PER ME DEI REGNANT!
The city states of the rulers of Troy, Orchomenos, Tyryns, Bog-Haz-Koi,
Mycenae, Cnossos, and cities and states without number and of which not even
the name or memory, now remains, too often, little expectant of calamity
from without, from whatever cause, finally went down into smoking ruin
before the deluge of wild men, who, with their reeking swords brought all
those god-ordered ages of ancient time to a bloody close; men such as the
wearer of the golden mask whose grave was opened by Heinrich Schlieman in
his excavations at Mycenae, and who he believed to be Agamemnon sleeping his
everlasting sleep.
Buried sword in one hand, with the other this giant amongst men still
clutched in death as in life, those disks of gold which so obviously were
storehouse of wealth and power.
Thus it is clear that by permitting gold to be equated with wealth, or that
which had been money, and forgetting thus the true nature of money as a
thing apart, his law alone, merely a device of transferable numbers to
assist and give order to the exchanges amongst his people, this god-king
from whom descended the legend of that company on Olympus, was already
surrendering his might, and the freedoms of his peoples, to those
inscrutable shadows that lurked in the dimness of the distant Babylonian
counting houses.
To these rulers, power was already in the merchant’s and master miner’s
precious metal pieces...
With such precious metals as they stripped from the
bodies of living and dead in those cities they had so gleefully sacked and
put to sword, when peace carne again, they were able to purchase those items
of luxury so much desired by their women, such as were manufactured in the
cities of the Mesopotamian plain and Egypt, (1) if not further afield. More
important still, they were thus able to obtain the finest of arms that
skilled craftsmanship could fashion, such as the suit of bronze armor found
at Medea in Greece (illustrated on Page 135 of Dawn of the Gods, by Jacquetta Hawkes); the very best of the master armourer’s trade.
Thus they readied themselves for the next slaughter. It may very well have
been as in today, when the new aggressors, designated Communist as according
to the meaning of that word, may very well be preparing for the destruction
of those easy-going people of the Anglo-Saxon world from whose skill and
technique derive those finest of arms through which their world could indeed
be threatened with total obliteration.
That in their position as ruler all gold flowed through their hands, whether
in those forms given to it by goldsmith’s art or in those shapes most
convenient from the point of view of its use in international exchange,
there is no doubt.
The latter case was clearly shown by the rings and disks
and the tiny double headed axes, as found at Troy, all of gold, and the four
hundred round pieces of gold and the one hundred and fifty golden disks that
were found in the Royal tombs of Mycenae (dating from c. 1500 B.C.) by
Heinrich Schlieman (2) all of which clearly represented some form of
exchange or money.
Spirals of gold wire also found in the grave of one
member of the Royal Family of Mycenae are suggested by Seltsman (Greek
Coins, p.5) to be adjusted to the small Aegean gold talent of 8.5 grammes
which he classifies as the Aegean gold unit. Herein would be implication of
the use of a gold unit in international exchanges even at that early time.
The rings of gold wire of a few grammes weight which circulated in Egypt
(Breasted, p. 307) in the reign of Tahutmes III (1501 B.C. - 1447 B.C.),
would appear to afford some verification of this fact. Gold or silver money,
whether ring money or other form of money, if of definite weight and
fineness would always be desirable in international exchanges.
As an interesting and pertinent digression, it also appears that spiral or
ring money may have come to occupy a place in the economic life of Egypt
too, as early as the latter years of the so-called Old Kingdom. Its use and
abuse, considering the Egyptian trade that existed across the known world
during the reign of Pepi pharaoh who reigned 90 years during the 6th
Dynasty, (3) may have been one of the factors by which the International
Money Power of the time, in whatever form it existed, brought about the
total collapse of kingly rule in Egypt in the years subsequent to the death
of this ruler.
The Hebrew records also appear to verify this use of metal rings or spirals
being used in settlement of trade balances between foreigners; or of being
storehouses of wealth... According to Madden, however, (4) there is no
mention of gold money in ancient Hebrew records, though gold constituted
part of the wealth of Abraham, undoubtedly refugee from Ur about the time of
its destruction by the Gutim...
The six hundred shekels of gold by weight
paid by David for the threshing floor and oxen of Ornan (5) and the 6000
shekels of gold taken by Naaman on his journey to the King of Israel (6)
do
not imply money... Nor can the passage: "they lavish gold out of the bag and
weigh silver in the balance," (7) or "Wisdom cannot be gotten for gold
neither shall silver be weighed for the price thereof," (8) be brought
forward in favour of gold money. Gold was generally employed for personal
ornament (9) and for adornment of the temple.
It is probable, therefore, that a system of "jewel currency," or "ring
money", was in use.
The case of Rebekah to whom the servant of Abraham gave
"a gold earing of half a shekel weight, (10) and two bracelets for her hands
of ten (shekels) weight," proves that the ancient Hebrews made their jewels
of a specific weight so as to know the value of these ornaments in employing
them in lieu of money.
That the Egyptians kept their bullion in jewels and
rings is not merely indicated by the scene on the monuments as mentioned by Lenormant and Masparo, in which they are represented as weighing rings of
gold, silver and copper, but also by the findings of archaeology such as the
copper rings found at Tel Amarna stamped with the cartouche of Kuen-Aten,
Hyksos ruler. (11)
These rings would appear to have been retained in the
treasury at Tel Amarna, and therefore still were current two hundred years
after the expulsion of the so called Hyksos. According to Breasted, gold and
copper rings of a fixed weigh circulated in large scale business in the time
of the "Old Kingdom", and (significantly enough to the student of "banking",
or private money creation and regulation, as it might better be known)
"stone weights were already marked with their equivalence in such rings."
(12)
The circulation as money of these "promises to pay" recorded on stone,
pointedly suggests the likelihood of the activities of a secret fraternity
whose hereditary trade was private money creation. It may very well have
been the debilitating force that, with the death of Pepi II in 2476 B.C.,
brought about ending in turmoil and anarchy to the even flow of the
undeterminable age over which the God-Kings reigning in awesome splendour,
so long had spread their mantle of man-consideration and true benevolence.
