes as endnotes
1 According to the review of Tragedy and Hope
Dr. Carroll Quigley; (New York, 1966.), as contained in the Naked Capitalist
published by W. Cleon Skousen, Salt Lake City, 1970.
2 Cambridge Ancient History; Vol. I; P. 371. On first reading this unusual
expression, there is temptation to think that an error has been made in the
translation of the tablet. However, according to the correspondent in Zaire
for the magazine known as Awake, chiefs of the natives of this country in
pre-Europeanized times announced the copper mining season with the words
Tuye Tukadie, Tuye Tukadie mukuba, which literally translates as “Let us go
eat copper; in effect meaning “Let us go enrich ourselves to provide for our
life.” (Awake, p. 25; July 8th, 1974.). Similarly the expression describing
the sellers of land as “eaters of the silver of the field”, derives from the
same root idea and implies that they enriched themselves to provide for the
essentials of life by the sale of their land for silver.
3 Sir Charles L. Woolley: Abraham, P. 123.
4 With all due deference to an otherwise most eminent scholar.
5 Very little is known of the former relatively extensive use of glass as
material to record definite numbers of the unit of exchange, or, more simply
put, as money. On this subject François Lenormant commented in his book: La
Monnaie dans l’Antiquité (P. 214; Tome I, Book II): “Nous possédons des
preuves irréfragables da l’usage de monnaie de verre en Egypte des la temps
du Haut-Empire (1) usage que se continua dans le même pays sous les
Byzantins (2) puis sous les Arabes (3). C’est principalement de temps des
Khalifes Fatimite que l’Egypte vit fabriquer le plu grand nombre de ces
assignats le verre, portant l’indication d’une valeur da monnaie. Les Arabes
de Sicile en firent aussi a l’imitation de ceux d’Egypte”
6 Sir Charles Woolley: Abraham, P. 123; London; 1936.
7 Christopher Dawson: Age of the Gods, P. 130. (London; 1928.).
8Actually evidence exists of Sumerian culture extending as far as the
Caspian Sea even before the Dynastic Period. Reference to this subject is to
be found on page 47 of The Sumerians.
9 On pages 124-125 of his book Abraham (London, 1936.) comment is made by
Sir Charles Woolley: “a trade which involved the greater part of the then
known world was carried on with remarkable smoothness by means of what we
should call a paper currency based on commodity values... The fluctuations
of currency values which are the bugbear of modern commerce were virtually
overcome by a currency which depended ultimately on the staple necessity of
life but was qualified by the use of a medium possessed of intrinsic value;
the commercial traveller had to use his wits and exercise his judgment as
to the form in which he cashed his credit notes.”
Further comment was made by Sir Charles Woolley and Jacquetta Hawkes in
Prehistory and the Beginnings of Civilization (pp. 615-616; London; 1963):
The difficulty was solved by what might be called Letters of Credit
facilitated by the existence of established agents on the trade routes.
The traveler started with a consignment of grain, might sell it in some
town on his road, receiving a signed tablet with the value expressed in
copper, possibly, or in silver with which he could buy there or elsewhere
something to the same value which he could sell at a profit farther along on
his journey... his tablets payable on demand by the agents to whom he was
accredited were the ancient equivalent of a Paper currency...”
10 E.J.C. McKay: Further Excavations at Mohenjo-Daro p 582. (Govt. India.
Delhi; 1938.)
11 Sir Charles Woolley: Excavations at Ur; P. 112.
12 In the words of Sir Charles L. Woolley on page 193 of Excavations at Ur:
“Raw materials were imported sometimes from over the sea, to be worked up
in the Ur factories; the Bill of Lading of a merchant ship which came up the
canal from the Persian Gulf to discharge its cargo on the wharves of Ur
details gold, copper ore, hardwood, ivory, pearls, and precious stones.”
13 John Bright: A History of Israel, P. 44; London; 1960.
14 Sir Charles Leonard Woolley; The Sumerians, P. 25 New York; 1965.
15 The Goyim of Genesis; Chapter XIV; verse I.
16 A. Andreades: History of the Bank of England, P. 23; London; 1966.
17 The Laws of Hammurabai; No. 7; (G.R. Driver & John C. Miles: Ancient
Codes and Laws of the Near East, Vol. II, P. 15. Oxford, 1952.).
Back to Contents
THE TEMPLE AND THE COUNTING
HOUSE
Out of those vague shadows of war and power and peace and settlement of
ancient strife that drifted out of the faded memory of man’s former abiding
on the Anatolian plateaus and throughout the Near East as it is so described
by us, emerged that force known as Classical Greece; a force which may be
said to principally derive from the union of the essential forward thrust of
the re-vitalized energies of the god-ruled city, and the political structure
by which the cattle raising men of the Indo-European warrior nations had
been governed.
