by David Astle
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 of Ibi-Sin before the Elamite rebels with their Amorite allies in 2030 B.C., and their taking away to Susa as captive, both the cult statue of the Lord Nannar, the Moon God together with the King Ibi-Sin himself, earthly viceroy of that God, those agents of International Money Power, quickly concluded the work of destruction[106] through liberalism and permissiveness, no doubt, so that by 1900 B.C., the Sumerian had totally lost his national and racial identity and will to be. What continued from then on was, without a doubt, a mixed breed with no special allegiance to anything other than “money.”[107]
Such agents are shown by the general evidence of history to be a class of dubious origins and antecedents. Imbued with racial self-hatred, these rascals, who are raised up in a time of national exhaustion, against the former natural system of rule, by a triumphant money power, too often are particularly distinguished by a readiness to please those who it seems to them are the masters; even to the downgrading and debauchment of their own kind. The apathy of a controlled public opinion to the deluge of perverted sex drenching the Anglo-Saxon countries today, which could not take place without the connivance of the so-called rulers, if only through their failure to take any serious steps towards controlling its source, is, herein, instance enough.
However, until the violent disruptions of caravaneering about 1800 B.C.,[108] the manufactures of Mesopotamia continued to flow Northwards as against precious metals, principally silver and raw materials; and no doubt that trading area or common market formerly controlled by the rulers of the IIIrd Dynasty at Ur, continued to exist; though no longer with the Lord Nannar[109] as signing authority.
The growing manufacturies of Mesopotamia, Syria, Egypt in the time of the Empire, Ur in the reign of Ibi-Sin, and of all the well-populated world which is now known as the Near East, were instigated as a result of those secret money creative processes known only to that class of persons who have already been detailed as best as is possible out of the fragmentary evidence available, to be controlling external trade out of the Mesopotamian plain. Such manufacturies, trading to the ends of the known world, would have drained south the silver of Greece, of Thrace, of Illyria, and Carpathia; indeed from wherever it could be obtained, it would have flowed as against settlement of trade balances, to Mesopotamia.
Consequently, by the time of the Assyrian assumption of control over Aram, and Arabia, and Egypt during the first half of the first Millennium B.C., money, as being a creation of the god of the city toward the well-being and good life of his people, had become a conception of which sight had been almost completely lost. It had come to be the silver injected into circulation by private persons, who by then, in reality, if not so far as went general appearances, 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. Thus the total design of the city which derived from the power of rejection or preferment formerly exercised through the money creative powers of the god through king and priesthood, fell into their hands, and where in earlier days a devoted priesthood exercised its prerogative of preferment through money creation, towards the people living a god-ordered and pious life, each man in harmony with his neighbours,[110] those new international forces that now exercised the reality of such rule from the counting houses, contemptuous of all kingly and godly power as undoubtedly 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.
Secretly promoting the concept of “Permanent Revolution” as being most suited towards the maintenance of their control, no sooner did stable and natural god-ordered government come again, then, feverishly digging at its roots, they tore it down. Out of break-up of family and home, out of lust and drunkenness, out of the people living in disorder, and love giving way to hate, they throve. Where they saw signs of nobility and natural aristocracy in living and thought, returning, financial preferment was automatically withdrawn. 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 as was exercised by the great Babylonian financial houses, it may safely be assumed that such temple 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 to the Pharaoh; as a result of which, while all other lands in Egypt were expropriated and returned to State ownership and administration, its lands, such as appertained to the temples, were not touched in any way.[111] Thus was a corrupted and short-sighted priesthood brought to acquiesce in the enthronement of its enemies, and the enemies of the god it represented. For Joseph clearly was 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.
The Left Hand Of Dawn
Both according to François Lenormant[112] and the Cambridge Ancient History,[113] cheques were in use in Babylonia from the earliest times. Such use of cheques has also been verified as having existed at Ur during the 3rd and 4th Millenniums B.C. by Sir Charles
L. Woolley, and no doubt, by other archaeologists at other sites.
As the only clear meaning that can be given to the law No. 7 of Hammurabai, indicates that also were known in the 3rd Millennium or earlier, the principles of private money creation through the creation of receipts as against valuables on deposit with persons of “Repute,” the existence of all the abuses against the men of the city, deriving from the exercise of the principles of inflation and deflation of the total number of such receipts indicating given numbers of the unit of exchange, may be deemed to have existed. These inflations or deflations of the volume of the mass of abstract money, which indeed such false receipts may be called, and such as are particularly associated with the custom of making payments by cheque drawn on “deposits” created by such receipts as issued by such persons “of repute,” and which could be manipulated as suited themselves and their friends etc., were directed towards creation of total monopoly of wealth and industry.
