by David Astle
[93] Stuart Piggott: Dawn of Civilization, p. 168. (New York; 1961) See also p. 28 in T.B.L. Webster (Mycenae to Homer).
[94] Colin Renfrew: The Emergence of Civilization, p. 448.
[95] One of the most eloquent of his letters to the Pharaoh (Winkler’s Translation of the Tel Amarna Letters. p. 181.) is as follows: “The King’s whole land which has begun hostilities with me, will be lost. Behold the territory of Shiri (Seir) as far as Ginti-Kirmil (Carmel), its princes are wholly lost, and hostility prevails against me. as long as ships were upon the sea, the strong arm of the King occupied Narahin and Kash, but now the Khabiri (Habiru) are occupying the King’s cities. There remains not one prince to my lord the King, everyone is ruined. Let the King take care of his land, and. let him send troops. For if no troops come this year, let the King send his officer to fetch me and my brothers, that we may die with our lord the King.” While the Pharaoh and his court, drenched with foreign influences, meditated at Tel Amarna upon the illusion of One World and its alien gods, the One World that had been the reality created by the sword of his more vigorous forebears, was crumbling to dust.
[96] Jacquetta Hawkes: Dawn of the Gods, p. 209. (New York; 1968).
[97] T.B.B. Webster: From Mycenae to Homer, p. 23.
[98] W.F. Albright: Syria, the Philistines and Phoenicia; p. 31; Cambridge, 1966. Of the case of the identification of the date of destruction of Ugarit through finding the last tablets placed in the oven, Professor Albright writes: “Publication of the documents from the Tablet Oven excavated in 1954, provides a solid basis for dating the fall of Ugarit which must have occurred within a very short time after the tablets were placed in the oven. Two letters are particularly important: RS 18.38 and RS 18.40. The second letter, written by an Ugaritic official to the king of Ugarit, says that he is in Lawasanda (Lawasantiya), watching the approaches from the East together with the king of Siannu. The latter ‘has fled and. was killed.’”
[99] Clearly the Danae were the Argives or Danaän of Homer’s Iliad. The arrows of Apollo Shootafar that appear (Book I) to have driven the Danaän back to their ships with great slaughter, could very well have been those of the dreaded archers of Egypt under Pharaoh Merneptah; thus bearing no real relation to the events at Troy except as was convenient to the poet as he endeavoured to thread together fragments of a heroic tale out of the long ago.
[100] Henry J. Breasted: A History of Egypt, p. 469.
[101] Sir William Mathew Flinders-Petrie; A History of Egypt, p. 256. London; 1897.
[102] Diodorus Siculus (A. del Mar: History of the Precious Metals, p. 40) gives striking picture of the horrors of marginal profit gold mining as carried out with slave labour in ancient times in the Bisharee district of Nubia (B.C. 50).
“There are thus infinite numbers thrown into these mines, all bound in fetters kept at work night and day, and so strictly surrounded that there is, no possibility of their effecting an escape. They are guarded by mercenary soldiers of various barbarous nations, whose language is foreign to them and to each other, so that there are no means of forming conspiracies or of corrupting those who are set to watch them. They are kept to incessant work by the rod of the overseer, who often lashes them severely. Not the least care is taken of the bodies of these poor creatures; they have not a rag to cover their nakedness; and whoever sees them must compassionate their melancholy and deplorable condition, for though they may be sick, maimed or lame, no rest nor any intermission of labour is allowed them. Neither the weakness of old age, nor the infirmities of females excuse any from the work, to which all are driven by blows and cudgels; until borne down by the intolerable weight of their misery, many fall dead in the midst of their insufferable labours. Deprived of all hope, these miserable creatures expect each day to be worse than the last, and long for death to end their sufferings.”
[103] Leo A. Oppenheim: Letters from Mesopotamia; p. 57, Chicago 1967.
[104] Criticising the prescription by Plato of community of wives, etc. for the ruling classes of his Republic, Aristotle wrote: “It would be far more useful applied to the agricultural class. For where wives and children are held in common (and, as according to Plato, all love was to be indiscriminate as between male, female, relation, or otherwise), there is less affection, and a lack of strong affection among the ruled is conducive to obedience and not to revolution.” (The Politics. Book II. Ch. 4.). Aristotle, as tutor and advisor to Alexander “The Great,” also as husband of the niece of Hermias, banker-tyrant of Assos and Atarneus, had clearly seen efforts towards practical application of these mischievous “philosophies” of political conduct.
[105] Leo A. Oppenheim: Letters from Mesopotamia, p. 30.