Much of the revitalization of such energies derived from increasing
availability of silver as a result of the expansion of the mining industry
due to the increasing use of tools of hardened iron, and the consequent
expansion of the volume of money in circulation amongst the peoples,
abstract, or as now obtained, of actual pieces of silver of known weight and
fineness carrying the identifying mark of the emitter.
This flood of the precious metals to which the new methods of mining gave
rise, with the consequent strengthening of the shift of money creative, or
total power center, from the god and the temple, to what some might describe
as the devil and the counting house, enabled those conspiratorial groups who
undoubtedly controlled precious metal bullion supplies, perhaps at this
stage alliance between the priesthood of certain cities whose god was not
getting fair acknowledgment, and those mysterious people, the Apiru, who,
concerned with the carrying trade between the cities as is clear, 1
seemingly belonged to no city, yet were to be found in them all, to set up a
supra-national god as the fount of their secret power.
He would be a god who should be contemptuous of
all other gods; living in no idols, he would be in all, and over all,
unseen, but all pervading.
If the god of such secret society or confederacy controlled
movements of silver bullion internationally, he well might be
contemptuous of all city gods other than himself, for when money values were
based on the exchange value of his silver in such international exchanges,
then he and his acolytes, whoever they were, knew that all prosperity in the
kingdoms of those most ancient times depended on him, and whether he
ordained through his servants that silver should be plentiful or otherwise;
whether indeed there should be no money and hardship, or plenty of money and
prosperity.
Also it may be assumed in the latter days of the declining temple power,
prosperity or otherwise would also depend on whether rulers of such kingdoms
and cities turned a blind eye, as it were, to that privately created ledger
credit page entry money whose use the international money changers were
undoubtedly promoting as a facilitation to exchanges between select and
secret groups of persons.
It would be completely external to the money
creative power of the temple even if clandestinely linked thereto, and so
would strengthen themselves and their one-God, all-powerful, all omnipotent.
The ruthless and stern edicts of such princes as Hammurabi of Babylon,
previously quoted, while perhaps effective in Babylon, would not avail in
all those cities or states to which the money changers undoubtedly carried
their arts, especially if they were not subject to the rule of Babylon. Who
knows to what extent the seizure of Ur by Hammurabai was the result of his
determination to totally extirpate the source of this attack on kingly
power, undoubtedly sanctioned, if not connived at by a cynical priesthood
who were largely the rulers, in this most ancient city.
That close to the throne and therefore the god
himself, were those who secretly held in contempt the god-king, and to whom
the utter devotion of the people, even unto death, was of no meaning, is
clear from the following excerpt from Sir Charles L. Woolley in
respect to his discovery of the tombs of the kings of the IIIrd
dynasty at Ur:
“When we dug away the filling we found that
in the upper part of the blocking of the door of each of the tomb
chambers, there had been made a small breach just large enough for a man
to get through; the dislodged bricks were lying in front of the door
covered by the clean earth imported for the filling.
The tomb had been robbed, and obviously just
as the earth was about to be put in; nobody would have dared to rob them
when the pit was still in use, nor, if such sacrilege had been done,
would the bricks have been left scattered on the floor and the breach
unfilled; the robbers must have chosen their moment when the inviolable
earth would at once hide all traces of their crime and they could afford
to be careless.” 2
According to the description of the burial scene
by Charles L. Woolley on page 72 of Excavations at Ur, on the
ramp leading down to the king’s tomb,
-
would have lain the bodies of those who
had elected to accompany their Lord into the regions beyond, in the
order in which they had lain down to die
-
for death was obviously their wish and
intention. It would have been almost impossible for such carefully
timed robbery to have taken place over the bodies of those who would
be amongst the first ladies of the court and certain officials,
military and otherwise, without there having been a well planned
conspiracy
-
for it was clear, dressed as they were
in their finest clothing of crimson and gold, they had gladly and
voluntarily offered themselves as company and comfort to their
god-king at the commencement of that eternal journey which was his
heavenly home
Testimony of their willingness existed in the
lethal cup still clutched in their long decayed hands 3 as they
lay before his tomb in their last poisoned sleep.
As, when the robbery was effected, it is clear they were already dead, there
had to be the connivance of certain persons in high places to whom this
great devotion was without meaning. Additionally, such gold and silver would
have been a useless and dangerous possession 4 except to those
whose lives so far as ordinary men were concerned were secret from first to
last; such as to whom it meant money and power internationally, and by whom
it could be melted and rapidly transferred abroad.
Speculating on the functions of the famous temple of Solomon, similar to the
temples of Egypt and the Sumerian city states, although according to
professor Paul Einzig little information exists as to how the
evolution of the monetary system of the Jews, prior to the adoption of
coinage, affected the Hebrew economic system or its price levels, it seems
that this temple in the earlier days was not only used as a treasury, but,
as in Babylonia, as a bank. Thus it received money on deposit (for safe
keeping).