Further, as according to Paul Einzig, “a credit system developed in Greece as in other parts of the ancient world long before the adoption of coinage,”[114] it may reasonably be supposed that well before the flood of refugees that must have poured out of Aram in the earlier days of the first millennium B.C. as a result of the Assyrian onslaught, Babylonian money power had already established branch agencies on the coast of Greece, and in the Mycenaean centres generally, from which they loaned their clay “promises to pay,” expressed in terms of silver no doubt, as against collateral. Such loans could be used to purchase those luxury goods and arms which were brought from the Syrian or Mesopotamian cities; but although the original loan had been but an entry in the ledger of the agent, probably, in the final analysis costing little more than the labour of slave scribe, the repayment demanded would be silver or slaves, or other equally desirable goods.
Clear evidence of the existence of this Babylonian force in the Mycenaean cities was yielded by verification of the fact of the existence of the mythological Cadmus of Grecian Thebes, reputedly Phoenician (Phoenician being simply a word used by the Greeks to describe those people that came to trade from the ports of Syria and Canaan), having probably been reality. This historical fact was revealed by the discovery in modern day Thebes in
the area that in ancient times must have been the national storehouses, of cylinders containing seals of a high dignitary of the court of King Burraburias who reigned in the city of Babylon in the first half of the 14th Century B.C.; which unmistakably suggested Cadmus, and his real part in the affairs of Thebes and those cities with which it was connected.[115] Further evidence of the activities of the Babylonians is indicated by the discovery of their seals in the Cyclades.
These trading stations established in Mycenae long before Homer, would have functioned very much as did the European trading stations on the West Coast of Africa during the eighteenth century A.D.[116] They were points from which agents of international money power could instigate internal warfare amongst the tribes, so that they would always have ready market for the products of their arms and other industries; the most desirable payment for these products being precious metals and slaves; as much in ancient times as in modern times.
As previously pointed out, the warrior princes of Mycenaean Greece had undoubtedly maintained steady supplies of these commodities as the result of their depredations over many years. But once they had thrown all their resources and military power into the gamble across the sea which was the campaign of the King of Lydia and the “Peoples of the Sea” against Pharaoh
Merneptah of Egypt, and which ended in total disaster for them at the battle of Perire, the years of strength, and plenty, and being feared by their enemies were over.
It may reasonably be assumed that their total destruction while in confederation with the tribes and kingdoms of the Western Mediterranean at Perire on the Western marches of the Egyptian Delta in 1234 B.C., by the discipline of the massed archers of Pharaoh Merneptah, would have marked the Apogee of the parabola of their rise and fall.[117] In that battle it was proven that they had over-reached themselves, and, as history records, their descent from that Apogee was swift. Despite the excellence of their weapons and the skill at diplomatic manoeuvre of those forces supporting them, such as lay hid within the Babylonian money power, although so much of that world of ancient time had fallen before their fine copper weapons and their chariots, as a result of that unhappy battle, all such equipment was gone; and more than thinking of further conquests abroad, thought had to be for defence of hearth and home.
If then the latest estimate of the date of the battle of Perire, given as 1234 B.C. by W.F. Albright,[118] is correct, that the destruction of Egypt itself was planned over the period of years or so following the sack of Troy (1250 B.C. according to the modern dating and that of Herodotus), is reasonable supposition. The organizing, arming, and training of such widely diverse peoples as formed the army of King Meryey of Lybia, would have taken many years of careful planning.
Considering that the plunder that acceded to Pharaoh Merneptah, after the battle, of at least ten thousand swords, mostly copper and bronze, the rest gold and silver, and the 120,000 pieces of other military equipment in copper and bronze, under the methods of production of that day represented years of work, perhaps Merneptah did not on this occasion melt them into bullion, or sell them to the agents of international money power who undoubtedly were amongst those camp followers appearing to support his army. He may have made the obvious move, as is suggested by the fall of Pylos about 1200 B.C.[119] of using this plunder in weapons to arm the tribes of Epirus, and perhaps farther North, who clearly would be the natural enemies Achaeans. These tribes, although recorded by some as being shepherds, were just as likely to have been slaves revolting from the mining industries established by the Babylonian money power through the instrumentality of the Achaeans and Mycenaeans; which mining industries produced the gold that was such a commonplace in the homes of the nobility of Mycenaea and the silver that was so much needed for the maintenance of that financial system based on silver by weight which was the foundation of what may have become, by this time, a total world hegemony of private money creative power.
Following is a digression on the mining industries that existed in Greece and to the North about the time of Cadmus who, as previously pointed out, was one of the principal Babylonian agents to the Mycenaean world. His approximate date may very well be known from the dating of the seal found at Grecian Thebes;[120] which reveals that Cadmus probably lived during the reign of King Burnaburiash (sometimes known as Burraburiash) of Babylon, who was contemporary of King Tutankhamen of Egypt (1358-1353 B.C.). The same Burnaburiash is best known by his letter to King Tutankhamen as was found in the Tel Amarna archives, in which, pleading for gold in no uncertain terms, he achieves an immortal fame.[121]
Nearly one hundred years before the more extensive knowledge of these times, such as exists today, Alexander Del Mar, relying on his own observations as a mining engineer, and on the records of the ancients, wrote as follows respecting the mines from which the agents of the world-wide Babylonian financial hegemony, such as Cadmus of Thebes drew their steady flow of gold and silver.
