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The Babylonian Woe by David Astle
The Babylonian Woe by David Astle
by David Astle
A Study of the Origin of Certain Banking Practices,
and of their effect on the events of Ancient History, written in the light of the Present Day.
The intellectual faculties however are not of themselves sufficient to produce external action; they require the aid of physical
force, the direction and combination of which are wholly at the disposal of money, that mighty spring by which the total force of
human energies is set in motion.
FOREWORD
“For money has been the ruin of many and has misled the minds of Kings.” –Ecclesiacticus 8, Verse 2.
When I originally approached my study as best as I might, dealing with the growth in pre-antiquity and antiquity of what is known
as the International Money Power, and the particular derivative of the money creative activities of such International Money
Power that might be defined as the Life Alternative Factor, I did so with some diffidence. Perhaps I was overly conscious of what
seemed to be the inadequateness of my preliminary training in these matters and that in no way could I describe myself as deeply
conversant with the languages of ancient times, or, in the case of Mesopotamia, their scripts.
However, in my preliminary studies involving checking through the indices of a number of those standard books of reference
dealing with the ancient civilizations, I soon found that any feelings of inferiority in so far as the adequacy of my scholarship
relative to my particular subject was concerned were unwarranted, and that qualms in these respects were by no means justified.
In almost all of such books of reference, except those that classified themselves as economic or monetary histories, was practically
no clear approach to the subject of money and finance, or to those exchange systems that must have existed in order that the so-
called civilizations might come to be. In the odd case where the translations of the texts might reveal some key clue, no more
special emphasis was placed herein than might have been placed on the mention of a gold cup, a ring, a seal, or some exquisite
piece of stone work.
In Jastrow’s Assyria there was no reference to money at all; in Breasted’s History of Egypt a volume of six hundred pages or so,
only brief mention on pages 97-98. In A History of Egypt by Sir William M. Flinders-Petrie, in the records of Sir John Marshall
and E.J.C. McKay in respect to the diggings at Mohenjo-Daro, and in the writings of Sir Charles L. Woolley and others on their
findings from their studies of the exhumed archives of the city states of ancient Mesopotamia, little enough information exists on
the matters referred to above. In Christopher Dawson who wrote widely on ancient times, particularly in the Age of the Gods
which dealt with most cultures until the commencement of that period known as antiquity, there is only one reference to money,
casual and not conveying much to the average reader; this reference to be found on page 131. In King’s History of Babylon there
was practically nothing on these matters.
Thus in almost all of the works of the great archaeologists and scholars specializing in the ancient civilizations, there is a virtual
silence on that all important matter, the system of distribution of food surpluses, and surpluses of all those items needed towards
the maintenance of a good and continuing life so far as were required by climate and custom.
In all the writings of these great and practical scholars, the workings of that mighty engine which injects the unit of exchange
amongst the peoples, and without which no civilization as we know it can come to be, is only indicated by a profound silence. Of
the systems of exchanges, of the unit of exchange and its issue by private individuals, as distinct from its issue as by the authority
of sovereign rule, on this all important matter governing in such totality the conditions of progression into the future of these
peoples, not a word to speak of.
While it is true that the average archaeologist, in being primarily concerned with the results of the forces that gave rise to the
human accretions known as civilizations, has little enough time to meditate on these forces themselves, especially since so little
evidence exists of what created them, or of how they provided guidance to men in the earlier days, the widespread character of
this omission borders on the mystifying. Virtual failure to speculate on those most important matters of all: the structure of the
machinery of the systems of exchanges which undoubtedly had given rise to the ancient city civilizations, and the true nature of
the energy source by which such machinery was driven, whether by injections of money as known this last three thousand years or
so, or by injections of an exchange medium of which little significant evidence or memory remains, is cause for concern. The truth
of the lines as quoted herein from Boeckh’s Public Economy of Athens (p.ii, present work) is immediately clear to all and that the
physical force underlying all civilizations must have been the system whereby surpluses were allocated to the people according to
their place in the pyramid of life and to their need; thus, when being controlled by the benevolent law of a dedicated ruler,
maintaining at all times the true and natural order of life.
1
According to Tragedy and Hope, the important and compendious work of Dr. Carroll Quigley, an outstanding scholar of liberal outlook, (as
interpreted by the reviewer, W. Cleon Skousen), such conspiracy certainly exists, and is vast in scope to say the least.
2
Mikhail I. Rostovtsev: A Social and Economic History of the Hellenistic World, p. viii, Vol. I. (Oxford; 1941).
The Babylonian Woe 2
through time, amongst which are numbered virtue, honour, and godliness, destroys equally as any other debilitating disease, and
will surely and speedily drag any people down to degeneracy and decay. A great army could not be more efficient in its power of
destruction.
The main discussion of the Artha-Sastra of Kautilya, Hindu classic instructing kings and rulers as to their proper conduct towards
good government, was as to whether financial or military organization came first of all as the root of strength and power in any
organized state. 1 Clearly in that day no less than in this day, financial organization preceded military organization; therefore there
is not much point really in discussion of so obvious a fact and truth.
While an effete people, though money as it is known, is in their hands, soon give way to vigour; nevertheless vigour, without strict
organization of its finances, which, while constituting strict organization of its labour, also enables it to create, or to obtain by
purchase from elsewhere the finest of weapons, will not much avail. Thus, and it has been demonstrated through history over and
over again, it is clear there is one feature basic and decisive in the progression of human life; certainly during the latter years of
which memory exists. That feature, particularly in relatively modern societies from the bronze age onwards, and during that period
of the rapid perfection of the mass production of weapons, is monetary organization, and what precious metals are available for
purposes of international exchange as against the purchase of those finest of weapons and essential materials of war only
obtainable abroad, and as wages for the most skilled men at arms from wherever obtainable, abroad or otherwise.
The gates of Egypt stand fast like Inmutet
They open not to the Westerners,
They open not to the Easterners,
They open not to the Northerners,
They open not to the Southerners,
They open not to the enemy who dwells within. 2
Much of history as we know it is the record of civilizations to counter and evade destruction of themselves from without or within,
or is the record of their efforts to destroy other seemingly competing civilizations or peoples attacking them from without or
within.
War is as inevitable as is peace as the result of the exhaustion of war, and there are few peoples that escape; but wars of the last
three thousand years have not been relatively infrequent occurrences, and have been an incessantly recurring evil. It is no chance
that; the growth of warfare into a very cancer eating into the vitals of mankind, and more particularly the white races is parallel to
the growth of that other cancer which is private, and therefore irresponsible, money creation and emission.
It seems that almost none of the scholars make any serious effort to throw light on the real meaning of this matter of private
monetary emission, and the disastrous effects that it has had, and in finality, will have, towards the defining of the remaining
period of time of man upon this earth, as being brief and uncertain.
Those strange decisions of kings signalling the opening of wars as frightful and disastrous to the European peoples, as the last two
so-called “World Wars,” decisions so abnegatory of self, but more than that, abnegatory of the best interests of the peoples they
represented before God, far from being the directives of benevolent force, are the directives of a force which cannot but be
described in any way but as being wholly malevolent. 3
The great engine which is the international control of monetary emission and regulation, driven as it was until recently by the
catalytic fuel of gold alone, is now almost world embracing in the scope of its operations. It seems there is no change in the
attitude of those its guides, nor any admission of the folly of their misuse of this God- Power which they direct towards the good
of themselves and their friends. Their obsession, despite ruin for all looming on every horizon, seems to remain the same narrow
vision of the day of their own world supremacy wherein they will rule as absolute lords over all; although by now it should be
apparent to them, no less than to all thinking people, that if this madness concealed within the much talked about conception
known as progress is not brought to a complete arrestment, nothing remains but an end wherein shall be silence and no song, for
indeed there will be no singer, nor any to sing to.
As it looks today, it may be the end for the Indo-European peoples whose diligent labours made so much of this world of today. It
may be the end, final and absolute for all men for that matter. it may be the end for this our Earth, our only place and home and
hope in the awful endlessness of space and time.
It should be more than apparent that in the relatively recent day when kingship and god-ship were one, so far as the simple souls
were concerned, and the god and his viceroy on earth, the priest-king, were creators and controllers of the economic good,
exchanges were created in order that the people might live a fuller life, and not so much to benefit any secret society or
interlocked group standing aside from the main paths of mankind, but to benefit all who kneeled humbly before the Almighty,
1
Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan and Charles Moore: A Source Book in Indian Philosophy, pp 219- 220. Princeton; 1957.
2
Ancient Egyptian Poem; Christopher Dawson: The Age of the Gods, p. 148.
3
For example, the folly of Britain in letting itself and the Empire be stamped into these last two so-called “Great” wars, may be compared to
that of the man described by the Emperor Augustus who goes fishing with a golden hook; he has everything lose and little to gain. (Suetonius:
the Twelve Caesars II, 25)
The Babylonian Woe 3
each fully in acceptance of himself as part of the god-wish, eternal and infinite; each one in his time an integral unit carefully
placed in the pyramid of life itself.
History over these last three thousand years particularly, has largely been the interweaving of both a witting, and an unwitting
distortion of the truth, with all the inevitable consequences which have been expected 1 and now are but a little way ahead. Kings
largely became the mouthpiece and sword arm of those semi-secret societies that controlled the material of money as its outward
and visible symbols came to be restricted to gold, silver, and copper. The fiat of the god in heaven which had been the decisive
force behind that which brought about an equitable exchange, was replaced by the will of those classes controlling the undertones
of civilization, leaders of the world of slave drivers, caravaneers, outcasts, and criminals generally, such as was to be discerned on
the edges of the ancient city civilizations, and followed the trade routes between them. The instrument of this will was precious
metal, whose supply was controlled by the leaders of these classes through their control of the slave trade, since mining was rarely
profitable in the case of the precious metals, except with slave labour, even after the development of hardened iron tools and
efficient methods of smelting.
The power of these men, indifferent and alien to most cities as they were, relative to that power it was replacing, which was the
will of the benevolent god of the city, had been made absolute by sowing in the minds of men over the thousands of years, the idea
of such metals having a specially high value relative to other goods and services being offered for exchange; indeed that they were
veritable store house of value.
The law of the ruler previously exercised towards the well being of the people in that they might live a good and honourable life
accordingly became corrupted. It became merely a symbol raised before their gaze, in order that they might not look down and see
the evil gnawing away at the roots of the Tree of Life itself, destroying all peace and goodness. Nor could those semi-secret
groups of persons be seen who so often were the sources of such evil. In their contemptuous indifference to the men of the state
who found meaningfulness and tranquillity through life lived in natural order under the law of the King, they constituted hidden
force deeply inimical to the best interests of mankind.
Through stealthy issue of precious metal commodity money into circulation amongst the peoples, replacing that money which
represented the fiat or will of the god of the city and which was merely an order on the state warehouses through his scribes, this
internationally minded group from the secrecy of their chambers were able to make a mockery of the faith and belief of simple
people. The line of communication from god to man through priest-king and priest was cut, being replaced by their own twisted
purposes such as they were; not however guiding mankind into the heaven that could have been and where all would be life, and
light, and hope, but into such a hell as to escape from which men might gladly come to accept the idea of Mass Suicide.
My sincere acknowledgements are due to:
1. Professor Fritz Heichelheim, and Sijthoff International Publishing Company, Leyden, for their very kind permission to use the
short extracts from Professor Heichelheim’s work: An Ancient Economic History.
2. Professor W.F. Albright, and Cambridge University Press for their very kind permission to use the short extracts from Professor
Albright’s work The Amarna Letters from Palestine; the same being found in Volume II of the Cambridge Ancient History.
3. G.R. Driver and John C. Miles, and the Clarendon Press, Oxford, for their very kind permission to use the rendering of
Hammurabai’s Law No. 7, as given by G.R. Driver and John C. Miles in their joint work: Ancient Codes and Laws of the Near
East.
4. Dr. T.B.L. Webster and Messrs. Methuen Publications for their very kind permission to use the short extracts from Dr.
Webster’s work: From Mycenae to Homer.
5. Sir Charles Leonard Woolley and Messrs. Faber & Faber Ltd. for their very kind permission to use the short extracts from Sir
Charles Leonard Woolley’s work: Abraham.
6. Sir Charles Leonard Woolley and Messrs. Ernest Benn for their very kind permission to use the short extracts from Sir Charles
Leonard Woolley’s work: Excavations at Ur.
7. Christopher Dawson & John Murray Publishing House for their kind permission to use an extract from Christopher Dawson’s
work: The Age of the Gods.
8. Dr William Langer and The Houghton Mifflin Company for their very kin permission to use the short extracts from the
Encyclopaedia of World History.
9. Dr. Charles Seltsman and the Associated Book Publishers for their very kind permission to use the short extracts from Greek
Coins.
My sincere acknowledgements are also due to all those friends and acquaintances who in any way have assisted me in the present
work.
1
Much of this was foretold in the Revelation of St. John the Divine.
The Babylonian Woe 4
IN THE BEGINNING WAS THE WORD
Every conclusion arrived at as a result of study of the fragments of information available in respect to money and its creators in
the world of the Ancient Civilizations, indicates the existence of a far reaching conspiracy in respect to monetary issuance
influencing the progression of man’s history in the earliest times of which written record exists. It is also outstandingly clear that it
was parent to that acknowledged and most obvious conspiracy such as exists today. 1
The whole notion of the institution of precious metals by weight as common denominator of exchanges, internationally and
nationally, cannot but have been disseminated by a conspiratorial organization fully aware of the extent of the power to which it
would accede, could it but maintain control over bullion supplies and the mining which brought them into being in the first place.
Clearly such notion had originally come into being during that historically distant period when first of all free silver began to be
extensively used as a convenient and highly portable commodity in settlement of balances outstanding in foreign trade; certainly
as far back as Neolithic times. This fact was indicated by the evidence existing that values (and by inference money) were already
expressed in terms of silver by weight at the time of the Azag-Bau Dynasty at Kish in Mesopotamia (3268-2897 B.C.); although in
a sense perhaps narrow and strictly national.
According to tablets unearthed recording a sale of land, the sellers were known as “The eaters of the silver of the field.” 2 This
expression clearly showed a connection between the conception of money as an abstract unit in circulation, and silver, the tangible
material on which the symbols of this money were later recorded. Such silver would then be valued according to the ancient
customs of the international trade routes which were manifested in the rules of the travelling merchants who controlled these
routes; these rules being established towards the better regulation of exchanges between themselves.
In other words, as a result of the establishment of the custom of settlement of balances in external trade by silver bullion by
weight, it seems that a system of values had grown up in the cities of Mesopotamia, over what period of time it would be
impossible to say for sure, in terms of those accepted values of definite weights of silver bullion in such external trade, relative to
the staples of life: barley, dates, etc.
That sales are recorded in the 4th Millennium B.C. means that even at that time there was a clear conception of the significance of
the abstract monetary unit, which is in itself an integral part of the law structure of any state, for such sales were in terms of
money. The true meaning of such a concept being largely incomprehensible to most even as in this day, except they were the truly
initiated, those controlling the internal exchanges, namely the priesthood and scribes, might well be excused if they early fell into
the error of expressing values in terms of the standard of values in international trade. This serious error brought about finally, not
only the collapse of that power through whose medium the god kings were best able to serve their peoples, but also as a further
consequence, the collapse and fading of the meaning and benevolent purpose of the god kings themselves.
With silver bullion controlled by an international and conspiratorial minded group, as indeed it is obvious it must have been,
considering the main sources of silver supply as being far away from those centres of civilization whose money depended on it
and yet with people coming to equate money, in actuality the law of the ruler, with value according to the law created in the
exchanges by the custom of the use of that same privately controlled commodity, then it becomes quite clear that scarcity or
plenty in money, whatever way it was evinced in the circulation, depended on the manipulations internationally of that group
controlling the distribution of precious metal bullion, and the plenty or scarcity they created, as was convenient to them.
If there was no silver, why then! there was no money, and prices fell. Substitute gold for silver, and history seeming to fast repeat
itself, we have the condition of the European world of the last 2000 years. If there was no gold, Why then again! There was no
money!
Hence was able to develop that conspiracy against mankind most exemplified by a continuous propaganda of hate against all
authority: in pre-antiquity and antiquity against the many city gods, and in relatively modern times against the kings that rose out
of the ruins of that which had been Rome.
As those controlling totally the economic life of a state through monetary creation and emission, must have felt that kings and
gods were more of a nuisance than anything else, the instigators of this conspiracy in whatever place and era, obviously were
those who first did the business of bankers; the controllers of values, and consequently the economic life of the states wherever the
precious metal standard was used.
According to Sir Charles L. Woolley, excavator of the city of Ur in Southern Mesopotamia, the unit of exchange in the days of the
great city states of Mesopotamia of the third and fourth Millennium B.C., and which served, therefore, as common denominator of
the value of goods and services, was the measure of barley. While however pointing out that gold and silver came to pass from
1
According to the review of Tragedy and Hope by Dr. Carroll Quigley; (New York, 1966.), as contained in the Naked Capitalist published by
W. Cleon Skousen, Salt Lake City, 1970.
2
Cambridge Ancient History; Vol. I; p. 371. On first reading this unusual expression, there is temptation to think that an error has been made in
the translation of the tablet. However, according to the correspondent in Zaire for the magazine known as Awake, chiefs of the natives of this
country in pre-Europeanized times announced the copper mining season with the words Tuye Tukadie, Tuye Tukadie mukuba, which literally
translates as “Let us go eat copper; in effect meaning “Let us go enrich ourselves to provide for our life.” (Awake, p. 25; July 8th, 1974.).
Similarly the expression describing the sellers of land as “eaters of the silver of the field,” derives from the same root idea and implies that they
enriched themselves to provide for the essentials of life by the sale of their land for silver.
The Babylonian Woe 5
hand to hand, with a value dictated by their value with reference to the constant value of a measure of barley, he asserts that the
salaries of government officials at the time of Hammurabai (about the beginning of the second millennium B.C.) were assessed in
barley but paid in silver, such silver having neither stamp nor government guarantee. 1
The notion therefore herein implied, of the numerous officials and labourers of Hammurabai of Babylon waiting in line to have
silver cut off from the bullion bar, and weighed as against pay for the day, or the week, or the month, as the case might have been,
although offered with sincerity, patently is as erroneous as that conception of the every day use in the exchanges of the aes rude in
a similar way, in which the classical scholars and numismatists would have us believe; and which implied that the foreman and his
labourers in ancient Rome of the days of the kings also waited in line after their day’s labour, say, on the Circus Maximus, to have
a fragment of copper cut off and weighed in order that their wives might be able to go to the market to purchase the evening
meal. 2
Clearly the word silver in the texts means no more than the word Plata in modern day Spanish, or Argent in modern day French.
