THE BABYLONIAN WOE Chapters I-III
by David Astle
CHAPTER
I. "In the Beginning was the Word."
II. The Temple and the Counting House
III. "Per Me Die Regnant!"
(Cover)
"What is money? How did it get started? Who trusts it? Who has
the right to print it or mint it?
Is money here to stay and if not, what will take its place?
Has there ever been, or will there ever be, equality in the
possession of money or other assets?
David Astle has given a good part of his life in a study of these
questions and now puts the benefit of years of reading and research
into this book which is part history; part criticism and part
prophesy.
To get back to the first question. What IS money?
Some intelligent and some surprising answers are here."
Gordon Sinclair
(Cover back)
Newsletter of the Naval Officers Association
"One of our members, David Astle, has just finished writing one
of the most erudite, extensively researched and interesting books that
has ever come past this Editor...
One expects it would be of considerable interest to those with an
interest in the finances of the world, or in (very) ancient history,
going back to the time of "money's" beginning in Mesopotamia and
Egypt. The author is not gentle in dealing with the effect of the
major financial manipulators, whether they be nefarious Egyptian
Kings, politicians, the advisors to Charles of England, or even to
today's dubious banking-influence wielders.
His scholarly documentation of sources make it a textbook in its
own right."
(Front cover inside)
THE BABYLONIAN WOE
A study of the Origin of Certain Banking Practices, and of their
effect on the events of Ancient History written in the light of the
Present Day. David Astle
The author commenced a sea career at sixteen years of age. During
the following years he travelled most of the world's great trade
routes, and visited its principal ports. He served as an officer in
the Royal Navy during World War II, seeing service in many theatres of
war.
After he left the sea shortly after the conclusion of this war,
he informs me that it soon became clear to him that the British Empire
and everything he believed had been effectively upheld through the
achievement of victory, seemed to be literally melting away before his
eyes, and many unexplained factors, totally destructive of the "will-
to-be" of the European peoples, were apparently entering the current
of life.
In 1961, he was fortunate enough to encounter those who were
able to give him the information necessary to enable him to see in
what direction he should guide his studies so that he would be able to
better understand the true significance of this swiftly passing
sequence of apparently chance events... "THE BABYLONIAN WOE"is one of
the results of these studies.
In this scholarly work, true-born Anglo-Saxon David Astle,
stylist in the greatest traditions of his people, has presented to the
world a history of the effects of monetary mechanics in very ancient
times, with emphasis on Ethno-psychology. It illustrates how, even in
the earliest times of which written record remains, the days of
Babylonia or before, a so-called monetary science undoubtedly existed;
being then, as in today, never more than as instrument by which its
secret and cynical controllers wittingly influenced the destinies of
individuals, nations, and empires as to (temporary) glory or final
disaster.
I strongly recommend this important and well-documented work as a
most useful reference book; complementing any study of Economic or
Monetary history. It will be a great asset to learned societies, top
management, and self-teaching individuals in all parts of the world.
The bibliography is a MUST for any who seek to understand the
significance of monetary creation and emission in relation to human
destiny and ultimate fate.
Paul A Gwinner, PH.D.
(Back cover inside)
"The Babylonian Woe"
With these cryptic words Milton ended the sonnet he wrote in 1655
A.D. in which he expressed indignation and lament for the slaughter of
the Piedmontese Protestants by Emmanuel II, Duke of Savoy and
Piedmont, and which reads as follows:
"Avenge, O Lord, Thy slaughtered saints, whose bones
Lie scattered on the Alpine mountains cold;
Even them who kept Thy truth so pure of old,
When all our fathers worshipped stocks and stones.
Forget not: in thy book record their groans
Who were Thy sheep, and in their ancient fold
Slain by the bloody Piedmontese, that roll'd
Mother with infant down the rocks. Their moans.
The vales redoubled to the hills, and they
To Heaven. Their martyred blood and ashes sow
O'er all the Italian fields, where still doth sway.
The triple tyrant: that from these may grow
A Hundred fold, who, having learned Thy way,
Early may fly the Babylonian Woe.
