The Babylonian Woe

by David Astle

  History over these last three thousand years particularly, has largely been the interweaving of both a witting, and an unwitting distortion of the truth, with all the inevitable consequences which have been expected[6] and now are but a little way ahead. Kings largely became the mouthpiece and sword arm of those semi-secret societies that controlled the material of money as its outward and visible symbols came to be restricted to gold, silver, and copper. The fiat of the god in heaven which had been the decisive force behind that which brought about an equitable exchange, was replaced by the will of those classes controlling the undertones of civilization, leaders of the world of slave drivers, caravaneers, outcasts, and criminals generally, such as was to be discerned on the edges of the ancient city civilizations, and followed the trade routes between them. The instrument of this will was precious metal, whose supply was controlled by the leaders of these classes through their control of the slave trade, since mining was rarely profitable in the case of the precious metals, except with slave 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 was the will of the benevolent god of the city, had been made absolute by sowing in the minds of men over the thousands of years, the idea of such metals having a specially high value relative to other goods and services being offered for exchange; indeed that they were veritable store house of value.

  The law of the ruler previously exercised towards the well being of the people in that they might live a good and 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 state 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 the heaven that could have been and where all would be life, and light, and hope, but into such a hell as to escape from which men might gladly come to accept the idea of Mass Suicide.

  My sincere acknowledgements are due to:

  1. Professor Fritz Heichelheim, and Sijthoff International Publishing Company, Leyden, for their very kind permission to use the short extracts from Professor Heichelheim’s work: An Ancient Economic History.

  2. Professor W.F. Albright, and Cambridge University Press for their very kind permission to use the short extracts from Professor Albright’s work The Amarna Letters from Palestine; the same being found in Volume II of the Cambridge Ancient History.

  3. G.R. Driver and John C. Miles, and the Clarendon Press, Oxford, for their very kind permission to use the rendering of Hammurabai’s Law No. 7, as given by G.R. Driver and John C. Miles in their joint work: Ancient Codes and Laws of the Near East.

  4. Dr. T.B.L. Webster and Messrs. Methuen Publications for their very kind permission to use the short extracts from Dr. Webster’s work: From Mycenae to Homer.

  5. Sir Charles Leonard Woolley and Messrs. Faber & Faber Ltd. for their very kind permission to use the short extracts from Sir Charles Leonard Woolley’s work: Abraham.

  6. Sir Charles Leonard Woolley and Messrs. Ernest Benn for their very kind permission to use the short extracts from Sir Charles Leonard Woolley’s work: Excavations at Ur.

  7. Christopher Dawson & John Murray Publishing House for their kind permission to use an extract from Christopher Dawson’s work: The Age of the Gods.

  8. Dr William Langer and The Houghton Mifflin Company for their very kin permission to use the short extracts from the Encyclopaedia of World History.

  9. Dr. Charles Seltsman and the Associated Book Publishers for their very kind permission to use the short extracts from Greek Coins.

  My sincere acknowledgements are also due to all those friends and acquaintances who in any way have assisted me in the present work.

  In The Beginning Was The Word

  Every conclusion arrived at as a result of study of the fragments of information available in respect to money and its creators in the world of the Ancient Civilizations, indicates the existence of a far reaching conspiracy in respect to monetary issuance influencing the progression of man’s history in the earliest times of which written record exists. It is also outstandingly clear that it was parent to that acknowledged and most obvious conspiracy such as exists today.[7]

  The whole notion of the institution of precious metals by weight as common denominator of exchanges, internationally and nationally, cannot but have been disseminated by a conspiratorial organization fully aware of the extent of the power to which it would accede, could it but maintain control over bullion supplies and the mining which brought them into being in the first place. Clearly such notion had originally come into being during that historically distant period when first of all free silver began to be extensively used as a convenient and highly portable commodity in settlement of balances outstanding in foreign trade; certainly as far back as Neolithic times. This fact was indicated by the evidence existing that values (and by inference money) were already expressed in terms of silver by weight at the time of the Azag-Bau Dynasty at Kish in Mesopotamia (3268-2897 B.C.); although in a sense perhaps narrow and strictly national.

  According to tablets unearthed recording a sale of land, the sellers were known as “The eaters of the silver of the field.”[8] This expression clearly showed a connection between the conception of money as an abstract unit in circulation, and silver, the tangible material on which the symbols of this money were later recorded. Such silver would then be valued according to the ancient customs of the international trade routes which were manifested in the rules of the travelling merchants who controlled these routes; these rules being established towards the better regulation of exchanges between themselves.

