by David Astle
In other words the clay facsimiles functioned in much the same manner as did bank notes over the last three hundred years in the Anglo-Saxon world; they were money, privately created and emitted.
François Lenormant, however lived at a time when relatively little was realized by numismatists of the functions of “Ledger Credit Page Entry Money,” or often enough of money itself as being so many numbers injected into a circulation amongst the people, either as pure abstraction and functioning as by transfer of such ledger credit page entry, or as tangible record on clay, paper, copper, silver, or gold, and functioning as by transfer from hand to hand of those defined commodities, intrinsically valueless or otherwise, on which its numbers were so imprinted. The value of such numbers in goods and services for sale being the most amount of such numbers as the people offered in competitive buying or the least as they accepted in competitive selling.
Per Me Dei Regnant!
The city states of the rulers of Troy, Orchomenos, Tyryns, Bog-Haz-Koi, Mycenae, Cnossos, and cities and states without number and of which not even the name or memory, now remains, too often, little expectant of calamity from without, from whatever cause, finally went down into smoking ruin before the deluge of wild men, who, with their reeking swords brought all those god-ordered ages of ancient time to a bloody close; men such as the wearer of the golden mask whose grave was opened by Heinrich Schlieman in his excavations at Mycenae, and who he believed to be Agamemnon sleeping his everlasting sleep.
Buried sword in one hand, with the other this giant amongst men still clutched in death as in life, those disks of gold which so obviously were storehouse of wealth and power.
Thus it is clear that by permitting gold to be equated with wealth, or that which had been money, and forgetting thus the true nature of money as a thing apart, his law alone, merely a device of transferable numbers to assist and give order to the exchanges amongst his people, this god-king from whom descended the legend of that company on Olympus, was already surrendering his might, and the freedoms of his peoples, to those inscrutable shadows that lurked in the dimness of the distant Babylonian counting houses.
To these rulers, power was already in the merchant’s and master miner’s precious metal pieces. With such precious metals as they stripped from the bodies of living and dead in those cities they had so gleefully sacked and put to sword, when peace carne again, they were able to purchase those items of luxury so much desired by their women, such as were manufactured in the cities of the Mesopotamian plain and Egypt,[54] if not further afield. More important still, they were thus able to obtain the finest of arms that skilled craftsmanship could fashion, such as the suit of bronze armour found at Medea in Greece (illustrated on Page 135 of Dawn of the Gods, by Jacquetta Hawkes); the very best of the master armourer’s trade.
Thus they readied themselves for the next slaughter. It may very well have been as in today, when the new aggressors, designated Communist as according to the meaning of that word, may very well be preparing for the destruction of those easy-going people of the Anglo-Saxon world from whose skill and technique derive those finest of arms through which their world could indeed be threatened with total obliteration.
That in their position as ruler all gold flowed through their hands, whether in those forms given to it by goldsmith’s art or in those shapes most convenient from the point of view of its use in international exchange, there is no doubt. The latter case was clearly shown by the rings and disks and the tiny double headed axes, as found at Troy, all of gold, and the four hundred round pieces of gold and the one hundred and fifty golden disks that were found in the Royal tombs of Mycenae (dating from c. 1500 B.C.) by Heinrich Schlieman[55] all of which clearly represented some form of exchange or money. Spirals of gold wire also found in the grave of one member of the Royal Family of Mycenae are suggested by Seltsman (Greek Coins, p.5) to be adjusted to the small Aegean gold talent of 8.5 grammes which he classifies as the Aegean gold unit. Herein would be implication of the use of a gold unit in international exchanges even at that early time. The rings of gold wire of a few grammes weight which circulated in Egypt (Breasted, p. 307) in the reign of Tahutmes III (1501 B.C. - 1447 B.C.), would appear to afford some verification of this fact. Gold or silver money, whether ring money or other form of money, if of definite weight and fineness would always be desirable in international exchanges.
As an interesting and pertinent digression, it also appears that spiral or ring money may have come to occupy a place in the economic life of Egypt too, as early as the latter years of the so-called Old Kingdom. Its use and abuse, considering the Egyptian trade that existed across the known world during the reign of Pepi pharaoh who reigned 90 years during the 6th Dynasty,[56] may have been one of the factors by which the International Money Power of the time, in whatever form it existed, brought about the total collapse of kingly rule in Egypt in the years subsequent to the death of this ruler.
The Hebrew records also appear to verify this use of metal rings or spirals being used in settlement of trade balances between foreigners; or of being storehouses of wealth. According to Madden, however,[57] there is no mention of gold money in ancient Hebrew records, though gold constituted part of the wealth of Abraham, undoubtedly refugee from Ur about the time of its destruction by the Gutim. The six hundred shekels of gold by weight paid by David for the threshing floor and oxen of Ornan[58] and the 6000 shekels of gold taken by Naaman on his journey to the King of Israel[59] do not imply money. Nor can the passage: “they lavish gold out of the bag and weigh silver in the balance,”[60] or “Wisdom cannot be gotten for gold neither shall silver be weighed for the price thereof,”[61] be brought forward in favour of gold money. Gold was generally employed for personal ornament[62] and for adornment of the temple.