In 1926, not long after the end of the 1st so-called "Great" War,
when the peoples of Europe were still endeavoring to stagger to their
feet once again, weak with loss of blood after four years of what
would be more properly called massacre, rather than war, Professor
Soddy, famous Atomic physicist turned "Economist" wrote (after
Milton):
Avenge, O Lord, they slaughtered sons, the Old
World shambles richening with their scattered bones;
Even them who kept thy truth,the scoffer owns,
When all our fathers worshipped gods of gold.
The generous quest of youth and science sold,
The surplus changed forever being loans,
The wreck-strewn shores and devastated zones
Of war forget not; resurrect their mold.
The flower the fire has mown, the roots decay,
The dust and ashes of the harvest sow
In every cot and croft where still doth sway
The money tyrant, that from these may grow
A hundred-fold, who having learned thy way
Early may fly the Babylonian Woe.
In this present work David Astle clarifies for all time the true
meaning of the words: "The Babylonian Woe." His own verse embodying
this term, also written in lament, is to be found on Page v.
----
(Page i)
THE BABYLONIAN WOE
"By using a mirror of brass, you may see to adjust your cap; by
using ancient times as a mirror you may learn to foresee the rise and
fall of empires." Emperor T'ai Tsung 627 A.D. - 650 A.D.
(Page ii)
The intellectual faculties however are not of themselves
sufficient to produce external action; they require the aid of
physical force, THE DIRECTION AND COMBINATION OF WHICH ARE WHOLLY AT
THE DISPOSAL OF MONEY, THAT MIGHTY SPRING BY WHICH THE TOTAL FORCE OF
HUMAN ENERGIES IS SET IN MOTION.
Augustus Boeckh; translated; The Public Economy of Athens, p7;
Book I, London, 1828
(Page iii)
THE BABYLONIAN WOE
A study of the Origin of Certain Banking Practices, and of their
effect on the events of Ancient History, written in the light of the
Present Day.
by David Astle
Published as a private edition.
Orders for this book and all communications to be addressed to:
Box 282, Station P, Toronto, Canada, M5S 2S8.
Printed by Harmony Printing Ltd.
(Page v)
Demoralized our men; small pride now left!
Two useless wars! With racial kith and kin,
In battle of our Gods were we then reft...
Yes, Those who steered the wasted years of strife
Brought to the true, in death the end.
Now few their ashes watch or tend...
Who then is left to stay our natural rule?
And who shall say to weakness: "No more show!"
You sheathe the sword? None but a wishful fool
Thinks thus! One world for us who were One World?
Alas! Our Gods are gone forever! So
Who then shall fight the Babylonian Woe.
PREFACE
Page vii
"For money has been the ruin of many and has misled the minds of
Kings." Ecclesiasticus 8, verse 2.
When I originally approached my study as best 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 Jastrows'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. Wooley 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 Kings'
"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 customs.
In all these 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 earlier days, the widespread character of these 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 media 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" (page ii) 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 needs; 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 a lack of
understanding of the importance of these matters; nor that there is
any special conspiracy of silence, even though there might indeed be
the temptation to arrive at such a conclusion.
(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.)
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 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 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 has 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 ancient city states of
Mesopotamia, of which, because of their records being preserved on
fire-baked clay, more is known than of more 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 is 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 assessment at cost per life, must have brought
relatively a very flood of silver into circulation of the cities of
the Near East.
Such flood off silver injected into 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, a god in
itself.
In its exercise, the fiat of the internationally minded group of
merchants and bullion brokers that arbitrarily dictated the exchange
value of such silver, being in actuality determination internationally
of the value of money, place such groups controlling silver exchanges
above and beyond local laws of the local god, and indeed conferred on
them the power to influence kingly appointment. It made of them the
servants of one god, a god above all gods; thereby somewhat relegating
the god whose order on the state warehouses as inscribed on clay by
the scribe or priest, had been the law governing exchanges, to the
place of their servant, their instrument...
"I have, however, kept before me as a guiding principle, in this
as in 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," wrote Professor
Rostovtsev, scholar and Economic Historian of renown.