Professor Einzig informs us that the gold
lavishly adorning the temple for decorative purposes, existed at the same
time, as a monetary reserve. When Hezekiah had paid a tribute of three
hundred talents of silver and thirty talents of gold to the king of Assyria
(around 700 B.C.), he “cut the gold from the doors of the Temple of the Lord
and from the Pillars.” (II Kings; 18, 16). 5
The arts of banking were, however, in no way as developed as they
were in Babylonia and Assyria. Amongst the ‘Apiru,’ undoubtedly confederates
of the Israelites in later times, were clearly many refugees 6
from the cruel debt slavery existing in Babylonia and its outposts during
the 2nd Millennium B.C., and later. Apart from the firm laws in respect to
the taking of interest, the Jubilee of the 50th year (Leviticus 25.II), if
fully enforced, would render any effort to create monopoly ineffective.
Thus it can be seen that the God in his holy shrine ruled in the same way in
that ancient Hebrew kingdom, so much better known to most than perhaps the
temple cities of ancient Sumeria; many of which, until relatively recently,
were not even names, and were no more than faintly discernible mounds on the
desert.
The Greek sanctuary owed existence to similar forces that had given rise to
the temples of Mesopotamia and to the temple of Solomon above mentioned.
Functioning in like manner, in modified form, clearly it originated from
those distant days when the shrine of the mother goddess of the cities of
the Anatolian plateau and the Persian highlands such as Catal Huyuk, 7
Hacilar, Dorak, Susa, etc., was the point from which the people drew
spiritual guidance, and the nucleus around which these human accretions
gathered in ancient times.
These shrines gave force to those mysteries
whose existence and purpose towards the continuity and good in life, drew
the devotion of all. The Temple of Artemis at Ephesus, the Temple of
Aphrodite at Corinth, the Temple of Athene at Athens, all obviously owed
their origin to the ancient worship of the Mother Goddess who, through the
wonder and urge in her body, consumed the whole life force of man.
The controllers of the healthy continuance of
life in these cities were a priesthood who considered themselves as the
direct representatives of the goddess on earth, the shepherds appointed to
the flock.
The temple states that existed to a relatively late date such as those of
Cappadocia, were indeed the direct projection forward into time of this
tradition of government of the city by the goddess in her holy shrine, as
much as were those of the city states of
early Sumeria. In Greece too, in earlier times, such rule existed
beyond much doubt, and during that period when Cretan civilization extended
to the mainland, and when power stemmed from the halls of Cnossus, and the
mystic place of mythology where once upon a time lived the Minotaur, it
would be an absolute certainty.
It would not bear much difference to those
systems of god control by which all those rulers of the Ancient Orient
8 had governed, and which had guided the calm and blessed procession
of the peoples through time and under the sun.
The temple of each small city state in Greece during the earlier days of
Greek industry may have functioned to some extent as did the great temples
or ziggurat of the powerful city states of Sumeria of much earlier days, and
money, that is the law controlling exchanges as to a common denominator of
values, may have come into existence as entry in the temple ledger, although
how represented in the circulation does not seem to be clearly known.
The notion of exchanges being conducted in terms
of cattle, one animal representing the unit, even if having existed in large
scale business in ancient times of the wandering Indo-European cattle
raising tribes of the Scythian plains, cannot be accepted as that which
created an exchange amongst the common people of the city civilizations.
True, the word for cattle may have
continued in some areas to have been used to indicate money, but, as
previously pointed out, certainly bearing no more reference to cattle than
does the French word Argent, or the Spanish word Plata bear reference to
silver in a context where money is definitely referred to.
It is clear that local tribes, such as the Bushmen of South Africa, 9
the natives of Melanesia and Micronesia,10 whose way of life
obviously derives, with little change, from the way of life of the races
that once occupied South China, Annam, 11 India, and Ceylon, in
the very ancient times of the tertiary ages previous to the ice ages, long
since have been conversant, with the basic principle of money. In their case
money was an abstract unit circulating amongst the people with tangibility
evinced by pieces of certain shell, cut according as tradition demanded; and
of value deriving from custom, which, in such societies, is law.
Therefore it may reasonably be expected that the intelligent Indo-Europeans
from whom stemmed the Greeks, were equally conversant with such principles;
even if later they came to forget them.
According to the Cambridge Ancient History:
“Ivory beads in country now devoid of
elephants suggest either wide range of movement or some form of
exchange.” 12
When the Cambridge Ancient History speculated as
above that the ivory beads of the Solutrean deposits of Northern France
represented some form of exchange medium, the graves of Sungir which reveal
similar mammoth ivory beads, proven to be 23,000 years old or more, had not
been opened 13.
During the Old Kingdom in Egypt and during the
earliest years of the cities of Babylonia, when “numberings” of all accepted
as wealth and possession, were taken every two years, and therefore books
kept, 14 a most refined system of distribution of surpluses and
therefore creation of exchanges, must have existed.