  In other words, as a result of the establishment of the custom of settlement of balances in external trade by silver bullion by weight, it seems that a system of values had grown up in the cities of Mesopotamia, over what period of time it would be impossible to say for sure, in terms of those accepted values of definite weights of silver bullion in such external trade, relative to the staples of life: barley, dates, etc.

  That sales are recorded in the 4th Millennium B.C. means that even at that time there was a clear conception of the significance of the abstract monetary unit, which is in itself an integral part of the law structure of any state, for such sales were in terms of money. The true meaning of such a concept being largely incomprehensible to most even as in this day, except they were the truly initiated, those controlling the internal exchanges, namely the priesthood and scribes, might well be excused if they early fell into the error of expressing values in terms of the standard of values in international trade. This serious error brought about finally, not only the collapse of that power through whose medium the god kings were best able to serve their peoples, but also as a further consequence, the collapse and fading of the meaning and benevolent purpose of the god kings themselves.

  With silver bullion controlled by an international and conspiratorial minded group, as indeed it is obvious it must have been, considering the main sources of silver supply as being far away from those centres of civilization whose money depended on it and yet with people
coming to equate money, in actuality the law of the ruler, with value according to the law created in the exchanges by the custom of the use of that same privately controlled commodity, then it becomes quite clear that scarcity or plenty in money, whatever way it was evinced in the circulation, depended on the manipulations internationally of that group controlling the distribution of precious metal bullion, and the plenty or scarcity they created, as was convenient to them.

  If there was no silver, why then! there was no money, and prices fell. Substitute gold for silver, and history seeming to fast repeat itself, we have the condition of the European world of the last 2000 years. If there was no gold, Why then again! There was no money!

  Hence was able to develop that conspiracy against mankind most exemplified by a continuous propaganda of hate against all authority: in pre-antiquity and antiquity against the many city gods, and in relatively modern times against the kings that rose out of the ruins of that which had been Rome.

  As those controlling totally the economic life of a state through monetary creation and emission, must have felt that kings and gods were more of a nuisance than anything else, the instigators of this conspiracy in whatever place and era, obviously were those who first did the business of bankers; the controllers of values, and consequently the economic life of the states wherever the precious metal standard was used.

  According to Sir Charles L. Woolley, excavator of the city of Ur in Southern Mesopotamia, the unit of exchange in the days of the great city states of Mesopotamia of the third and fourth Millennium B.C., and which served, therefore, as common denominator of the value of goods and services, was the measure of barley. While however pointing out that gold and silver came to pass from hand to hand, with a value dictated by their value with reference to the constant value of a measure of barley, he asserts that the salaries of government officials at the time of Hammurabai (about the beginning of the second millennium B.C.) were assessed in barley but paid in silver, such silver having neither stamp nor government guarantee.[9]

  The notion therefore herein implied, of the numerous officials and labourers of Hammurabai of Babylon waiting in line to have silver cut off from the bullion bar, and weighed as against pay for the day, or the week, or the month, as the case might have been, although offered with sincerity, patently is as erroneous as that conception of the every day use in the exchanges of the aes rude in a similar way, in which the classical scholars and numismatists would have us believe; and which implied that the foreman and his labourers in ancient Rome of the days of the kings also waited in line after their day’s labour, say, on the Circus Maximus, to have a fragment of copper cut off and weighed in order that their wives might be able to go to the market to purchase the evening meal.[10]

  Clearly the word silver in the texts means no more than the word Plata in modern day Spanish, or Argent in modern day French. These words literally translate as silver, but as money which they are most used to indicate, they may be anything from grimy tattered paper note, to a silver peso, or to the brass coin which may function as divisible thereof. Similarly the word from the texts denoting silver may be safely said to have meant that which passed for money, perhaps exchangeable in the temple or the money shops for silver, but being in itself anything which circulated, denoting multiple or divisible of the unit o exchange; be it clay or wood or glass[11] or leather or papyrus or stone.

  Thus, as was the case in Sumeria indeed, long, long before the time of the great Hammurabai 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,[12] it was no major advance for those who benefited most from this conception, namely the bullion brokers and their satellites, the money changers or barkers, to find a weak king and a corruptible priesthood, who could be brought to lose sight of the total control of the city which was the right of the god they served; and who might turn a blind eye to those other more sinister activities by which the power of the Ziggurat was further undermined.