(Mikhail I. Rostovtsev: "A Social and Economic History of the
Hellenistic World, p viii, Vol I, Oxford; 1941)
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 those successful
achievements, can be no decision more final. It is also certain that
the money accumulation mania injected by fame into the minds of
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, honour, and godliness, destroys equally as
another debilitating disease, and will surely and speedily drag any
people down to a degeneracy and decay... A great army could not be
more efficient in its power of destruction. 8
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 any organized state.
(Sarvepalli Radhaakrishnan and Charles Moore: "A Source Book in
Indian Philosophy" p219-220. Princeton; 1957)
Clearly in that day no less than 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 labour, 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 weapons
and essential materials of wear 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.
(Ancient Egyptian poem; Christopher Dawson: "The Age of the Gods"
p 148)
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 a benevolent force, are
the directives of a force which cannot but be described in any way but
as being wholly malevolent.
(For 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 to lose and little to
gain. [Suetonius: the Twelve Caesars II, 25.])
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 not 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 of the Indo-European peoples
whose diligent labours 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 and now are but a little way ahead.
(Much of this was predicted in the the "Revelation of St. John
the Divine.)
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
precious metals except with slave labour, 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 as 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 a 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 honourable 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 states who found meaningfulness and
tranquillity 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 heaven that could have been and
where all would be life, and light, and hope, but into such hell as to
escape from which men might gladly come to accept the idea of Mass
Suicide.
Bibliography: 131 citations
CHAPTER I: IN THE BEGINNING WAS THE WORD
Page 1
Every conclusion 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. It was parent to that acknowledged and
most obvious conspiracy such as exists today.
(According to the review of Tragedy and Hope, Dr. Carroll
Quigley; New York 1966, as contained in the Naked Capitalist published
by Leon Skousen, Salt Lake City 1970)
The whole notion of the institution of precious metals by weight
as the common denominator of exchanges 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.
As far back as Neolithic times, values (and by inference money)
were already expressed in terms of silver by weight at the time of the
Azug-Bau Dynasty at Kish in Mesopotamia (3268-2897 B.C.)
Page 2
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
that abstract monetary unit for 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 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 rules,
then it becomes quite clear that scarcity or plenty in money 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.
Page 3
Hence was able to develop that conspiracy against mankind most
exemplified by a continuous propaganda of hate against all authority.
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 Wooley, the excavator of Ur, the unit of
exchange in the 4th Millennium was the measure of barley. Salaries of
government officials of Hammurabai, King of Babylon, were assessed in
barley but paid in silver.
The notion of the numerous officials of Babylon waiting in line
to have silver cut off from the bullion bar, 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
classical scholars and numismatists would have us believe; and which
implied that the foreman and his laborers in ancient Rome also waited
in line to have a fragment of copper weighed out in order that their
wives might be able to go to the market to purchase the evening meal.
Page 4
Clearly the word silver in the texts means no more than the word
"Plata" in modern Spanish, or "Argent" in modern day French. These
words literally translate as silver, but as money, they may be
anything from a grimy tattered paper note, to a silver peso, to the
brass coin. Similarly, the word from the texts denoting silver may be
safely said to have meant that which passed for money, be it clay or
wood or class or leather or papyrus or stone.
(In his book "La monnaie dans l'antiquite" Francois Lenormant
commented "We have proof of the use of glass money in Egypt from the
beginning of the time of the High Empire.")
Thus 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, it was no major advance for those who
benefited most from this conception, namely the bullion brokers, money
changers and bankers, 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.
In the Age of Gods, Dawson remarks:
"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 there grew up in Mesopotamia a regular
money economy based on precious metals as standards of exchange."
Page 5
This information from Dawson is most illuminating; but of the
undertones, 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 presumed 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 held on deposit.
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.
According to Wooley, trade seemed to extend from the city of Ur
over the whole known world as far afield as Europe, being carried on
by means of letters of credit, bills of exchange, and "promises to
pay" (cheques), made out in terms of staple necessities expressed in
terms of silver at valuation of barley.
(On page 124 of his book Abraham (London 1936), Wooley comments:
"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.)
Page 6
The merchant loaned money to his customers, 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.
Thus, the caravaneer or traveling merchant gave credit. Whether
his own or that of the merchant for whom he was agent or directly from
the Ziggurat itself, it functioned as a form of foreign aid similar to
foreign aid today. Considering that the merchant 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 maintaining the steady working
capacity of the home manufacturies, and a contented people in
consequence.