It is probable, therefore, that a system of “jewel currency,” or “ring money,” was in use. The case of Rebekah to whom the servant of Abraham gave “a gold earing of half a shekel weight,[63] and two bracelets for her hands of ten (shekels) weight,” proves that the ancient Hebrews made their jewels of a specific weight so as to know the value of these ornaments in employing them in lieu of money. That the Egyptians kept their bullion in jewels and rings is not merely indicated by the scene on the monuments as mentioned by Lenormant and Masparo, in which they are represented as weighing rings of gold, silver and copper, but also by the findings of archaeology such as the copper rings found at Tel Amarna stamped with the cartouche of Kuen-Aten, Hyksos ruler.[64] These rings would appear to have been retained in the treasury at Tel Amarna, and therefore still were current two hundred years after the expulsion of the so called Hyksos. According to Breasted, gold and copper rings of a fixed weigh circulated in large scale business in the time of the “Old Kingdom,” and (significantly enough to the student of “banking,” or private money creation and regulation, as it might better be known) “stone weights were already marked with their equivalence in such rings.”[65] The circulation as money of these “promises to pay” recorded on stone, pointedly suggests the likelihood of the activities of a secret fraternity whose hereditary trade was private money creation. It may very well have been the debilitating force that, with the death of Pepi II in 2476 B.C., brought about ending in turmoil and anarchy to the even flow of the undeterminable age over which the God-Kings reigning in awesome splendour, so long had spread their mantle of man-consideration and true benevolence.
Further evidence that the Egyptians kept their bullion in jewels or rings is indicated by the passage from Exodus[66] in which it is related that the Israelites, previous to their departure from Egypt, borrowed “jewels of silver and jewels of gold and spoiled the Egyptians.”
In consequence it would appear that the money used by the children of Jacob when they went to purchase corn in Egypt was ring money, the use of which was permitted by the Pharaoh Egypt of the time; rightly or wrongly. Their money is described “bundles of money,” as verified by the authorized translation Deuteronomy. “Then shalt thou t
urn it into money and bind up the money in thine hand and shall go unto the place where the Lord thy God shall choose”[67] The excavations of Heinrich Schlieman indicate that such ring money was also used by the Mycenaeans at perhaps rather later date.
Thus the Greek city state, owing its existence to an uncertain long period during which there took place those events that led up to the final days of Cnossos and Mycenae, was the result of the union of the forces of order in life and death that motivated the priest-king, were he at Cnossos, or at Thebes, or Tel Amarna, or serving the Moon god at Ur, leader amongst the Sumerian cities, and those forces that drove on the builders of the battlements first of all unearthed by Heinrich Schlieman at Troy and Mycenae. Whether priest-king or peasant-king, their wealth was already assessed in terms of the weight of their store of precious metals which would be so eagerly accepted in exchange for the products of the master armourers employed by the bankers who already controlled trade and money creation in those cities of the Ancient Orient; from which cities, therefore, the glory of total guidance by the god-will had already departed.
He who was literally the Son of God on Earth as he meditated in his island fastness of Crete, was beholden to none other than the people below who he served from his place as the apex of the pyramid of life itself, and to the will of the one above who appointed him to serve. The peasant king at Mycenae or Troy or wherever it might be, for all his seeming rock-like strength, and a certain god-likeness in character of the kingship he bore, as was indicated by the title Wanax, necessarily existed as instrument of those who manipulated gold or silver supplies internationally, and at the same time the slave market; men of a class who, in that control of prices which they so clearly exercised, were able to control prosperity in all those seemingly powerful states that had accepted the international valuation of silver as the factor determining internal or national values; such as was the case with most of the mainland cities. They may have been, as it seems they are today, a close knit conspiratorial group threaded through the priest and scholar class of these cities and lards; thought not of themselves of such origin.
The answer may be found to lie in the existence in very ancient Sumeria of a privileged class, who, having access to the “credit” of the temple, thus were able to control the masters of the great donkey caravans who carried such “credit,” or will of the god of the city, from one place of business to the other; incising record on their tablets, of loan of such credit made to enable purchase, or interest overdue, or repayment of such loan as had been made the previous trip. These persons, who may be considered themselves to derive from the hereditary caravaneers and who must have functioned as bullion broker and banker, would have been fully clear on the subject of silver and its function in settlement of foreign trade balances and its use as a standard on which to base money accounting. In the latter days of the city states of Sumeria, it is reasonably clear that during certain periods of decay, a languid and corrupted priesthood might delegate[68] to these persons, not only matters of trade, but also those decisions relative to foreign states so essential to the continuance of the might and right of the god of the city.