[106] The relative poverty of the tombs of the 3rd Dynasty at Ur and the pathetic substitutes for the precious metals with which the dead had been adorned in earlier days, reveal the same withering up process that seems to attack any state exposed over any length of time to the exactions of a private money creative power maintaining itself by control of precious metals and the merry-go-round of trade for trade’s sake.
[107] Thus the way was paved for the Semitic city of Babylon to institute itself as the leader of Mesopotamia. However, although politically displacing and absorbing the original race of Sumer, it functioned as but the prophet of Sumer, a mirror of the past giving renewed vigour to a culture that had been evolved long ago. (A History of Babylon, pp. 2-3, L.W. King.).
[108] Albright: The Amarna Letters from Palestine. Cambridge Ancient History; Vol. II; pp. 17-18.
[109] The Moon God of Ur.
[110] There are evidences of a piety and reverence in those ancient days, and of longing by mankind for guidance from an unknown God, little different to that piety to which the rise of Christianity gave revival, and which still exists in homes that withstand the uproar of the age, and stand aside from the destructive forces that seek to guide it. According to E.G.H. Kraeling in Aram and Israel (p. 26):
In the scriptures of Sumeria we have: Si dilini — “Sin (or Si) hath set me free.” Si idri — “Sin is my help (in a time of need).” Si aqabi — “Sin hath endowed (or bestowed upon me).” Sin or Si being the name of the God.
In the adoration of Nashu (or Nusku of the Assyrians) we have: Nashu-dimri — “Nashu is my protection.” Nashu gabri — “Nashu is my hero.” Nashu sagab — “Nashu is exalted.” Nashu Qatari — “Nashu is my rock (of salvation).” Nashu aili — “Nashu is my strength.” In the adoration of Adad we have: Adad hutni — “Adad is my protection.”
In the adoration of Ai (The Lunar Deity of the Arabians) we have: Ia abba “Ai is my Father.” “Ia Manis” Ai is my Right Hand. “Alla sharu” God is King! (and Lord of all!)
[111] Genesis. Chapter 57, Verse 22. According to Michael Grant: (Jews in the Roman World, p. 7), there are scholars who consider this Pharaoh to have been Akhenaton.
[112] François Lenormant: La Monnaie dans l’Antiquité; Book l; pp. 113-122.
[113] Cambridge Ancient History. Vol. I; p. 392.
[114] Paul Einzig: Primitive Money, p. 225.
[115] Jacquetta Hawkes: Dawn of the Gods, p. 205, (New York, 1968). Also Britannica 1898, Vol. XI. p. 92. Also the deductions of Professor Sayce in Mycenae, p. 265. p. 365.
[116] Captain Theodore Canot: The Adventures of an African Slaver; (New York; 1928). Also Cambridge Economic History, Vol II; p. 16.
[117] W.F. Albright; p. 32.
[118] The details of the mining, treatment and smelting of unoxidized ores as took place about this time in the Austrian Alps, are evidence of a long and tedious process (Cambridge Economic History, Vol II, pp. 19-20.).
According to Professor W.F. Albright in The Amarna Letters from Palestine, (p. 12.): “when we glance through the Amarna letters, we cannot but be impressed with the smallness of the garrisons which were considered adequate by the local princes when clamouring for aid; the prince of Megiddo wants a hundred men, but three other chieftains including the princes of Gezer and Jerusalem, are satisfie
d with fifty each. Even the prince of wealthy Byblos who constantly asks for assistance, is generally satisfied with two hundred to six hundred infantry and twenty to thirty chariots. Brigawaza of the Damascus region also wants two hundred men.”
Correlating these informations, it is clear, that although populations were much less in that day (the latter half of the second millennium B.C.), the limiting factor to military force was the availability of arms, not as is today with its unlimited supplies of metal, the availability of men (hence “conscription”).
[119] Jacquetta Hawkes: Dawn of the Gods, p. 24.
[120] Ibid. p. 205.
[121] Letter 9 of the Tel Amarna Tablets; Vol I; p. 29. (Samuel A.B. Mercer; Toronto, 1939.). The translation reads as follows: To Niphururia, king of Eg[ypt], say. Thus saith Burraburias, king of Karadunias, thy brother. I am well. With thee, thy house, thy wives, thy land, thy chief men, thy horses, thy chariots, may it be very well. Since my father and thy fathers with one another established friendly relations, they sent to one another rich presents, and they refused not one another any good request. Now my brother has sent [only] two minas of gold as a present. But now, if gold is plentiful, send me as much as thy fathers. But if it is scarce, send half what thy father did. Why didst thou send only two minas of gold? Now, since my work on the House of God is great, and vigorously have I undertaken its accomplishment, send much gold.
