The Babylonian Woe

by David Astle

  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, which same law was undoubtedly intended as a preventative to this sickness in society, which, even at that day, may very well have been the cancer that destroyed much that has been before.

  According to Professor Bright, the Code of 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 during the period of the breakup of that power formerly wielded by the God at Ur, that is, at about the same time that Ur was sacked by the Elamites in 1950 B.C., and Amorite and Elamite political power was established over Northern and Southern Mesopotamia.[19] Both of these codes are well before the Code of Hammurabai, and are evidence of the latter being but a revision of law codes existing in the days of UR-NAMMU, or before, UR-NAMMU being that most outstanding ruler who reigned from 2278 B.C. to 2260 B.C. during the third dynasty at Ur.[20]

  The severity of the penalty and the placing of the law so high in the code leaves little doubt that it was directed against an evil that was by no means new, and, who knows, may have been one of the deep seated causes of the invasions that devastated Ur, both from the Gutim,[21] the Elamites, the Amorites, and the Hittites; for no doubt of old, just as today, Money Power was as busy arming the enemies of the people amongst whom it sojourned, as that people themselves.

  While the scholars do not appear to have paid any special attention to this particular law, or to have attached to it any special significance, its true intent and purpose is clear to anyone conversant with the origins of private money issuance in modern times, as indicated by the familiar story of the goldsmith’s multiple receipts.[22]

  If a man buys silver or gold or slave, or slave girl, or ox or sheep or ass or anything else whatsoever from a [free] man’s son or a free man’s slave or has received them for safe custody without witness or contract, that man is a thief: he shall be put to death.[23]

  The requisite of witnesses and contract attesting to the true facts of valuables on deposit, would to some extent obviate the danger of the goldsmiths, silversmiths or traders, involved in a transaction, creating receipts for valuables that did not exist, in safe custody or otherwise. It was equally possible in ancient times as much as in modern times to circulate such receipts as money lawfully instituted.

  Provided a corrupted priesthood turned a blind eye to this practice and loaned their sanction thereto, such fraudulent money or, in the misleading euphemism of a corrupted world, “credit,” would be equally effective in foreign markets as in the home markets, if not more so because of the greater danger of exposure of the criminal nature of this activity that would undoubtedly exist in the home market.

  The severity of the penalty required by this Law Number 7 of the Code of Hammurabai, exercised by a strong and dedicated ruler, would have been an absolute deterrent to such practice that since that time, and more especially in modern times since the 16th Century A.D., has become so indurated to a fixture. Its results are to be seen on every hand, not to speak of the final result which though not yet arrived, else this book would not be in existence, is clear.

  The Laws of Hammurabai, King of Babylon, just the same as those more ancient codes of which they were revision, were directed towards the regulation of life of nobleman, as well as freeman, merchant, or slave, and no special concessions were given to either of these stations in life, even if such stations in life were accepted as integral part of the structure of the state life. Euphemistic and misleading words such as “businessman” or “financier” had not yet, it seems, been planted in the vocabulary. By and large, the king still ruled in absolute, and his law giving justice to all was carved in stone, and placed in the market place for the highest or the lowest to understand clearly the rules by which he must live. Merchants were unequivocally described as such, and law ruthlessly prescribed severe penalties for their corrupt conduct. They were kept in place as a caste, not of the highest order, and, it would appear, somewhat similar to the Hindu system, they served the priesthood and nobility, and were conceded a place in life as an instrument whereby the people generally might live a better life.

  The Code of Hammurabai, revision of more ancient codes as it was, does not reveal any particular regard towards this caste of persons. However, as by the time of its promulgation, both privet property and privately issued money seem to have been well established, it is to be assumed that the ignorant of noble caste or otherwise, were already deferring to that magic known as money, in much the same manner as they did at all times through latter history when faced with the necessity of compromise with privet money creative power, whose activities had been permitted by foolish kings, and to whom such kings had even committed the finances of the realm. Such was most clearly illustrated during the last four hundred years in England; perhaps more so than at any other time in recorded history.

  In the time of Hammurabai, King of Babylon, matters were by no means as desperate as they are today. Merchandising was by no means regarded as an end in itself, and a means whereby it was the right of ignoble men to proffer any corruption to the people so long as it made “profit” for them, and “interest” for the so-called barker who supplied the original “finances” out of his secret and costless money-creative processes. Money lending and merchandising as it is known, still had not come to be a means whereby man-hating and therefore corrupt secret societies might seek to overturn the tree of life itself by way of sowing the seeds of decay in that true and natural order of life which had been ordained from time immemorial.

  Private money creators and the merchants their satellites, had at that time by no means arrived at that point when they might conspire to present complete defiance to the gods and their appointed, and as a small matter in the way of their business, install jackasses, or whatever might be, in the places of the mighty, as too often was the case in the latter days.