  Of those time Dawson in the Age of the Gods remarks:

  “Originally the state and the temple corporations were the only bodies which possessed the necessary stability and resources for establishing widespread commercial relations. Temple servants were sent on distant missions, provided with letters of credit which enabled them to obtain supplies in other cities. Moreover the temple was the bank of the community through which money could be lent at interest and advances made to the farmer on the security of his crop. Thus in the course of the 3rd millennium there grew up in Mesopotamia a regular money economy based on precious metals as standards of exchange, which stimulated private wealth and enterprise and led to real capitalist development. The temple and the palace remained the centres of the economic life of the community but by their side and under their shelter there developed a many sided activity which found expression in the guilds of the free craftsmen and the merchants, and the private enterprise of the individual capitalist.”[13]

  This information from Christopher Dawson with the translation of the tablets before him, and every assistance no doubt from those students in that particular field, is most illuminating; but of the undertones of those highly significant years in man’s period upon this earth, he seems to see little, or he just does not choose to speculate as to their nature.

  Principal amongst those undertones, and quite possibly the force that brought these changes about, may safely be assumed to be the secret and private expansion of the total money supply effected primarily by the issuance into circulation of false receipts for silver and other valuables supposedly being held on deposit in thief proof vaults, or otherwise, for safe custody.

  Such receipts would be accepted by merchants instead of the actual metal, and would function as money, and would be an addition to the total money supply, though not understood as such by the rulers who would thus easily be inveigled into lending their sanction to seemingly harmless practices; or at least into turning a blind eye; especially if priesthood and scribes so advised.

  With that growth of the conception of private wealth which would automatically follow on the acceptance of the idea of buying and selling, or perhaps better put, preceded such idea of buying and selling as according to a silver standard internationally accepted, such involvement of priesthood and scribe would not be hard to achieve. According to Sir Charles Woolley, trade seemed to extend from the city of Ur, particularly during the so-called IIIrd. Dynasty, over the whole known world which certainly reached as far afield as Europe[14] being carried on by means of letters of credit, bills of exchange, and “promises to pay” (cheques), made out in terms of staple necessities; of life expressed in terms of silver at valuation of barley (probably at a given season of the year).[15]

  There also is no doubt that the merchant as representative of the god of the city from which he journeyed, loaned money by which his customers were able to make their purchases, such money merely being an abstraction indicated by the figures on the clay tablet; in earlier days being backed by the will-force of the god of the city, and in latter days by the promises of silver issued by one who at that time would be the equivalent of today’s banker, and who, should such need arise, such as would be occasioned by the temple withdrawing its sanction or permissiveness towards his activities would be able to partially back his self-created abstract money which was the reality of such promises, with actual silver.

  Thus the caravaneer or travelling merchant gave credit. Whether his own or that of the merchant for whom he was agent, or direct; from the Ziggurat itself, dwelling place of the god, it functioned as a form of foreign aid similar to the foreign aid of today.

  Considering that the merchant in earlier times operated solely with the credit of the temple that raised him up, while the temple remained supreme, such foreign aid was instrument of state policy, maintaining the servility of lesser states, while at the same time maintaining the steady working cap
acity of the home manufactures, and contented people in consequence. The classes of the dominant power were content that the manufacturies gave them daily labour, and the classes of the subordinate power were able to buy the luxuries they craved, and the necessities they needed as against money deducted from the credits loaned by the dominant power. Repayment of these credits, as in today, was made by way of return shipment of raw materials such as were needed for the manufacturies of the dominant state. That such raw materials were assessed in value as according to the international value of silver related to the national value of barley in the dominant state seems most likely.

  However it is clear that with the growth of silver in circulation between private persons, and between private persons and states, as now would become an inevitability, that which had been total economic control from the gods through his servants in the Ziggurat, was bypassed, and merchants were now able to deal privately using their own credit, or powers of abstract money creation. They were also able, through their control of distant mining operations, to afflict a previously dedicated priesthood with thought of personal possession; and through the control of the manufacture of weapons in distant places, they were able to arm warlike peoples towards the destruction of whosoever they might choose.

  Those merchants of whatever race they may have been, who voyaged to the cities of Sumeria from places as far distant as the great cities of the Indus valley civilization known today as Mohenjo-Daro and Harrapa, as is clearly demonstrated by the Sumerian seals found at Mohenjo-Daro[16] and the seals from Mohenjo-Daro found at Ur,[17] and who were without a doubt one of the main sources of precious metal supply in Sumeria,[18] came to realize that they could actually create that which functioned as money with but the record incised by the stylus on the clay tablet promising metal or money. Obviously, as a result of this discovery which depended on the confidence they were able to create in the minds of the peoples of their integrity, provided they banded themselves together with an absolute secrecy that excluded all other than their proven and chosen brethren, they could replace the god of the city himself as the giver of all. If so be they could institute a conception of a one god, their god, a special god of the world, a god above all gods, then not merely the city, be it Ur or Kish or Lagash or Uruk, but the world itself could be theirs, and all that in it was. A strange dream! One whose fulfilment they never really expected!