After description of the thoroughness of Roman mining in Spain in the Asturias, and detailed mention of Laureion near Athens, he continues: “Thassus, an island off the Thracian coast (written Thasso by the Greeks and Thassus by Livy) was originally colonized by the Phoenicians. Thassus itself is probably a corruption of Iassus for Pausanias informs us that Thassus was the son of Agenor, the brother of Europa, and the leader of the Phoenicians (and therefore, brother of Cadmus the founder of Thebes)[122] which are details that belong to the myth of Iassus. Herodotus says that he himself visited the island of Thassus, where he saw a temple to the Thasian Hercules ‘erected by the Phoenicians, who built Thassus while they were engaged in the search for Europa, an event which happened five generations before Hercules, the son of Amphytryon, was known in Greece.” The “Thasian Hercules” was Iassus.
We know but little more of the early history of Thasus beyond the fact that its mines were celebrated for their yield of gold and silver; that the most productive ones were in the S.E. district between Aenyra and Coenyra; and that the Thasians, in addition to the mines of the island, owned and worked those of Scapte Hyle (or Scaptesyla) on the Thracian main. These last in the time of Darius yielded an average annual product worth or equal to 80 talents. The mines on the island did not produce so much at this period, although at an earlier one they had annually yielded between two or three hundred talents.
About 60 miles S.S.E. of Cape Sunium is the island of Siphnos, which in the time of Polycrates B.C. 580-22 and perhaps long before, was famous for its rich mines of gold and silver. ‘Their soil produced both gold and silver in such abundance that from a tenth part of their revenues they had a treasury at Delphos equal n value to (all) the riches which that temple possessed.’ In the Roman period, time of Strabo, Siphnos was noted for its poverty: for says Pausanias, speaking of the interval, ‘Afterwards their gold mines were destroyed by an inundation of the sea.’
Mount Pangaeus is in Thrace on the River Nestus, about two hundred miles W.N.W. from Constantinople. Pliny says that the gold mines in this range were opened by Cadmus: indeed it is probable that all the mines in ancient Greece were opened by the Phoenicians or the Venetians, before they were worked by the Greeks. Phillip of Macedon about B.C. 358, being informed that in ancient times (that would be previous to the so-called Dark Ages of Greece)[123] these mines had been productive, caused them to be reopened, with the result that he obtained from them annually more than a thousand talents. It is from the gold of Pangaeus that he struck his “Phillips,” whose type during the following century was so extensively copied by the Gauls.
The island of Samos, once called Cypar-Issa, is on the west coast of Asia Minor near the mouth of the Caystrus and ruined Ephesus. It was colonized originally by the Bacchidae, who were presumably Phoenicians or Venetians and who, on being driven out of Samos by the Ionians, settled afterwards in Samothrace. We know little of the early history of Samos. The Samian mines were of gold and silver, the ores of which were reduced on the river Imbrasus. The extant gold, silver, and electrum coins of Samos are numerous. S
ome of those commonly attributed to Sardis, were ascribed by Sestini to Samos. Herodotus reports that Polycrates bought off the Lacedaemonians, who tried to deprive him of the island, with a subsidy of lead coins thinly cased with gold, and thus cheaply got rid of his unwelcome visitors. The mines of Samos were still worked in the time of Theophrastus, about 240 B.C., for he wrote concerning them: ‘Those who work in these mines cannot stand upright, but are obliged to lie down either on their sides, or their backs: for vein they extract runs length-wise and is only two feet deep though considerably more in breadth and is enclosed on every side with hard rock. From this vein the ore is obtained.’
Mines of gold or silver or both were worked by the so-called Pelasgians in many parts of Greece, chiefly in the mountains of Albania, Dalmatia, Croatia, Bosnia, Servia, Thrace and Bulgaria. The remains of a smelting furnace composed of colossal hewn stones (once again the cyclopaean stone works of Mycenae?),[124] together with heaps of refuse silver ores, can still be seen in Albania, almost in sight from the houses of Corfu (Corcyra). Similar structures and remains are said to exist in Dalmatia. In Bosnia at Slatnitza, on the road to Scopia, six miles from Traunick, the Romans worked gold mines on an extensive scale and they were probably worked by the Greeks before the Romans. There are reported to be gold mines in several mountains near Zvornick and Varech. The rivers Bosna, Verbatch, Drina, and Latchva are auriferous. Many silver mines have been worked in the neighbourhood of Rama or Prezos, Foinitca and other villages, called Sreberno, Srebernik, or Srebernitza. Cinnabar is obtained near the convent of Chressevo, and this deposit was probably worked for mercury in very ancient times. About B.C. 470, Alexander, son of Amyntas, possessed a mine near lake Prasis and Mt. Dysia in Macedonia, which yielded him a talent per diem.