The connection between such system and the
scarabs 15 in the case of Egypt, and the seals in the case of
Mesopotamia, seems to have been generally dismissed. The fact that the
scarabs have been found in their hundreds in places far removed from Egypt,
from Palestine, to Crete, to Etruria, indicates significance far removed
from their use as ornaments.
The agents of the Babylonian Money Power as it existed previous to
the extensive growth of coined money as a base for that circulation, seen or
abstract, which drove the trade and industry of the Greek industrial
revolution, would themselves have promoted and encouraged the establishment
of the temple nucleus to the city state. It was the form of government they
understood best and whose essential powers they knew, from experience now
grown ancient, how to control and subvert if necessary.
Just as the similar secret money creative
force heads directly for the seat of government itself in this day and
age, and once it becomes fully lodged and acknowledged, in the same way as
with the establishment of the Bank of England in 1694 and the
establishment of the
Federal Reserve Bank of the United States
in 1913, two instances with which we are most familiar, it penetrates right
into the heart of the treasury, 16 so it was in that day.
In the little cities of early Greek industrial
revolution, perhaps no less sly amongst this sturdy people, but clearly
discernible it was.
As amongst the original aristocracy of Greece owing its origin to those
heroic days of the Homeric Sagas, would be little enough sympathy for
the smooth subtleties of those newcomers originating from the counting
houses of the Phoenician, Aramean, or Babylonian Cities, it would not be to
the natural political leaders that these newcomers would address themselves
in the first place, but to the priesthood, those who controlled shrine and
temple, the advisors and guides to such rulers.
Just as in today such priesthood is too often
composed of men of little understanding of the realities of financial life,
and who will lend themselves almost eagerly to any power that may approach
them with sufficient front to convince them that they are being offered more
than the god they represent is already possessed of, so it was in that day.
This village priesthood, conducting the simple
rites such as may have been during the period known as the dark ages, and
before the advent of the city states of historical record, when was breathed
into their ears the possibilities of magnificent temples such as were to be
found in Egypt, and the extent of the control they would exercise through
the oracles, whose wisdom would be spread by fame across the whole world,
would easily be gained.
Thus the cities that rose out of the industrial awakening of Greece had all
the appurtenances of the sacred city state of more ancient days.
However, just as sacred kingship existing as the
projection of the guiding will of the Almighty on to this earth, too
often during the last three hundred years has become little more than a
front giving legality to such money as circulates bearing as it does, the
profile of the ruler who so often has been unwitting co-conspirator, if only
as essential instrument, with that money power, totally international in
character, which has nowadays largely replaced kingly power as the true
ruler, so it was that the temple that should owe fealty to the gods alone,
became a front for the international money creative force of that day and
age; connected closely with the trade in precious metals and slaves as it
must have been.
The temple of the Sumerian city state had been palace, temple, warehouse,
government offices and central bank in one, and its servants 17
had administered it in these capacities certainly until the end of what is
known as the Dynastic period (in the case of the city of Ur), and with
declining strength for long afterwards; and the king of the city state had
been sufficiently as god on earth, that, as previously has been described,
there were those of his wives and concubines and officials who gladly went
down to the grave with him. 18
Thus, as the distant heir, in some degree, to this temple of ancient days,
the temple of the Greek city state in the 1st Millennium B.C. was
still a place looked up to as the abode of the gods, and wherein the sacred
rites were conducted; even if that economic power, by which, as the
expression of the benevolent will of the god, it had controlled the total
existence of men, and their comings and goings, was now exercised by an
external and indifferent force, alien to Greece in thought and character,
and with whom it connived against its own adherents.
In the same way the priesthood or laymen that promote, wittingly or
unwittingly,
the elements of decay penetrating the church of today,
connive blindly or otherwise with those whose stated and clear plan has
never been other than the disintegration of this selfsame church, and who
have always had in mind no more than its ultimate destruction.
In a latter period it is true, but still within the first millennium B.C.,
the situation at the Temple of Apollo at Delos, and of which some
proof exists, clearly illustrates this condition of the temple: still as
controller of the mysteries, and the recipient of the bounty of devoted
souls, but no longer the centre and control point of the god owned state. It
had become merely a front for the economic purposes of a secret fraternity
whose concern was money changing, silver bullion, the grain trade, and the
slave trade.
These persons had conducted their business in
the shade of the temple courtyards from ancient days as, and if they could,
in order that the power or mystery as locally was held in awe, might give
sanctity to their activities which so often were exercised against the well
being of the people who sheltered them.
Such activities were frequently concerned with
movements of bullion, the factor most of all giving rise to instability of
prices, and movements of labor which then was slaves, hardly less a factor
in such instability of prices, and therefore so necessary to the full
exploitation of a given people.
