by David Astle
The chariots by means of which Egypt had been subdued, can only have been paid for out of the booty of conquest, the plunder of tomb and temple, and the sale of the enslaved peoples. The fact of the persistence of the thrust of Tahutmes III[77] into these regions substantially less than one hundred years after the eviction of the Hyksos by Ahmose I (1500 B.C.-1557 B.C.) from their last Egyptian stronghold at Avaris[78] on the Eastern marches of the Delta, would indicate no idle pointless advance, but definite design towards destroying the heart of the enemy, the elimination of his financial and industrial centres. Whether they were still in the regions of Ugarit and Alalakh, or now sheltered elsewhere behind the Kingdom of Kadesh, perhaps in Mittani, would not be known.
However, that both sides had equal access to the international arms industry would certainly be indicated by the spoil in manufactures of war of the battle of Megiddo (1479 B.C.) as won by Tahutmes III against the King of Kadesh and his allies, amounting to nine hundred and twenty-four chariots and two hundred suits of armour.[79] By corollary, it may reasonably be assumed that opposed to these chariots as seized at Megiddo, would have been at least another thousand chariots. Alexander of Macedonia venturing far from home in later times, was a reckless adventurer, considering that at the battle of Issus (October, 333 B.C.) the whole Macedonian army amounted to little more in numbers than the Greek mercenary centre of Darius which was but a small part of the Persian’s enormous, if undisciplined host.[80] Tahutmes, who ruled Egypt from 1501-1447 B.C. was the god-king of a great and ancient state to which occupation by the detested Hyksos had so recently taught a severe lesson in that which was modern warfare in those times. He was descendant of a line of kings 2000 years old or more, and it is very doubtful if he would have moved abroad without careful organization and planning. To build his thousand or so chariots was needed the wood of Lebanon and Syria, and those districts surrounding the Gulf of Antioch.[81] Also was the craftsmanship of its cities of Ugarit and Alalakh needed, or at least, of that so strategic district, whatever its name at that time; also equal financial and industrial organization to that which clearly was available to the kingdom of Kadesh, suggested by Breasted to be the last flicker of political and military power of the Hyksos.[82]
Thus it would appear that money creative power had definitely reestablished some form of agency in Egypt, where, under the conditions of the empire, its best interests lay. The agreement between Tahutmes and the Phoenician cities, particularly Tyre,[83] demonstrates concessions made to traders in order to obtain the sea-power which he so much needed for the success of his campaign against Kadesh. The fact of gold and silver rings of a few grains weight circulating in Egypt as against day-to-day purchases,[84] indicates the nature of the concessions by Tahutmes to that money creative force which undoubtedly drove the world-wide trade of the Phoenician cities. The gifts in silver bullion from the Kheta (or Hittites),[85] natural enemies of the kings of Mittani, indicate that they knew that which would be most welcome to the Pharaoh, and would most of all weaken his leanings towards friendship with Mittani, or other peoples likely to have been their enemies.
The temples of Egypt clearly retained immense wealth and holdings in land,[86] and still conducted their own trading expeditions.[87] However, from the reckoning of Breasted that one person in fifty, and one seventh of the land was owned by them,[88] it is clear that by the times of Rameses III (1198-1167 B.C.) and to whose reign this estimate is applicable, the true force behind kingly rule which is the will of the god, so that king and temple needed to own nothing, as being all in all, they owned all and were all, had long ago been gathered up by those promoting the conception of private ownership. Such conception of private ownership would naturally derive from that right these persons had already arrogated to themselves to create and manipulate the monetary unit, tangible or abstract, and thereby stimulate the growth of a private enterprise for good or ill. To such an extent had this change in the substructure of life proceeded, that, by the time of Solomon, first Hebrew king in Jerusalem[89] (955 B.C. approx.), the chronicler was able to write: “And a chariot came up and went out of Egypt for six hundred shekels of silver”;[90] therein being indication that the international money power of the day deemed it safe to locate its most important industry, which was that of armaments, in the land of Egypt; at least after the barbaric but definitely more “pliable” Libyan dynasty had become established.