Page 7
With the growth of silver in circulation, 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
able through the 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 who were the main sources of precious metals 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 as
the giver of all.
Page 8
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 Hammurabai Code.
According to Professor Bright, the Code of Hammurabai was but a
revision of two legal codes promulgated in Sumerian by Lipit-Ishtar of
Isin, and in Akkadian by the King of Eshnummua in 1950 B.C.
The severity of the penalty and the placing of this law so high
in the code leave 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 from the Gutim,
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 scholars do not appear to have paid any special attention
to this particular law, or to have attached 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.
Page 9
"If a man buys silver or gold or slave or ox or sheep or anything
else from a free man or has received them for safe custody without
witness or contract, that man is a thief; he shall be put to death."
The requisite witnesses and contract attesting to the true facts
of valuables on deposit would to some extent obviate the danger of the
goldsmiths creating receipts for valuables that did not exist.
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.
The severity of the penalty 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.
Page 10
At the time of the promulgation of the Law of Hammurabai, both
private property and private issued money seem to have been well
established. It is to be assumed that 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 private 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 as during
the last four hundred years in England.
In the time of Hammurabai, 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 bankers who
supplied the original "finances" out of his secret and costless money-
creative processes.
Money lending 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 had at that time by no means arrived at
that point where they might conspire to present complete defiance to
the gods and their appointed and install jackasses in the places of
the mighty, as too often was the case in the latter days.
CHAPTER II: THE TEMPLE AND THE COUNTING HOUSE
Page 11
Out of the vague shadows of war and power and peace emerged that
force known as Classical Greece. Much of the revitalization derived
from the increased availability of silver as a result of the expansion
of the mining industry due to the increasing use of tools of hardened
iron.
This flood of precious metals 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, the "Apiru"
who 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, 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.
(According to Professor W.F. Albright, "There was a large and
apparently increasing class of stateless and reputedly lawless people
in Palestine and Syria to whom the appellation "Apiru" was given. They
were a class of heterogeneous ethnic origin and spoke different
languages, often alien to the people in whose documents they appear."
Apiru must mean "dusty ones" from the fact that the bearer of the
designation trudges in the dust behind donkeys, mules and chariots.
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. Samuel Mercer refers to the use of the name "Habiru" at
Babylon in the times of Hammurabai. The secret societies of a group
known as "Haburah" seem to have existed beyond the times of the
destruction of Jerusalem by Titus.)
Page 12
If the god of such secret society or confederacy controlled
movements of silver bullion internationally, he might well be
contemptuous of all city gods other than himself, for when money
values were based on his silver in such international exchanges, then
he and his acolytes knew that all prosperity in the kingdoms depended
on him, and whether he ordained through his servants that silver
should be plentiful or otherwise; whether indeed there would be no
money and hardship, or plenty of money and prosperity.
In the latter days of declining temple power, prosperity would
also depend on whether rulers turned a blind eye to that privately
created ledger credit page entry money whose use the international
money changers were undoubtedly promoting as facilitation to exchanges
between select and secret groups of persons and so would strengthen
themselves and their one-God all-powerful, all omnipotent...
Page 13
The ruthless and stern edicts of such princes as Hammurabai of
Babylon, while perhaps effective in Babylon, would not avail in all
those cities 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 extirpate the source of this attack on kingly
power.
That close to the throne were those who secretly held in contempt
the god-king is clear from the following excerpt from Wooley in
respect of his discovery of the tombs of the kings of the IIIrd
dynasty at Ur:
"The tomb had been robbed just as the earth was about to be put
in; nobody would have dared 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 the crime and they could afford to be careless."
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. 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 without there having been a well planned conspiracy.
Page 14
When the robbery was effected, it is clear they were already
dead, there had to be connivance of certain persons in high places to
whom this great devotion was without meaning. Such gold and silver
would have been useless and a dangerous possession except to those to
whom it meant money and power internationally and by whom it could be
melted and rapidly transformed abroad.