These words literally translate as silver, but as money which they are most used to indicate, they may be anything from grimy
tattered paper note, to a silver peso, or to the brass coin which may function as divisible thereof. Similarly the word from the texts
denoting silver may be safely said to have meant that which passed for money, perhaps exchangeable in the temple or the money
shops for silver, but being in itself anything which circulated, denoting multiple or divisible of the unit o exchange; be it clay or
wood or glass 3 or leather or papyrus or stone.
Thus, as was the case in Sumeria indeed, long, long before the time of the great Hammurabai once money had come to be more of
an abstract unit of account based for its value in desirable goods and services, on the barter power of a certain weight of silver
bullion related to the constant value of barley, 4 it was no major advance for those who benefited most from this conception,
namely the bullion brokers and their satellites, the money changers or barkers, to find a weak king and a corruptible priesthood,
who could be brought to lose sight of the total control of the city which was the right of the god they served; and who might turn a
blind eye to those other more sinister activities by which the power of the Ziggurat was further undermined.
Of those time Dawson in the Age of the Gods remarks:
“Originally the state and the temple corporations were the only bodies which possessed the necessary stability and resources
for establishing widespread commercial relations. Temple servants were sent on distant missions, provided with letters of
credit which enabled them to obtain supplies in other cities. Moreover the temple was the bank of the community through
which money could be lent at interest and advances made to the farmer on the security of his crop. Thus in the course of the
3rd millennium there grew up in Mesopotamia a regular money economy based on precious metals as standards of exchange,
which stimulated private wealth and enterprise and led to real capitalist development. The temple and the palace remained the
centres of the economic life of the community but by their side and under their shelter there developed a many sided activity
which found expression in the guilds of the free craftsmen and the merchants, and the private enterprise of the individual
capitalist.” 5
This information from Christopher Dawson with the translation of the tablets before him, and every assistance no doubt from
those students in that particular field, is most illuminating; but of the undertones of those highly significant years in man’s period
upon this earth, he seems to see little, or he just does not choose to speculate as to their nature.
Principal amongst those undertones, and quite possibly the force that brought these changes about, may safely be assumed to be
the secret and private expansion of the total money supply effected primarily by the issuance into circulation of false receipts for
silver and other valuables supposedly being held on deposit in thief proof vaults, or otherwise, for safe custody.
Such receipts would be accepted by merchants instead of the actual metal, and would function as money, and would be an addition
to the total money supply, though not understood as such by the rulers who would thus easily be inveigled into lending their
sanction to seemingly harmless practices; or at least into turning a blind eye; especially if priesthood and scribes so advised.
With that growth of the conception of private wealth which would automatically follow on the acceptance of the idea of buying
and selling, or perhaps better put, preceded such idea of buying and selling as according to a silver standard internationally
accepted, such involvement of priesthood and scribe would not be hard to achieve. According to Sir Charles Woolley, trade
seemed to extend from the city of Ur, particularly during the so-called IIIrd. Dynasty, over the whole known world which
1
Sir Charles L. Woolley: Abraham, p. 123.
2
With all due deference to an otherwise most eminent scholar.
3
Very little is known of the former relatively extensive use of glass as material to record definite numbers of the unit of exchange, or, more
simply put, as money. On this subject François Lenormant commented in his book: La Monnaie dans l’Antiquité (p. 214; Tome I, Book II):
“Nous possédons des preuves irréfragables da l’usage de monnaie de verre en Egypte des la temps du Haut-Empire (1) usage que se continua
dans le même pays sous les Byzantins (2) puis sous les Arabes (3). C’est principalement de temps des Khalifes Fatimite que l’Egypte vit
fabriquer le plu grand nombre de ces assignats le verre, portant l’indication d’une valeur da monnaie. Les Arabes de Sicile en firent aussi a
l’imitation de ceux d’Egypte.”
4
Sir Charles Woolley: Abraham, p. 123; London; 1936.
5
Christopher Dawson: Age of the Gods, p. 130. (London; 1928.)
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certainly reached as far afield as Europe 1 being carried on by means of letters of credit, bills of exchange, and “promises to pay”
(cheques), made out in terms of staple necessities; of life expressed in terms of silver at valuation of barley (probably at a given
season of the year). 2
There also is no doubt that the merchant as representative of the god of the city from which he journeyed, loaned money by which
his customers were able to make their purchases, such money merely being an abstraction indicated by the figures on the clay
tablet; in earlier days being backed by the will-force of the god of the city, and in latter days by the promises of silver issued by
one who at that time would be the equivalent of today’s banker, and who, should such need arise, such as would be occasioned by
the temple withdrawing its sanction or permissiveness towards his activities would be able to partially back his self-created
abstract money which was the reality of such promises, with actual silver.
Thus the caravaneer or travelling merchant gave credit. Whether his own or that of the merchant for whom he was agent, or direct;
from the Ziggurat itself, dwelling place of the god, it functioned as a form of foreign aid similar to the foreign aid of today.
Considering that the merchant in earlier times operated solely with the credit of the temple that raised him up, while the temple
remained supreme, such foreign aid was instrument of state policy, maintaining the servility of lesser states, while at the same
time maintaining the steady working capacity of the home manufactures, and contented people in consequence. The classes of the
dominant power were content that the manufacturies gave them daily labour, and the classes of the subordinate power were able to
buy the luxuries they craved, and the necessities they needed as against money deducted from the credits loaned by the dominant
power. Repayment of these credits, as in today, was made by way of return shipment of raw materials such as were needed for the
manufacturies of the dominant state. That such raw materials were assessed in value as according to the international value of
silver related to the national value of barley in the dominant state seems most likely.
However it is clear that with the growth of silver in circulation between private persons, and between private persons and states, as
now would become an inevitability, that which had been total economic control from the gods through his servants in the
Ziggurat, was bypassed, and merchants were now able to deal privately using their own credit, or powers of abstract money
creation. They were also able, through their control of distant mining operations, to afflict a previously dedicated priesthood with
thought of personal possession; and through the control of the manufacture of weapons in distant places, they were able to arm
warlike peoples towards the destruction of whosoever they might choose.
Those merchants of whatever race they may have been, who voyaged to the cities of Sumeria from places as far distant as the
great cities of the Indus valley civilization known today as Mohenjo-Daro and Harrapa, as is clearly demonstrated by the
Sumerian seals found at Mohenjo-Daro 3 and the seals from Mohenjo-Daro found at Ur,1 4 and who were without a doubt one of the
main sources of precious metal supply in Sumeria, 5 came to realize that they could actually create that which functioned as money
with but the record incised by the stylus on the clay tablet promising metal or money. Obviously, as a result of this discovery
which depended on the confidence they were able to create in the minds of the peoples of their integrity, provided they banded
themselves together with an absolute secrecy that excluded all other than their proven and chosen brethren, they could replace the
god of the city himself as the giver of all. If so be they could institute a conception of a one god, their god, a special god of the
world, a god above all gods, then not merely the city, be it Ur or Kish or Lagash or Uruk, but the world itself could be theirs, and
all that in it was. A strange dream! One whose fulfilment they never really expected!
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.
1
Actually evidence exists of Sumerian culture extending as far as the Caspian Sea even before the Dynastic Period. Reference to this subject is
to be found on page 47 of The Sumerians.
2
On pages 124-125 of his book Abraham (London, 1936.) comment is made by Sir Charles Woolley: “a trade which involved the greater part
of the then known world was carried on with remarkable smoothness by means of what we should call a paper currency based on commodity
values. The fluctuations of currency values which are the bugbear of modern commerce were virtually overcome by a currency which
depended ultimately on the staple necessity of life but was qualified by the use of a medium possessed of intrinsic value; the commercial
traveller had to use his wits and exercise his judgement as to the form in which he cashed his credit notes.”
Further comment was made by Sir Charles Woolley and Jacquetta Hawkes in Prehistory and the Beginnings of Civilization (pp. 615-616;
London; 1963): The difficulty was solved by what might be called Letters of Credit facilitated by the existence of established agents on the
trade routes. The traveller started with a consignment of grain, might sell it in some town on his road, receiving a signed tablet with the value
expressed in copper, possibly, or in silver with which he could buy there or elsewhere something to the same value which he could sell at a
profit farther along on his journey. his tablets payable on demand by the agents to whom he was accredited were the ancient equivalent of a
Paper currency.”
3
E.J.C. McKay: Further Excavations at Mohenjo-Daro p 582. (Govt. India. Delhi; 1938.)
4
Sir Charles Woolley: Excavations at Ur; p. 112.
5
In the words of Sir Charles L. Woolley on page 193 of Excavations at Ur: “ Raw materials were imported sometimes from over the sea, to be
worked up in the Ur factories; the Bill of Lading of a merchant ship which came up the canal from the Persian Gulf to discharge its cargo on
the wharves of Ur details gold, copper ore, hardwood, ivory, pearls, and precious stones.”
The Babylonian Woe 7
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. 1 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. 2
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, 3 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. 4
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. 5
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.
1
John Bright: A History of Israel, p. 44; London; 1960.
2
Sir Charles Leonard Woolley; The Sumerians, p. 25 New York; 1965.
3
The Goyim of Genesis; Chapter XIV; verse I.
4
A. Andreades: History of the Bank of England, p. 23; London; 1966.
5
The Laws of Hammurabai; No. 7; (G.R. Driver & John C. Miles: Ancient Codes and Laws of the Near East, Vol. II, p. 15. Oxford, 1952.).
The Babylonian Woe 8
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.
1
According to professor W.F. Albright (The Amarna Letters from Palestine. Cambridge Ancient History Vol. 11; pp. 14-17.): “There was also
a large and apparently increasing class of stateless and reputedly lawless people in Palestine and Syria to whom the appellation Apiru was
given, it has now become certain that they were a class of heterogenous ethnic origin, and that they spoke different languages, often alien to the
people in whose documents they appear.”
Further on in the same work, after pointing out the distinct differences between the desert tribes (Bedawin), the grooms, and the SA.GAZ
troops (‘Apiru’), using an old text relative to the Hittite armed forces as the source of his information (about 1500 B.C.), professor Albright
further points out that the word Apiru must mean dusty ones in N. West Semitic, and that it still appears in Syriac conveying the same meaning.
“Characteristic of all these terms is the common fact that the bearer of the designation trudges in the dust behind donkeys, mules or chariots. In
1961 I collected the then available archaeological and documentary material bearing on the caravan trade of the twentieth to nineteenth
centuries B.C., and the organization of donkey caravans; I found far-reaching correlations with early patriarchal tradition in Genesis.” (p. 17).
The complex problem of the significance of the ‘Apiru’ (or Habiru) is not rendered less so by the fact that it recurs in cuneiform texts from
different parts of Mesopotamia, Syria, Egypt, and Asia Minor; all of which date from between the dynasty of Agade, and the 11th century B.C.
Thus it would appear that the restless ‘Apiru’ of later times, mercenary soldier, bandit, or smuggler, was the descendant of the donkey
caravaneers who maintained the trade between the cities of the known world previous to the collapse of the main cities in Babylonia before the
arms of the Gutim, the Hittites, and the Elamites at different times, and which resulted in the extinction of a great deal of the donkey caravan
trade by the 18th century B.C., and left the followers of that trade uncertain of where to settle or what occupation to follow.
In the Tel Amarna Tablets, Vol II, Samuel A.B. Mercer refers to the use of the name Habiru at Babylon in the time of Hammurabai, (p.840); he
further records that a list of Hittite gods, headed List of the Gods of the Habiru, was found at Bog-Haz Koi by Winckler, (p. 841). The secret
societies of a group known as the Haburah seem to have existed beyond the time of the destruction of Jerusalem by Titus. According to Jost (I.
History of the Jews; p. 210) Vespasian appointed a Rabbi John Ben Zakkai, chief of the Haburah as ruler of Jamnia. As Haburah derives from
habor: to join, there may not be significant connection between Habiru or ‘Apiru’ and the more modern Haburah.
The Babylonian Woe 9
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.” 1
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 2 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 3 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). 4
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 5 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, 6 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
1
Sir Charles Woolley: Excavations at Ur, p. 158.
2
Ibid., p. 72.
3
“Mes-Kalan-Dug, ‘the good Hero of the Land,’ Prince of Ur, buried probably as early as 3500 B.C., took with him to the next world a wealth
of golden vessels and weapons such as no commoner would have ventured to posses.”: Charles Seltsman, in Creek Coins (p. 2.).
4
Paul Einzig: Primitive Money, p. 214. Oxford; 1949.
5
In the Amarna Letters from Palestine, (p. 16), Professor W.F. Albright records that one of the letters from the Tel Amarna archives reports
that Zemredda of Lachish had been killed by slaves who had become ‘Apiru.’ Further Professor Albright records that “in thirteen century
documents from Ugarit, we hear of men of Ugarit, including slaves, who had escaped to the ‘Apiru’ in Hittite territory.”
6
James Mellaart: Catal Huyuk; London; 1967.
The Babylonian Woe 10
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 1 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 Plata 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, 2 the natives of Melanesia and Micronesia, 3 whose way of life
obviously derives, with little change, from the way of life of the races that once occupied South China, Annam, 4 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.” 5
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 6 . 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, 7 a
most refined system of distribution of surpluses and therefore creation of exchanges, must have existed. The connection between
such system and the scarabs 8 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.
The agents of the Babylonian Money Power as it existed previous to the extensive growth of coined money as a base for that
circulation, seen or abstract, which drove the trade and industry of the Greek industrial revolution, would themselves have
promoted and encouraged the establishment of the temple nucleus to the city state. It was the form of government they understood
best and whose essential powers they knew, from experience now grown ancient, how to control and subvert if necessary. Just as
the similar secret money creative force heads directly for the seat of government itself in this day and age, and once it becomes
fully lodged and acknowledged, in the same way as with the establishment of the Bank of England in 1694 and the establishment
of the Federal Reserve Bank of the United States in 1913, two instances with which we are most familiar, it penetrates right into
the heart of the treasury, 9 so it was in that day. In the little cities of early Greek industrial revolution, perhaps no less sly amongst
this sturdy people, but clearly discernible it was.
As amongst the original aristocracy of Greece owing its origin to those heroic days of the Homeric Sagas, would be little enough
sympathy for the smooth subtleties of those newcomers originating from the counting houses of the Phoenician, Aramean, or
Babylonian Cities, it would not be to the natural political leaders that these newcomers would address themselves in the first
place, but to the priesthood, those who controlled shrine and temple, the advisors and guides to such rulers. Just as in today such
priesthood is too often composed of men of little understanding of the realities of financial life, and who will lend themselves
1
These words “the Ancient Orient” so aptly supplying loose definition to that world that lived under the political system that governed most of
the cities of the Ancient Near East, derive from professor Heichelheim’s Ancient Economic History.
2
Kingston-Higgins: Survey of Primitive Money, p. 189. London; 1949.
3
Paul Einzig: Primitive Money, p. 29-81. Also Kingston-Higgins.
4
Kingston-Higgins also refers to shell money in the Neolithic caves of Annam (p. 139). Also at Mohenjo-Daro. (p. 1). For shell money at
Mohenjo-Daro see E.J.C. McKay; p. 582. Further Excavations at Mohenjo-Daro.
5
Cambridge Ancient History. p. 51; Vol. I.
6
London Illustrated News. p. 24, March 7th, 1970; The Boys of Sungir; Dr. Otto Bader.
7
James Henry Breasted: A History of Egypt, p. 44.
8
According to Flinders-Petrie, scarabs first appear in Egypt during the fourth Dynasty and continue right through to the end (of Pharaonic rule)
with no important break. History of Egypt. p. 52; Vol. I; London, 1897.
9
A Andreades: History of The Bank of England, p. 389-401. See also The Federal Reserve System, a pamphlet originally published by the
Board of governors of the Federal Reserve System, 1939, and republished by Omni Publications of Hawthorne, California.
The Babylonian Woe 11
almost eagerly to any power that may approach them with sufficient front to convince them that they are being offered more than
the god they represent is already possessed of, so it was in that day. This village priesthood, conducting the simple rites such as
may have been during the period known as the dark ages, and before the advent of the city states of historical record, when was
breathed into their ears the possibilities of magnificent temples such as were to be found in Egypt, and the extent of the control
they would exercise through the oracles, whose wisdom would be spread by fame across the whole world, would easily be gained.
Thus the cities that rose out of the industrial awakening of Greece had all the appurtenances of the sacred city state of more
ancient days. However, just as sacred kingship existing as the projection of the guiding will of the Almighty on to this earth, too
often during the last three hundred years has become little more than a front giving legality to such money as circulates bearing as
it does, the profile of the ruler who so often has been unwitting co-conspirator, if only as essential instrument, with that money
power, totally international in character, which has nowadays largely replaced kingly power as the true ruler, so it was that the
temple that should owe fealty to the gods alone, became a front for the international money creative force of that day and age;
connected closely with the trade in precious metals and slaves as it must have been.
The temple of the Sumerian city state had been palace, temple, warehouse, government offices and central bank in one, and its
servants 1 had administered it in these capacities certainly until the end of what is known as the Dynastic period (in the case of the
city of Ur), and with declining strength for long afterwards; and the king of the city state had been sufficiently as god on earth,
that, as previously has been described, there were those of his wives and concubines and officials who gladly went down to the
grave with him. 2
Thus, as the distant heir, in some degree, to this temple of ancient days, the temple of the Greek city state in the 1st Millennium
B.C. was still a place looked up to as the abode of the gods, and wherein the sacred rites were conducted; even if that economic
power, by which, as the expression of the benevolent will of the god, it had controlled the total existence of men, and their
comings and goings, was now exercised by an external and indifferent force, alien to Greece in thought and character, and with
whom it connived against its own adherents.
In the same way the priesthood or laymen that promote, wittingly or unwittingly, the elements of decay penetrating the church of
today, connive blindly or otherwise with those whose stated and clear plan has never been other than the disintegration of this
selfsame church, and who have always had in mind no more than its ultimate destruction.
In a latter period it is true, but still within the first millennium B.C., the situation at the Temple of Apollo at Delos, and of which
some proof exists, clearly illustrates this condition of the temple: still as controller of the mysteries, and the recipient of the bounty
of devoted souls, but no longer the centre and control point of the god owned state. It had become merely a front for the economic
purposes of a secret fraternity whose concern was money changing, silver bullion, the grain trade, and the slave trade. These
persons had conducted their business in the shade of the temple courtyards from ancient days as, and if they could, in order that
the power or mystery as locally was held in awe, might give sanctity to their activities which so often were exercised against the
well being of the people who sheltered them. Such activities were frequently concerned with movements of bullion, the factor
most of all giving rise to instability of prices, and movements of labour which then was slaves, hardly less a factor in such
instability of prices, and therefore so necessary to the full exploitation of a given people.