There is little doubt that it was about this time that gold was beginning to augment silver in Babylonia as reserve in the ratio of 13:1 approximately. Hence it might reasonably be assumed that the worthy Burnaburiash could very well have been egged on by force other than that of sheer godliness.
[122] Bracketed comment by present author. Britannica, 9th edition, Vol. VIII.
[123] Bracketed comment by present author.
[124] Ibid.
[125] Alexander del Mar: History of the Precious Metals, pp. 47-50.
[126] Breasted, pp. 480-481.
[127] Cyrus H Gordon: Ugaritic Literature, p. ix, p. 120. (Text 118) Rome, 1949.
[128] Cambridge Economic History, Vol. II, p. 16.
[129] Jacquetta Hawkes: Dawn of the Gods, p. 209.
[130] Cambridge Economic History; Vol. II: p. 19.
[131] Britannica. 1898: p. 90: Vol. XI.
[132] Sir Charles Leonard Woolley: Prehistory and the Beginnings of Civilization, pp. 651-658, London, 1937.
[133] Sir Charles Leonard Woolley: Abraham, p. 23, 24. Also see p. 80 present work.
[134] This quotation which comes from Sir Charles L. Woolley’s translation of the Sumerian King Lists, (Excavations at Ur, p. 249.), reads in full: “The Flood came. After the Flood came, Kingship again was sent down from on High.”
[135] Frederick William Madden, M.R.A.S.: Coins of the Jews, P. 29; London; 1881.
[136] According to Sir Charles L. Woolley in his book Abraham (pp. 23-24.): “At Ras Shamra on the North Syrian coast, there have recently been unearthed documents of a very surprising kind; there are clay tablets bearing inscriptions in cuneiform, but the signs represent not syllables as in Babylonian, but letters of the alphabet, and the language is a form of Aramaic closely related to Hebrew: they date from the 14th Century before Christ. Consequently we see that by the time of the Exodus people living in Syria and speaking a tongue akin to the Israelite were so accustomed to the idea of writing that they had modified the old established script of Sumer and Babylon to suit the peculiarities of their own language.” However, in his latest book: Prehistory and the Beginnings of Civilization, (pp. 651-658), Sir Leonard Woolley states that the various scripts of Ancient Syria deciphered or otherwise, and including Phoenician which he definitely claims to be parent script of ancient Greek, all derived from the Egyptian picture writing or Hieroglyphics (via the Hieratic of 2000 B.C.) in agreement with Madden who wrote one hundred years ago. (See chart on p. 75 of the present work.)
[137] Alexander del Mar: History of the Precious Metals, p. 45.
[138] Miner’s and Smelter’s Magazine, Vol. VI, pp 286-322. (A. del Mar: History of the Precious Metals, p. 46.)
[139] Leo A. Oppenheim: Letters from Mesopotamia, p. 46: Chicago: 1967.
[140] Ibid.
[141] Paul Einzig: Primitive Money, p. 206. Also as according to the records of the city of Kish as pertain to the Azag-Bau Dynasty (3268-2897 B.C.). See page 1 of this work.
[142] Sir Charles Woolley: Abraham, p. 122.
[143] Ernest Babelon: Les Origines de la Monnaie, p. 106; Paris; 1897.
[144] Herodotus: The Histories, Book I.
[145] The Nabonidus of modern books of reference who reigned in conjunction with Belshazzar.
[146] Actually through his general, Gobryas, 558 B.C.
[147] Alexander del Mar: History of Monetary Systems, pp. 413, 425, 410, 441, 442.
[148] Emil G.H. Kraeling: Aram and Israel, p. 80; Columbia. 1918.
[149] Ibid.
[150] Emil G.H. Krealing: Aram and Israel, p. 80, Columbia, 1918.
[151] Emil G.H. Kraeling, Ph.D.: Aram and Israel, pp. 83-84 Columbia: 1918.
[152] Paul Einzig: Primitive Money, p. 225; Oxford, 1949.
[153] According to II Kings, 17, 6, ‘In the ninth year of Hoshea, the king of Assyria took Samaria, and carried Israel away into Assyria, and placed them in Halah and in Habor by the river of Gozan, and in the cities of the Medes,’ and according to the records of Sargon of Assyria: ‘Samaria I looked at, I captured; 27,280 men (or families) who dwelt in it I carried away.’
As a completely new population was brought to the now empty land (II Kings, 17, 24), it is curious that 120 years later a so-called Jewish prince should go out of his way to seek battle with Pharaoh Necho, vigorous king of a resurgent Egypt, who according to the Biblical record (II Chronicles, 36, 21) ‘sent ambassadors to him, saying, what have I to do with thee, thou king of Judah? I come not against thee this day, but against the house wherewith I have war: for God commanded me to make haste (to Carchemish): forbear thee from meddling with God, who is with me, that he destroy thee not.’