The island of Delos, although virtually infertile and without special
advantages such as natural harbors of any particular excellence, due to the
contributions and gifts of the pilgrims visiting the Temple of Apollo, and
the deposits of the cities, trapezitae and leading citizens, in precious
metals and money, for such were esteemed to be safe in the Temple of the
God, became very rich; a centre of trade and banking, and above all, a
centre for the area slave trade from which almost none were safe. 19
Of the commercial activities of the great sanctuaries, Oskar Seffert,
the German antiquarian of the last century had to say, (A Dictionary of
Classical Antiquities, p. 91.):
”We hear in isolated cases of State Banks,
but this business was carried on in the vast majority of cases, by the
Great Sanctuaries, such as those of Delphi, Delos, Ephesus, and Samos,
which were much used as banks for loans and deposits both by individuals
and governments.”
In other words, therefore, the great
sanctuary functioned very much the same way, from the economic standpoint,
as the central bank in this day.
The agents of International Money Power,
as used by the priesthood of the Temple of Apollo to take care of the fiscal
or financial dealings of the temple, and to whom undoubtedly was farmed out
the credit of the temple, must have fully understood that the priesthood had
betrayed their high calling, and thereby had betrayed those devoted souls
who continued to believe the sole concern of the temple was, as formerly,
for their spiritual guidance and that they should live good, virtuous and
pious lives.
These agents would have lurked as only faintly discernible shadows behind
the temple facade, although they instigated much of what came to pass in
those days, if themselves so little seen. Of first concern to them would
have been the reputation of their masters, the priesthood, for piety,
probity, and godliness, in so far as appearance went. For by maintaining the
position of the priesthood, they maintained themselves and their secret
power; yet for whatever they brought about, especially if of evil, it may
safely be assumed, a nevertheless inviolate priesthood would be held
responsible.
Hence the people never questioned the existence of the temple but as the
place where the will of the god was exercised through his servants. That it
had come to function more as instrument in the capacity of sanctifying front
for an international power concerned largely with money creation and the
control of the slave trade, itself mainly of criminal antecedents, was
something they never came to fully understand; nor that this whole thing of
prayer, worship, and devotion was dangerously near to becoming a cruel hoax
manipulated by a handful of aliens, who looked at them and their fervor and
belief with dead eyes.
No more in this day do those who toil on through
the few years of their lives realize that the governments that they so
naively believe are theirs, are but a wavering shadow. The absolute reality
of sovereign power only obtainable through total control over monetary
creation and emission and cancellation, is not theirs.
They but function as standards by which
international money creative forces create the worlds money in a given area;
places wherein exponents of the “Law” and talkative and by no means wise or
learned men foregather to discuss road minding etc. and too often little
things that occupy them, but matter not too much; never looking too closely
at the direction from which they came, nor toward that direction in which
they go; nor, above all, towards the place of the hand that feeds them.
Therefore this economic power apparently centering in the Temple of Apollo
would not only derive from those loans in precious metals that it was able
to grant, but also from the fact that those very secret fraternities
understanding fully the principles of Ledger Credit Page Entry Money,
operated under its patronage.
There can be no doubt that the principles of
monetary inflation, or, better put, abstract money creation, were well
understood to the trapezitae or professional bankers to whom the Temple at
Delos apparently delegated these functions; 20 and equally well
known was how easily merchants could be trained to make payments by cheque
drawn on account consisting of supposed deposits with a recognized banker
either by signed and witnessed document, by signed document, even by no more
than verbal instructions.
Thus, provided the payee also had account at
Delos or agency thereof, no transfer of actual silver need have been
involved, and what is now euphemistically described as the fractional
reserve system, (a swindle indurated in a system!) was operated.
The enormous volume of exchanges a business that
could be carried on without the movement of one drachma of silver, and
consequently the monopolization of trade and industry and subsequent control
over the whole world and its affairs that could be brought about at
literally no real cost, provided those dealing in money changing and
financial matters maintained close solidarity, was known to the bankers.
The tremendous entre-pôt trade of Delos, especially in slaves,
21 could not derive from anything else other than the acceptance of
the “Credit” of the Temple from the hands of these aliens. These men would
be skilled money changers bred and trained in the ancient financial
sophistication of the cities of Babylonia, Aram, a Phoenicia, etc.
They would be fully conversant with the
possibilities inherent in such ledger credit page entry money, and whose
successful functioning as an abstract inflation of the number of units of
silver they claimed to control, depended on secrecy, and solidarity amongst
themselves, and above all, on the patronage of the corrupted temples.
Professor Rostovtsev relates at length the commercial dealings of
Apollonius, manager of the economic affairs of the Ptolemic Pharaoh,
Philadelphus. 22 If the true name of Apollonius or others of
that necessarily interlocked money power was known, and substituted for that
of Antigonus and Demetrius and Soter and, indeed of Philadelphus and all
those rulers that succeeded Alexander, then the glass through which this
tale is read, showing but dark and inscrutable figures incomprehensibly
moving on the screen of time, becomes clear and meaningful.