Further evidence that the Egyptians kept their bullion in jewels or rings is
indicated by the passage from Exodus (13) in which it is related that the
Israelites, previous to their departure from Egypt, borrowed "jewels of
silver and jewels of gold and spoiled the Egyptians"...
In consequence it would appear that the money used by the children of Jacob
when they went to purchase corn in Egypt was ring money, the use of which
was permitted by the Pharaoh Egypt of the time; rightly or wrongly... Their
money is described "bundles of money", as verified by the authorized
translation Deuteronomy...
"Then shalt thou turn it into money and bind up
the money in thine hand and shall go unto the place where the Lord thy God
shall choose" (14)
The excavations of Heinrich Schlieman indicate that such
ring money was also used by the Mycenaeans at perhaps rather later date.
Thus the Greek city state, owing its existence to an uncertain long period
during which there took place those events that led up to the final days of
Cnossos and Mycenae, was the result of the union of the forces of order in
life and death that motivated the priest-king, were he at Cnossos, or at
Thebes, or Tel Amarna, or serving the Moon god at Ur, leader amongst the
Sumerian cities, and those forces that drove on the builders of the
battlements first of all unearthed by Heinrich Schlieman at Troy and
Mycenae.
Whether priest-king or peasant-king, their wealth was already
assessed in terms of the weight of their store of precious metals which
would be so eagerly accepted in exchange for the products of the master armourers employed by the bankers who already controlled trade and money
creation in those cities of the Ancient Orient; from which cities,
therefore, the glory of total guidance by the god-will had already departed.
He who was literally the Son of God on Earth as he meditated in his island
fastness of Crete, was beholden to none other than the people below who he
served from his place as the apex of the pyramid of life itself, and to the
will of the one above who appointed him to serve.
The peasant king at
Mycenae or Troy or wherever it might be, for all his seeming rock-like
strength, and a certain god-likeness in character of the kingship he bore,
as was indicated by the title
Wanax, necessarily existed as instrument of
those who manipulated gold or silver supplies internationally, and at the
same time the slave market; men of a class who, in that control of prices
which they so clearly exercised, were able to control prosperity in all
those seemingly powerful states that had accepted the international
valuation of silver as the factor determining internal or national values;
such as was the case with most of the mainland cities...
They may have been,
as it seems they are today, a close knit conspiratorial group threaded
through the priest and scholar class of these cities and lards; thought not
of themselves of such origin.
The answer may be found to lie in the existence in very ancient Sumeria of a
privileged class, who, having access to the "credit" of the temple, thus
were able to control the masters of the great donkey caravans who carried
such "credit", or will of the god of the city, from one place of business to
the other; incising record on their tablets, of loan of such credit made to
enable purchase, or interest overdue, or repayment of such loan as had been
made the previous trip.
These persons, who may be considered themselves to
derive from the hereditary caravaneers and who must have functioned as
bullion broker and banker, would have been fully clear on the subject of
silver and its function in settlement of foreign trade balances and its use
as a standard on which to base money accounting. In the latter days of the
city states of Sumeria, it is reasonably clear that during certain periods
of decay, a languid and corrupted priesthood might delegate (15) to these
persons, not only matters of trade, but also those decisions relative to
foreign states so essential to the continuance of the might and right of the
god of the city.
The special international character of the outlook of these people, sprung
as they undoubtedly were from the donkey caravaneers, born to be at home
amongst all peoples, yet to always bear in mind the peculiar business of the
caravan merchants, their trade and profit, may not have made for decisions
as from a true and dedicated god-servant.
Thus it may very well be that we
must look to the professional caravaneers, from whom descended the Habiru,
(16) for widespread dissemination of the knowledge of the possibilities
offered to merchants by development of the practices relating to private
money creation deriving from a clear understanding of the meaning of
accounting to a silver standard, and later the potentialities towards
development of monopoly of trade inherent in the actual use of silver as the
material on which the numbers of the abstract unit were stamped.
The full
extent of the possibilities towards the accumulation of wealth through
exploitation of varying ratios between silver and gold in different parts of
the world, and the possibilities of a private and secret expansion of the
total monetary circulation which was open to those who were held in such
esteem in the cities that persons were glad to deposit their valuables with
them for safe-keeping, may also have been known to them.
As such accounting to a silver standard had long been known in the lands of
Sumer and Akkad, and the mainland generally, control of values had long
since been in the hands of the silver bullion brokers, whoever they were,
and the money lenders, and bankers and their satellite merchants, without
reference as in former days, to priesthood and temple scribe.
Through
bullion they controlled money, and through money creation, on that bullion
as base, they controlled manufactures...
According to T.B.L. Webster in his
book From Mycenae to Homer:
"Undoubtedly Ugarit and Alalakh were more
concerned with manufactures than Knossos and Pylos, and silver by weight was
already for them performing the function of money, whereas as far as can be
seen in the Mycenaean centres, no such standard existed" (17) ...
However
the fact that the Achaeans derived their system of measurements from
Mesopotamia (18) would certainly suggest that the most important measurement
of all, the monetary unit would equally originate from such source.
This
opinion is further strengthened by the collaboration obviously existing in
the Mycenaean settlement at Ugarit (19) with that money power which based
itself on silver by weight, such as clearly controlled the manufacturies of
Ugarit and Alalakh...
Further according to the same scholar:
"The Alalakh tablets also record copper distributed to smiths, but note in
addition it is to be used for making baskets or arrowheads; and the King of
Assyria sent copper to Mari to be made into nails by the local craftsmen. A
report from Pylos that the woodcutters in two places are delivering 150
axles and 150 spars for the chariot factory may be compared with the
Ugaritic texts on the delivery of wood for the making of arms, and a note of
wood delivered to the carpenters for the construction of wagons in Alalakh.