The island of Delos, although virtually infertile and without special advantages such as natural harbours of any particular
excellence, due to the contributions and gifts of the pilgrims visiting the Temple of Apollo, and the deposits of the cities,
trapezitae and leading citizens, in precious metals and money, for such were esteemed to be safe in the Temple of the God,
became very rich; a centre of trade and banking, and above all, a centre for the area slave trade from which almost none were
safe. 3
Of the commercial activities of the great sanctuaries, Oskar Seffert, the German antiquarian of the last century had to say, (A
Dictionary of Classical Antiquities, p. 91.):
.” We hear in isolated cases of State Banks, but this business was carried on in the vast majority of cases, by the Great Sanctuaries,
such as those of Delphi, Delos, Ephesus, and Samos, which were much used as banks for loans and deposits both by individuals
and governments.”
In other words, therefore, the great sanctuary functioned very much the same way, from the economic standpoint, as the central
bank in this day. The agents of International Money Power, as used by the priesthood of the Temple of Apollo to take care of the
fiscal or financial dealings of the temple, and to whom undoubtedly was farmed out the credit of the temple, must have fully
understood that the priesthood had betrayed their high calling, and thereby had betrayed those devoted souls who continued to
believe the sole concern of the temple was, as formerly, for their spiritual guidance and that they should live good, virtuous and
pious lives.
1
According to N.K. Sandars in the introduction to his translation of the Epic of Gilgamish (p. 14.): “The temples were served by a perpetual
priesthood in whose hands, at one time, was almost the whole wealth of the state; and amongst whom were the archivists and teachers, the
scholars and mathematicians. In very early times the whole temporal power was theirs, as servants of the god whose estates they managed.”
2
Sir Charles L. Woolley: Further Excavations at Ur, p. 158.
3
Plato was reputed to have been sold as a slave by Dionysus, ruler of Syracuse, for 20 minae. Diodorus: xv.7; Plutarch: Dionysos, 5.
The Babylonian Woe 12
These agents would have lurked as only faintly discernible shadows behind the temple facade, although they instigated much of
what came to pass in those days, if themselves so little seen. Of first concern to them would have been the reputation of their
masters, the priesthood, for piety, probity, and godliness, in so far as appearance went. For by maintaining the position of the
priesthood, they maintained themselves and their secret power; yet for whatever they brought about, especially if of evil, it may
safely be assumed, a nevertheless inviolate priesthood would be held responsible.
Hence the people never questioned the existence of the temple but as the place where the will of the god was exercised through his
servants. That it had come to function more as instrument in the capacity of sanctifying front for an international power concerned
largely with money creation and the control of the slave trade, itself mainly of criminal antecedents, was something they never
came to fully understand; nor that this whole thing of prayer, worship, and devotion was dangerously near to becoming a cruel
hoax manipulated by a handful of aliens, who looked at them and their fervour and belief with dead eyes. No more in this day do
those who toil on through the few years of their lives realize that the governments that they so naively believe are theirs, are but a
wavering shadow. The absolute reality of sovereign power only obtainable through total control over monetary creation and
emission and cancellation, is not theirs. They but function as standards by which international money creative forces create the
worlds money in a given area; places wherein exponents of the “Law” and talkative and by no means wise or learned men
foregather to discuss road minding etc. and too often little things that occupy them, but matter not too much; never looking too
closely at the direction from which they came, nor toward that direction in which they go; nor, above all, towards the place of the
hand that feeds them.
Therefore this economic power apparently centering in the Temple of Apollo would not only derive from those loans in precious
metals that it was able to grant, but also from the fact that those very secret fraternities understanding fully the principles of
Ledger Credit Page Entry Money, operated under its patronage. There can be no doubt that the principles of monetary inflation,
or, better put, abstract money creation, were well understood to the trapezitae or professional bankers to whom the Temple at
Delos apparently delegated these functions; 1 and equally well known was how easily merchants could be trained to make
payments by cheque drawn on account consisting of supposed deposits with a recognized banker either by signed and witnessed
document, by signed document, even by no more than verbal instructions. Thus, provided the payee also had account at Delos or
agency thereof, no transfer of actual silver need have been involved, and what is now euphemistically described as the fractional
reserve system, (a swindle indurated in a system!) was operated. The enormous volume of exchanges a business that could be
carried on without the movement of one drachma of silver, and consequently the monopolization of trade and industry and
subsequent control over the whole world and its affairs that could be brought about at literally no real cost, provided those dealing
in money changing and financial matters maintained close solidarity, was known to the bankers.
The tremendous entre-pôt trade of Delos, especially in slaves, 2 could not derive from anything else other than the acceptance of
the “Credit” of the Temple from the hands of these aliens. These men would be skilled money changers bred and trained in the
ancient financial sophistication of the cities of Babylonia, Aram, a Phoenicia, etc. They would be fully conversant with the
possibilities inherent in such ledger credit page entry money, and whose successful functioning as an abstract inflation of the
number of units of silver they claimed to control, depended on secrecy, and solidarity amongst themselves, and above all, on the
patronage of the corrupted temples.
Professor Rostovtsev relates at length the commercial dealings of Apollonius, manager of the economic affairs of the Ptolemic
Pharaoh, Philadelphus. 3 . If the true name of Apollonius or others of that necessarily interlocked money power was known, and
substituted for that of Antigonus and Demetrius and Soter and, indeed of Philadelphus and all those rulers that succeeded
Alexander, then the glass through which this tale is read, showing but dark and inscrutable figures incomprehensibly moving on
the screen of time, becomes clear and meaningful. For instance it is unthinkable that those soldiers who were the successors to
Alexander, probably by no means as instructed as their commander, should have understood the undercurrents that still supported
enthroned kings, and upheld them before the gaze of those that yearned towards them as to the Lord’s anointed.
When Antigonus Gonatus took over the patronage formerly extended by the Ptolemies to Delos, he made it an entre-pôt centre for
the Northern Aegean trade in those materials so necessary in the building of ships; and more significantly again for silver; no
doubt from the mines of Thrace and beyond.
This flow of silver to Delos from the North is of equal interest to the rest of the entre-pôt trade. It would have contributed to the
augmentation of the temple reserves of silver that would have enabled Delos to partially replace Athens during the 3rd Century
B.C. as the new centre from which international money power came to control the finances of the Eastern Mediterranean as
formerly, in the days of the Athenian Empire; and therefore above all, that grain trade so essential to Athens 4 and mainland
Greece. A document mentioned by Professor M. Rostovtsev refers to a purchase of grain in Delos by a Sitones of Histicaea, a
subject city of Macedonia in which he observes that the purchase was made out of money advanced by a Rhodian banker. This
particular case might suggest that the banking of Rhodes was interlocked with that of Delos and that those silver reserves of the
1
Rostovtsev: A Social and Economic History of the Hellenistic World, Vol. I, p. 233.
2
William L. Westerman: The Slave Systems of Greek and Roman Antiquity, p. 65.
3
Mikhail Ivanovitch Rostovtsev: A Social and Economic History of the Hellenistic World; Vol. I; p. 227.
4
Mikhail Ivanovitch Rostovtsev: A Social and Economic History of the Hellenistic World; pp. 218, Vol. I.
The Babylonian Woe 13
Temple of Apollo functioned also as reserve to Rhodian banking. Delos, because of its sanctity would constitute a much safer
store house for precious metal hoards than ever Rhodes might be.
Previous references to banking in the Grecian centres and sanctuaries as being conducted by aliens, 1 are also verified by Professor
M. Rostovtsev. 2 The question therefore arises “What aliens?” Would they be members of the same fraternity as the Aramean,
Apollonius above mentioned, manager for the economic affairs for Ptolemy Philadelphus; men who were standing almost above
and beyond mankind in their manipulation of powers that not so long previously had been reserved solely to the gods and which
had been exercised only by that dedicated priesthood surrounding the king, son of god, on earth? Such power being lost to kings
forever when in the first place they permitted the institution of accounting to a silver standard in ancient times in the Lands of
Sumer and Akkad.
The latter days of Delos and the Temple of Apollo when 10,000 slaves were shipped abroad in one day alone, 3 would certainly
suggest the existence at Delos as controllers of its economic affairs, a class of persons internationally minded, and utterly callous
to the sufferings of the mixture of broken races that passed before it the way to the slave stockades. Although slavery previous to
the 4th century B.C. had been more in the nature of a benign custom similar to the custom of the bonded servant or apprentice of
the 18th and 19th Centuries in Northern Europe, after the Macedonian conquests it became a custom in no way so benign, 4 and
herding all kinds of persons formerly free, day in and day out, on to the ships of the day, could not have been accomplished but
with whip and chain and families being torn apart without compunction or compassion, and little children defenseless against the
abuse of monsters.
While the facts of the Temple of Apollo at Delos are relatively clear, supposition of the existence of the Temple of Athene, at
Athens as being under the secret control of the bankers, while not being so clear, is logical.
The reserve of 6000 talents of coined silver supposed to have been stored in the Acropolis at the beginning of the Peloponnesian
War 5 would certainly seem to indicate that the Temple loaned itself to that major activity of so-called bankers, the creation of
abstract money, and shielded them in their very carefully guarded secret that most money circulating as between Athenian
merchants and those with whom they did business within, or without the Athenian Empire, was that which was created as by
ledger credit page entry. The silver reserve would have been the banker’s window dressing and would have served to take care of
smaller day to day expenses and payments to foreign states where no other form of payment was possible or acceptable.
The Peloponnesian War ended no more than a little over a hundred years before the time of Alexander. According to A.
Andreades in his essay on the war finances of Alexander the Great, total expenditures per annum of Alexander at the time of the
crossing of the Hellespont were 5000 - 7000 talents 6 . This was the expenses of an army far from home, and to which, until the
Battle of Issus and the certainty of Macedonian total victory, little enough credit would have been available, and most of the
disbursements of which army would have been in solid metal. Of such metal, fortunately for the Macedonian Royal House, the
mines of Phillipi had certainly made substantial contribution.
It is therefore out of the question to consider whether 6000 talents of silver were adequate for the total finances of the
Peloponnesian War over ten years, so far as Athens was concerned. If all disbursements to traders etc. had been in silver, it is
doubtful if such so-called reserve could have lasted six months.
This silver was merely the foundation of that illusion which was no doubt spread across the Athenian Empire, that those baked
clay facsimiles of Greek coinages which circulated so well between merchants and governments, were redeemable in silver coin;
just as for the last three hundred years in the British Empire all the Queen’s loyal subjects have believed that every bank note in
circulation was redeemable in gold!
On the subject of such fiduciary currencies in ancient times, particularly the Athenian, François Lenormant, eminent 19th Century
Numismatist wrote: 7
1
Oskar Seffert: A Dictionary of Classical Antiquities, p. 91.
2
Mikhail I. Rostovtsev: A Social and Economic History of the Hellenistic World, Vol. I. p.227.
3
Strabo: XIV, v. 570, (Napoleon III: Julius Caesar Vol. I, p. 241; London; 1865).
4
William L. Westerman: The Slave Systems of Greek and Roman Antiquity; American Philosophical Society; Philadelphia.
5
The siege of Potidaea, a relatively minor engagement of a long war, cost the Athenians 2000 of these talents. (Thucydides: The Peloponnesian
War, Book II, Ch. 7.).
6
Andreades: Annales d’Histoire Economique et Sociale, p. 350, Paris, 1929.
7
According to François Lenormant in his book La Monnaie dans l’Antiquité, pp. 215-216, Book II, Tome I: “Cedrenus prétend que les
Romaines a une époque très ancienne auraient en des monnaies de bois; mais cette tradition doit très probablement être relegnée dans la
domaine des fables avec la monnaie Romains de terre cuite dont parle Suidas. Pourtant ils se pourrait que cette dernier indication se rapportait a
quelques espèce d’assignat momentamente en usage et qui n’aurait ermané des autorités publiques. On trouve fréquemment a Athènes des
moulages en terre cuites de monnaies d argent ou d’or de diverses contrées, appartenant principalement a la période, qui s’étend du milieu de V
siècle avant J.C. entres outres de statères de Cyzique. Le savant Numismatist Sicilien, M. Antonio Salinas pendant son séjour en Grèce, a
recueilli un grand nombres de ces monuments, soit en originaux, soit en moulage, et soit en dessins. La destination de cette classe spéciale
d’objets qui se rattachent forcement a la numismatique, est très obscure. Mais on peut conjecturer que de telles pseudo-monnaies de terre
cuites, moulées sur des espèces existantes, ont du avoir une circulation fiduciaire, mais d’une caractère tout prive comme celles des billets de
crédit. dont la loi autorise dans certains pays l’émission par des institutions particulière.”
The Babylonian Woe 14
“Cedrenus claims that the Romans had wooden money in very ancient times. But this tradition can probably be relegated to
the domain of fables with the Roman money of clay of which Suidas writes. However it could be that this last information is
connected with several types of assignat briefly used at the time and which could not have been emitted by public authority.
Clay moulds of silver and gold currencies of various countries, principally belonging to the period extending from the middle
of the 5th Century B.C., and among others, of the staters of Cyzique, are frequently found at Athens.
The learned Sicilian Numismatist M. Antonio Salinas during his stay in Greece, collected a large number of these monuments,
either as originals or moulds, or drawings. The purpose of this special class of objects that are of course connected with
numismatics, is very obscure. But it can be conjectured that such pseudo-currencies of baked clay moulded from existing
types (of money) had a fiduciary circulation of quite a private character, however, similar to that of the credit notes whose
emission is authorized in certain countries by particular institutions.”
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.
1
Heinrich Schlieman: Mycenae, pp. 157; 241; 242. Blom; New York, 1967 (reprint)
2
It is also interesting to note that amongst so much precious metal was also found a large number of oyster shells and unopened oysters; also
weapons of obsidian. Although Heinrich Schlieman was convinced he had found the grave of Agamemnon who had lead the heroes to before
the walls of Troy, the obsidian weapons and the oyster shells indicated that this grave belonged to a much earlier age again than that of
Agamemnon; an age perhaps even previous to that in Which occurred those disturbances that brought down into ruin so much of the ancient
world, of which Sumeria, Crete, Mycenae, Egypt and the Empire of the Hittites were but part.
At the time of Schlieman’s diggings at Mycenae, practically nothing was known of the extensive use of shell money in ages long gone by, but
as a result of the extensive studies of recent years, particularly those of Paul Einzig (Primitive Money; London 1949.), and of Mrs. Kingston-
Higgins (A Survey of Primitive Money, London; 1949.), it is quite clear that the oyster shells found in the Mycenaean graves were reference
The Babylonian Woe 15
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, 1 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, 2 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 3 and
the 6000 shekels of gold taken by Naaman on his journey to the King of Israel 4 do not imply money. Nor can the passage: “they
lavish gold out of the bag and weigh silver in the balance,” 5 or “Wisdom cannot be gotten for gold neither shall silver be weighed
for the price thereof,” 6 be brought forward in favour of gold money. Gold was generally employed for personal ornament 7 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, 8 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. 9
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.” 10 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.
days more ancient again than those of Agamemnon and the Heroes. They belonged to a day already nearly forgotten, when shells were money,
and money, not only amongst simple societies, but also amongst some highly organized societies was shells. In the I Chiag, one of the earliest
books of the Chinese, 100,000 dead shell fish are given as the equivalent of riches. The famous dictionary of the Emperor Kang Hsi (1662 A.D.
- 1723 A.D.) based on the Shuo Wen of Hsu Shin who died about A.D. 120, says pei denotes sea creatures that live in shells. The character pei
was included in most characters relating to wealth. It is included in many such characters in the latest Chinese dictionaries.
1
Henry J. Breasted: p. 142.
2
F.W. Madden: Coins of the Jews, pp. 9-10.
3
Chron. I. xxxi. 25.
4
2. Kings. V.5.
5
Isaiah. xlvi.6.
6
Job. xxviii. 15.
7
Genesis, xxiv. 22.
8
Genesis. xiv. 22.
9
Alexander del Mar: A History of Monetary Systems in Various States, p. 38.
10
James H. Breasted: A History of Egypt, pp. 97-98. Of the latter years of the Old Kingdom remarks made by the scholarly writer of the articles
on Egypt in the Encyclopaedia Britannica (9th Edn.): “ The sixth Dynasty was probably a family of a different part of Egypt. It has left many
records which indicate less centralization at Memphis than those of earlier Sovereigns; and mark the beginning of wars for predatory purposes
and extension of territory. This change is accompanied by a less careful style of sculpture and less pains in the excavation of tombs as though
the Egyptians were gaining a larger horizon, or, it may be, exchanging religion for ambition.”
However, speculation more to the point might very well be as to whether or not the Egyptians of this period were making an exchange of the
deep harmony in living as had obtained under the true and natural order under which they had lived so long, for that disorder in life which
necessarily derived from the ferment known as “Progress”; one of the essential factors by which private (and hence irresponsible) money
creative power maintains its total hegemony, once its control is established amongst a people.
The Babylonian Woe 16
Further evidence that the Egyptians kept their bullion in jewels or rings is indicated by the passage from Exodus 1 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 turn it into money and bind up the money in
thine hand and shall go unto the place where the Lord thy God shall choose” 2 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 3 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, 4 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.
1
Exodus. xii, 35. Exodus iii, 22. (King James Version).
2
Deuteronomy. xiv, 24-26. (King James Version)
3
Such a period may very well have been the several centuries preceding the collapse of the caravan trade in Mesopotamia, in the 18th century
B.C.
4
In the words of Professor F.W. Albright writing of the findings of his studies relative to the caravan trade and the organization of the donkey
caravans of the twentieth and nineteenth centuries B.C.: “It became particularly obvious that the previously enigmatic occupational background
of Abraham becomes intelligible only when we identify the terms Ibri ‘Hebrew,’ (previously ‘Abiru) with ‘Apiru, later ‘Abiru, literally ‘person
from across or beyond.’” (The Amarna Letters from Palestine; Cambridge Ancient History; Vol. II, p. 17.)
The Babylonian Woe 17
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” 1 . However the fact that the Achaeans derived their system of measurements
from Mesopotamia 2 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 3 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.” 4
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 trade, 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., 5 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, 6 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, 7 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.
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 8 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
1
T.B.L. Webster: From Mycenae to Homer, p. 22; London; 1964.