For instance it is unthinkable that those
soldiers who were the successors to Alexander, probably by no means as
instructed as their commander, should have understood the undercurrents that
still supported enthroned kings, and upheld them before the gaze of those
that yearned towards them as to the Lord’s anointed.
When Antigonus Gonatus took over the patronage formerly extended by
the Ptolemies to Delos, he made it an entre-pôt centre for the
Northern Aegean trade in those materials so necessary in the building of
ships; and more significantly again for silver; no doubt from the mines of
Thrace and beyond.
This flow of silver to Delos from the North is of equal interest to the rest
of the entre-pôt trade. It would have contributed to the augmentation
of the temple reserves of silver that would have enabled Delos to partially
replace Athens during the 3rd Century B.C. as the new centre from which
international money power came to control the finances of the Eastern
Mediterranean as formerly, in the days of the Athenian Empire; and therefore
above all, that grain trade so essential to Athens 23 and
mainland Greece.
A document mentioned by Professor M.
Rostovtsev refers to a purchase of grain in Delos by a Sitones of
Histicaea, a subject city of Macedonia in which he observes that the
purchase was made out of money advanced by a Rhodian banker. This particular
case might suggest that the banking of Rhodes was interlocked with that of
Delos and that those silver reserves of the Temple of Apollo functioned also
as reserve to Rhodian banking. Delos, because of its sanctity would
constitute a much safer store house for precious metal hoards than ever
Rhodes might be.
Previous references to banking in the Grecian centers and sanctuaries as
being conducted by aliens, 24 are also verified by
Professor M. Rostovtsev. 25
The question therefore arises “What aliens?”
Would they be members of the same fraternity as
the Aramean, Apollonius above mentioned, manager for the economic affairs
for Ptolemy Philadelphus; men who were standing almost above and
beyond mankind in their manipulation of powers that not so long
previously had been reserved solely to the gods and which had been exercised
only by that dedicated priesthood surrounding the king, son of god, on
earth?
Such power being lost to kings forever when in
the first place they permitted the institution of accounting to a silver
standard in ancient times in the Lands of
Sumer and Akkad.
The latter days of Delos and the Temple of Apollo when 10,000 slaves were
shipped abroad in one day alone, 26 would certainly suggest the
existence at Delos as controllers of its economic affairs, a class of
persons internationally minded, and utterly callous to the sufferings of the
mixture of broken races that passed before it the way to the slave
stockades.
Although slavery previous to the 4th century
B.C. had been more in the nature of a benign custom similar to the custom of
the bonded servant or apprentice of the 18th and 19th Centuries in Northern
Europe, after the Macedonian conquests it became a custom in no way so
benign, 27 and herding all kinds of persons formerly free, day in
and day out, on to the ships of the day, could not have been accomplished
but with whip and chain and families being torn apart without compunction or
compassion, and little children defenseless against the abuse of monsters.
While the facts of the Temple of Apollo at Delos are relatively clear,
supposition of the existence of the Temple of Athene, at Athens as being
under the secret control of the bankers, while not being so clear, is
logical.
The reserve of 6000 talents of coined silver supposed to have been stored in
the Acropolis at the beginning of the Peloponnesian War 28 would
certainly seem to indicate that the Temple loaned itself to that major
activity of so-called bankers, the creation of abstract money, and
shielded them in their very carefully guarded secret that most money
circulating as between Athenian merchants and those with whom they did
business within, or without the Athenian Empire, was that which was created
as by ledger credit page entry.
The silver reserve would have been the banker’s
window dressing and would have served to take care of smaller day to day
expenses and payments to foreign states where no other form of payment was
possible or acceptable.
The
Peloponnesian War ended no more than a
little over a hundred years before the time of Alexander.
According to A. Andreades in his essay on
the war finances of Alexander the Great, total expenditures per annum
of Alexander at the time of the crossing of the Hellespont were 5000 - 7000
talents 29. This was the expenses of an army far from home, and
to which, until the Battle of Issus and the certainty of Macedonian total
victory, little enough credit would have been available, and most of the
disbursements of which army would have been in solid metal. Of such metal,
fortunately for the Macedonian Royal House, the mines of Phillipi had
certainly made substantial contribution.
It is therefore out of the question to consider whether 6000 talents of
silver were adequate for the total finances of the Peloponnesian War over
ten years, so far as Athens was concerned. If all disbursements to traders
etc. had been in silver, it is doubtful if such so-called reserve could have
lasted six months.
This silver was merely the foundation of that illusion which was no doubt
spread across the Athenian Empire, that those baked clay facsimiles of Greek
coinages which circulated so well between merchants and governments, were
redeemable in silver coin; just as for the last three hundred years in the
British Empire all the Queen’s loyal subjects have believed that every bank
note in circulation was redeemable in gold!