The famous temple of Solomon was not only used as a treasury but,
as in Babylonia, as a bank. The arts of banking were 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 from the cruel debt slavery existing in
Babylonia during the 2nd Millennium. Apart from the firm laws in
respect to the taking of interest, the Jubilee of the 50th year
(Leviticus 24.II), if fully enforced, would render any efforts 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.
Page 15
The Greek sanctuary owed existence to similar forces that had
given rise to the temples of Mesopotamia and to the temple of Solomon.
Functioning in like manner, clearly it originated from those distant
days when the priesthood considered themselves as the direct
representatives of the gods on earth, the shepherds appointed to the
flock.
Page 16
The temple of each small city in Greece may have functioned as
did the great temples of the powerful city states of 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 cannot be accepted as that which created an exchange
amongst the common people of the city civilizations.
It is clear that local tribes such as the Bushmen of South Africa
have been conversant with the basic principles of money as pieces of
certain shell, cut according as tradition demanded.
Page 17
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 countries now devoid of elephants suggest either
wide range of movement or some form of exchange."
The graves of Sungir reveal similar mammoth ivory beads proven to
be 23,000 years old or more. During the old kingdom of Egypt when
"numberings" of all accepted as wealth and possession were taken every
two years, and therefore books kept, a most refined system of
distribution of surpluses and therefore creation of exchanges must
have existed. The connection between such system and the "scarabs"
seems to have been generally dismissed. That scarabs have been found
in their hundreds in places far removed from Egypt indicates
significance far removed from their use as ornaments.
The agents of Babylonian Money Power would themselves have
promoted establishment of the temple nucleus to the city state. It was
the form of government they understood best and they knew how to
control and subvert it 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 Federal Reserve Bank in 1913, two instances with which we
are most familiar, it penetrates right into the heart of the treasury,
so it was in that day.
Page 18
As amongst the original aristocracy of Greece would be little
enough sympathy for the smooth subtleties of those newcomers
originating from the countinghouses 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 the 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 lend themselves almost eagerly to any power with
sufficient front to offer them more than the god they represent, so it
was in that day.
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, too often during the last three hundred years, kingship
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 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.
Page 19
Thus, as the distant heir 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; even if that economic
power by which, as the expression of the benevolent will of the god,
it had controlled the total existence men, was now exercised by an
external and indifferent force, alien to Greek and with whom it
connived against its own adherents.
The temple of Apollo at Delos had become merely a front for the
economic purposes of a secret fraternity whose concern was money
changing, silver bullion and the slave trade.
Page 20
These persons had conducted their business in the shade of the
temple courtyards from ancient days as 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 the movements of bullion, the factor most of all giving rise to
instability and therefore so necessary to the full exploitation of the
people.
The island of Delos, although virtually infertile and without
special advantages such as natural harbors, due to gifts of pilgrims
visiting the temple of Apollo and the deposits of the cities,
"trapezitae" and leading citizens, became very rich; a great center of
trade and banking, and above all, a center for the great slave trade
from which almost none were safe.
(Plato was reputed to have been sold as a slave for 20 minae.)
Oskar Seyffert, in Dictionary of Classical Antiquities wrote:
"Delphi, Delos, Ephesus and Samos were much used as banks for
loans and deposits both by individuals and governments."
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 to take
care of the fiscal dealings of the temple and to whom was farmed out
the credit of the temple, must have fully understood that the
priesthood had betrayed their high calling. 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. By
maintaining the position of the priesthood, they maintained themselves
and their secret power for whatever they brought about, especially if
of evil, it may safely be assumed, the priesthood would be held
responsible.
Page 21
Hence the people never questioned the existence of the temple but
as the place where the will of god was exercised through his servants.
That it had come to function more as instrument in the capacity of
front for an international power concerned largely with money creation
and the control of the slave trade was something they never came to
fully understand. 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 but which international money creative
forces create the world's money in a given area.
Therefore, this economic power would not only derive from those
loans in precious metals but also from the fact that those very secret
fraternities understanding fully the principles of Ledger Credit Page
Entry Money, operated under it's 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;
Page 22
And equally known was how easily merchants could be trained to
make payments by cheque drawn on account consisting of supposed
deposits with a recognized banker. Thus no transfer of actual silver
need have been involved and what is now euphemistically described as
the fractional reserve system (a swindle indurated into a system!) was
operated. The enormous volume of exchanges 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-pot trade of Delos, especially in slaves,
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, 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.