The special international character of the outlook of these people, sprung as they undoubtedly were from the donkey caravaneers, born to be at home amongst all peoples, yet to always bear in mind the peculiar business of the caravan merchants, their trade and profit, may not have made for decisions as from a true and dedicated god-servant. Thus it may very well be that we must look to the professional caravaneers, from whom descended the Habiru,[69] for widespread dissemination of the knowledge of the possibilities offered to merchants by development of the practices relating to private money creation deriving from a clear understanding of the meaning of accounting to a silver standard, and later the potentialities towards development of monopoly of trade inherent in the actual use of silver as the material on which the numbers of the abstract unit were stamped. The full extent of the possibilities towards the accumulation of wealth through exploitation of varying ratios between silver and gold in different parts of the world, and the possibilities of a private and secret expansion of the total monetary circulation which was open to those who were held in such esteem in the cities that persons were glad to deposit their valuables with them for safe-keeping, may also have been known to them.
As such accounting to a silver standard had long been known in the lands of Sumer and Akkad, and the mainland generally, control of values had long since been in the hands of the silver bullion brokers, whoever they were, and the money lenders, and bankers and their satellite merchants, without reference as in former days, to priesthood and temple scribe. Through bullion they controlled money, and through money creation, on that bullion as base, they controlled manufactures. According to T.B.L. Webster in his book From Mycenae to Homer: “Undoubtedly Ugarit and Alalakh were more concerned with manufactures than Knossos and Pylos, and silver by weight was already for them performing the function of money, whereas as far as can be seen in the Mycenaean centres, no such standard existed”[70]. However the fact that the Achaeans derived their system of measurements from Mesopotamia[71] would certainly suggest that the most important measurement of all, the monetary unit would equally originate from such source. This opinion is further strengthened by the collaboration obviously existing in the Mycenaean settlement at Ugarit[72] with that money power which based itself on silver by weight, such as clearly controlled the manufacturies of Ugarit and Alalakh.
Further according to the same scholar:
“The Alalakh tablets also record copper distributed to smiths, but note in addition it is to be used for making baskets or arrowheads; and the King of Assyria sent copper to Mari to be made into nails by the local craftsmen. A report from Pylos that the woodcutters in two places are delivering 150 axles and 150 spars for the chariot factory may be compared with the Ugaritic texts on the delivery of wood for the making of arms, and a note of wood delivered to the carpenters for the construction of wagons in Alalakh. We may add here also from Pylos a list of wooden objects made, a list of vessels received by men (perhaps Mayors) in various places and a note of pieces of ivory; to set beside this rather slender evidence of Mycenaean manufacture, Alalakh provides a record of sixty four business houses and their produce; they include smiths, leather workers, joiners, and cartwrights.”[73]
Thus it seems that where the conception of money as to a silver standard existed as at Ugarit and Alalakh, so also existed organized industry, including outstandingly the private manufacture of arms under methods that appear to be those of semi-mass production. It is not without significance that this early era of privately issued money (such as was silver money), and consequent private industry, particularly that which was devoted to arms manufacture, was in certain areas so coincidental with the massive movements of warlike peoples, and the collapse of ancient empires that had lived long under the pattern of life known as that of the Ancient Orient. Conquering peoples needed the best of arms. It seems that the best of arms were obtainable from private industry; and private industry in its turn needed silver or gold or labour which was slaves, in payment. Both were obtainable as the result of war. Therefore parallel, though not entirely the same as in today, the more war, the more the industry, and the more the need for the products of the money creators’ ledgers. Hence became the more absolute the control of that which most of all designs industry and its accompanying slavery in one form or another, namely, private money creative power.
Thus regardless of what strength still resided in the heart of the temple states of the Ancient Orient, if values were dictated by the international valuation of silver bullion, then, above all, the internationally dealing silver bullion brokers would be in a position to see to it that manufacture and distribution of arms was under their control, the factor most important of all in international power allocation.
They were in a position to have manufactured in some scale, controlling labour as they undoubtedly did through control of the slave t
rade, the finest weapons known in that day for those rulers who collaborated with them and served best their purposes. Clearly by the same token, with such total money control, they were in a position to withhold the best of weapons, or the materials for such weapons, from those who served them the least. In a world that had come to believe in money as an absolute, such was the position long ago, exactly as in today. Thus the state that rejected international money power, as did Sparta and Rome in ancient times, and Russia in modern times, had to be prepared to establish total military self-sufficiency.
The Cretan civilization that communicated its ancient language through the pictograph script known as Linear “A,” which recognizably came to communicate Greek through that development of this script known as Linear “B,” about 1500 B.C.,[74] would certainly seem to have been conquered by Greek speaking peoples some reasonable period previously; which would suggest about 1700-1600 B.C.
At the same time, according to Breasted,[75] in 1675 B.C., the so-called Hyksos, a Semitic conqueror, entered the Delta regions of Egypt, establishing total military supremacy through the use of horse and chariot, previously unknown in Egypt.
The evidences of the Ugarit and Alalakh tablets, although of a substantially later date (about three hundred and fifty years) indicating semi-mass production in these areas of chariot parts, arrow heads, and arms of various kinds,[76] cannot but suggest that it was from this region, so close to the copper of Cyprus, and the wood of Anatolia and Lebanon, that money power armed those restless peoples that may have inundated Crete in earlier times, and Egypt somewhat later.