We may add here also from Pylos a list of wooden objects made, a list of
vessels received by men (perhaps Mayors) in various places and a note of
pieces of ivory; to set beside this rather slender evidence of Mycenaean
manufacture, Alalakh provides a record of sixty four business houses and
their produce; they include smiths, leather workers, joiners, and
cartwrights." (20)
Thus it seems that where the conception of money as to a silver standard
existed as at Ugarit and Alalakh, so also existed organized industry,
including outstandingly the private manufacture of arms under methods that
appear to be those of semi-mass production.
It is not without significance
that this early era of privately issued money (such as was silver money),
and consequent private industry, particularly that which was devoted to arms
manufacture, was in certain areas so coincidental with the massive movements
of warlike peoples, and the collapse of ancient empires that had lived long
under the pattern of life known as that of the Ancient Orient. Conquering
peoples needed the best of arms. It seems that the best of arms were
obtainable from private industry; and private industry in its turn needed
silver or gold or labour which was slaves, in payment. Both were obtainable
as the result of war.
Therefore parallel, though not entirely the same as in
today, the more war, the more the industry, and the more the need for the
products of the money creators' ledgers. Hence became the more absolute the
control of that which most of all designs industry and its accompanying
slavery in one form or another, namely, private money creative power.
Thus regardless of what strength still resided in the heart of the temple
states of the Ancient Orient, if values were dictated by the international
valuation of silver bullion, then, above all, the internationally dealing
silver bullion brokers would be in a position to see to it that manufacture
and distribution of arms was under their control, the factor most important
of all in international power allocation.
They were in a position to have manufactured in some scale, controlling
labour as they undoubtedly did through control of the slave trade, the
finest weapons known in that day for those rulers who collaborated with them
and served best their purposes... Clearly by the same token, with such total
money control, they were in a position to withhold the best of weapons, or
the materials for such weapons, from those who served them the least...
In a
world that had come to believe in money as an absolute, such was the
position long ago, exactly as in today. Thus the state that rejected
international money power, as did Sparta and Rome in ancient times, and
Russia in modern times, had to be prepared to establish total military
self-sufficiency.
The Cretan civilization that communicated its ancient language through the
pictograph script known as Linear "A", which recognizably came to
communicate Greek through that development of this script known as Linear
"B", about 1500 B.C., (21) would certainly seem to have been conquered by
Greek speaking peoples some reasonable period previously; which would
suggest about 1700-1600 B.C.
At the same time, according to Breasted, (22) in 1675 B.C., the so-called Hyksos, a Semitic conqueror, entered the Delta regions of Egypt,
establishing total military supremacy through the use of horse and chariot,
previously unknown in Egypt.
The evidences of the Ugarit and Alalakh tablets, although of a substantially
later date (about three hundred and fifty years) indicating semi-mass
production in these areas of chariot parts, arrow heads, and arms of various
kinds, (23) cannot but suggest that it was from this region, so close to the
copper of Cyprus, and the wood of Anatolia and Lebanon, that money power
armed those restless peoples that may have inundated Crete in earlier times,
and Egypt somewhat later.
The chariots by means of which Egypt had been subdued, can only have been
paid for out of the booty of conquest, the plunder of tomb and temple, and
the sale of the enslaved peoples.
The fact of the persistence of the thrust
of Tahutmes III (24) into these regions substantially less than one hundred
years after the eviction of the Hyksos by Ahmose I (1500 B.C.-1557 B.C.)
from their last Egyptian stronghold at Avaris (25) on the Eastern marches of
the Delta, would indicate no idle pointless advance, but definite design
towards destroying the heart of the enemy, the elimination of his financial
and industrial centres. Whether they were still in the regions of Ugarit and
Alalakh, or now sheltered elsewhere behind the Kingdom of Kadesh, perhaps in
Mittani, would not be known.
However, that both sides had equal access to the international arms industry
would certainly be indicated by the spoil in manufactures of war of the
battle of Megiddo (1479 B.C.) as won by Tahutmes III against the King of
Kadesh and his allies, amounting to nine hundred and twenty-four chariots
and two hundred suits of armour. (26)
By corollary, it may reasonably be
assumed that opposed to these chariots as seized at Megiddo, would have been
at least another thousand chariots. Alexander of Macedonia venturing far
from home in later times, was a reckless adventurer, considering that at the
battle of Issus (October, 333 B.C.) the whole Macedonian army amounted to
little more in numbers than the Greek mercenary centre of Darius which was
but a small part of the Persian’s enormous, if undisciplined host. (27)
Tahutmes, who ruled Egypt from 1501-1447 B.C. was the god-king of a great
and ancient state to which occupation by the detested Hyksos had so recently
taught a severe lesson in that which was modern warfare in those times. He
was descendant of a line of kings 2000 years old or more, and it is very
doubtful if he would have moved abroad without careful organization and
planning. To build his thousand or so chariots was needed the wood of
Lebanon and Syria, and those districts surrounding the Gulf of Antioch. (28)
Also was the craftsmanship of its cities of Ugarit and Alalakh needed, or at
least, of that so strategic district, whatever its name at that time; also
equal financial and industrial organization to that which clearly was
available to the kingdom of Kadesh, suggested by Breasted to be the last
flicker of political and military power of the Hyksos. (29)
Thus it would appear that money creative power had definitely reestablished
some form of agency in Egypt, where, under the conditions of the empire, its
best interests lay. The agreement between Tahutmes and the Phoenician
cities, particularly Tyre, (30) demonstrates concessions made to traders in
order to obtain the sea-power which he so much needed for the success of his
campaign against Kadesh.
The fact of gold and silver rings of a few grains
weight circulating in Egypt as against day-to-day purchases, (31) indicates
the nature of the concessions by Tahutmes to that money creative force which
undoubtedly drove the world-wide trade of the Phoenician cities. The gifts
in silver bullion from the Kheta (or Hittites), (32) natural enemies of the
kings of Mittani, indicate that they knew that which would be most welcome
to the Pharaoh, and would most of all weaken his leanings towards friendship
with Mittani, or other peoples likely to have been their enemies.