2
Jacquetta Hawkes: Dawn of the Gods, p. 226. New York; 1969.
3
Ibid.
4
T.B.L. Webster: From Mycenae Homer, p. 22.
5
John Chadwick: The Decipherment of Linear “B”; Cambridge; 1958.
6
Henry J. Breasted: A History of Egypt, p. 214.
7
T.B.L. Webster: From Mycenae to Homer, p. 18.
8
Henry J. Breasted: A History Egypt, pp. 284-321.
The Babylonian Woe 18
Egyptian stronghold at Avaris 1 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. 2 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. 3 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. 4 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. 5
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, 6
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, 7 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), 8 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, 9 and still conducted their own trading expeditions. 10
However, from the reckoning of Breasted that one person in fifty, and one seventh of the land was owned by them, 11 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 12 (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”; 13 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.
1
Henry J Breasted: A History of Egypt, p. 217.
2
Ibid. p. 292.
3
According to J.B. Bury (History of Greece, p. 744; Random House edn.), Alexander’s total army numbered no more than 30,000 foot and
5000 horse. The Greek hoplite centre of Darius, against which was thrown the full weight of the relatively puny Macedonian phalanx, itself
numbered 30,000 men.
4
Encyclopaedia Britannica; 9th Edn.; Vol. XXII; p. 823.
5
Henry J. Breasted: A History of Egypt, pp. 293, 305.
6
Henry J. Breasted: A History of Egypt. p. 298. New York; 1956.
7
Ibid. p. 307.
8
Ibid. p. 304.
9
Ibid. p. 491.
10
Ibid. p. 485.
11
Ibid. p. 491.
12
Ibid. p. 529.
13
Kings. 10, 29.
The Babylonian Woe 19
Kadesh, and its allies, Arvad and Symyra, were the military force towards the destruction of which Tahutmes III directed his
efforts. 1 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 2 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, 3 and the stone vases and ivory seals that were found in Crete; 4 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. 5
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.
1
Six hundred years later these cities of Arvad and Symyra seemed also to have attracted the special attention of Assyria. In this case they were
friend and ally set up in opposition to the other Arameo-Phoenician cities.
2
Henry J. Breasted: A History of Egypt, pp. 97-98.
3
Stuart Piggott: Dawn of Civilization, p. 168. (New York; 1961) See also p. 28 in T.B.L. Webster (Mycenae to Homer).
4
Colin Renfrew: The Emergence of Civilization, p. 448.
5
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.
The Babylonian Woe 20
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, 1 and Cnossos, 2 and Ugarit 3
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”), 4 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. 5
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, 6 elements deriving from the “Peoples of the Sea” perhaps, and
the Habiru, also known as ‘Apiru or Khabiri.
1
Jacquetta Hawkes: Dawn of the Gods, p. 209. (New York; 1968).
2
T.B.B. Webster: From Mycenae to Homer, p. 23.
3
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.’”
4
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.
5
Henry J. Breasted: A History of Egypt, p. 469.
6
Sir William Mathew Flinders-Petrie; A History of Egypt, p. 256. London; 1897.
The Babylonian Woe 21
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. 1
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., 2 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. 3 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.” 4
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
1
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.”
2
Leo A. Oppenheim: Letters from Mesopotamia; p. 57, Chicago 1967.
3
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.
4
Leo A. Oppenheim: Letters from Mesopotamia, p. 30.
The Babylonian Woe 22
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.
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 1 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.” 2
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., 3 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 4 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, 5 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
1
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.
2
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.).
3
Albright: The Amarna Letters from Palestine. Cambridge Ancient History; Vol. II; pp. 17-18.
4
The Moon God of Ur.
5
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!)
The Babylonian Woe 23
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. 1 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.
1
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.
2
François Lenormant: La Monnaie dans l’Antiquité; Book l; pp. 113-122.
3
Cambridge Ancient History. Vol. I; p. 392.
4
Paul Einzig: Primitive Money, p. 225.
5
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.
6
Captain Theodore Canot: The Adventures of an African Slaver; (New York; 1928). Also Cambridge Economic History, Vol II; p. 16.
The Babylonian Woe 24
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. 1 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, 2 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. 3 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; 4 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. 5
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.
1
W.F. Albright; p. 32.
2
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 satisfied 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”).
3
Jacquetta Hawkes: Dawn of the Gods, p. 24.
4
Ibid. p. 205.
5
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.
The Babylonian Woe 25
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) 1
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) 2 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. Some 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?), 3 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.
In Servia there were silver mines near Nova-Berda, and (Roman) gold mines near Saphina. Ancient mines of both gold and silver,
chiefly the latter exist in other parts of Servia, but little is known of their early history. There are some twenty thousand acres of
alluvions within fifty miles of Belgrade which might yet richly reward the hydraulic process. There is plenty of water with good
heads and good grades for the gravel. Bulgaria also abounds in mines of the precious metals, but like most of those within the
territory comprised within Ancient Greece, they have fallen to ruins and their history is forgotten.
.In many parts of Greece or European Turkey, where ancient mines were worked, a superstition is said to prevent the peasantry
from visiting them. Malte-Brun especially mentions this of the old Roman mines near Traunick, and we ourselves have noticed the
same superstition in the vicinity of the Roman gold mines in the Carpathian foothills. This superstition is probably due to the
traditions of that cruel and relentless slavery to which their forefathers were subjected by the Greek and Roman Lords who once
1
Bracketed comment by present author. Britannica, 9th edition, Vol. VIII.
2
Bracketed comment by present author.
3
Ibid.
The Babylonian Woe 26
owned these mines. Valdivia, writing to the Emperor Charles V, declared that every castellano of gold from Peru cost a measure
of human blood and tears. What was the cost of gold to the ancient Romans or the still more ancient Greeks, it would be hard to
say: but a human life for every ounce would probably be well within the mark. 1
For further information on mining in very ancient times in S.E. Europe, the activities of the Beaker people etc., the Cambridge
Economic History should be consulted, though no special significance, such as obviously exists, will be pointed out therein
relating this search for silver and gold to the private money creative system already well established in Babylonia at that time.
So to return to the main thread of this tale. It is clear that a relatively extensive, and hardened, and brutalized population existed in
the localities of the mining industries of Epirus and farther North at the time of the flourishing of Crete, and Mycenae and of
Cadmus of Thebes; formerly considered mythological, but clearly powerful agent of the Babylonian money power towards its
search for the precious metals. This population, largely slave, given weapons and organizations, as the vanguard of the so-called
militant shepherds, could be a serious threat to the civilizations of the South, so concerned with peace and the pleasures deriving
from trade etc., which is born out by the records of history, scant as they are.
It is to be noted that Ugarit, wherein the Achaean had trade centre after 1300 B.C., great port, and location of manufacturies, fell
well previous to 1190 B.C., when Rameses III of Egypt appears to have finally checked the Southward advance of its destroyer; 2
which suggests likelihood of them as having been those Northern people, not connected with the “Peoples of the Sea,” with whom
Egypt undoubtedly established alliance at the time of the battle of Perire. Such allies may very well have been those we know of
as the Dorians, who, as is revealed by the tablets of Pylos, clearly were sea raiders in their earlier days in the Mediterranean area.
Further verification of these conclusions, though not of the Dorian alliance, exists in the deductions of Professor Albright (Syria,
the Philistines, and Phoenicia; p. 31.), deriving from the information on the documents found in the Tablet Oven at Ugarit, that
the sack of Ugarit, having obviously occurred shortly after the tablets were placed in the oven, dates from about 1234 B.C., which
would be about the time of the victory of Merneptah of Egypt over the “Peoples of the Sea” at Perire.
The destruction Ugarit may very well have been an act of political revenge of a reawakened Egypt, working through the allies it
would be raising up. For it is clear that the raiders who struck down this important city were well advised in that they chose the
time for their attack as being when the ships of Ugarit had been ordered elsewhere, perhaps to Lydia, by the Hittites who appear to
have been the overlords of the kings of Ugarit. 3 These raiders obviously were also well armed. In that day, much more so than
today, the question was not so much as whether men were available, as whether effective arms were available for them to bear.
Ugarit was undoubtedly centre from which arms and supplies were shipped to the Libyans and the “Peoples of the Sea.” In such,
therefore, it would have been agency of that greater force seeking to design the end of Egypt as it bad been known; and waiting for
its plunder of sliver and gold.
The main Achaean states, suffering serious shortage of arms as a result of the battle of Perire, which appears to be verified by the
dearth of military equipment recorded by the Linear “B” tablets unearthed at Pylos, obviously written shortly before the full force
of the attack came from the North, were wide open to the enemy. On the reasonable assumption that Pharaoh Merneptah would
have arranged for armed uprising of the numerous mine slaves to the North of Mycenaean Greece, together with organized attack
from those nations of mid Europe, perhaps from as far afield as Denmark, trading partner of Mycenae, 4 it would have been
reasonable for him to have supplied them with officers particularly instructed in siege work, and the arms with which, as a result
of Perire, his arsenals would have been so well equipped.
One thing is clear, the Dorians known to be destroyers of Pylos, an action which paved the way for their conquest of the
Peloponnese, were well organized, with a strong esprit de corps which remained with them until the last days of Sparta, and were
well armed as armaments went in those days. Having ships, as the tablets of Pylos reveal, 5 they thus could maintain adequate
supplies down the coast of the Adriatic. Above all they must have had previous experience in siege work such as could have been
gained in the wars against the Canaanitic cities, for the tremendous walls of both Mycenae and Tyryns could not have been taken
but by well organised armies with a strong and experienced engineering corps. It may safely be considered that a considerable part
of the excellent arms with which the Dorians must have been supplied, was the plunder of Perire. The only uncertainty is whether
these arms were obtained, as seems to be the usual thing in such circumstances, from the international money power direct, or
from a scheming and resurgent Egypt where the god-king shone once again on the throne of the two lands, giving universal
illumination as guide of his people’s destiny. After Perire, terrible battle that it must have been for the times, he certainly would
have been in a position to “Divide and Rule.”
After all these events, largely indicating frustration of the schemes of international money creative power, particularly in its failure
to bring about total collapse of that most ancient world which was Egypt, so far as Greece was concerned, there came a period
known today as the “Dark Ages”; dark, because too little is known thereof. Such was the magnitude of the disaster that swept over
the Achaeans, weaponless as they very well may have been, that for a time those trading stations established by the Babylonians,
1
Alexander del Mar: History of the Precious Metals, pp. 47-50.
2
Breasted, pp. 480-481.
3
Cyrus H Gordon: Ugaritic Literature, p. ix, p. 120. (Text 118) Rome, 1949.
4
Cambridge Economic History, Vol. II, p. 16.
5
Jacquetta Hawkes: Dawn of the Gods, p. 209.
The Babylonian Woe 27
and that had flourished for so long, through the crumbling of so much of what had been in ancient days, may have been reduced or
even closed. 1
As however the turbulence died away, money power as centred in Mesopotamia. now with the plunder of half a dozen
civilizations in its strong rooms, and a steady inflow of the precious metals deriving from the rapid expansion of the mining
industry at that time, due to the improvement of the methods of exploration and smelting brought about by the use of tools of
hardened iron, together with the availability of ample slave supplies as derived from all these wars, began to look around for new
fields in which its power to create “Capital” could be used to best advantage. Thus once again the money creators of Mesopotamia
turned their eyes towards the idyllic shores of Greece, and its forested mountains and hills; Greece which was clearly the gateway
to Europe, and, through its command of the routes to the Hellespont and the Black Sea, to further Asia.
Analysing the sources, either Dorian or Ionian from which derived the impulses which gave driving force to the growth of the
Greek industrial revolution, the Encyclopaedia Britannica (1898) says:
.”The Ionian was that which most actively influenced the early development of Greece. But the Ionians themselves derived the
most impulses of their progress from a foreign source. Those Canaanites or ‘lowlanders’ of Syria, whom we call by the Greek
name of Phoenicians, inhabited the long narrow strip of territory between Lebanon and the sea. Phoenicia, called ‘Keft’ by the
Egyptians, had at a remote period contributed Semitic settlers to the Delta or ‘Isle of Caphtor’; and it would appear from the
evidence of the Egyptian monuments that the Kefa, or Phoenicians, were a great commercial people as early as the 16th Century
B.C. Cyprus, visible from the heights of Lebanon, was the first stage of the Phoenician advance into the Western waters; and to
the last there was a Semitic element side by side with the Indo-Europeans. From Cyprus the Phoenician navigators proceeded to
the Southern coasts of Asia Minor, where the Phoenician colonists gradually blended with the natives, until the entire seaboard
had become in a great measure subject to Phoenician influences. Thus the Solymni, settled in Lycia, were akin to the Canaanites
and the Carians, originally kinsmen of the Greeks, were strongly affected by Phoenician contact. It was at Miletus especially that
the Ionian Greeks came into commercial intercourse with the Phoenicians. Unlike the dwellers on the southern seaboard of Asia
Minor, they showed no tendency to merge their nationality in that of Syrian strangers. But they learned from them much that
concerned the art of navigation, as for instance, the use of the round built merchant vessels called, and also a system of weights
and measures, as well as the rudiments of some useful arts. The Phoenicians had first of all been drawn to the coasts of Greece in
quest of the purple fish which was found in abundance off the coasts of the Peloponnesus and of Boeotia; other attractions were
furnished by the plentiful timber for shipbuilding which the Greek forests supplied, and by veins of silver, iron, and copper ore.
Two periods of Phoenician influence on early Greece may be distinguished: first, a period during which they were brought into
intercourse with the Greeks merely by traffic in occasional voyages; secondly a period of Phoenician trading settlements in the
islands or on the coasts of the Greek seas, when their influence became more penetrating and thorough. It was probably early in
this second period, perhaps about the 9th century B.C. (probably the time of the first major Assyrian attack on the Arameans in
933 B.C.), that the Phoenician alphabet became diffused through Greece. This alphabet was itself derived from the alphabet of the
Egyptian Hieroglyphics, which was brought into Phoenicia by the Phoenician settlers in the Delta. It was imported into Greece,
probably by the Arameo-Phoenicians of the Gulf of Antioch, not by the Phoenicians of Tyre and Sidon, and seems to have
superseded, in Asia Minor and the islands, a syllabary of some seventy characters, which continued to be used in Cyprus down to
a late time. The direct Phoenician (I.E. Babylonian), influence on Greece lasted to about 600 B.C. (significantly about the time of
the Seisachtheia at Athens, and the Laws of Lycurgus in Laconia). Commerce and navigation were the provinces that concerned
the higher culture, the Phoenicians seem to have been little more than carriers from East to West of Egyptian, Assyrian, or
Babylonian ideas.” 2
Although the existence of the cities of Ugarit and Alalakh in the region of the Gulf of Antioch was unknown when the above was
written, neither therefore had knowledge of those days received the impetus of the information recorded in their tablet hoards, nor
were Linear “A” and “B” known, much less deciphered, revealing so much of Mycenae and its time, and that which had been
before, the opinions expressed by this 19th Century writer more or less agree with those recently expressed by Sir Charles
Leonard Woolley, 3 despite the belief of Sir Leonard some 26 years previously, that the script of the (Aramaic) tablets of Ras
Shamra, site of ancient Ugarit, derived from the cuneiform of Sumeria and Akkadia. 4
.And so to continue with the main thread of our narrative, it being thus quite clear that by 933 B.C., agencies for Babylonian
imperialism were once again well established, in Greece, certainly in Ionia, and almost certainly farther afield on the Greek
mainland, considering those favourable conditions existing in Greece at that time, the international money power of that day, in
reality as blind a force to its own needs and purposes as it is today, on the advice of such Aramaean refugees no doubt, decided to
reduce exports to Greece, and to finance the growth of native Greek manufactures. Such financing, whether through forgery of the
existing currency of Greece, the iron or copper spits, out of the bloody scrap garnered from the fields of battle in Aram, or Arabia,
or Israel, or Egypt; or by other methods known to them, as previously described, would present no problem.
1
Cambridge Economic History; Vol. II: p. 19.
2
Britannica. 1898: p. 90: Vol. XI.
3
Sir Charles Leonard Woolley: Prehistory and the Beginnings of Civilization, pp. 651-658, London, 1937.
4
Sir Charles Leonard Woolley: Abraham, p. 23, 24. Also see p. 80 present work.
The Babylonian Woe 28
Thus renewing more permanently the base from which their trade into Northern Europe might be conducted, winter or summer,
they were guaranteed a more steady flow of Carpathian, Illyrian, Thracian, or Attican silver. A base was also established from
which the similar trade into the Pontic regions and South Russia could be better maintained; in addition could be reckoned on a
growing industrial population to assist in the absorption of both Egyptian and South Russian surpluses of grain.
The petty but vigorous city states of Greece as existed and would come to exist, would form a good ground for experiment with
money systems, and with new systems of government and, what is now-a-days called social systems. In the fevered imagination of
the money changers scheming in their shaded courtyards of Babylonia, such experiments might even show the way towards that
for which their souls yearned above all, and which still they had not been able to bring about: the total disintegration of the last
great kingdoms of earth, which, it seems, no sooner had they been brought to the point of collapse, than somehow they came to
rise again. “Kingship again being sent down from on High.” 1 The way might be shown to them by which they too, their God,
themselves and theirs, might become Lords of the Earth; and indeed, whereby out of their midst might be set up that God-King
who would preside over the governance of the Universe; its total and absolute ruler.
.And much of these strange yearnings came to be realized. The possibilities inherent in circulating pieces of precious metal of
equal weight and fineness, and with the seal of state stamped thereon, as money, after the first major experiment therein in the
Lydia of Croesus, were fully exploited in Greece. No doubt these ancient Greeks, the same as our people in this day, fondly
imagined that the state imprinted marks on their so-called coinage, denoted the absolute integrity of their money; and while they
continued in this belief, they were the more easily manipulated.
Thus the power of rejection or appointment fell out of the withering hand of a decadent, if not dying priesthood, into that hand that
moved over the disks of precious metal in the shadows of the counting house; and rather than noble and selfless men in positions
of power, came low and venal men wielding but the appearance of power. Such men being raised up from the blind mob,
exercised no more control or rule than that which the forces behind money creation and issuance permitted to them; nor did they
exercise guidance further than that limit dictated by the inferiority of their quality.
The Greek of those days, as the Englishman during the 17th Century A.D., was highly intelligent, industrious, and frugal, and he
clearly served under his ancient and natural aristocracy proudly and gladly in war or in peace. His land was then covered with
forests from which was available an ample supply of charcoal such as would last kilns and furnaces for a long time to come; from
Thrace, not so far distant, came suitable timbers for shipbuilding. Hence the spark that gave light to the life of the Greek city state
must have been smouldering well before the introduction of coined money from Lydia and its attendant possibilities of controlled
credit manipulations much greater than had ever been before.