On the subject of such fiduciary currencies in ancient times, particularly
the Athenian, François Lenormant, eminent 19th Century Numismatist
wrote: 30
“Cedrenus claims that the Romans had wooden
money in very ancient times. But this tradition can probably be
relegated to the domain of fables with the Roman money of clay of which
Suidas writes. However it could be that this last information is
connected with several types of assignat briefly used at the time and
which could not have been emitted by public authority. Clay moulds of
silver and gold currencies of various countries, principally belonging
to the period extending from the middle of the 5th Century B.C., and
among others, of the staters of Cyzique, are frequently found at Athens.
The learned Sicilian Numismatist M. Antonio Salinas during his stay in
Greece, collected a large number of these monuments, either as originals
or moulds, or drawings. The purpose of this special class of objects
that are of course connected with numismatics, is very obscure. But it
can be conjectured that such pseudo-currencies of baked clay molded from
existing types (of money) had a fiduciary circulation of quite a private
character, however, similar to that of the credit notes whose emission
is authorized in certain countries by particular institutions.”
In other words the clay facsimiles functioned
in much the same manner as did bank notes over the last three hundred years
in the Anglo-Saxon world; they were money, privately created and
emitted.
François Lenormant, however lived at a time when relatively little
was realized by numismatists of the functions of “Ledger Credit Page Entry
Money,” or often enough of money itself as being so many numbers
injected into a circulation amongst the people, either as pure abstraction
and functioning as by transfer of such ledger credit page entry, or as
tangible record on clay, paper, copper, silver, or gold, and functioning as
by transfer from hand to hand of those defined commodities, intrinsically
valueless or otherwise, on which its numbers were so imprinted.
The value of such numbers in goods and services
for sale being the most amount of such numbers as the people offered in
competitive buying or the least as they accepted in competitive selling.
References
1. According to professor W.F. Albright (The Amarna Letters from Palestine.
Cambridge Ancient History Vol. 11; pp. 14-17.): "There was also a large and
apparently increasing class of stateless and reputedly lawless people in
Palestine and Syria to whom the appellation Apiru was given, it has now
become certain that they were a class of heterogenous ethnic origin, and
that they spoke different languages, often alien to the people in whose
documents they appear."
Further on in the same work, after pointing out the distinct differences
between the desert tribes (Bedawin), the grooms, and the SA.GAZ troops ('Apiru’),
using an old text relative to the Hittite armed forces as the source of his
information (about 1500 B.C.), professor Albright further points out that
the word Apiru must mean dusty ones in N. West Semitic, and that it still
appears in Syriac conveying the same meaning...
"Characteristic of all these
terms is the common fact that the bearer of the designation trudges in the
dust behind donkeys, mules or chariots. In 1961 I collected the then
available archaeological and documentary material bearing on the caravan
trade of the twentieth to nineteenth centuries B.C., and the organization of
donkey caravans; I found far-reaching correlations with early patriarchal
tradition in Genesis..."
(P. 17).
The complex problem of the significance of the ‘Apiru’ (or Habiru) is not
rendered less so by the fact that it recurs in cuneiform texts from
different parts of Mesopotamia, Syria, Egypt, and Asia Minor; all of which
date from between the dynasty of Agade, and the 11th century B.C.
Thus it would appear that the restless ‘Apiru’ of later times, mercenary
soldier, bandit, or smuggler, was the descendant of the donkey caravaneers
who maintained the trade between the cities of the known world previous to
the collapse of the main cities in Babylonia before the arms of the Gutim,
the Hittites, and the Elamites at different times, and which resulted in the
extinction of a great deal of the donkey caravan trade by the 18th century
B.C., and left the followers of that trade uncertain of where to settle or
what occupation to follow.
In the Tel Amarna Tablets, Vol II, Samuel A.B. Mercer refers to the use of
the name Habiru at Babylon in the time of Hammurabai, (P.840); he further
records that a list of Hittite gods, headed List of the Gods of the Habiru,
was found at Bog-Haz Koi by Winckler, (P. 841). The secret societies of a
group known as the Haburah seem to have existed beyond the time of the
destruction of Jerusalem by Titus. According to Jost (I. History of the
Jews; P. 210) Vespasian appointed a Rabbi John Ben Zakkai, chief of the
Haburah as ruler of Jamnia. As Haburah derives from habor: to join, there
may not be significant connection between Habiru or 'Apiru’ and the more
modern Haburah.
2. Sir Charles Woolley: Excavations at Ur, P. 158.
3. Ibid., P. 72.
4. "Mes-Kalan-Dug, 'the good Hero of the Land,’ Prince of Ur, buried
probably as early as 3500 B.C., took with him to the next world a wealth of
golden vessels and weapons such as no commoner would have ventured to
posses.": Charles Seltsman, in Creek Coins (P. 2.).
5. Paul Einzig: Primitive Money, P. 214. Oxford; 1949.
6. In the Amarna Letters from Palestine, (P. 16), Professor W.F. Albright
records that one of the letters from the Tel Amarna archives reports that
Zemredda of Lachish had been killed by slaves who had become 'Apiru’...