Ancient ways and ancient morale gave way to foreign influences and the period of self-criticism and therefore self-immolation that always seems to follow the advent of the penetration of international money creative force. Such money creative force and its key arms manufacturies so much needed by the war powers of that day, would always continue to maintain itself, come what may. Possibly its heartland was some area such as Switzerland today, that by tacit consent of all powers, remained neutral in all this strife, and whose neutrality would always be respected by the armed force of each of the struggling states.
Kadesh, and its allies, Arvad and Symyra, were the military force towards the destruction of which Tahutmes III directed his efforts.[91] The manufacturing cities of Alalakh and Ugarit on the lower Orontes river and bordering on the Gulf of Antioch, respectively, because of the widespread extent of their trading operations during the 13th Century B.C. until the time of their destruction at the end of that century by sea rovers, either ally or enemy of the confederacy known as the “Peoples of the Sea,” might very well be suspected of being headquarters of a money market at that time, even if the deep source of their money power existed in the Babylonian cities.
In being a centre for international trade and arms manufacture during the 13th century B.C., this area may very well be considered to have been a similar centre during the 15th Century B.C.: the more especially in consideration of the agreement which seemed to have existed between the Arameo-Phoenician cities (excluding Arvad and Symyra) and Tahutmes; at least those who guided his policies.
While therefore the neutrality of such areas was respected, money power in control of the movements of bullion internationally, safe behind this shield of neutrality as designers of the international money market, would be able to continue to manipulate war industries; always remaining in a position to allocate the latest of weapons to those states which offered them the best advantage in respect to their particular affair. The rulers of that great Egypt after Tahutmes III and his conquests, although probably completely unaware of the extent of the power of this same international force, deriving as it did from the bazaars of the ancient cities of lower Mesopotamia, obviously needed its good graces when it carne to obtaining those materials and weapons so necessary for what in that time was modern warfare.
As a result, although the Egyptian empire in the earliest years might very well be described as a common market existing independent of Babylonian money power, and deriving its strength from the will to be of a dedicated and instructed Ruler, the sequence of events shows that through those concessions it obtained for its best services in war, it was not long before international money power re-penetrated the substructure of Egyptian life and established its usual behind-the-scenes influence, if not control, as in the earlier time that denoted the collapse of the “Old Kingdom.” It may safely be considered to have reassumed the position of hidden power it had held a thousand years before during the closing years of the 6th Dynasty, a period in which the stone weights indicating equivalence in metal money[92] circulated in much the same way as the clay facsimiles of contemporary coinages circulated in the Eastern Mediterranean area during the days of the Athenian empire, or as circulated the paper notes of today that formerly indicated claim on precious metal. Further indication of the activities of private money creative force in this same period exists in the evidence of an extensive world-wide trade on land and sea revealed by those items of Egyptian manufacture discovered at Dorak in Anatolia by James Mellaart,[93] and the stone vases and ivory seals that were found in Crete;[94] all of which dated from this time, and bore
little evidence to suggest that they were in the nature of gifts between rulers.
Through “liberalism,” and so-called “progressive teachings,” its most ancient instruments, wittingly or otherwise, towards the continuance of its secret hegemony, reinstituted international money creative force seems to have brought the host land of Egypt to where it was at the time of Akhenaton (1375 to 1358 B.C.), and the Tel Amarna letters which tell of self-destruction and decay, the rejection of old values and beliefs, and the indifference of the a Egyptian rulers to their trust, and to the crumbling of Empire. The degeneracy and complacence of the age was revealed by the fruitless outcry out of Asia from the vassals of the Pharaoh; being particularly exemplified by the despairing pleas of king Abdikhiba of the most ancient city of Jerusalem for assistance against the pressure of the armed assaults of the Habiru.[95]
In the meantime the military might of those grim warriors of the shaft graves of Mycenae continued to grow, and they clearly could be relied on to supply the master moneyers of that ancient world with gold and silver and slaves. Therein these robber rulers, best known from the Homeric sagas, were but the instruments by which the mysterious worshippers of the anti-god, the controllers of the extensive money creative force deriving from the Mesopotamian cities, unseen, but all-seeing, slowly undermined the walls of the temple states of the ancient world, of Crete, of Mycenae, of Troy, of Bog-Haz Koi and of Egypt too, so finally and so completely, that little memory or record existed, except in the case of Egypt; even during that period which is known as antiquity; that is the period of the flourishing of Greece and Rome.