Page 23
This flow of silver to Delos would have enabled Delos to
partially replace Athens during the 3rd century B.C. as the new center
from which international money power came to control the finances of
the Eastern Mediterranean. Professor Rostovtsev refers to a purchase
of grain in Delos by a Sinotes 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 suggests 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 Grecian cities as being
conducted by aliens are also verified by Rostovtsev. The question
therefore arises "What aliens?" Would they be members of the same
fraternity of men who were standing almost above mankind in their
manipulation of powers that not so long previously had been reserved
solely to the gods and exercised through a dedicated priesthood? Such
power being lost to kings forever when they permitted the institution
of accounting to a silver standard.
Page 24
The latter days of Delos and the Temple of Apollo when 10,000
slaves were shipped abroad in one day alone would certainly suggest
the existence 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 on 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 century in Northern
Europe, after the Macedonian conquests it became a custom in no way so
benign and herding of 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 stored in the
Acropolis at the beginning of the Peloponnesian War 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 between merchants within and 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 served to
take care of day to day expenses.
The Peloponnesian War ended no more than 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 at the time of the crossing of the Hellespon were 5000 -
7000 talents. This was the expenses of an army far from home and to
which little credit would have been available and most disbursements
would have been paid in solid metal.
Page 25
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. If all disbursements had been in
silver, it is doubtful if such a so-called reserve could have lasted
six months.
This silver was merely the foundation of that illusion that those
baked clay facsimiles of Greek coinages which circulated so well
between merchants and governments were redeemable in silver coin; just
as 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!
Page 26
On the subject of such fiduciary currencies in ancient times,
particularly Athenian, Francois Lenormant wrote:
"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 molds of silver and gold currencies
of various countries are frequently found in Athens.
The learned Sicilian Numismatist Antonio Salinas, during his stay
in Greece, collected a large number of these monuments, either as
originals or molds 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 as 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.
Francois Lenormant 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 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.
CHAPTER III: PER ME DEI REGNANT
Page 27
The city states of the rulers of Troy, Tyryns, Mycenae and cities
and states without number and of which not even the name or memory now
remains, too often, finally went down into smoking ruin before the
deluge of wild men, 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, his law alone, merely a device
of transferable numbers to assist and give order to the exchanges
amongst his people, this god-king 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 the
master miner's precious metal pieces. With such precious metals as
they stripped from the bodies of the living and dead in those cities
they had so gleefully sacked and put to sword, when peace came again,
they were able to purchase those items of luxury and obtain the finest
arms that skilled craftsmen could fashion.
Page 28
Rings and disks and tiny axes as found at Troy, all of gold, and
the four hundred round pieces of gold and the one hundred and fifty
golden disks found in the toms of Mycenae (dating from 1500 B.C.) all
clearly represented some form of exchange or money. Spirals of gold
adjusted to the small Aegean gold talent of 8.5 grams which he
classified as the Aegean gold unit imply the use of a gold unit in
international exchanges even at this early time.
(It is interesting to note that amongst so much precious metal
was also found a large number of oyster shells and unopened oysters.
At the time of Schlieman's diggings, nothing was known of the
extensive use of shell money in ages long gone by but it is quite
clear that the oyster shells belonged to a day already nearly
forgotten when shells were money. In the I Ching, one of the earliest
books of the Chinese, 100,000 dead shell fish are given as an
equivalent of riches.)
Page 29
Spiral or ring money during the reign of Pepi II, Pharaoh during
the 6th Dynasty, 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.
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
600 shekels of gold by weight paid by David for oxen of Ornan and the
6000 shekels of gold taken by Naaman on his journey to the King of
Israel do not imply money. Gold was generally employed for personal
ornamentation and for adornment of the temple.
It is therefore probable that a system of jewel currency or ring
money was in use.
Page 31
Stone weights were already marked with their equivalence in such
rings. 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.
Page 32
It would appear that the money used by the children of Jacob when
they went to purchase corn in Egypt was ring money. Their money is
described as "bundles of money" as verified in Deuteronomy "Then shalt
thou turn it into money and bind up the money in thine hand."