The temples of Egypt clearly retained immense wealth and holdings in land,
(33) and still conducted their own trading expeditions. (34) However, from
the reckoning of Breasted that one person in fifty, and one seventh of the
land was owned by them, (35) it is clear that by the times of Rameses III
(1198-1167 B.C.) and to whose reign this estimate is applicable, the true
force behind kingly rule which is the will of the god, so that king and
temple needed to own nothing, as being all in all, they owned all and were
all, had long ago been gathered up by those promoting the conception of
private ownership.
Such conception of private ownership would naturally
derive from that right these persons had already arrogated to themselves to
create and manipulate the monetary unit, tangible or abstract, and thereby
stimulate the growth of a private enterprise for good or ill.
To such an
extent had this change in the substructure of life proceeded, that, by the
time of Solomon, first Hebrew king in Jerusalem (36) (955 B.C. approx.), the
chronicler was able to write:
"And a chariot came up and went out of Egypt
for six hundred shekels of silver". (37)
Therein being indication that the
international money power of the day deemed it safe to locate its most
important industry, which was that of armaments, in the land of Egypt; at
least after the barbaric but definitely more "pliable" Libyan dynasty had
become established.
Ancient ways and ancient morale gave way to foreign influences and the
period of self-criticism and therefore self-immolation that always seems to
follow the advent of the penetration of international money creative force.
Such money creative force and its key arms manufacturies so much needed by
the war powers of that day, would always continue to maintain itself, come
what may. Possibly its heartland was some area such as Switzerland today,
that by tacit consent of all powers, remained neutral in all this strife,
and whose neutrality would always be respected by the armed force of each of
the struggling states.
Kadesh, and its allies, Arvad and Symyra, were the military force towards
the destruction of which Tahutmes III directed his efforts. (38) The
manufacturing cities of Alalakh and Ugarit on the lower Orontes river and
bordering on the Gulf of Antioch, respectively, because of the widespread
extent of their trading operations during the 13th Century B.C. until the
time of their destruction at the end of that century by sea rovers, either
ally or enemy of the confederacy known as the "Peoples of the Sea," might
very well be suspected of being headquarters of a money market at that time,
even if the deep source of their money power existed in the Babylonian
cities.
In being a centre for international trade and arms manufacture during the
13th century B.C., this area may very well be considered to have been a
similar centre during the 15th Century B.C.: the more especially in
consideration of the agreement which seemed to have existed between the
Arameo-Phoenician cities (excluding Arvad and Symyra) and Tahutmes; at least
those who guided his policies.
While therefore the neutrality of such areas was respected, money power in
control of the movements of bullion internationally, safe behind this shield
of neutrality as designers of the international money market, would be able
to continue to manipulate war industries; always remaining in a position to
allocate the latest of weapons to those states which offered them the best
advantage in respect to their particular affair.
The rulers of that great
Egypt after Tahutmes III and his conquests, although probably completely
unaware of the extent of the power of this same international force,
deriving as it did from the bazaars of the ancient cities of lower
Mesopotamia, obviously needed its good graces when it carne to obtaining
those materials and weapons so necessary for what in that time was modern
warfare.
As a result, although the Egyptian empire in the earliest years might very
well be described as a common market existing independent of Babylonian
money power, and deriving its strength from the will to be of a dedicated
and instructed Ruler, the sequence of events shows that through those
concessions it obtained for its best services in war, it was not long before
international money power re-penetrated the substructure of Egyptian life
and established its usual behind-the-scenes influence, if not control, as in
the earlier time that denoted the collapse of the "Old Kingdom".
It may
safely be considered to have reassumed the position of hidden power it had
held a thousand years before during the closing years of the 6th Dynasty, a
period in which the stone weights indicating equivalence in metal money (39)
circulated in much the same way as the clay facsimiles of contemporary
coinages circulated in the Eastern Mediterranean area during the days of the
Athenian empire, or as circulated the paper notes of today that formerly
indicated claim on precious metal.
Further indication of the activities of
private money creative force in this same period exists in the evidence of
an extensive world-wide trade on land and sea revealed by those items of
Egyptian manufacture discovered at Dorak in Anatolia by James Mellaart, (40)
and the stone vases and ivory seals that were found in Crete; (41) all of
which dated from this time, and bore little evidence to suggest that they
were in the nature of gifts between rulers.
Through "liberalism," and so-called "progressive teachings", its most
ancient instruments, wittingly or otherwise, towards the continuance of its
secret hegemony, reinstituted international money creative force seems to
have brought the host land of Egypt to where it was at the time of Akhenaton
(1375 to 1358 B.C.), and the Tel Amarna letters which tell of
self-destruction and decay, the rejection of old values and beliefs, and the
indifference of the a Egyptian rulers to their trust, and to the crumbling
of Empire.
The degeneracy and complacence of the age was revealed by the
fruitless outcry out of Asia from the vassals of the Pharaoh; being
particularly exemplified by the despairing pleas of king Abdikhiba of the
most ancient city of Jerusalem for assistance against the pressure of the
armed assaults of the Habiru. (42)
In the meantime the military might of those grim warriors of the shaft
graves of Mycenae continued to grow, and they clearly could be relied on to
supply the master moneyers of that ancient world with gold and silver and
slaves.
Therein these robber rulers, best known from the Homeric sagas, were
but the instruments by which the mysterious worshippers of the anti-god, the
controllers of the extensive money creative force deriving from the
Mesopotamian cities, unseen, but all-seeing, slowly undermined the walls of
the temple states of the ancient world, of Crete, of Mycenae, of Troy, of
Bog-Haz Koi and of Egypt too, so finally and so completely, that little
memory or record existed, except in the case of Egypt; even during that
period which is known as antiquity; that is the period of the flourishing of
Greece and Rome.
What, therefore, did the international money creative fraternity of that day
need from those states that clearly forbad their trade or settlement as
corruptors of all true order and peace in life, and that thus rejected their
blandishments; or from any other state for that matter?...
What other than
the plunder out of sack and ruin by those wild men they brought in from
distant lands to North and to South... and to whom they offered the
sweet-smelling women, the sunlit gardens, the gold and the silver; which of
course would soon be theirs in any case...