[154] Ezekiel, Chapter I, V.1,3. Chapter 3, V.15, 23. Chapter 10, V.15, 22. Chapter 11, V.4, (Prophesy) 25, (Expounding Prophesy to Chebarites).
[155] Daniel, Chapter 5, V. 30.
[156] William Smith: History of the Bible, p. 476 London, Ont. 1885.
[157] Marduk was the national God of Babylon, just as Nannar was National God of Ur, and second only to Énlil.
[158] Ezra, King James Version; Ch. 10.
[159] “Membership in the Society is now either by ‘convincement’ of the Spiritual Truths to which Friends witness, or, in England, by birth if both parents are Friends:” James Hastings in Vol. 12 of the Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics (New York 1914.).
[160] Sir Ernest Cassel: Lloyd’s Bank in the History of Banking, p. 20 et seq. Oxford, 1933.
[161] Leo A. Oppenheim: Letters from Mesopotamia, p. 51; Chicago; 1967.
[162] Ibid., p. 46.
[163] Leviticus, Chapter 5, King James version.
[164] The nobility have always been the first to disappear in major warfare. As leaders of their men in battle, their young men are the first to die. During the recent first ‘Great’ war, it may safely be said that the best part of the young men of the natural aristocracy of Europe had perished by 1917.
[165] F.W. Madden: Coins of the Jews, pp. 4-5; London; 1881.
[166] Charles Seltsman: Greek Coins; London; 1933.
[167] F.W. Madden: Coins of the Jews, page 29. According to Herodotus “the Phoenician letters were adopted but with some variation in the shape of a few,” but according to Professor Sayce of much more convincing opinion, “since the names of the letters of the Greek alphabet nearly all end in ‘a,’ it would appear that it must have been brought into Greece, not by the Phoenicians of Tyre and Sidon, but by the Arameans of the gulf of Antioch since the emphatic Aleph is a characteristic of Aramaic, not Phoenician. Even the names of the letters in the Hebrew alphabet disclose their Aramaic origin.
” Which conclusions were further verified by the Ras Shamra tablets discovered some fifty years later, mentioned on page 80 of this work. (See chart on pp. 75-76.)
[168] Sir Charles L. Woolley: Abraham, pp. 124-125, p. 16.
[169] Elgin Groseclose: Money, the Human Conflict; p. 16. University of Oklahoma; 1934.
[170] W.P. Wallace: The Early Coinages of Athens and Euboia, p. 23, Numismatic Chronicle, 1962, and reply by Colin M. Kraay on p. 417.
[171] Charles Seltsman: Greek Coins, London, 1933.
[172] Plutarch: The Lives, “Lucurgus.”
[173] W.P. Wallace: The Early Coinages of Athens and Euboia, p. 23, Numismatic Chronicle; and the reply by Colin M. Kraay, p. 417.
[174] A. Del Mar: History of Monetary Systems in Various States; p. 47; reprint, New York; 1969.
[175] “Mais lorsque, par la guerre de Tarente, l’Italie eut été soumise, … alors se fit sentir, en premier lieu, la nécessité de plus en plus vive d’un système général de bonnes monnaies; … On fit choix, dans ce but, d’un pied monétaire, qui déjà avait été généralement accepté, et on frappa le Denier, de valeur de la Drachme Attique, qui était en usage non seulement dans les monarchies de l’Orient mais encore en Sicile. Assurément le Drachme de l’Attique pesait 4 gr. 37, tandis que le plus ancien Denier, quelque peu plus lourd, était taillé sur un poids moyen de 4 gr. 55 puisqu’il valait quatre Scrupules, c’est-a-dire 1/72 de livre ou 1/6 d’once. Mais cette différence fut supprimée, a la suite d’une réduction qui eut lieu vraisemblablement pendant la première guerre punique, et porta le denier à 1/84 de livre ou 1/7 de l’once c’est-à-dire 3 gr. 90; de sorte que les derniers de ce poids devaient en général être accepté sur le même pied que les Drachmes qui étaient en circulation et n’avaient pas tout à fait le poids légal.”: Théodore Mommsen & Joachim Marquardt: Manuel des Antiquités Romaines, p. 14, Tome X, “De l’Organisation Financière Chez les Romaines.”
[176] Alexander del Mar: History of Monetary Systems in Various States, p. 29, pp. 35-53.
[177] Formerly, as according to Mythology, considered to have been enacted in the 9th Century B.C.