What, therefore, did the international money creative fraternity of that day need from those states that clearly forbad their trade or settlement as corruptors of all true order and peace in life, and that thus rejected their blandishments; or from any other state for that matter? What other than the plunder out of sack and ruin by those wild men they brought in from distant lands to North and to South. and to whom they offered the sweet-smelling women, the sunlit gardens, the gold and the silver; which of course would soon be theirs in any case.
Of all those cities and states without number, and many without name, why they disappeared, or when, both as actual sites, or names intertwined with historical memory is not known; nor the story of the ending; for as at Pylos,[96] and Cnossos,[97] and Ugarit[98] too, in so many cases the flames were the final gesture of fate which made durable to the end of time, the clay libraries and archives thus sharply defining the end of their compilation and leaving no record further.
The last thrust of the relatively wild men of the North and West against Egypt, and that Egypt survived to still continue to write its name upon the page of history for yet a thousand years, even if with a hand growing ever more weary, if successful, would have revealed the same picture. It is clear that the organization of all those Western and Northern peoples in confederation against Egypt during the reign of the Pharaoh Merneptah (1236 B.C.-1236 B.C.) was not of haphazard design. Tehennu, Sherden (or Sardinians) Shekelesh (or Sikeli, the early natives of Sicily), Achaeans, Lycians, Teresh (or Etruscans), Danae (obviously deriving from the Goths of the Northern shores of Europe and very likely the forefathers of those in the Israelitish confederacy who described themselves as “Dan”),[99] all these nations known as “The Peoples of the Sea,” could not have been brought together as a fairly disciplined group without some more internationally wise advisors in the close circle surrounding King Meryey of the Libyans than his own Libyan advisors. Egypt still contained in temple and burial house a great part of the gold washed from the rivers of Africa over a thousand years or more, despite the plunder in gold the so-called Hyksos had carried with them into the desert some three hundred and fifty years before. Whether Egypt fell, or the confederate host fell, either way was profit to the international bullion traders whose agents would have equally followed Egyptian or confederate.
After this total victory, largely won by the skill and discipline that existed in the Egyptian archery, of copper, still a most valuable metal of war, 9000 swords alone were surrendered to Merneptah. A further one hundred and twenty thousand pieces of other copper military equipment were also surrendered; of weapons and vessels in silver and gold, over three thousand pieces were taken from the camp of the rulers and chiefs; this latter spoil including many swords of gold and silver.
The Kings are overthrown, saying ‘salam!’
Not one holds up his head among the nine Nations of the Bow.
Wasted is Tehennu,
The Hittite Land is pacified,
Plundered is Canaan with every evil,
Carried off is Askalon,
Seized upon is Gezer,
Yenoam is made as a thing not existing.
Israel is desolated, her seed is not
Palestine has become a defenceless widow for Egypt.
All Lands are united, they are pacified;
Every one that is turbulent is bound by King Merneptah.[100]
It is interesting to note that although the hosts that fell at the battle of Perire, numbering at least nine thousand, were almost all from the West, according to the poem recorded above, Merneptah almost immediately turned his attention to the peoples of the East. Judging by this record of the stele, he paid some special attention to an Israel never previously referred to in Egyptian history. Such Israel would undoubtedly be a confederacy established during the 13th Century B.C. by Canaanitic tribes, elements such as the fragments of the “Hyksos” or Shepherd Kings, whatever their correct designation, and that had disappeared into the desert some 350 years before pursued by the chariots of Ahmose I,[101] elements deriving from the “Peoples of the Sea” perhaps, and the Habiru, also known as ‘Apiru’ or ‘Khabiri’.