The Greek city state 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 armorers employed
by the bankers who already controlled trade and money creation in
those cities of the Ancient Oriental.
Page 33
The peasant king at Mycenae or Troy, for all his seeming rock-
like strength, 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. 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, though not 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." These persons 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.
Page 34
We must look to the professional caravaneers for widespread
dissemination of the knowledge of the possibilities of 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 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 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, control of values had long since been in
the hands of the silver bullion brokers and the money lenders and
bankers. Through bullion they controlled money and through money
creation on that bullion as base, they controlled manufacturers.
Page 35
Thus it seems that where the conception of money as to a silver
standard existed as at Ugarit and Alalakh, so also existed the private
manufacture of arms under methods of mass production. It is not
without significance that this early era of privately issued money and
consequent private industry, particular that devoted to arms
manufacture, was in certain areas so coincidental with the massive
movements of warlike peoples, and the collapse of ancient empires.
Conquering peoples needed the best arms The best arms were
obtainable from private industry; and private industry needed silver
or gold or labor which was slaves, in payment. Both were obtainable as
the result of war. Therefore, parallel, 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 control of that which most of
all designs industry and its accompanying slavery in one form or
another, namely, private money creative power.
Page 36
Controlling labor as they did through control of the slave trade,
they were in a position to have manufactured in some scale the finest
weapons for those rulers who collaborated with them and served their
best purposes. With such total money control, they were in a position
to withhold the best of 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.
Hydsos 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
indicating semi-mass production in these areas of chariot parts and
arms of various kinds cannot but suggest that it was from this region
that money power armed those restless people that may have inundated
Crete in earlier times and Egypt somewhat later.
The persistence of the thrust of Tahutmes III into these regions
would indicate no idle pointless advance but definite design towards
destroying the heart of the enemy, the elimination of his financial
and industrial centers.
Page 37
However, that both sides had equal access to the international
arms industry would be indicated by the spoil as won by Tahutmes
against the King of Kadesh amounting to 924 chariots and 200 suits of
armor.
It is very doubtful Tahutmes would have moved abroad without
careful organization and planning. To build his 1000 chariots was
needed the wood of Lebanon and Syria, the craftsmanship of Ugarit and
financial and industrial organization.
Page 38
Thus it would appear that money creative power had definitely
re-established some form of agency in Egypt. In agreement between
Tahutmes and Tyre 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 circulating
in Egypt indicates the nature of his concessions to that money
creative force which undoubtedly drove the world-wide trade of the
Phoenician cities. The gifts in silver bullion from the Hittites
indicate that they knew that which would be most welcome to the
Pharaoh.
By the time of Rameses III (1198-1167 B.C.), the true force
behind kingly rule had long ago been gathered up by those promoting
the conception of private ownership derived from that right these
persons had already arrogated to themselves to create and manipulate
the monetary unit, tangible or abstract.
Page 39
International money power of the day deemed it safe to locate its
most important industry, armaments, in the land of Egypt.
Ancient ways and morale gave way to foreign influences and 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 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.
Page 40
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 Egypt
after Tahutmes, although probably completely unaware of the extent of
the power of this same international force, obviously needed its good
graces when it came to obtaining those materials and weapons so
necessary for what in that time was modern warfare. It was not long
before international power penetrated the substructure of Egyptian
life and established its usual behind-the-scenes influence, if not
control, in much the same way as when the stone weights of the 6th
Dynasty indicating equivalence in metal money circulated in much the
same way as the clay facsimiles or as the paper notes of today that
formerly indicated a 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.
Page 41
The military might of those grim warriors of Mycenae continued to
grow and they clearly could be relied on to supply the master moneyers
with gold and silver and slaves. Therein these robber rulers, best
known from the Homeric sagas, were but the instruments by which the
mysterious worshipers of the anti-god, the controllers of the
extensive money creative force, unseen, but all-seeing, slowly
undermined the walls of the temple states of the ancient world so
finally and completely that little memory or record existed.
What, therefore, did the international money creative fraternity
of that day need from those states that clearly forbade their trade or
settlement as corrupters of all true order and peace in life and that
thus rejected their blandishments?