  The Temple And The Counting House

  Out of those vague shadows of war and power and peace and settlement of ancient strife that drifted out of the faded memory of man’s former abiding on the Anatolian plateaus and throughout the Near East as it is so described by us, emerged that force known as Classical Greece; a force which may be said to principally derive from the union of the essential forward thrust of the re-vitalized energies of the god-ruled city, and the political structure by which the cattle raising men of the Indo-European warrior nations had been governed.

  Much of the revitalization of such energies derived from increasing availability of silver as a result of the expansion of the mining industry due to the increasing use of tools of hardened iron, and the consequent expansion of the volume of money in circulation amongst the peoples, abstract, or as now obtained, of actual pieces of silver of known weight and fineness carrying the identifying mark of the emitter.

  This flood of the precious metals to which the new methods of mining gave rise, with the consequent strengthening of the shift of money creative, or total power center, from the god and the temple, to what some might describe as the devil and the counting house, enabled those conspiratorial groups who undoubtedly controlled precious metal bullion supplies, perhaps at this stage alliance between the priesthood of certain cities whose god was not getting fair acknowledgment, and those mysterious people, the Apiru, who, concerned with the carrying trade between the cities as is clear,[24] seemingly belonged to no city, yet were to be found in them all, to set up a supra-national god as the fount of their secret power. He would be a god who should be contemptuous of all other gods; living in no idols, he would be in all, and over all; unseen, but all pervading.

  If the god of such secret society or confederacy controlled movements of silver bullion internationally, he well might be contemptuous of all city gods other than himself, for when money values were based on the exchange value of his silver in such international exchange
s, then he and his acolytes, whoever they were, knew that all prosperity in the kingdoms of those most ancient times depended on him, and whether he ordained through his servants that silver should be plentiful or otherwise; whether indeed there should be no money and hardship, or plenty of money and prosperity.

  Also it may be assumed in the latter days of the declining temple power, prosperity or otherwise would also depend on whether rulers of such kingdoms and cities turned a blind eye, as it were, to that privately created ledger credit page entry money whose use the international money changers were undoubtedly promoting as a facilitation to exchanges between select and secret groups of persons. It would be completely external to the money creative power of the temple even if clandestinely linked thereto, and so would strengthen themselves and their one-God, all-powerful, all omnipotent.

  The ruthless and stern edicts of such princes as Hammurabai of Babylon, previously quoted, while perhaps effective in Babylon, would not avail in all those cities or states to which the money changers undoubtedly carried their arts, especially if they were not subject to the rule of Babylon. Who knows to what extent the seizure of Ur by Hammurabai was the result of his determination to totally extirpate the source of this attack on kingly power, undoubtedly sanctioned, if not connived at by a cynical priesthood who were largely the rulers, in this most ancient city. That close to the throne and therefore the god himself, were those who secretly held in contempt the god-king, and to whom the utter devotion of the people, even unto death, was of no meaning, is clear from the following excerpt from Sir Charles L. Woolley in respect to his discovery of the tombs of the kings of the IIIrd dynasty at Ur:

  “When we dug away the filling we found that in the upper part of the blocking of the door of each of the tomb chambers, there had been made a small breach just large enough for a man to get through; the dislodged bricks were lying in front of the door covered by the clean earth imported for the filling. The tomb had been robbed, and obviously just as the earth was about to be put in; nobody would have dared to rob them when the pit was still in use, nor, if such sacrilege had been done, would the bricks have been left scattered on the floor and the breach unfilled; the robbers must have chosen their moment when the inviolable earth would at once hide all traces of their crime and they could afford to be careless.”[25]

  According to the description of the burial scene by Charles L. Woolley on page 72 of Excavations at Ur, on the ramp leading down to the king’s tomb, would have lain the bodies of those who had elected to accompany their Lord into the regions beyond, in the order in which they had lain down to die; for death was obviously their wish and intention. It would have been almost impossible for such carefully timed robbery to have taken place over the bodies of those who would be amongst the first ladies of the court and certain officials, military and otherwise, without there having been a well planned conspiracy; for it was clear, dressed as they were in their finest clothing of crimson and gold, they had gladly and voluntarily offered themselves as company and comfort to their god-king at the commencement of that eternal journey which was his heavenly home. Testimony of their willingness existed in the lethal cup still clutched in their long decayed hands[26] as they lay before his tomb in their last poisoned sleep.

  As, when the robbery was effected, it is clear they were already dead, there had to be the connivance of certain persons in high places to whom this great devotion was without meaning. Additionally, such gold and silver would have been a useless and dangerous possession[27] except to those whose lives so far as ordinary men were concerned were secret from first to last; such as to whom it meant money and power internationally, and by whom it could be melted and rapidly transferred abroad.

  Speculating on the functions of the famous temple of Solomon, similar to the temples of Egypt and the Sumerian city states, although according to professor Paul Einzig little information exists as to how the evolution of the monetary system of the Jews, prior to the adoption of coinage, affected the Hebrew economic system or its price levels, it seems that this temple in the earlier days was not only used as a treasury, but, as in Babylonia, as a bank. Thus it received money on deposit (for safe keeping).