Of all those cities and states without number, and many without name, why
they disappeared, or when, both as actual sites, or names intertwined with
historical memory is not known; nor the story of the ending; for as at
Pylos, (43) and Cnossos, (44) and Ugarit (45) too, in so many cases the
flames were the final gesture of fate which made durable to the end of time,
the clay libraries and archives thus sharply defining the end of their
compilation and leaving no record further.
The last thrust of the relatively wild men of the North and West against
Egypt, and that Egypt survived to still continue to write its name upon the
page of history for yet a thousand years, even if with a hand growing ever
more weary, if successful, would have revealed the same picture. It is clear
that the organization of all those Western and Northern peoples in
confederation against Egypt during the reign of the Pharaoh Merneptah (1236
B.C.-1236 B.C.) was not of haphazard design.
Tehennu, Sherden (or
Sardinians) Shekelesh (or Sikeli, the early natives of Sicily), Achaeans,
Lycians, Teresh (or Etruscans), Danae (obviously deriving from the Goths of
the Northern shores of Europe and very likely the forefathers of those in
the Israelitish confederacy who described themselves as "Dan"),
(46) all
these nations known as "The Peoples of the Sea", could not have been brought
together as a fairly disciplined group without some more internationally
wise advisors in the close circle surrounding King Meryey of the Libyans
than his own Libyan advisors.
Egypt still contained in temple and burial
house a great part of the gold washed from the rivers of Africa over a
thousand years or more, despite the plunder in gold the so-called Hyksos had
carried with them into the desert some three hundred and fifty years before.
Whether Egypt fell, or the confederate host fell, either way was profit to
the international bullion traders whose agents would have equally followed
Egyptian or confederate...
After this total victory, largely won by the skill and discipline that
existed in the Egyptian archery, of copper, still a most valuable metal of
war, 9000 swords alone were surrendered to Merneptah. A further one hundred
and twenty thousand pieces of other copper military equipment were also
surrendered; of weapons and vessels in silver and gold, over three thousand
pieces were taken from the camp of the rulers and chiefs; this latter spoil
including many swords of gold and silver...
The Kings are overthrown, saying ’salam!' Not one holds up his head among
the nine Nations of the Bow. Wasted is Tehennu, The Hittite Land is
pacified, Plundered is Canaan with every evil, Carried off is Askalon,
Seized upon is Gezer, Yenoam is made as a thing not existing. Israel is
desolated, her seed is not Palestine has become a defenceless widow for
Egypt. All Lands are united, they are pacified; Every one that is turbulent
is bound by King Merneptah... (47)
It is interesting to note that although the hosts that fell at the battle of
Perire, numbering at least nine thousand, were almost all from the West,
according to the poem recorded above, Merneptah almost immediately turned
his attention to the peoples of the East. Judging by this record of the
stele, he paid some special attention to an Israel never previously referred
to in Egyptian history.
Such Israel would undoubtedly be a confederacy
established during the 13th Century B.C. by Canaanitic tribes, elements such
as the fragments of the "Hyksos" or Shepherd Kings, whatever their correct
designation, and that had disappeared into the desert some 350 years before
pursued by the chariots of Ahmose I, (48) elements deriving from the
"Peoples of the Sea" perhaps, and the Habiru, also known as 'Apiru or
Khabiri...
...But who was who, or why, or what, little concerned that brain centre in
Babylon or Ur, or wherever it was... Whoever they professed to be, or to
belong to, meant nothing. Out of death and destruction was their harvest,
whether those they said were their own, were theirs or not. The only reality
was control of precious metal...
Out of death and destruction came the
releasing in that day of the all important hoards of stored bullion, and the
renewal of the slave herds to be consumed in mining ventures in distant
places, garnering the increase of such precious metals... (49)
Further, as kingly rule weakened, with the increasing circulation of
fraudulent receipts for precious metals and other valuables supposedly on
deposit, this highly secretive interstratum of merchant classes controlled
by these monopolists of money through monopoly of control of precious metal
bullion, postulated by Professor A.L. Oppenheim to be Aramaic speaking
during the first Millennium B.C., (50) would be able of finance much larger
manufacturing systems than had been possible from the highly discriminatory
temple loans of earlier days. Ugarit and Alalakh previously mentioned, were
but early instances...
While the purpose of the temple was to cause the
people to live godly lives as according to the customs of the day and to
preserve them from straying out of the ways of righteousness as it were, the
secret and private money creative power, being more concerned with the
opposite, the needs of the anti-god, the destruction of the people’s lives,
whether of king, priest, nobleman, or merchant, or he who laboured in the
field, loaned without such discrimination...
Out of the resulting confusion
amongst rulers could come nothing but advantage to themselves and their
purposes; out of the break up of family and home and tradition, all that the
dedicated servant of the god has in life, would come an exhausted and
confused people, more ready to accept slavery. (51)
Corruption of the
priesthood, as in today, was the chief aim of money conspiracy, and by
causing such priesthood to lose sight of its high purpose and itself as the
voice of god on earth, success in all its other purposes, naturally
followed.
"Documents of the third level originate in autonomous economic bodies
ranging from collective agricultural organizations centred in families, to
what often constitutes de facto private enterprise inside and outside
cities. The distribution of the evidence in volume and importance varies
with time and region"... (52)
Private enterprise depended on privately issued money and of such was
silver.
Thus towards the establishment of manufacturies, they, the
international bullion controllers needed the connivance of those corrupted
temple officials who had lost sight of the meaning of that god-given power
of money creation which had been theirs, and without which the god himself,
the real ruler of the city, could not be truly maintained.
By the time these
temple officials were brought to enter into such connivance, they would be
past realizing or caring, for that matter, about the destructive effects to
their powers and purposes which lay in so permitting private issuance of
money into circulation amongst the people by way of precious metals, or
receipts for such precious metals or valuables, supposedly on deposit for
safekeeping with prominent merchant houses; thus they would be easily
manipulated...
With the extension of the growth of exchanges to a silver standard such as
would derive from the circulation of false receipts issued against silver or
valuables reputedly on deposit for safe keeping, no special outlay in
precious metals was needed other than possibly bribes to court and temple
officials.