Further Professor Albright records that "in thirteen century documents from
Ugarit, we hear of men of Ugarit, including slaves, who had escaped to the 'Apiru’
in Hittite territory."
7. James Mellaart: Catal Huyuk; London; 1967.
8. These words "the Ancient Orient" so aptly supplying loose definition to
that world that lived under the political system that governed most of the
cities of the Ancient Near East, derive from professor Heichelheim’s Ancient
Economic History.
9. Kingston-Higgins: Survey of Primitive Money, P. 189. London; 1949.
10. Paul Einzig: Primitive Money, P. 29-81. Also Kingston-Higgins.
11. Kingston-Higgins also refers to shell money in the Neolithic caves of
Annam (P. 139). Also at Mohenjo-Daro. (P. 1). For shell money at
Mohenjo-Daro see E.J.C. McKay; P. 582. Further Excavations at Mohenjo-Daro.
12. Cambridge Ancient History. P. 51; Vol. I.
13. London Illustrated News. P. 24, March 7th, 1970; The Boys of Sungir; Dr.
Otto Bader.
14. James Henry Breasted: A History of Egypt, P. 44.
15. According to Flinders-Petrie, scarabs first appear in Egypt during the
fourth Dynasty and continue right through to the end (of Pharaonic rule)
with no important break. History of Egypt. P. 52; Vol. I; London, 1897.
16. A Andreades: History of The Bank of England, P. 389-401. See also The
Federal Reserve System, a pamphlet originally published by the Board of
governors of the Federal Reserve System, 1939, and republished by Omni
Publications of Hawthorne, California.
17. According to N.K. Sandars in the introduction to his translation of the
Epic of Gilgamish (P. 14.):
"The temples were served by a perpetual
priesthood in whose hands, at one time, was almost the whole wealth of the
state; and amongst whom were the archivists and teachers, the scholars and
mathematicians. In very early times the whole temporal power was theirs, as
servants of the god whose estates they managed."
18. Sir Charles L. Woolley: Further Excavations at Ur, P. 158.
19. Plato was reputed to have been sold as a slave by Dionysus, ruler of
Syracuse, for 20 minae. Diodorus: xv.7; Plutarch: Dionysos, 5.
20. Rostovtsev: A Social and Economic History of the Hellenistic World, Vol.
I, P. 233.
21. William L. Westerman: The Slave Systems of Greek and Roman Antiquity, p.
65.
22. Mikhail Ivanovitch Rostovtsev: A Social and Economic History of the
Hellenistic World; Vol. I; P. 227.
23. Mikhail Ivanovitch Rostovtsev: A Social and Economic History of the
Hellenistic World; pp. 218, Vol. I.
24. Oskar Seffert: A Dictionary of Classical Antiquities, P. 91.
25. Mikhail I. Rostovtsev: A Social and Economic History of the Hellenistic
World, Vol. I. P.227.
26. Strabo: XIV, v. 570, (Napoleon III: Julius Caesar Vol. I, P. 241;
London; 1865).
27. William L. Westerman: The Slave Systems of Greek and Roman Antiquity;
American Philosophical Society; Philadelphia.
28. The siege of Potidaea, a relatively minor engagement of a long war, cost
the Athenians 2000 of these talents. (Thucydides: The Peloponnesian War,
Book II, Ch. 7.).
29. Andreades: Annales d’Histoire Economique et Sociale, p. 350, Paris,
1929.
30. According to "François Lenormant in his book La Monnaie dans l’Antiquité,
pp. 215-216, Book II, Tome I: "Cedrenus prétend que les Romaines a une
époque très ancienne auraient en des monnaies de bois; mais cette tradition
doit très probablement être relegnée dans la domaine des fables avec la
monnaie Romains de terre cuite dont parle Suidas. Pourtant ils se pourrait
que cette dernier indication se rapportait a quelques espèce d’assignat
momentamente en usage et qui n’aurait ermané des autorités publiques. On
trouve fréquemment a Athènes des moulages en terre cuites de monnaies d
argent ou d’or de diverses contrées, appartenant principalement a la période,
qui s’étend du milieu de V siècle avant J.C. entres outres de statères de
Cyzique. Le savant Numismatist Sicilien, M. Antonio Salinas pendant son
séjour en Grèce, a recueilli un grand nombres de ces monuments, soit en
originaux, soit en moulage, et soit en dessins. La destination de cette
classe spéciale d’objets qui se rattachent forcement a la numismatique, est
très obscure. Mais on peut conjecturer que de telles pseudo-monnaies de
terre cuites, moulées sur des espèces existantes, ont du avoir une
circulation fiduciaire, mais d’une caractère tout prive comme celles des
billets de crédit. dont la loi autorise dans certains pays l’émission par
des institutions particulière"..."
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