Page 42
What other than the plunder out of sack and ruin by those wildmen
they brought in from distant lands to North and to South. And to whom
they offered the women, gardens, 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, is not known; nor the story of
the ending. For as at Pylos and Ugarit too, in so many cases, the
flames were the final gesture of fate which made durable the clay
libraries and archives.
It is clear that the organization of all those Western and
Northern peoples in confederation against Egypt's Pharaoh Merneptah
(1236 B.C.) was not of haphazard design. All these nations known as
"The Peoples of the Sea" could not have been brought together together
as a fairly disciplined group without some more internationally wise
advisors. 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 his victory, Merneptah almost immediately turned his
attention to the peoples of the East. He paid special attention to an
Israel never previously referred to in Egyptian history.
Page 43
But who was who, or why, or what, little concerned that brain
center in Babylon or Ur or wherever it was. Out of death and
destruction was their harvest. The only reality was control of
precious metal. Out of death and destruction came the releasing 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.
(Diodorus Siculus (A. Del Mar: A History of Precious Metals)
gives a striking picture of the horrors of marginal profit gold mining
as carried out with slave labor in ancient times in the Nubia in
B.C.50:
"There are thus infinite numbers thrown into these mines, all
bound in fetters, kept a 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 at 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 labor 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 labors. Deprived of all hope, these miserable
creatures expect each day to be worse than the last and long for death
to end their sufferings.")
Further, as kingly rule weakened, with the increasingly
circulation of fraudulent receipts for precious metals supposedly on
deposit, this highly secretive interstratum of merchant classes
controlled by these monopolists of money through monopoly of control
of precious metal bullion would be able to finance much larger
manufacturing systems than had been possible from the highly
discriminating temple loans of earlier days.
Page 45
While the purpose of the temple was to cause the people to live
godly lives, the secret and private money creative power, being more
concerned with the opposite, the needs of the anti-god, the
destruction of the peoples lives, 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 would come an exhausted
and confused people, more ready to accept slavery. Corruption of the
priesthood, as in today, was the chief aim of the money conspiracy.
The international bullion controllers needed the connivance of
those corrupted temple officials who had lost sight of the meaning of
the god-given power of money creation which had been theirs. By the
time these temple officials were brought to enter into such
connivance, they would be past realizing or caring about the
destructive effects of their powers and purposes which lay in so
permitting private issuance of money amongst the people by way of
precious metals or receipts for such metals supposedly on deposit.
Page 46
With the growth of exchanges to a silver standard as would derive
from the circulation of false receipts issued against silver on
deposit, these men, 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 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 relating to war.
Those receipts representing the weight of silver which circulated
by custom or by law, as money, while accepted as money, were money.
Their cost to the money manipulators, bullion brokers, being but that
of the clay in the tablet and the scribes 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 in 2020 B.C., those agents of International Money
Power quickly concluded the work of destruction through liberalism and
permissiveness so that by 1900 B.C. the Sumerian had totally lost his
national and racial identity with no special allegiance to anything
other than "money."
Page 47
Such agents are shown by the general evidence of history to be a
class of dubious origins. These rascals who are raised up in a time of
national exhaustion by a triumphant money power, too often are
distinguished by a readiness to please those who it seems to them are
the masters.
The growing manufacturies of Mesopotamia, Syria, Egypt, were
instigated as a result of those secret money creative processes known
only to that class of persons controlling external trade.
Page 48
By the time of the Assyrian conquest during the first half of the
first Millennium B.C., money, as being the creation of the god of the
city toward the well-being and good life of his people, had become
silver injected into circulation by private persons who, by then,
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. The power of
rejection or preferment formerly exercised through the king and
priesthood fell into their hands, and where in earlier days a devoted
king exercised its preferment through money creation towards the
people's well-being, those international forces that now exercised the
reality of such rule from the counting houses, contemptuous of all
kingly and godly power as 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.
Page 49
Secretly promoting the concept of "Permanent Revolution" as being
most suited toward the maintenance of their control, no sooner did
stable government come again then, feverishly digging at its roots,
they tore it down. Out of the break-up of family and home, they
throve. 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 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 of the Pharaoh. For Joseph was clearly an 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.
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