These men, the controllers of bullion movements internationally,
and of almost equal consequence, the slave trade, now that their knowledge
of the frauds relating to the use of precious metal money, and consequently
their knowledge of that which is now known as "capital" was becoming
perfected, were bringing into being extensive private industries, the most
important of which, as pointed out previously, were the industries relating
to war.
Towards the promotion of any particular industry as required by the
bankers, no doubt ambitious slaves or freedmen as eager for money as their
counterparts today, could be always found.
It was clearly understood that those receipts representing the weight of
silver or the valuables assessed as according to a silver standard, that the
bankers were supposed to have on deposit for safe keeping, which circulated
by custom, or by law which is custom, as money as to represent a definite
amount of exchange units, while accepted as money, were money.... The fact
that the people accepted them as such, made them so. Their cost to the money
manipulators, bullion brokers, or whatever their designation, being but that
of the clay in the tablet and the scribe’s entry thereon...
After the final triumph of the international money creative fraternity which
may be identified in Mesopotamia with that period of conquest, reconquest,
and conquest again that began with that invasion of Sumeria by the Gutim in
2270 B.C., and ended with the collapse of the Empire of Ur of Ibi-Sin before
the Elamite rebels with their Amorite allies in 2030 B.C., and their taking
away to Susa as captive, both the cult statue of the Lord Nannar, the Moon
God together with the King Ibi-Sin himself, earthly viceroy of that God,
those agents of International Money Power, quickly concluded the work of
destruction (53) through liberalism and permissiveness, no doubt, so that by
1900 B.C., the Sumerian had totally lost his national and racial identity
and will to be...
What continued from then on was, without a doubt, a mixed
breed with no special allegiance to anything other than "money".
(54)
Such agents are shown by the general evidence of history to be a class of
dubious origins and antecedents. Imbued with racial self-hatred, these
rascals, who are raised up in a time of national exhaustion, against the
former natural system of rule, by a triumphant money power, too often are
particularly distinguished by a readiness to please those who it seems to
them are the masters; even to the downgrading and debauchment of their own
kind.
The apathy of a controlled public opinion to the deluge of perverted
sex drenching the Anglo-Saxon countries today, which could not take place
without the connivance of the so-called rulers, if only through their
failure to take any serious steps towards controlling its source, is,
herein, instance enough.
However, until the violent disruptions of caravaneering about 1800 B.C.,
(55) the manufactures of Mesopotamia continued to flow Northwards as against
precious metals, principally silver and raw materials; and no doubt that
trading area or common market formerly controlled by the rulers of the IIIrd
Dynasty at Ur, continued to exist; though no longer with the Lord Nannar
(56) as signing authority.
The growing manufacturies of Mesopotamia, Syria, Egypt in the time of the
Empire, Ur in the reign of Ibi-Sin, and of all the well-populated world
which is now known as the Near East, were instigated as a result of those
secret money creative processes known only to that class of persons who have
already been detailed as best as is possible out of the fragmentary evidence
available, to be controlling external trade out of the Mesopotamian plain.
Such manufacturies, trading to the ends of the known world, would have
drained south the silver of Greece, of Thrace, of Illyria, and Carpathia;
indeed from wherever it could be obtained, it would have flowed as against
settlement of trade balances, to Mesopotamia.
Consequently, by the time of the Assyrian assumption of control over Aram,
and Arabia, and Egypt during the first half of the first Millennium B.C.,
money, as being a creation of the god of the city toward the well-being and
good life of his people, had become a conception of which sight had been
almost completely lost.
It had come to be the silver injected into
circulation by private persons, who by then, in reality, if not so far as
went general appearances, through manipulation of that inverted pyramid of
ledger credit page entry money erected on the silver they claimed to hold in
reserve, as apex, had now completely usurped the essential power of the
temple: the creation and allocation of the unit of exchange.
Thus the total
design of the city which derived from the power of rejection or preferment
formerly exercised through the money creative powers of the god through king
and priesthood, fell into their hands, and where in earlier days a devoted
priesthood exercised its prerogative of preferment through money creation,
towards the people living a god-ordered and pious life, each man in harmony
with his neighbours, (57) those new international forces that now exercised
the reality of such rule from the counting houses, contemptuous of all
kingly and godly power as undoubtedly they were, but still needing such
power as front behind which they might shelter in order to better pursue
their nefarious purposes, spread hate and suspicion, each man of his
brother.
Secretly promoting the concept of "Permanent Revolution" as being most
suited towards the maintenance of their control, no sooner did stable and
natural god-ordered government come again, then, feverishly digging at its
roots, they tore it down. Out of break-up of family and home, out of lust
and drunkenness, out of the people living in disorder, and love giving way
to hate, they throve.
Where they saw signs of nobility and natural
aristocracy in living and thought, returning, financial preferment was
automatically withdrawn... He who was consumed with animal desires and
ignobility of purpose, was their man and eagerly their slave, and willing
betrayer of his brethren into what was planned for them by his master.
Even though certain priesthood continued to maintain vigorous temple
organizations long after the international control came about such as was
exercised by the great Babylonian financial houses, it may safely be assumed
that such temple organizations continued to exist only on account of their
deference to these new controllers of international exchanges...
In a
similar manner did the Egyptian priesthood defer to the power of Joseph as
Vizier to the Pharaoh; as a result of which, while all other lands in Egypt
were expropriated and returned to State ownership and administration, its
lands, such as appertained to the temples, were not touched in any way. (58)
Thus was a corrupted and short-sighted priesthood brought to acquiesce in
the enthronement of its enemies, and the enemies of the god it represented.
For Joseph clearly was agent of an external Money Power, and while the
Pharaoh leaned on him, he and that force behind him were clearly the
rulers... de facto if not de jure, they were in the place of the Pharaoh...