But who was who, or why, or what, little concerned that brain centre in Babylon or Ur, or wherever it was. Whoever they professed to be, or to belong to, meant nothing. Out of death and destruction was their harvest, whether those they said were their own, were theirs or not. The only reality was control of precious metal. Out of death and destruction came the releasing in that day of the all important hoards of stored bullion, and the renewal of the slave herds to be consumed in mining ventures in distant places, garnering the increase of such precious metals.[102]
Further, as kingly rule weakened, with the increasing circulation of fraudulent receipts for precious metals and other valuables supposedly on deposit, this highly secretive interstratum of merchant classes controlled by these monopolists of money through monopoly of control of precious metal bullion, postulated by Professor A.L. Oppenheim to be Aramaic speaking during the first Millennium B.C.,[103] would be able of finance much larger manufacturing systems than had been possible from the highly discriminatory temple loans of earlier days. Ugarit and Alalakh previously mentioned, were but early instances. While the purpose of the temple was to cause the people to live godly lives as according to the customs of the day and to preserve them from straying out of the ways of righteousness as it were, the secret and private money creative power, being more concerned with the opposite, the needs of the anti-god, the destruction of the people’s lives, whether of king, priest, nobleman, or merchant, or he who laboured in the field, loaned without such discrimination. Out of the resulting confusion amongst rulers could come nothing but advantage to themselves and their purposes; out of the break up of family and home and tradition, all that the dedicated servant of the god has in life, would come an exhausted and confused people, more ready to accept slavery.[104] Corruption of the priesthood, as in today, was the chief aim of money conspiracy, and by causing such priesthood to lose sight of its high purpose and itself as the voice of god on earth, success in all its other purposes, naturally followed.
“Documents of the third level originate in autonomous economic bodies ranging from collective agricultural organizations centred in families, to what often constitutes de facto private enterprise inside and outside cities. The distribution of the evidence in volume and importance varies
with time and region.”[105]
Private enterprise depended on privately issued money and of such was silver. Thus towards the establishment of manufacturies, they, the international bullion controllers needed the connivance of those corrupted temple officials who had lost sight of the meaning of that god-given power of money creation which had been theirs, and without which the god himself, the real ruler of the city, could not be truly maintained. By the time these temple officials were brought to enter into such connivance, they would be past realizing or caring, for that matter, about the destructive effects to their powers and purposes which lay in so permitting private issuance of money into circulation amongst the people by way of precious metals, or receipts for such precious metals or valuables, supposedly on deposit for safekeeping with prominent merchant houses; thus they would be easily manipulated.
With the extension of the growth of exchanges to a silver standard such as would derive from the circulation of false receipts issued against silver or valuables reputedly on deposit for safe keeping, no special outlay in precious metals was needed other than possibly bribes to court and temple officials. These men, the controllers of bullion movements internationally, and of almost equal consequence, the slave trade, now that their knowledge of the frauds relating to the use of precious metal money, and consequently their knowledge of that which is now known as “capital” was becoming perfected, were bringing into being extensive private industries, the most important of which, as pointed out previously, were the industries relating to war. Towards the promotion of any particular industry as required by the bankers, no doubt ambitious slaves or freedmen as eager for money as their counterparts today, could be always found.
It was clearly understood that those receipts representing the weight of silver or the valuables assessed as according to a silver standard, that the bankers were supposed to have on deposit for safe keeping, which circulated by custom, or by law which is custom, as money as to represent a definite amount of exchange units, while accepted as money, were money. The fact that the people accepted them as such, made them so. Their cost to the money manipulators, bullion brokers, or whatever their designation, being but that of the clay in the tablet and the scribe’s entry thereon.