Consequently, at the time of its emergence into the light of history as we know it, Greece was to the known world in the same way
as was England during the 16th and 17th Centuries, when, due to the stealthy stimulation of a “Credit,” or abstract money
economy, money greed injected into the nobility caused them to forget their trust. The major manifestation of the forgetfulness of
such trust was their seizure of the common lands for the purposes of sheep pasture, the growing wool trade now yielding good
return in the expanding money economy; thus depriving the villagers of their rightful livelihood on the land, and leaving them
with no option but emigration into the cities. In the cities these villagers served as labour in mine or factory, there being totally at
the mercy of rascals from foreign parts, or those who bad been raised up from their own ranks as most eager for food, and who
were least critical of the hand that offered it to them.
So far as Greece was concerned, on to a scene idyllic in the loveliness of its tree clad hills and mountains and shores, came men
from that Aramaic speaking money power out of Syria and Aram, plausible men who wept and moaned to the pitying Greek the
slaughter of their people by the Assyrian. Refugees from the Hittite city of Carchemish, from Aramean Damascus, Kummuh, and
Sama’l, and other cities. Cities which had crumbled to dust before the ferocity of the Assyrians under Shalmanezer and
Ashurnazirpal; but whether Syrian or Babylonian, these men spoke and wrote Aramaic in one form or another, as the evidence of
the Greek alphabet reveals, 2 and which would be further suggested by the nature of the tablets that were found (about 1935) on the
site of Ugarit (now known as Ras Shamra), on the North Syrian Coast. 3
These men brought with them the knowledge of precious metal commodity exchange, and amongst other deceptions easily
perpetrated on a simple and trusting people, knowledge of the possibilities of creation of money and wealth through the rackets of
1
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.”
2
Frederick William Madden, M.R.A.S.: Coins of the Jews, P. 29; London; 1881.
3
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.)
The Babylonian Woe 29
storage of valuables as for safe custody; or the creation of credit as it is now euphemistically known, and its power as a driving
force towards the establishment of industry amongst a healthy, trusting, and warlike people; and its power towards the creation of
monopoly of ownership and control of such industry.
What must have been cottage industry in Greece, soon became industry under organization and under methods of semi-mass
production, long since known in Sumeria, and Akkadia, and Assyria etc. Such industry could only be organized on the basis of
money wages in the case of freemen, and therefore only with labour, slave or free, trained to the concept of money, and the making
of money, as the be-all and end-all in life.
Athens made pottery and ships; Corinth made pottery and ships; Megara made textiles. Athens, with ample surpluses of olive oil
sufficient to maintain a substantial export trade in that commodity, and with the production of silver from the Laureion mines but
a few miles from the city, became centre of an entre-pôt trade with those other Greek city states that relied on copper or iron
fiduciary money systems to drive their industry and exchanges; money systems if of state design and control, that international
banking had little use for.
But without the economic organization deriving from participation in the orbit of the international money market controlled by the
international silver bullion brokers and their agents, the bankers of the Piraeus who controlled above all the flow of silver from
Laureion and Thrace, and Samos, and mines further afield, it is doubtful if that dynamic force engendered from the union of
Dorian and pre-Dorian Greece could ever have become that which it did become: the point to which a great part of the power and
learning gravitated from those fast dying worlds of the most Ancient Orient; thence being thrust forth again amongst men to
constitute that which may prove to have been one of the last stages of man’s endeavour upon this earth.
It was the beginning of an apparent reassemblance, a false renewal of learning and life which was to reveal momentarily, in fading
glory, the fusion of that world of the companions of Zeus, golden-headed giants descended to earth from their home amongst the
gods, and the world of Crete where dark children of the sun basked in the light and comfort of him who to them was god on earth
as he walked in his gardens at Cnossos.
Both god, priesthood and people lived in this distant sunlit world in the mystic harmony of ancient systems of life. They lived with
little knowledge of warfare or weapons of war. Their cities were without wall or visible defence so long had they been without
fear. In a mild warm climate, they needed little clothing, and their women who wore no more than a heavy flounced skirt, proudly
and fearlessly displayed the loveliness of their breasts.
1
Alexander del Mar: History of the Precious Metals, p. 45.
2
Miner's and Smelter's Magazine, Vol. VI, pp 286-322. (A. del Mar: History of the Precious Metals, p. 46.)
3
Leo A. Oppenheim: Letters from Mesopotamia, p. 46: Chicago: 1967.
4
Ibid.
5
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.
The Babylonian Woe 30
It is not until the Assyrian, Neo-Babylonian, and Persian eras that clear evidence can be traced of the total degeneration of kingly
power and of kings and so-called emperors as quite often being little more than gloriously be-medalled front men for private
money creative power striving to create world-wide hegemony. They still continued to be needed principally as a point towards
which the eyes of the people might be diverted in order that the people might not realize that all was not well in that direction
towards which their loyalties naturally leaned, nor glimpse the destructive forces that were gnawing at the roots of the Tree of Life
itself. Even as far back as 2500 B.C. Sargon of Akkad proceeded into Anatolia to chastise the city of Ganes on account of the
commercial community of Mesopotamia; 1 probably to enforce payment of interest on loans, or repayment of principal. One of the
reasons of the success of Cyrus, though but a petty Persian prince formerly to 550 B.C. when he deposed his sovereign, Astyages
the Mede, is clear from the circumstances of his victory over Croesus of Lydia in 546 B.C.
Croesus had offended international money powers by seizure of their treasure held by their agent Sadyattes 2 and by the total
assumption of monetary issue by the state. Example had to be made of him to deter other princes from similar action, and the
eager and ambitious Cyrus was obviously the one chosen for this purpose. According to the article on Babylonia in the
Encyclopaedia Britannica, 9th Edition, by Professor Sayce, Croesus had rashly joined battle with Cyrus without waiting for the
arrival of his Babylonian allies under Nabu-Nahud 3 the father of Belshazzar of the Book of Daniel. It is more than likely,
however, that a truer reading of these events would be that international money power, patron of the rise of Cyrus both through
organization of his supplies of mercenary soldiers, and of the best of weapons, had been the principal influence in these events as
in other enterprises of Cyrus, such as the siege of Babylon 14 years later. Thanks to its influence, while the progress of Nabu-
Nahud towards junction with the forces of Croesus would have been sabotaged, Croesus himself would have been misinformed of
the intentions and strength of both Cyrus and Nabu-Nahud. 4
Cyrus won the day, and Croesus was totally humbled. Having thus proven his “suitability,” and his readiness to promote the
policies of his financial backers, the relatively easy conquest of Babylon was arranged for Cyrus some fourteen years later. 5 Cyrus
from then on was designated “The Great,” and assumed the title of “Great King” of the vast Persian domains over which he now
ruled.
As the most valuable by-product of their being and existence, kings and “conquerors” were also needed towards the maintenance
of the steady inflow of slaves, sufficient to take care of the fearful death rate in the mines, and no doubt, to permit of the opening
of new mines due to the rapid expansion of the mining industry on account of the growth of the use of hardened iron tools and
improved methods of exploration.
This growth of bullion supplies, also meaning growth of the money economy, meant growth of industry. Such growth of industry
meant further demand for labour, which labour then was principally slave, as money economy had not arrived at the totality of its
modern development. Therefore not only was an increasing and continuous flow of slaves needed for the mines, but also for the
industry to which the products of the mines gave rise.
There were two ways alone by which new supplies of precious metals became available to rejuvenate a monetary circulation
withering, and even disappearing from wear and tear, exportation or hoarding, with the economic collapse that such condition
could bring about: one was through mining using slave labour as mining with free labour was rarely profitable, 6 and the other was
through sack and plunder. For the first method “Conquerors” were needed for free men did not willingly become mine slaves; for
the second method “Conquerors” were obviously needed again, for to cause a people to reveal and surrender their hidden hoards
of precious metals, would only be possible as a result of the nights of terror immediately following on the “Conquest,” and the
abuse and rapine infected by a lust crazed soldiery such as followed such conquerors and achieved such “Conquests.” For
instance, according to the Iliad, (Book IX), promise of the gold and bronze plunder (of Troy) was the principal lure used by
Agamemnon (besides the return of Briseis), to bring Achilles back into the fight.
For further instance, may be accepted the main information in respect to Shalmanezer the Assyrian and his campaigns in 858 B.C.,
leaving no doubt of the purposes of the hidden forces who guided him, and wherein lay their chief interest. The conquest of
Damascus, in 803 B.C., yielded 20 talents of gold and 2300 talents of silver, not to speak of 300 talents copper and 5000 talents of
iron. The sack of Carchemish by Sargon, 717 B.C., yielded 11 talents of gold and 2100 talents of silver.
The following table reveals what was extracted from several lesser cities and their rulers.
1
Sir Charles Woolley: Abraham, p. 122.
2
Ernest Babelon: Les Origines de la Monnaie, p. 106; Paris; 1897.
3
Herodotus: The Histories, Book I.
4
The Nabonidus of modern books of reference who reigned in conjunction with Belshazzar.
5
Actually through his general, Gobryas, 558 B.C.
6
Alexander del Mar: History of Monetary Systems, pp. 413, 425, 410, 441, 442.
The Babylonian Woe 31
Ruler & City Gold Indemnity Silver Indemnity Annual Tribute
Hattinean 3 Talents 100 Talents 10 Talents of Silver
Sangar of Carchemish 3 Talents 70 Talents 1 m. gold, 1 t. silver
Harii of Sam’al 10 Talents 16 minas of gold
Arame son of Bitaqusi 6 Talents
Katazil of Kummuh 20 minas of silver
Tyre, Sidon, and Jehu of Israel, though clearly sitting on the fence as it were to secure the best advantage as might be offered out
of these events, without openly committing themselves as ally of Assyria, hastened to pay tribute when after the battle near Wadi
Zerzer in 842 B.C. in which Hazael, usurper King of Damascus was finally put to flight with the slaughter of some 6000
Arameans, 1 and likely the enslavement of many more, Shalmanezer, victorious but totally exhausted, came down to the coast
unable to continue with the investment of Damascus 2 . It would be an interesting speculation as to what was really in the mind of
Shalmanezer in turning towards the coast. What money power had armed Hazael to the point that he could be such a real threat to
the Assyrian? Had Shalmanezer planned bloody revenge? Then realizing that in the destruction he planned, he might further
destroy his own source of arms, and those slave traders who organized the sale of his captives, had he hesitated, finally deciding to
settle for tribute?
The States of Arvad, Symyra, and Ushana in the fact that they paid no tribute to Nineveh, 3 while being much closer than the
Aramean States, revealed themselves as ally; the absence of any savage thrust by Assyria at that time against Israel, or Tyre, or
Sidon, in the first phase of Assyrian conquest, would suggest such states, if not actually as ally, as harbouring forces in one form
or another which would be controlled by agents of that highly secret international bullion broking fraternity, which indubitably
existed, and which was connected to the extensive organization of camp followers and slave traders that must have been yet
another host behind the Assyrian host, and therefore, profitably, enemy of the Aramean.
Money power, international in scope, being that it sought at this time, to institute precious metals as the governing factor of
exchanges over the rest of the known world, was deeply lodged in the heart of the Assyrian, a people to whom it had early
imparted the secret Hittite skills and processes in iron working, and who, in their home land, had the necessary materials for such
industry. Assyria for the time was their sword arm. Whether the Assyrians were aware of its significance or not, they must have
been closely connected with that fraternity whose business was mining of the precious metals, trade in certain staple commodities
and manufactures, and slaves, and who must have conducted their operations in all the cities of Babylonia, Aram, whether enemy
or not, and especially, Phoenicia. Considering that Phoenician mining operations extended as far North as Britain where was
mined the tin so necessary in bronze manufacture, it may be assumed that Phoenicia, above all, dealt in Assyrian war captives. In
places as distant as Cornwall where they would have been in a relatively weak position so far from home, they would have relied
on imported slaves, rather than on local conquest. There is no missing the connection between the floods of slaves as released on
to world markets by the Assyrian conquests, and the rapid expansions of that which is now known as “Credit,” the same silver and
gold mining that was taking place all over the known world at that time.
Of some interest is the story of the easing of the pressure on Damascus by the departure of Shalmanezer in 839 B.C. during the
first phase of Assyrian conquest, to more pressing business in the North. “Hazael, King of Damascus was able to turn again to
Israel.”
Once Assyria, abandoning the Israelites whose alliance they must have been accepting at that time, either to assure themselves of
a source of supply of mercenary soldiers or of slave-master camp followers, turned a deaf ear to the pleas of Jehu, the Israelite
king, the Philistines, the Idumeans, the Amorites, and even their ancient ally, the Tyrians, viciously turned on them 4 . Could it be
to seize a share of the plunder gathered off the battlefields of Shalmanezer?
The renewed stream of precious metal money that must have followed the sack of all those cities of Aram at this time, flowing
through the coffers of the international money power located in the cities of Nineveh or Babylon or Ur, would have been
accompanied by vast expansions of that which is now known as “Credit,” the same being emitted in all the major cities of the
Near East. Also 5 Bills of Exchange, Letters of Credit, but above all the ubiquitous receipts for valuables reputedly on deposit for
safe custody, came into being: clay “Promises to Pay”: all forming expansion in one form or another of the working money
supply. By manipulation of such abstract monetary units in relation to what might have been described as the visible symbols of
the monetary unit such as was gold or silver money, powerful business houses combining the operations of banker, goldsmith,
silversmith etc., with branches in all major cities, were certainly able to manipulate the destinies of so-called empires, just as they
have so done in this day. That Babylon itself should have been able to rise again, and lead a frightened world against Assyria to
form the so-called Neo-Babylonian empire, is proof, however, that international money power at that time was not monopoly of
1
Emil G.H. Kraeling: Aram and Israel, p. 80; Columbia. 1918.
2
Ibid.
3
Emil G.H. Krealing: Aram and Israel, p. 80, Columbia, 1918.
4
Emil G.H. Kraeling, Ph.D.: Aram and Israel, pp. 83-84 Columbia: 1918.
5
Paul Einzig: Primitive Money, p. 225; Oxford, 1949.
The Babylonian Woe 32
the Hebrew who now whatever his origins, as ally of the Israelite who had come out of Egypt, appears clearly in history, a distinct
entity; even if the part he plays as native of Palestine was relatively insignificant.
It seems the fall of the Assyrian in finality in the defeat of Ashur-Uballit by Nabopolassar in 605 B.C, was also the fall of the
Hebrew. No sooner had Nabopolassar destroyed the last remnant of Assyrian military power, than, at Carchemish, his son
Nebuchadnezzar destroyed that of a resurgent Egypt under Pharaoh Necho, recently victor over Josiah of Judah on that ominous
place of battle Meggiddo, 1 better known as Armageddon, (II Chronicles; 25, 20-27.), and where eight hundred years previously
Tahutmes III had put the confederate armies of Syria to flight.
In this battle of Carchemish in which Pharaoh Necho had suffered complete defeat, was destroyed the last protector of Israel, and
as a consequence, in 586 B.C. Israel itself was totally destroyed. Its leaders, overtaken by the same fate as its Aramean blood
relatives, if not co-religionists, were carried off to servitude at Babylon; where in the case of some, they were used to keep the
wheels of industry and finance turning in that great city, while in the case of others, they seem to have been permitted settlement
in the region of the river Chebar, a large irrigation canal near Babylon, where they were allowed to establish homes, to farm, and
to maintain themselves as a racial and religious group, clearly living a national and exclusive life, as was shown by the very fact
that an intensely nationalistic prophet such as Ezekiel could exist in the settlement at Chebar, preaching amongst his own people
without restriction. 2
During this time the city was yet again sold to the new imperial power risen out of old Elam and the Persian Highlands, and in 536
B.C., the Persian forces under Cyrus, “The Great,” quietly entered the city by night march down the drying river bed after they
had completed diversion of the river. According to the book of Daniel, the proud Belshazzar, King in Babylon, was slain that
night. 3
It is interesting to note that shortly after the entry of the Persian forces into the city, the “Children of Israel” were permitted to
return to that which they considered their homeland, and every assistance was given them towards renewal of their national life
and the rebuilding of their temple, which, of course, was its heart. In the very first year of his reign at Babylon 536 B.C., Cyrus
issued a decree permitting the rebuilding of the temple at Jerusalem, and the gold and silver vessels carried away by
Nebuchadnezzar supposed to be 5400 in number, were returned to Sheshbazaar, the Prince of Judah who was leader of the
migration. 4 Although the proclamation of Cyrus had been addressed to all servants of God throughout the Empire, the 42,000 or
so who responded to the call and went with Sheshbazaar, were but a small part of the Hebrew population of the total dominions of
Cyrus. The special concessions made by Cyrus to the Hebrew almost on entry into the city of Babylon, would certainly suggest
that he had received their substantial assistance, perhaps through financing towards the purchase of the finest of military
accoutrements such as would only be obtainable through the good graces of the Babylonian commercial and banking houses, or
through that information with which the Hebrew may have kept him constantly supplied such as the state of military preparedness
within the city, etc.
It may reasonably be assumed that the Babylonian money power was completely international in outlook, whatever its outward
profession, and totally unsympathetic towards the ancient faith of the Ziggurat and the worship of Marduk, 5 and towards the
intended effects of the restoration of the Ziggurat of Ur, at that time, by Nebuchadnezzar. If in earlier Assyrian times such money
power certainly was not the Hebrew, though possibly linked thereto through members of the latter Israelitish Confederacy such as
the Habiru or even those who derived from the Hyksos, the fact of the existence of powerful Hebrew influence in international
finance in Neo-Babylonian times, seems a reasonable supposition.
The Hebrew, being aggressive and intelligent, may have risen to especially privileged position in the Babylonian money industry,
if that is what it can be called, and may have come to learn at that time those secret practices of the money changers craft, which
he was certainly forbidden in his native land, according to the Laws Moses. In Babylonia the law No. 7 of Hammurabai has long
since become a dead letter.
That ungodly and cruel order of Ezra compelling the Israelites divorce their foreign wives after their return to what was
considered their ancestral homeland, 6 might very well have been related to the needs of total religious, racial, and commercial
1
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.’
2
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).
3
Daniel, Chapter 5, V. 30.
4
William Smith: History of the Bible, p. 476 London, Ont. 1885.
5
Marduk was the national God of Babylon, just as Nannar was National God of Ur, and second only to Énlil.
6
Ezra, King James Version; Ch. 10.