References
1. Heinrich Schlieman: Mycenae, pp. 157; 241; 242. Blom; New York, 1967
(reprint)
2. It is also interesting to note that amongst so much precious metal was
also found a large number of oyster shells and unopened oysters; also
weapons of obsidian. Although Heinrich Schlieman was convinced he had found
the grave of Agamemnon who had lead the heroes to before the walls of Troy,
the obsidian weapons and the oyster shells indicated that this grave
belonged to a much earlier age again than that of Agamemnon; an age perhaps
even previous to that in Which occurred those disturbances that brought down
into ruin so much of the ancient world, of which Sumeria, Crete, Mycenae,
Egypt and the Empire of the Hittites were but part. At the time of
Schlieman’s diggings at Mycenae, practically nothing was known of the
extensive use of shell money in ages long gone by, but as a result of the
extensive studies of recent years, particularly those of Paul Einzig
(Primitive Money; London 1949.), and of Mrs. Kingston-Higgins (A Survey of
Primitive Money, London; 1949.), it is quite clear that the oyster shells
found in the Mycenaean graves were reference days more ancient again than
those of Agamemnon and the Heroes. They belonged to a day already nearly
forgotten, when shells were money, and money, not only amongst simple
societies, but also amongst some highly organized societies was shells... In
the I Chiag, one of the earliest books of the Chinese, 100,000 dead shell
fish are given as the equivalent of riches. The famous dictionary of the
Emperor Kang Hsi (1662 A.D. - 1723 A.D.) based on the Shuo Wen of Hsu Shin
who died about A.D. 120, says pei denotes sea creatures that live in shells.
The character pei was included in most characters relating to wealth. It is
included in many such characters in the latest Chinese dictionaries.
3. Henry J. Breasted: P. 142.
4. F.W. Madden: Coins of the Jews, pp. 9-10.
5. Chron. I. xxxi. 25.
6. 2. Kings. V.5.
7. Isaiah. xlvi.6.
8. Job. xxviii. 15.
9. Genesis, xxiv. 22.
10. Genesis. xiv. 22.
11. Alexander del Mar: A History of Monetary Systems in Various States, P.
38.
12. James H. Breasted: A History of Egypt, pp. 97-98. Of the latter years of
the Old Kingdom remarks made by the scholarly writer of the articles on
Egypt in the Encyclopaedia Britannica (9th Edn.): " The sixth Dynasty was
probably a family of a different part of Egypt. It has left many records
which indicate less centralization at Memphis than those of earlier
Sovereigns; and mark the beginning of wars for predatory purposes and
extension of territory. This change is accompanied by a less careful style
of sculpture and less pains in the excavation of tombs as though the
Egyptians were gaining a larger horizon, or, it may be, exchanging religion
br ambition..."
However speculation more to the point might very well be as to whether or
not the Egyptians of this period were making an exchange of the deep harmony
in living as had obtained under the true and natural order under which they
had lived so long, for that disorder in life which necessarily derived from
the ferment known as "Progress"; one of the essential factors by which
private (and hence irresponsible) money creative power maintains its total
hegemony, once its control is established amongst a people.
13. Exodus. xii, 35. Exodus iii, 22. (King James Version).
14. Deuteronomy. xiv, 24-26. (King James Version)
15. Such a period may very well have been the several centuries preceding
the collapse of the caravan trade in Mesopotamia, in the 18th century B.C.
16. In the words of Professor F.W. Albright writing of the findings of his
studies relative to the caravan trade and the organization of the donkey
caravans of the twentieth and nineteenth centuries B.C.: "It became
particularly obvious that the previously enigmatic occupational background
of Abraham becomes intelligible only when we identify the terms Ibri
'Hebrew', (previously 'Abiru) with 'Apiru, later 'Abiru, literally 'person
from across or beyond'." (The Amarna Letters from Palestine; Cambridge
Ancient History; Vol. II, P. 17.)
17. T.B.L. Webster: From Mycenae to Homer, P. 22; London; 1964.
18. Jacquetta Hawkes: Dawn of the Gods, P. 226. New York; 1969.
19. Ibid.
20. T.B.L. Webster: From Mycenae Homer, P. 22.
21. John Chadwick: The Decipherment of Linear "B"; Cambridge; 1958
22. Henry J. Breasted: A History of Egypt, P. 214.
23. T.B.L. Webster: From Mycenae to Homer, P. 18.
24. Henry J. Breasted: A History Egypt, pp. 284-321.
25. Henry J Breasted: A History of Egypt, P. 217.
26. Ibid. P. 292.
27. According to J.B. Bury (History of Greece, P. 744; Random House edn.),
Alexander’s total army numbered no more than 30,000 foot and 5000 horse. The
Greek hoplite centre of Darius, against which was thrown the full weight of
the relatively puny Macedonian phalanx, itself numbered 30,000 men.
28. Encyclopaedia Britannica; 9th Edn.; Vol. XXII; P. 823.
29. Henry J. Breasted: A History of Egypt, pp. 293, 305.
30. Henry J. Breasted: A History of Egypt. P. 298. New York; 1956.
31. Ibid. P. 307.
32. Ibid. P. 304.
33. Ibid. P. 491.
34. Ibid. P. 485.
35. Ibid. P. 491.
36. Ibid. P. 529.
37. Kings. 10, 29.
38. Six hundred years later these cities of Arvad and Symyra seemed also to
have attracted the special attention of Assyria. In this case they were
friend and ally set up in opposition to the other Arameo-Phoenician cities.
39. Henry J. Breasted: A History of Egypt, pp. 97-98.
40. Stuart Piggott: Dawn of Civilization, P. 168. (New York; 1961) See also
P. 28 in T.B.L. Webster (Mycenae to Homer).
41. Colin Renfrew: The Emergence of Civilization, P. 448.
42. One of the most eloquent of his letters to the Pharaoh (Winkler’s
Translation of the Tel Amarna Letters. P. 181.) is as follows: "The King’s
whole land which has begun hostilities with me, will be lost. Behold the
territory of Shiri (Seir) as far as Ginti-Kirmil (Carmel), its princes are
wholly lost, and hostility prevails against me... as long as ships were upon
the sea, the strong arm of the King occupied Narahin and Kash, but now the
Khabiri (Habiru) are occupying the King’s cities. There remains not one
prince to my lord the King, everyone is ruined... Let the King take care of
his land, and... let him send troops... For if no troops come this year, let
the King send his officer to fetch me and my brothers, that we may die with
our lord the King."... While the Pharaoh and his court, drenched with
foreign influences, meditated at Tel Amarna upon the illusion of One World
and its alien gods, the One World that had been the reality created by the
sword of his more vigorous forebears, was crumbling to dust.