  Professor Einzig informs us that the gold lavishly adorning the temple for decorative purposes, existed at the same time, as a monetary reserve. When Hezekiah had paid a tribute of three hundred talents of silver and thirty talents of gold to the king of Assyria (around 700 B.C.), he “cut the gold from the doors of the Temple of the Lord and from the Pillars;” (II Kings; 18, 16).[28]

  The arts of banking were, however, in no way as developed as they were in Babylonia and Assyria. Amongst the ‘Apiru,’ undoubtedly confederates of the Israelites in later times, were clearly many refugees[29] from the cruel debt slavery existing in Babylonia and its outposts during the 2nd Millennium B.C., and later. Apart from the firm laws in respect to the taking of interest, the Jubilee of the 50th year (Leviticus 25.II), if fully enforced, would render any effort to create monopoly ineffective.

  Thus it can be seen that the God in his holy shrine ruled in the same way in that ancient Hebrew kingdom, so much better known to most than perhaps the temple cities of ancient Sumeria; many of which, until relatively recently, were not even names, and were no more than faintly discernible mounds on the desert.

  The Greek sanctuary owed existence to similar forces that had given rise to the temples of Mesopotamia and to the temple of Solomon above mentioned. Functioning in like manner, in modified form, clearly it originated from those distant days when the shrine of the mother goddess of the cities of the Anatolian plateau and the Persian highlands such as Catal Huyuk,[30] Hacilar, Dorak, Susa, etc., was the point from which the people drew spiritual guidance, and the nucleus around which these human accretions gathered in ancient times. These shrines gave force to those mysteries whose existence and purpose towards the continuity and good in life, drew the devotion of all. The Temple of Artemis at Ephesus, the Temple of Aphrodite at Corinth, the Temple of Athene at Athens, all obviously owed their origin to the ancient worship of the Mother Goddess who, through the wonder and urge in her body, consumed the whole life force of man. The controllers of the healthy continuance of life in these cities were a priesthood who considered themselves as the direct representatives of the goddess on earth, the shepherds appointed to the flock.

  The temple states that existed to a relatively late date such as those of Cappadocia, were indeed the direct projection forward into time of this tradition of government of the city by the goddess in her holy shrine, as much as were those of the city states of early Sumeria. In Greece too, in earlier times, such rule existed beyond much doubt, and during that period when Cretan civilization extended to the mainland, and when power stemmed from the halls of Cnossus, and the mystic place of mythology where once upon a time lived the Minotaur, it would be an absolute certainty. It would not bear much difference to those systems of god control by which all those rulers of the Ancient Orient[31] had governed, and which had guided the calm and blessed procession of the peoples through time and under the sun.

  The temple of each small city state in Greece during the earlier days of Greek industry may have functioned to some extent as did the great temples or ziggurat of the powerful city states of Sumeria of much earlier days, and money, that is the law controlling exchanges as to a common denominator of values, may have come into existence as entry in the temple ledger, although how represented in the circulation does not seem to be clearly known. The notion of exchanges being conducted in terms of cattle, one animal representing the unit, even if having existed in large scale business in ancient times of the wandering Indo-European cattle raising tribes of the Scythian plains, cannot be accepted as that which created an exchange amongst the common people of the city civilizations. True, the word for cattle may have continued in some areas to have been used to indicate money, but, as previously pointed out, certainly bearing no more reference to cattle than does the French word Argent, or the Spanish word Pla
ta bear reference to silver in a context where money is definitely referred to.

  It is clear that local tribes, such as the Bushmen of South Africa,[32] the natives of Melanesia and Micronesia,[33] whose way of life obviously derives, with little change, from the way of life of the races that once occupied South China, Annam,[34] India, and Ceylon, in the very ancient times of the tertiary ages previous to the ice ages, long since have been conversant, with the basic principle of money. In their case money was an abstract unit circulating amongst the people with tangibility evinced by pieces of certain shell, cut according as tradition demanded; and of value deriving from custom, which, in such societies, is law.

  Therefore it may reasonably be expected that the intelligent Indo-Europeans from whom stemmed the Greeks, were equally conversant with such principles; even if later they came to forget them. According to the Cambridge Ancient History: “Ivory beads in country now devoid of elephants suggest either wide range of movement or some form of exchange.”[35]

  When the Cambridge Ancient History speculated as above that the ivory beads of the Solutrean deposits of Northern France represented some form of exchange medium, the graves of Sungir which reveal similar mammoth ivory beads, proven to be 23,000 years old or more, had not been opened[36]. During the Old Kingdom in Egypt and during the earliest years of the cities of Babylonia, when “numberings” of all accepted as wealth and possession, were taken every two years, and therefore books kept,[37] a most refined system of distribution of surpluses and therefore creation of exchanges, must have existed. The connection between such system and the scarabs[38] in the case of Egypt, and the seals in the case of Mesopotamia, seems to have been generally dismissed. The fact that the scarabs have been found in their hundreds in places far removed from Egypt, from Palestine, to Crete, to Etruria, indicates significance far removed from their use as ornaments.