The Babylonian Woe 33
security, as indeed might the ordinance existing today amongst English Quakers forbidding them to marry outside their own sect, 1
whose leaders, any brief study will show, were deeply involved in the growth and control of modern banking, 2 which had lead,
and still leads mankind along a road that offers little peace or rest, and finally, exhaustion and calamity; a road of non-return.
One thing becomes clear out of this turmoil of rising and falling “Empires” of the first millennium B.C., particularly that
calamitous succession of Assyrian, Neo-Babylonian, and Persian “Empires,” from 933-605 B.C., 625-538 B.C., and 538-332 B.C.,
respectively, and that is: in a world where treasure had become totally equated in the peoples minds with “Wealth,” as expressing
relatively large sums of the monetary unit, no sooner had one power gathered all such treasure in a given area into its store houses
and safe deposits, by conquest, plunder, and sack, than such treasure, temporarily creating boom, moved on again, as likely as not
to form the base of those “credits” granted by international money power towards the purchase of arms and the best of mercenary
soldiers by that next power destined to arise and be the new “conqueror.”
Dealing in money, and bullion which was the foundation of the money system, had become a highly specialized and closed trade
now able to operate quite apart from the temples; even if in many cases the temples still continued to permit themselves, and that
which they stood for, to be used as front, and so had offered sanctity to those most sinister and destructive operations of the
money, bullion, and slave brokers; in themselves and their attitude towards mankind, the antithesis of God, the Anti-God.
The money masters had only one purpose besides maintenance of secrecy: which was growth of themselves and those through
whom they worked. Those through whom they worked were too often the criminal castes of the civilizations; criminal because the
nature of so much of their activities, such as fencing, counterfeiting of coinages, clipping and sweating of coins, was criminal; as it
had to be. Towards this purpose, consciously or not, they sought the total destruction of that natural order of life of god, king,
priesthood, and temple and the devoted, and its eradication from the Book of Life itself. For piety and love and man living with
hope and will for the future, guided by his trained shepherds had to be substituted an order of the exploitation of mankind. The
rulers in such an order would be its previous rejects, its outcasts. God, king, temple and the devoted were to become a thing
forgotten, and man, into whom was to be injected raging animal passions, was to be left wandering without guide, except such
thrusting hither and thither by such as could only be called living sores of man-hatred and which were embedded in mankind
itself, could be called guidance.
The unfortunate masses of the Ancient Orient, who had so trusted their rulers, had no idea or understanding of the new reality, and
that the ruler they saw, far from being the Son of God on Earth, was in reality a puppet manipulated by that conspiratorial force
exerted by those controllers of precious metal bullion particularly, that lurked in the Aramaic speaking middle class mentioned by
Professor Oppenheim. 3 These powerful classes could have had no more than a secret contempt for the gods, kings, priesthood, of
the peoples amongst whom they lived, able as they were by this manipulation, to bring about the decay or growth of power,
without reference to such “State” power structure, of those whose undoing or otherwise, they planned.
They themselves, through triumph of their system of private money issuance, had now in reality come to sit in the place of the
gods. From this time on it seems, there was not even that periodic interference of the king against the money-lender, which gave
the people respite from time to time, as in the old Babylonian period, 4 and the Kingdom of Israel of record. 5
Cruel private monopolization of wealth and capital grew, and where the people had been sheep in the flock, and the king their
loving and devoted guide, now that kings concerned themselves with those false policies prepared for them in the interest of the
private money creators, the people became lost and disheartened, driven hither and thither as they were by the crazed wolf
masquerading in the place of the shepherd’s diligent sheep dog.
In this time, as today, the people were almost entirely at the mercy of the private persons controlling their money, who then
controlled the inflow of precious metals, silver and gold, the foundation of the people’s money. The policies of these controllers
from their standpoint as internationalists, were necessarily directed towards the stimulation of war against the well-being of
mankind. Frequently wars were above all the prime essential, firstly towards the destruction of the natural system of rule 6
previously defined, which had been the protection of the people; secondly towards the reinjection into the system of hoarded coin
and bullion, and consequent reinflation of the money supply; thirdly, but not the least important, the gathering of a new crop of
slaves to replace those stocks of silver and gold, so necessary to the foundation of their money power, and the maintenance of
their international hegemony in consequence.
1
“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.).
2
Sir Ernest Cassel: Lloyd's Bank in the History of Banking, p. 20 et seq. Oxford, 1933.
3
Leo A. Oppenheim: Letters from Mesopotamia, p. 51; Chicago; 1967.
4
Ibid., p. 46.
5
Leviticus, Chapter 5, King James version.
6
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.
The Babylonian Woe 34
BABYLON, BANKING, AND BULLION
Without a doubt, the ramifications of Babylonian banking as operated from Nineveh during the eighth and seventh centuries B.C.,
extended in more or less degree over that total area from Tartessus to India, 1 and from the gold washings of that great bend in the
Nile in Nubia known as the Bisharee, to the mines of Cornwall; and of all such area it was the focus of land and sea routes. In
absolute degree during the first millennium, it extended as far afield as there is evidence of Aramaic as language of official and
merchant classes; that is to say from Peshawar to Greece. 2 In Greece the evidence however is not so much from Aramaic as
language, as from the fact that the Greek alphabet derives from Aramaic, 3 and therefore may be assumed to be the design of
refugee Arameans of the period after 933 B.C., when Assyrian policy after forty years of unremitting pressure from the Arameans,
became the extirpation of the Aramean, achievable from much strengthened military resources.
Accolytes of the bankers of Babylonia, whether from Nineveh, Carchemish, or the Babylonian cities themselves, who sought their
own fields abroad, or prominent but unsuspecting natives of the area chosen for penetration, were selected as “suitable” to open
the trade in a given area; “suitability,” as in today, being advanced training in money worship, basic lack of integrity, and
preferably some black mark in their secret past making them amenable to pressure and willing to grind down their own kind, or
sell them to the slave trader without the gate, and without mercy and without compunction.
Those refugees skilled in money, from the cities of Aram in particular, though perhaps not qualifying in every specific trait
detailed above, being dispossessed, and with therefore bitterness in their hearts, would have served best. They would have
considered that alignment with the Babylonian banking houses would be alignment with enemy and destroyer of that which had
destroyed them. Such silver money as they later minted and circulated from Aegina and Argos, appears, as is explained below, to
have been of the same weight and fineness as the Babylonian shekel, being that it was eighty-five grains to the drachma. Thus it is
evident that the financial organization these Arameans created in Greece previous to Solon was outright extension of the
Babylonian; in a way it might have been the instrument of Babylonian imperialism, just as was the entry on the tablet of the
traveling agent of the Temple of Ur, recording loans made to enable purchase, instrument, two thousand years before, of that
imperialism of Ur 4 . Thus the coinage as used at Athens at this time, wherever minted, could be exported and circulated in
Babylonia or other cities of this common money market; and while it could be profitably used in settlement of unfavourable
Indian trade balances, it could also be returned to Athens without loss or remitting.
In the so-called Solonian monetary reforms, according to Groseclose, 5 the Mina consisting of 73 drachmas was made legal tender
to the value of 100 drachmas, though according to some scholars, there is no evidence of Athenian mintage at this time. 6
Assuming Groseclose and his authorities to be correct, it follows that the real meaning of these currency reforms was the
establishment of Athenian home mintage inaugurating a new coinage of a less weight, made legal tender for debts incurred in
terms of the previous heavy weight coinage minted at Aegina or Argos. However of this matter Seltsman in his Greek Coins
writes,.”That was the change brought about by the Solonian currency reform, the purpose of which was not to relieve debtors by
lowering the value of the standard coin, but rather to free Athenian trade from a weight system such as bound the merchants to a
local Peloponnesian standard which did not extend beyond the Aegean sea.
Instead the Athenians now had a currency based on the old and famous bronze Age “Euboic talent and mina, and his standard coin
was of the same weight of those of the Corinthians, Samians, and later of Cyrenaeans. But he retained the Pheidonian system of
dividing his stater into two drachmas and his drachma into six obols. At Athens, too, the rival systems of currency met and merged
for she began to coin on the Dorian system, whence she derived her obols, drachmas, and didrachmas, but under Solon’s reforms
she went over to the Ionian system and adjusted her money to the Ionic Euboic talent.” 7
The very fact of the stress on weight shows that such reforms were designed for, and perhaps only really understood by, a group
that was only concerned with silver by weight; in other words, large scale movements of bullion; and who would be none other
than our old friends the international bankers or bullion brokers; possibly even in some opposition to a situation in the
Peloponnese and Aegina, such as may have been occasioned by the institution of the Laws of Lycurgus at Sparta, 8 when
consequently, they and their agents had virtually been ejected from those areas controlled by Sparta or influenced by her policies.
1
F.W. Madden: Coins of the Jews, pp. 4-5; London; 1881.
2
Charles Seltsman: Greek Coins; London; 1933.
3
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.)
4
Sir Charles L. Woolley: Abraham, pp. 124-125, p. 16.
5
Elgin Groseclose: Money, the Human Conflict; p. 16. University of Oklahoma; 1934.
6
W.P. Wallace: The Early Coinages of Athens and Euboia, p. 23, Numismatic Chronicle, 1962, and reply by Colin M. Kraay on p. 417.
7
Charles Seltsman: Greek Coins, London, 1933.
8
Plutarch: The Lives, “Lucurgus.”
The Babylonian Woe 35
Solon was more likely the front man they put up to put into effect a programme they had designed as a result of the conclusion
reached amongst themselves that the notion of Greece as source of the slaves so desperately needed in a world which consumed so
much labour, would have to be forgotten if their agents were to be able to continue operating in Greece, and if they themselves
were to be able to maintain that confidence and respect of the Greek people so essential to their particular affair.
From henceforward it is clear, the issue was to be loans to industrial workers on the security of their wages. No longer would the
banks or money lenders lend to the peasantry being that now they were forbidden to bind their persons as collateral security, and
sell them into slavery across the seas, in the event of non-payment; or to alienate their lands. To get such loans, which the poor
and trusting of the countryside were always craving for one special occasion or another it was necessary to go to Athens and work
for a wage in some industry. It may safely be said that the main industry was mining at Laureion, and possibly in Thrace, where
“Free Men” for a trifling wage could join the gangs of slaves clawing their way into the hard rock, until further sources of cheap
slave supply were found.
Although some modern numismatic scholars 1 disagree with the findings of the scholars of even thirty years ago, and with some
reason, and certainly may be more accurate in their dates, in the case of Alexander Del Mar, who had both practical experience of
mining and practical experience in the field of government finance, and who had made considerable study of the workings of
money and finance in antiquity, his opinion is not to be so lightly brushed aside. In his History of Monetary Systems in Various
States on this subject he writes: 2
“According to Boeckh, p. 28, one hundred of the new drachmas of Solon who was Archon of Athens B.C. 594, were
equivalent to 72 or 73 more ancient drachmas. If this were quite reliable, then to Solon belongs the merit or demerit of altering
the ratio from 13:1 to 10:1; because, as we have some of the drachmas of Solon and know their contents, the proportion given
would make the more ancient drachmas contain about 85 grains fine silver, the weight of the shekel. As twenty of these were
commonly exchanged for a gold coin, which, whether a dharana of India, a medimni of Media, a daric of Persia, or a stater of
the Levant, contained about 130 grains of fine metal, the Athenian ratio, previous to the lowering of the drachma, must have
obeyed the ratio of Assyria, Media, and Persia, which was 13:1. But according to Quiepo, who is a more reliable authority on
the weights of coins than Boeckh, although we have drachmas older than Solon, they do not contain more than 65 grains of
fine silver; so that the change of ratio from 13:1 to 10:1, assumed to have occurred at Athens, must have taken place before
Solon was Archon. However, it is certain from the coins that the ratio under the administration of Solon was 10:1 and that it
continued for nearly three centuries; for it is impliedly mentioned by Menander about B.C. 322, as being still in vogue at a
recent period. During this interval, the ratio in the Orient was 6¼ or 6½, and in Persia 13:1 or double the Indian ratio.”
In other words, if these weights of drachma and of shekel as at that time are correct, just as the Roman denarius was later issued to
practically the same weight as the post Solonian drachma which was in use in Sicily and Magna Graecia, 3 so was the early Greek
drachma, whether Aeginetic or of Argos, I.E. Pheidonian, minted to the same standard as the shekel, the unit of exchange in
Babylonia, Assyria, and Phoenicia, clearly creating extension of the Common Money Market of that area and its financial
dependencies. Thus the Greek coin could be exported, circulated at par with the shekel, and even returned to Greece without loss
through remitting or smelting to bullion; and also more important still, could realize that sure profit that the international bullion
traders had guaranteed themselves in the Indian trade, by prevailing on rulers to maintain the ratio of silver as to gold at 13:1 as
opposed to 6½:1 in India. 4 In other words the real significance of the monetary reforms of Solon was the separation of Athens
from the financial hegemony of Babylonia and its nearer agencies in Lydia, Aegina, Argos etc.; which, as previously pointed out,
may very well have been rendered ineffective by the Laws of Lycurgus, 5 considered now, a point of great significance, to have
been enacted in the early sixth century. 6 From now on it was going to be forbidden to Athenian merchants to settle unfavourable
trade balances with slaves, and almost profitless to settle such balances with silver, either as coin or bullion. Henceforth the
bankers would have to serve Athenian interests and would have to derive their profits from local business, I.E., there would be
much more money circulating in Athens, and therefore a healthier industry; which history records as being exactly what
transpired.
1
W.P. Wallace: The Early Coinages of Athens and Euboia, p. 23, Numismatic Chronicle; and the reply by Colin M. Kraay, p. 417.
2
A. Del Mar: History of Monetary Systems in Various States; p. 47; reprint, New York; 1969.
3
“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.”
4
Alexander del Mar: History of Monetary Systems in Various States, p. 29, pp. 35-53.
5
Formerly, as according to Mythology, considered to have been enacted in the 9th Century B.C.
6
Humphrey Michell: Sparta, p. 27.
The Babylonian Woe 36
According to Grote, the banking system assumed after Solon a more beneficial character. The old noxious contracts “mere snare
for the liberty of a poor free man and his children,” disappeared and loans of money “took their place founded on property and
prospective earnings of the debtor which were in the main useful to both parties, and therefore maintained their place in the moral
sentiment of the people.” 1
Thus to such an extent did Athens abjure the international bankers who must be loosely described as centering in Babylonia, that,
insignificant as she relatively was, through the seisachtheia (‘shaking-off-of-burdens’), she in reality severed from Babylonian
Imperialism and its financial hegemony world wide, and established herself as minor competitive force, as was shown by the
Persian efforts at encirclement; towards which their seizure of control of the Thracian mines in the year 512 B.C. constituted the
first clear step. Even if the reforms of Solon were not so absolute as those of Lycurgus in Sparta, and still left silver as the material
of the basic monetary unit, and therefore still left Athens at the mercy of those forces whose secret activities contributed towards
the functioning of what is known as Gresham’s Law, “Bad money drives out the good,” the Persian move of 512 B.C., by no
means took the strength out of Athens and her allies. While securing ship timbers for the fleets they were planning, and also
further silver supplies, Persia, wherein nested international money power at that time, thought that she would be cutting off from
Athens these commodities so essential to the promotion of war industry. Somehow Athens still continued to maintain itself free of
this Babylonian Imperialism which now sheltered behind Persia, and despite the enormous resources of Persia, was able to defeat
the “Great King,” both on land at Marathon, 490 B.C.; Platea and Mycale, 479 B.C.; and at sea at Salamis in the famous naval
battle of 480 B.C. It may safely be assumed that the huge issues of the owl drachmas during the decade that followed the
discovery of the 3rd level or contact at Laureion 2 and its fantastically rich ore, substantially contributed to this success. Those
designing international money power were just that: international! If the other fellow too, looked to be on to a good thing, and
could offer what its controllers needed most of all, which was precious metals, then a way could always be found to do business!
Out of war could only come good to them and theirs. Whether the “Great King” remained great, or Athens took his place, was not
of that much importance. They would see to it that none who might be a real threat to them, would achieve a similar power to
theirs; that is, from an international standpoint.
So to sum up the situation so far as pre-Solonian Athens was concerned, a simple unlettered people offered all the luxuries of
another world as against the new money whose function is so little understood by lettered people even in this day, without going
back 2500 years, had become swamped in debt. The law in respect to this debt had been upheld by a corrupted nobility in favour
of the bankers. No doubt it had been represented to them by these same bankers that this pressure of debt on the growing
population would keep the masses docile and tied to the land as was indicated by the prevalence of the mortgage tablets on the
farms of Attica. 3 This condition, favouring the corrupted nobility of Greece and the international money power, ignored the needs
of the new-rich manufacturers of Athens, who were neither able to obtain sufficient supply of local free labour, nor to obtain
slaves.
Where credit institutions had long since existed as in the Grecian ports, 4 in a land of relatively simple folk, where the ways of
money were no more understood than they are today, by loans of ledger credit page entry money against collateral, demanding in
repayment silver coinage, Money Power obviously had made a very good thing of it in Greece. By the bankers of a given area
using the same standard of weight in its precious metal coinage, calling loans in unison, the money supply could be shrunk to
almost nothing; on which, their agents abroad could send ships, and buy crops and men and women and children for a song.
The Laws of the Archon Solon, by making no provision for employment for the freed debt slaves, nor providing for redistribution
of the land, gave the Athenian manufacturer that labour, which he most of all needed. The Solonian ordinance offering Athenian
citizenship to any free man from the countryside who came to Athens and took up a trade, further improved the labour market.
The monetary reforms of Solon reducing the export of coin or bullion, gave the Athenian manufacturers the money they also
needed, for they remained the only market for the “funds” of the bankers, native or Peloponnesian; the latter having had no option
but to find new lands to “conquer,” as it were, after their virtual ejection by the laws enacted under the patronage of Lycurgus of
Sparta. 5
Finally, it might be said that the laws of the Archon Solon were the manifestation of the growth of the Athenian principle and the
rejection, compulsory or otherwise, by all classes, of the Babylonian Money Power; including that growing class, who for the time
being, seeing which way the wind lay, might now be called National Money Power.
1
. G. Grote: History of Greece, Ch. 9; (Elgin Groseclose: Money, the Human Conflict, p. 18.)
2
W.P Wallace: The Early Coinages of Athens and Euboia, p. 35, The Numismatic Chronicle, 1962.
3
Elgin Groseclose: Money, the Human Conflict, p. 16; University of Oklahoma, 1934.
4
Paul Einzig: Primitive Money, p. 225; London, 1949.