43. Jacquetta Hawkes: Dawn of the Gods, P. 209. (New York; 1968).
44. T.B.B. Webster: From Mycenae to Homer, P. 23.
45. W.F. Albright: Syria, the Philistines and Phoenicia; P. 31; Cambridge,
1966. Of the case of the identification of the date of destruction of Ugarit
through finding the last tablets placed in the oven, Professor Albright
writes: "Publication of the documents from the Tablet Oven excavated in
1954, provides a solid basis for dating the fall of Ugarit which must have
occurred within a very short time after the tablets were placed in the oven.
Two letters are particularly important: RS 18.38 and RS 18.40... The second
letter, written by an Ugaritic official to the king of Ugarit, says that he
is in Lawasanda (Lawasantiya), watching the approaches from the East
together with the king of Siannu. The latter 'has fled and ... was killed'."
46. Clearly the Danae were the Argives or Danaän of Homer’s Iliad. The
arrows of Apollo Shootafar that appear (Book I) to have driven the Danaän
back to their ships with great slaughter, could very well have been those of
the dreaded archers of Egypt under Pharaoh Merneptah; thus bearing no real
relation to the events at Troy except as was convenient to the poet as he
endeavoured to thread together fragments of a heroic tale out of the long
ago...
47. Henry J. Breasted: A History of Egypt, P. 469.
48. Sir William Mathew Flinders-Petrie; A History of Egypt, P. 256. London;
1897.
49. Diodorus Siculus (A. del Mar: History of the Precious Metals, P. 40)
gives striking picture of the horrors of marginal profit gold mining as
carried out with slave labour in ancient times in the Bisharee district of
Nubia (B.C. 50). "There are thus infinite numbers thrown into these mines,
all bound in fetters kept at work night and day, and so strictly surrounded
that there is, no possibility of their effecting an escape. They are guarded
by mercenary soldiers of various barbarous nations, whose language is
foreign to them and to each other, so that there are no means of forming
conspiracies or of corrupting those who are set to watch them. They are kept
to incessant work by the rod of the overseer, who often lashes them
severely. Not the least care is taken of the bodies of these poor creatures;
they have not a rag to cover their nakedness; and whoever sees them must
compassionate their melancholy and deplorable condition, for though they may
be sick, maimed or lame, no rest nor any intermission of labour is allowed
them. Neither the weakness of old age, nor the infirmities of females excuse
any from the work, to which all are driven by blows and cudgels; until borne
down by the intolerable weight of their misery, many fall dead in the midst
of their insufferable labours. Deprived of all hope, these miserable
creatures expect each day to be worse than the last, and long for death to
end their sufferings."
50. Leo A. Oppenheim: Letters from Mesopotamia; P. 57, Chicago 1967.
51. Criticising the prescription by Plato of community of wives, etc. for
the ruling classes of his Republic, Aristotle wrote: " It would be far more
useful applied to the agricultural class. For where wives and children are
held in common (and, as according to Plato, all love was to be
indiscriminate as between male, female, relation, or otherwise), there is
less affection, and a lack of strong affection among the ruled is conducive
to obedience and not to revolution." (The Politics. Book II. Ch. 4.).
Aristotle, as tutor and advisor to Alexander " The Great ", also as husband
of the niece of Hermias, banker-tyrant of Assos and Atarneus, had clearly
seen efforts towards practical application of these mischievous
"philosophies" of political conduct.
52. Leo A. Oppenheim: Letters from Mesopotamia, P. 30.
53. The relative poverty of the tombs of the 3rd Dynasty at Ur and the
pathetic substitutes for the precious metals with which the dead had been
adorned in earlier days, reveal the same withering up process that seems to
attack any state exposed over any length of time to the exactions of a
private money creative power maintaining itself by control of precious
metals and the merry-go-round of trade for trade’s sake.
54. Thus the way was paved for the Semitic city of Babylon to institute
itself as the leader of Mesopotamia. However, although politically
displacing and absorbing the original race of Sumer, it functioned as but
the prophet of Sumer, a mirror of the past giving renewed vigour to a
culture that had been evolved long ago. (A History of Babylon, pp. 2-3, L.W.
King.).
55. Albright: The Amarna Letters from Palestine. Cambridge Ancient History;
Vol. II; pp. 17-18.
56. The Moon God of Ur.
57. There are evidences of a piety and reverence in those ancient days, and
of longing by mankind for guidance from an unknown God, little different to
that piety to which the rise of Christianity gave revival, and which still
exists in homes that withstand the uproar of the age, and stand aside from
the destructive forces that seek to guide it. According to E.G.H. Kraeling
in Aram and Israel (P. 26):
In the scriptures of Sumeria we have :
Si dilini — "Sin (or Si) hath set me free." Si idri — "Sin is my help (in a
time of need)." Si aqabi — "Sin hath endowed (or bestowed upon me)." Sin or
Si being the name of the God
In the adoration of Nashu (or Nusku of the Assyrians) we have :
Nashu-dimri — "Nashu is my protection." Nashu gabri — "Nashu is my hero."
Nashu sagab — "Nashu is exalted." Nashu Qatari — "Nashu is my rock (of
salvation)." Nashu aili — "Nashu is my strength."
In the adoration of Adad we have :
Adad hutni — "Adad is my protection."
In the adoration of Ai (The Lunar Deity of the Arabians) we have :
Ia abba "Ai is my Father. " Ia Manis "Ai is my Right Hand." Alla sharu "God
is King! (and Lord of all!)
58. Genesis. Chapter 57, Verse 22. According to Michael Grant: (Jews in the
Roman World, P. 7), there are scholars who consider this Pharaoh to have
been Akhenaton.
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