5
According to Gertrude Coogan, the first act of Solon after having had the Dictatorship urged on him by a powerful sector of the Athenian
population, was abrogation of the privilege of silver mining, and, as a consequence, the privilege of money issuance by the nobility. I am,
however, of the opinion that Miss Coogan missed the point here. What actually happened, it is true, would have been abrogation of the
privilege of money issue by the nobility, but not as directly exercised by such nobility, but as through it being farmed out by them to the
Arameo-Phoenician traders, i.e., the Babylonian Money Power.
The Babylonian Woe 37
PHRYGIA, FINANCE, AND FRONT MAN
The Assyrian conquests must have released a very flood of bullion on to the markets of the Middle East. Steeply rising prices that
would have followed must have made it more profitable for bankers and money lenders and manufacturers from this most ancient
area to look further afield for lands where money as denoted by treasure was not so plentiful, and therefore wherein such treasure
might serve them best. The gold, silver, and electrum bullion with which, after 671 B.C. and the Assyrian thrust into Egypt during
the second phase of Assyrian conquest, their store houses and strong rooms were overflowing, could be put to better use than lying
inactive in these same store houses or strong rooms, at Nineveh, Babylon, Lagash, or Ur or wherever they were situated.
The privately issued electrum staters of Lydia of the seventh and sixth century B.C. denoted a highly significant possibility. Lydia
was the source of something Assyria badly needed. The first thing such military organization such as existed in Assyria would
need, would be financial organization, and secondly, stemming from its financial organization, organization above all towards the
purpose of the purchase of the best of arms. Phrygia was famous throughout the ancient world for its arms. 1 Lydia bordered on
and indeed may very well have been part of Phrygia in earlier times. Hence the secret of the electrum staters. Assyria needed
Phrygian arms and at the same time had to accept such financial terns as the suppliers of such arms decreed, and it may safely be
assured that such terms stipulated payment was to be made in gold, silver, or electrum.
The extraordinary treasure of such as Sadyattes, latter dispossessed and executed by Croesus, cannot be explained any other way.
It had to derive from the plunder gathered up by Assyria from all its conquests, as much as from the river washings of Lydia. The
evidence of the gold artifacts, of the ancient civilizations of Anatolia of thousands of years previous to this time, such as Hacilar,
Catal Huyuk, Dorak, 2 would indicate that the Anatolian rivers had been well washed for gold many ages before 3 . Although
according to the Guide to the principal coins of the Greeks published by the British Museum, pages 12-13, electrum for the
Lydian coinages came from the Pactolus river, the question still stands: “what happened to the enormous gold, silver, and
electrum plunder, of Assyria; that had been taken from Aram, Israel, Arabia, and above all from Egypt?”
The great temple cities such as Karnak must have literally gleamed with gold and silver monuments and finishing. According to
Diodorus in 57 B.C.: “So that there was no city under the sun so adorned with so many and stately monuments of gold, silver, and
ivory, and multitudes of colossi and obelisks, each cut out of an entire stone.
.The decorations of these buildings were as magnificent as their design. The walls and pylons were covered with paintings and
sculpture, the gates and pillars were overlaid with gold and the floors with silver, which, to the Egyptians was a metal hardly less
precious than gold itself.” 4
The electrum obelisks of Hatsepsut 5 as removed by Ashurbanipal from before the Temple of Amon at Karnak in 661 B.C.,
contained, according to Breasted 2500 talents of electrum, 6 and according to other writers as much as 2900 talent; not to speak of
other more massive plunder stripped from temple and tomb. The electrum from the obelisks alone, assuming the correctness of the
percentages of gold, silver, and copper given on the cylinder reported by Desroches-Noblecourt to be in the Louvre, as being 75%,
22%, 3%, respectively, 7 would value at $186,648,000 (166,650 lbs. at approximately $70.00 to the fine ounce), having a buying
power infinitely greater than in today. Skilfully used as the basis of a pyramid of ledger credit page entry money, it would be
sufficient to maintain the finances of great enterprise, if not of kingdoms. Lydia, peasant kingdom that had emerged from the ruins
of Phrygia after the Cimmerian invasion, 8 could very well have functioned in its institution in a similar manner to Switzerland
during the last few hundred years; somewhat in the nature of a bullion broker’s or international banker’s refuge. 9 Which might
account, perhaps, for the ferocity of the destruction by Cyrus of the hapless Croesus, who was said to have been flayed alive; as
example no doubt to other kings, and to remind them that while their power was national, there was another power which was
international; above and beyond the power of petty kings.
Similarly, the other metals, copper, bronze, and iron, no longer deemed precious, and which therefore were often left on the
battlefield, would fall into the hands of members of those semi-criminal castes such as Sadyattes, previously mentioned, who
would control the camp followers that stripped the dead and thus garnered this scrap metal. These metals offered considerable
profit by way of manufacturing counterfeits of the currencies of those states wherein base metal currencies were used.
1
“But I perhaps, owing to the number of advocates may be classed in the common body; the battle of Cannae has made you a sufficiently
respectable accuser. We have seen many men slain, not at Trasimene but at Servilius. Who was not wounded there with Phrygian steel?”
Cicero: Orationes, “Pro S. Roscius” (Vol. I, p. 65; C.D. Yonge; London, 1883.).
2
Kenneth Pearson: The Dorak Affair, London, 1967.
3
Strabo, XIII, iv, 5. (Del Mar: History of the Precious Metals, p. 51.)
4
Christopher Dawson: Age of the Gods, p. 295.
5
James H. Breasted: History of Egypt, p. 281.
6
Ibid. p. 559.
7
Christiane Desroches-Noblecourt: Tutankhamen, p. 33. New York, 1963.
8
Encyclopaedia of World History, p. 37, Boston, 1948.
9
The fact that after the destruction of Croesus by Cyrus, 547 B.C., Sardis remained the principal mint for the whole Persian Empire, and for
which it turned out Sigloi as to the Babylonian standard, gives further strength to the idea.
The Babylonian Woe 38
Many Northern states and cities to which considerable industry was being transferred, used copper or iron fiduciary currencies in
earlier times. Such was the iron currency of Clazomenae mentioned by Aristotle 1 and the iron spits of Pre-Pheidon Argos,
examples of which were dedicated to the Goddess in the Temple of Hera at Argos at the commencement of silver coinage by
Pheidon, and were actually exhumed from the place of their dedication by the archaeologists who explored that site. 2 Herein
would have been fertile field for profit for those that dealt in money in Greece or elsewhere, for that matter.
Though the Greek himself obviously must have been the foundation of Greek industry, the Aramean or the Phoenician, bringing
the ways of money and banking and who brought an alphabet and writing to Greece, became the cornerstone of that industry. He
also brought agencies from the great banking houses of Babylonia such as that firm mentioned by Professor Sayce in Babylonian
Literature, which flourished from the reign of Nabopolassar, the father of Nebuchadnezzar, to the reign of Darius Hystaspes;
approximately one hundred years; and of which evidence remains in the clay cheques and deeds found by some Arabs in a great
earthen jar. 3 Since the time of Professor Sayce, which is nearly a hundred years ago, much more evidence of the existence of
powerful banking and merchant institutions has come to light; outstandingly those of the Egibi Sons, and the Murassu, who,
according to Professor Humphrey Michell in his work, The Economics of Ancient Greece (p. 334), carried on very large and
complicated business; even by modern standards.
Just as Babylonian business and banking houses maintained extensive branches in the Sumerian cities, such as at Lagash where
their records were found to exceed the records of the king, 4 so it may safely be assumed that they maintained branches within any
state within the limits of the communications of the day, and where profit was to be made.
The sturdy intelligent people of Greece were a fertile field for the renewal of industry and trade after the disturbance that must
have followed the rise in prices deriving from the augmentation of precious metal reserves resulting from the flow of Assyrian
plunder on to the bullion markets, and later, with Babylonia once again supreme following the victories of Nabopolassar in 605
B.C., from the similar flow of Babylonian plunder. At the same time Greece was a place of refuge from the war clouds drifting
over all that Near East world, and the stench of slaughter that followed the warring hosts.
It would not be long before the skill of the Aramean at letters, money, counterfeit or otherwise, and in organization of industry,
stirred the peasant kingdoms of Greece. Industries rose under the guidance of these refugees similar to those of their homelands, to
be later followed by a money economy as to the silver standards of Babylonia, and by the systematic spreading of money madness
amongst the landed aristocracy of Greece, thus separating them from their peoples for whom they had been the hereditary guides.
For their peoples and their labours had now become but cyphers; desirable wealth assessed as according to the figures in the
banker’s book.
The people who drifted into the cities as slave or freeman, and found employment in the organized manufacturies of these
strangers who by now were calling themselves Greeks, and were by now bearing Greek names, not unnaturally gave their
allegiance to that new hand that seemed to feed them. Eagerly, just as in today, they drank at the fountain of hatred of their former
masters, who through their sanction of the activities of these “New Greeks,” and connivance with them in respect to the new
money system they set up, betrayed both their people and themselves.
Among the first steps towards the total monetization of the wealth and labour of the Greek peoples to a precious metal standard
controllable by the great banking houses of Babylonia, was the permitting of the striking of a silver coinage on the island of
Aegina by Pheidon, 5 “progressive” King of Argos in 680 B.C., similar to the private coinage that was issued in Lydia prior to
Croesus. “Progressive” King of Argos meant in this case a king ready to listen to the blandishments of money power, luring him
into that trap which was the use of precious metal currency, over which he could have relatively little control; since silver as its
base was to be obtained only at great expense by slave labour at localities too often far distant, and, relative to localities yielding
iron or copper, few and far between. True, the silver used by the moneyers of Aegina probably came from Laureion, in sight
across the sea. But even though the source of supply was so close at hand, a coinage of which so small a unit represented so much
value, placed the economy, through the practices of banking, in the hands of the international bullion controllers.
That the bankers, known as trapezitae, conducted almost the same business as bankers today is clearly indicated by the article in
Seffert’s Classical Dictionary, even if, as the word trapezitae indicates, they but sat at a bench in the market place, instead of
sitting in gilded halls surmounted by sixty story buildings, as indeed they do today. Within the limits of clay tablet and stylus, the
same confidence game was operated, though probably there were few who understood it as being such;. yesterday it was a
conspiracy against the men of a city, or a relatively small state; today a conspiracy against the whole world. Those that have their
hands on the throttle of this all embracing evil do not however bear the faintest resemblance to whole hearted demons in hell, or
gods who in their mountain halls contemptuously plan the total eradication of man who may be their complete failure. They are
1
Frederick William Madden, M.R.A.S.: Coins of the Jews, p.29; London; 1881.
2
Charles Seltsman: Greek Coins, pp. 34-35.
3
Frederick William Madden, M.R.A.S.: Coins of the Jews, p. 6. (footnote).
4
Cambridge Ancient History, p. 392, Vol. 1.
5
According to the table on p. 35, “Greek Coins” by C. Seltsman, the Aeginetan drachma was established without any doubt at its given
standard, because in the time of Pheidon, the ratio of silver to iron was 400:1. He clearly had been advised to establish the new silver drachmas
and obolos so that they would have the same purchasing power as the now discarded iron obolos and “Drax.” according to their valuation in an
International market where money was metal by weight.
The Babylonian Woe 39
but pudgy and sly little men as much overwhelmed by the monster they have raised, as are the foolish nations that permitted them
so to do.
Of Ancient Greek banking Seffert says: “Bankers were called by the Greeks trapezitae because they sat at tables in the market
places, the centre of all business transactions. They acted as money changers exchanging for a commission heavy money or gold
into smaller coin, and the moneys of different systems with each other. In commercial cities they would do a considerable trade in
this way, the different standards and the uncertainty of the stamping of the coins in Greece creating a great demand for their
assistance. They also acted as money lenders both on a small and a large scale. Finally they received money on deposit. People
placed their money with them for safe custody, partly to facilitate the management of it. The depositors, according to their
convenience, either drew out sums of money themselves, or commissioned their banker to make payment to a third person. In this
line the business of the banks was considerable. If a citizen had a large sum of money circulating in business, he probably
preferred to put it in a bank and to hand over to the banker the business of making his payments. Strangers too found that the
banks offered them such facilities that they were glad to make considerable use of them. 1 The bankers kept strict account of all
monies in their charge. If a person were making a payment to another who was a depositor at the same bank, the banker would
simply transfer the requisite sum from one account to another. The bankers were generally well known from the public character
of their occupation, and they naturally gained great experience in business. Consequently their advice and assistance were often
asked for in the ordinary affairs of life. They would be called in to attest the conclusion of contracts, and would take charge of
sums of money, the title to which was disputed, and of important documents. Business of this kind was generally in the hands of
resident aliens.” 2
The above quotation from the great German scholar, Oskar Seffert, leaves those of us who understand the origins and meaning of
today’s banking, little doubt, as previously pointed out, that within the limits of clay tablet and stylus, every fraudulent practice
known to banking would have been practised. Also the commonly accepted idea that instruments used in foreign trade, such as
Letters of Credit, Bills of Exchange, etc. were a discovery of the 12th Century A.D., is further clearly proved erroneous by the
sentence: “Strangers too found that the banks offered them such facilities that they were glad to make considerable use of them.” 3
Therefore behind the monetary reforms of King Pheidon of Argos we must see not the wonder of what so many so-called scholars
would call the arrival of the “Invention” of coinage in Greece, but the comings and goings of strange aliens with letters from
mysterious “Important” men who dwelt in Tyre, or Sidon, or Sardis, or who dwelt in Babylonia itself; everything to be in the
name of “progress,” everything to be joy and light! The only thing our poor peasant king had to ask himself was. “Joy and light
for whom. Us or these panders, pornographers, and luxury pedlars who now flock to our shores?”
Very soon, no doubt, the answer became apparent. Behind the Aramaic speaking banker came the slave trader, and it was not long
before the poor people found that the king’s law was no longer for them, and was but a measure behind which these glib and
double talking “Bankers” operated. “We must protect the people’s savings!” no doubt was their cry, yesterday, as in today.
Such silver coinage as was produced at Aegina or Argos would have been no more than a few seen symbols, the apex of an
inverted pyramid of unseen or abstract symbols of which only the money master really understood the meaning and purpose, and
only he knew how to manipulate. Through manipulation of these “Credits” in relation to the silver that people now thought was
their money, King Pheidon himself could have been tricked into believing himself a slave because he could not repay his so-called
“debt.” However the banker needed the king as such, for a while yet no doubt.
In the meantime peasantry and lesser nobility were drawn into this trap of irredeemable debt, and, as the king’s law had to be
upheld, they and their families would be sold into that cruel slave system that was growing up all over the Mediterranean world
and through which, money economy, now grown into a very monster, could find docile labour for the dreary grind of the new
methods of semi-mass production in manufacture, such as it had brought into being, and against which the reforms of Solon as
described in the previous chapter, were directed.
History should not be misled by the Greek names of those significant figures and families concerned with money and money
power at that time, whether in Lydia or in Greece. Oskar Seffert states quite clearly that the bankers or trapezitae were resident
aliens. 4 Controlling the undercurrents of city life as undoubtedly they would have so done, in those days it would have been no
more difficult than it is in these days to secure the services of a front man to promote their interests, and secure them citizenship if
necessary. Just as aliens who seek trade and power amongst whatever people they maybe, so often change their names to suit the
circumstances while retaining allegiance to that group into which they were born, so it was in that day, nearly three thousand years
ago. In the early days of the Greek cities, citizenship was easy to obtain and persons with pretence at power, influence and money,
in a society where worship of money had replaced worship of the gods, in truth, would have no great difficulty in that direction.
Out of the weakening of what was left of the true power of kingly rule at Athens, such as descended from Mycenaean Greece, and
consequent growth of “Aristocratic” democracy, doubtless deriving from concession to international money power for its
1
Obviously for discounting Bills of Exchange, raising money against Bills of Lading, Warehouse Receipts, and the realization into that which
circulated as money of the promissory note issued as between friends or otherwise.
2
Oskar Seffert: Dictionary of Classical Antiquities, p. 91.
3
Visiting Merchants and Ships’ Captains.
4
Oskar Seffert: Dictionary of Classical Antiquities, p. 91.
The Babylonian Woe 40
assistance against the Dorian previous to 1100 B.C., and before whom it appears the city of Athens never fell, came the
replacement of the title Wanax indicating god-king reigning in earthly splendour, for that of Archon-Basileus of lesser degree. 1
Out of the further weakening of such aristocracy of the Greeks as later existed, whether Achaean, Ionian, or Dorian, and the soul
destruction sown amongst them as consequence of their betrayal into slavery and abuse of their followers who had so trusted them
and looked to them for guidance, derived those conditions out of which the so-called tyrant rose to power. Out of the involvement
of the natural leaders of the people 2 with things ignoble and inimical to their own kind, such as trade and “Money-making,” and
with strange luxuries and vices, rose those men, often traitors to their own class, who fronted for the conspiratorial money power
of the age. Such men steered the restless aspirations of the wage slaves of the cities; those dispossessed masses so easily stirred to
active resentment against their former leaders deriving from the ancient nobility; and who, of course, had no more understanding
than themselves of that force by which they were both being manipulated.
1
Jacquetta Hawkes: Dawn of the Gods, p. 262; New York; 1968.
2
Referring to the Hellenic terminology in connection with banking transactions and professions etc. Professor Heichelheim of vast scholarship
recorded “That the banking transactions of the individual bankers, money lenders, and debtors influenced the whole economic life and even, to
a certain degree, the intellectual development in Attica, the territories of the Delian League and in many other polis territories of our period,
since the fifth, if not occasionally sixth centuries B.C. will be obvious from the above list which has a surprising number of specializations.”
Fritz Heichelheim: An Ancient Economic History, Vol. II, pp. 196-197; Leyden; 1958-1970.
3
Fritz Heichelheim: An Ancient Economic History, Vol. 1, p. 290; Leyden. 1958. 1970.
4
Houghton Mifflin (Publishers): Encyclopedia of World History, p. 48; Boston; 1940.
5
A. Andreades: History of the Bank of England, p. 22; London; 1966.
6
Sir William Ashley: Economic Organizations of England, p. 96-118. London; 1933.
The Babylonian Woe 41
leaving harbour carried to the ends of the earth, so the land of the great lord was but the capital investment that grew the food that
he the manufacturer purchased for himself and his slaves or the raw materials needed for his particular trade; and he himself, in
the money creator’s kingdom on earth, was as assessable in coin as was potter, weaver, or armourer. The land owning nobleman
was a man controllable as themselves through the arts of taxation in terms of money, could they but institute a system of
government in which the natural ruler had no more power to rule than themselves.
No doubt these worthy tradesmen of Megara, or Corinth, or Athens, led on by the attitude of their true masters, the trapezitae, the
money creators, agents of those great and ancient banking houses of Babylon city, said to themselves of the natural lords of Hellas
“Who are these men?” “For all their fine manners and clothing, we could buy them up a hundred times did they but know it!”
And so the stage was set for the arrival of the tyrant financed into existence by the bankers towards the total destruction of the old
way of life, which still had within it the seeds of a strength sufficient to root out its enemies such as, in the case of Sparta, had
been outstandingly proven by the renewal of the ancient life system through the financial and social reforms of Lycurgus. Classes
of manufacturers and entrepreneurs, contemptuous of a nobility that seemed to have betrayed its trust, were easily stirred to envy
and resentment, and the work of destruction by the tyrant received little or no opposition.
“In order to level the class of large landowners and nobles economically, Theagenes of Megara simply allowed their herds of
cattle to be slaughtered without remuneration. A frequent political device of tyrants from Asia Minor to Sicily was to murder or
banish nobles, confiscate their possessions, and redistribute their wealth amongst the poor.” 1
The poor, needless to say, soon returned to being poor again. “The poor ye shall always have with you.” The poor merely being
those who trust that their rulers are attending to serious matters as indicated by their position in the scale of life, such as
governing. The word “poor” having existed, of course, long before the crafty banker, standing in the shade beside the ways of life,
arranged it that measure of poverty and riches was in that number of (privately issued) units of exchange in which a man could be
assessed according to success or failure in the conflict of life, as he the banker had established it.
The tyrant, therefore, was that force by which international money power as it derived from the control of silver bullion and the
slave markets, destroyed all resistance to its total ownership of life and labour and human hope. The status of all, slave or free, in
some degree, depended on their relations with the trapezitae who presided at their table in the agora; and should they be kings or
rulers of states, no doubt their destinies would be much influenced by those shadowy figures furtively watching from the counting
houses of far away Mesopotamia. According to the special nature of the times, the tyrant, in his capacity as ruler, would above all
be guided instrument; but that the tyrant no more understood the true significance of his existence than do these so-called
revolutionary “leaders” of today, is a certainty.
The so-called “revolutions” of today are clearly similar in their origins to those of the time of the tyrants; the main difference
being more of a technicality. Until 1870 A.D. the arbitrary valuation of gold bullion as according to the decision of the bullion
brokers, was common denominator of values internationally, with silver bullion in second place at the ratio as decided by the
leading states; but still rarely varying a great deal from that ratio decided on nearly 2000 years ago by Julius Caesar and his
financial advisors, of 12:1. 2 After the demonetization of silver in almost all the major states of the world, in the seventies of the
last century, 3 the common denominator of values was gold alone, with silver just another commodity moving up and down on
world markets according to supply and demand.
More than ample evidence exists of those persons designated international bankers in “Modern Times” as also the instigative
factor in the principle so-called revolutions of the last three hundred years. According to Commander Guy Carr, 4 the so-called
English revolution was totally the work of the international bullion brokers who seem at that time to have been lodged in
Amsterdam, although the loan of silver bullion to Queen Elizabeth I 5 for the recoinage that took place shortly after her accession
to the throne as negotiated by the famous “Sicile,” 6 later Lord Burghley, came from Antwerp.
Some of the Crypto-Jews of the Commonwealth, 7 of whom many would have been in England during the reign of Charles I,
would also appear to have been a factor in such revolution as witting or unwitting agents of the Amsterdam bullion brokers. 8 The
main designer of the events of those days seems to have been a Manasseh Ben Israel, “a remarkable character,” who apparently
took the initiative in the financing of Cromwell; 9 which enabled Cromwell to obtain the best of arms, the first requisite of the
would-be conqueror throughout history.
1
Fritz Heichelheim: An Ancient Economic History, Vol. I, p. 290.
2
A. Del Mar: History of the Precious Metals, p. 81; New York, 1968.
3
A. Del Mar: Money and Civilization. Also John R. Elsom. pp. 49-50.
4
Commander Guy Carr: Pawns in the Game, pp. 19, 20, 21.
5
G. Ravenscroft Dennis: The House of Cecil, p. 61. London, 1914.
6
Illustrated London News, Nov. 11th, 1911, p. 762.
7
Lucien Wolf: The Resettlement of the Jews in England; London; 1888.
8
A. Andreades: History of the Bank of England, p. 28.
9
F.P.G. Guizot: Histoire de la République d’angleterre, pp. 154-155; Paris; 1854.
1
Max Dimont: Jews, God, and History, p. 291. New York; 1962.
2
According to the letters of Quang Chang Ling (1878); (History of the Precious Metals; p. 348; A. Del Mar): “ It was in the year 1498 that the
Portuguese made their way around the Cape (of Good Hope). In 1510, under Albuquerque, they treacherously seized the East Indian city of
Goa, and leaving a garrison in it, sailed away to Malacca which they had seen and coveted in 1508. They plundered Malacca of a booty so
enormous that the Quinto, or fifth, of the king of Portugal amounted to 200.000 gold cruzados, a sum equivalent to $5,000,000.00.”
“We have our own theory concerning the sources of your present riches. We ascribe it in part, to your gains from the piratical conquest,
enslavement and murderous extinction of the American races, but chiefly to the profitable trade with the Orient. From the opening of this trade
to 1640, when the Portuguese were driven from Japan, and the British first acquired territory in Hindustan, three of your European nations
alone took a thousand million dollars in gold and silver from Asia; two thirds as much as they wrung from all America during the same period.
From Malacca alone they took 25.000.000; from Japan, up to the date mentioned, four hundred millions; from India and China still greater
sums (in gold or silver coin, or bullion).”
3
The Chapters in Del Mar’s History of Civilization dealing with this period, will repay the reading.
4
Andreades: History of the Bank of England, pp. 14-32.
5
Ibid, p. 19-20.
6
Ibid. p. 22.
7
A. del Mar: History of Monetary Crimes, PP. 7-44.
8
Pepys Diary, Aug 17th, 1666. Diary and Correspondence. 5 vols. London, 1848.
The Babylonian Woe 43
Faith,” the real key to sovereignty, were repudiated; 1 showing that the son had even less understanding of the realities of money
than had the father. 2
To return to Cromwell and the principal factors that lead up to his success, and his assumption of the powers of tyranny: when it
became clear that Cromwell was as “suitable” a man as could be found to fit the needs of the occasion, Manasseh Ben Israel
supplied him with the gifted Fernandez Carvajal, for the reorganization of his army, which became known as the “Model Army”.
Trained revolutionaries then poured into the country, presiding over whom was the Portuguese Ambassador, a De Souza, who
loaned them the diplomatic immunity of his house for their meetings. One such revolutionary was the man known today as Calvin,
whose father had been fiscal agent to a prominent French Bishop. 3
These revolutionary leaders, besides developing the technique of spreading religious differences, also exploited the use of
truculent mobs, a practice known to this class of people from most ancient times, for the gaining of political ends. According to
Commander Guy Carr, who is a relatively recent writer on this subject: 4 “The evidence which absolutely convicts Oliver
Cromwell of participating in the revolutionary plot was obtained by Lord Alfred Douglas, who edited a weekly review known as
Plain English published by the North British Publishing Company. In an article which appeared in the issue of Sept. 3rd 1921, he
explained that he and his friend, Mr. L.D. Van Valckert of Amsterdam, Holland, had come into possession of a missing volume of
records of the Synagogue of Muljeim. This volume had been lost during the Napoleonic Wars. The volume contained records of
letters written to and answered by the directors of the Synagogue.
They are written in German. One entry dated June 16th, 1647 reads: From O.C. (i.e.) Oliver Cromwell to Ebenezer Pratt.
‘In return for financial support will advocate admission to England; this however impossible while Charles living. Charles cannot
be executed without trial, adequate grounds for which do not at present exist. Therefore advise that Charles be assassinated, but
will have nothing to do with the arrangements for procuring an assassin, though willing to help in his escape.’
In reply to this dispatch the records show E. Pratt wrote a letter dated July 12th, 1647 addressed to Oliver Cromwell.
‘Will grant financial aid as soon as Charles removed and. admitted. 5 Assassination too dangerous. Charles should be given an
opportunity to escape. His recapture will then make trial and execution possible. The support will be liberal but useless to discuss
terms until trial commences.’
On November 12th, that same year, Charles was given the opportunity to escape. He was, of course, recaptured. Hollis and
Ludlow, authorities on this chapter of history, are both on record as considering the flight as the stratagem of Cromwell. After
Charles had been recaptured, events moved apace. Cromwell had the British Parliament purged of most of the members he knew
were loyal to the King. Notwithstanding this drastic action, when the house sat all night on December 6th, 1648, the majority
agreed ‘That the concessions offered by the king were satisfactory to a settlement.’
Any such settlement would have disqualified Cromwell from receiving the blood money promised him by the international money
barons through their agent E. Pratt, so Cromwell struck again. He ordered Colonel Pryde to purge Parliament of those members
who had voted in favour of a settlement with the King. What then happened is referred to in history books as ‘Pryde’s purge’.
When the purge was finished, fifty members remained. They are recorded as the ‘Rump Parliament’. They usurped absolute
power. On January 30th, 1649, he was publicly beheaded in front of the banqueting house at Whitehall, London. Oliver Cromwell
received his blood money just as Judas had done.” 6
On the same somewhat obscure page of history, Professor Andreades pointed out in his History of the Bank of England, 7 that
Cromwell’s best known historians pay little attention to the subject of his relations with the Jews and their return to England.
Carlyle and Morley devoting no more than a page to this highly controversial event. 8 The reader gains the impression that more
was to be said on the subject. He asserts himself: “It is certain that as soon as Charles I was dead, the Jews attempted to return to
England.” 9
The following statements by Benjamin Franklin in reference to the causes of the American Revolution are equally illuminating:
1
Anderson, Adam, p. 485, An Historical and Chronological Deduction of the Origin of Commerce, Vol. II, London, 1787-1789.
2
Charles II was totally in the hands of the bankers and goldsmiths as is revealed by the following extract from D. MacPherson’s Annals of
Commerce, (p. 428). “Charles being in want of money, the bankers took 10% of him barefacedly, and by private contracts on many bills,
orders, tallies and debts of that King, they got 20, sometimes 30% to the great dishonour of Government. This great gain induced the
Goldsmiths to become more and more lenders to the King, to anticipate all the revenues, to take every grant of Parliament into pawn as soon as
it was given; also to outvie each other in buying and taking to pawn bills, orders and tallies, so that in effect, all the revenue passed through
their hands.”
3
Will Durant: The Reformation; p. 459.
4
Commander Guy Carr: Pawns in the Game, p. 20.
5
According to A. Andreades (History of the Bank of England. p. 30.), Frederick Harrison says in his biography of Oliver Cromwell: “Noble
were the efforts of the Protector to impress his own spirit of toleration on the intolerance of his age. He effectively protected the Quakers; he
admitted the Jews after an expulsion of three centuries, and he satisfied Mazarin that he had given to Catholics all the protection that he dared.”
6
Commander Guy Carr: Pawns in the Game, p. 19-21.
7
A. Andreades: History of the Bank of England, p. 28.
8
Ibid.
9
Ibid.
The Babylonian Woe 44
“About this time (the time of the Treaty of Paris, 1763), Benjamin Franklin made a visit to England. While there he was asked
how he accounted for the prosperous conditions of the colonies. His reply was: ‘That is simple. It is only because in the colonies
we issue our own money. It is called “Colonial Scrip” and we issue it in the proper proportion to the demands of trade and
industry.’” (See Senate Document No. 23, Page 98, by Robert L. Owen, 1 former Chairman, Committee on Banking and Currency,
United States Senate.)
Robert L. Owen continues: “It was not very long until this information was brought to the Rothschild’s Bank, and they saw that
here was a nation ready to be exploited; here was a nation setting up an example that they could issue their own money instead of
the money coming through the Banks. The Rothschild’s Bank caused a bill to be introduced in the English Parliament., therefore,
which provided that no colony of England could issue its own money. They had to use English money. Consequently the colonies
were compelled to discard their ‘scrip’ and mortgage themselves to the Bank of England (the Amsterdam Bullion Brokers!) to get
money. For the first time in the history of the United States our money began to be based on debt.”
“Benjamin Franklin stated that in one year from that date the streets of the colonies were filled with the unemployed, because
when England exchanged with them, she gave them only half as many units in payment in borrowed money from the Rothschild
as they had in ‘scrip’. In other words, their circulating medium was reduced 50%, and everyone became unemployed according to
Benjamin Franklin’s own statement.”
Continuing the quote from Senate Document No. 23: “Mr. Franklin went further than that. He said that this was the original cause
of the revolutionary war. In his own language: ‘The colonies would gladly have borne the little tax on tea and other matters had it
not been that England took away from the colonies their money which created unemployment and dissatisfaction’.” 2
The French Revolution, so called, left much less evidence of its origins than the so-called Russian Revolution 120 years later,
though the instigating factor is clear enough. The French Revolution by Nesta Webster, The Life of Napoleon by Sir Walter Scott,
almost unobtainable, and above all the chapters in God and the Goldsmiths by McNair Wilson, on Napoleon Bonaparte, give some
light on this matter. A study of Louis XV and his relations to the Pâris Brothers, the state tax farmers, especially through Madame
Du Pompadour, formerly Poisson, possibly illegitimate child of Pâris Duverney and god-daughter of Pâris Monmartel, yields
impressions. The writings of Necker, front man for the international bankers of the time, and who Mirabeau described as “the
Hero who arrived by famine” should be read, and also the writings of Turgot, finance Minister to Louis XVI, who fought against
Necker and the evil fraternity behind him, and who nicely summed up the situation in his first memorandum to Louis XVI as
follows:
“So long as finance shall be continually subject to the old expedients in order to provide for state services, your Majesty will
always be dependent on financiers, and they ever will be the masters, and by the manoeuvres belonging to their trade they will
frustrate the most important operations. Thus the government can never feel itself at ease, it can never be acknowledged as
able to sustain itself, because the discontents and impatience of the people are always the means made use of by intriguing and
ill-disposed men in order to excite disturbance.” 3
Clearly the Minister Turgot was a man of sincerity and integrity, a true God-servant, and the fact that it was only after prolonged
scheming on the part of the international bankers, who mostly lived outside of France, that he was dismissed, 4 would suggest that
his master also sought to do that which he was borne to do, that is, love, guide, and protect the people. But neither master nor man
understood the strength of the undercurrents which flowed, nor, it is to be feared, the true meaning of l’etat c’est moi! which in
essence means “I am the fount of Life. I am that point through which the Almighty God injects your money amongst you that
binds you together as one. I, and no other; not my steward, nor servant, faithful or unfaithful.”
The men of intrigue he referred to, were such stewards, the international bankers. These men, standing behind thrones intercepted
that God-Power from on high which was the force behind l’etat c’est moi!, and, controlling the value of money of whatever kind,
and therefore international price levels, with responsibility only to them and theirs, confused the nations with their sly schemes of
fatuous purpose.
The instigating factor of the Russian Revolution so-called is common knowledge and is detailed in a hundred books. Perhaps one
of the best sources of information relating to the financing of the same Russian “Revolution” is the book Czarism and Revolution
written by Arsene De Goulévitch, a former officer of the Czar’s army and founder of the Union for the Defence of Oppressed
Peoples.
1
Robert L. Owen was the senator who wrote and introduced the legislation setting up the Federal Reserve (Central Banking) system in 1913.
His foreword to a book written by a Miss Gertrude Coogan shows that he lived to bitterly regret his part in writing and introducing this Bill.
The remark made later by President Wilson, who had paved the way for the Bill — “I am a most unhappy man. Unwittingly I have ruined my
country” — shows that Owen was not alone in his remorse. The Central Banking System known as the Federal Reserve System and towards
the creation of which he had been the principal instrument, though apparently state department in the same way as the Bank of England, was in
reality no more than the instrument through which the so-called International Bankers harnessed the burgeoning energies of the American
peoples to themselves, their own world wide needs and purposes. From first to last, which perhaps has not yet come, it was a privately owned
and controlled institution.
2
John R. Elsom: Lightning over the Treasury Building, PP. 29-30; Forum Press; Boston.
3
R. McNair Wilson: God and the Goldsmiths, p. 48.
4
His dismissal was effected through the agency of Marie-Antoinette. As she disliked Turgot personally, no doubt she was a ready instrument.
The Babylonian Woe 45
According to information deriving from the French Secret Service, one of the principal sources of finances for the International
Revolutionary Movement prior to 1917, was Jacob Schiff of the International banking firm of Kuhn, Loeb, and Company, based
in New York City. It was recorded that twelve million dollars had been donated to the revolutionaries by Schiff, in the years
preceding the war of 1914-1918. This fact is apparently confirmed and amplified from sources other than the French Secret
Service. 1
The main funds for the so called “Revolution” and towards the steps which led up to it, do not appear to have come from that class
of nouveau riche bred into being in Russia out of the activities over the previous 50 years, of the joint stock banks, and the men
such as Sawa Morozov, and Tereschenko, 2 the socialistic sugar magnate. The extensive funds so necessary towards the effective
disruption of a major state appear to have come from certain British and American circles, which it seems, had been lending their
support to the Russian revolutionary “cause,” for a long time. In his book, My Life, Trotsky speaks of a large loan granted in 1907
by a “Financier” belonging to the so-called “Liberal” Party in Britain. This particular “British” financier was apparently not alone
in his monetary support of the “Revolution” in Russia. 3
The conduct of Jacob Schiff, previously mentioned, towards Czarist Russia, once he was installed as head of the New York
“International Banking” firm of Kuhn, Loeb, and Company, was that of an apparently unyielding enemy. References to his anti-
czarist activities exist in the book by Cyrus Adler: Jacob Schiff, his Life and Letters. 4
Further verification of the activities of Jacob Schiff is afforded by the New York “Journal American” of February 3rd, 1949; a
time when pro-revolutionary activities were “The Thing” in New York City: 5 “today it is estimated by Jacob’s grandson, John
Schiff, that the old man sank about $20,000,000.00 for the triumph of Bolshevism in Russia.” 6 According to Goulévitch (p. 231),
various other persons well known in the world of international banking, whatever the expression “International Banking” might
mean, 7 were also known to be associated with support of revolutionary activities. The ruin to the states of the world set on foot by
these immensely rich, but otherwise trifling persons, whose solidarity, however, had enabled them to so profit from the
unbelievable expansion of the use of Ledger Credit Page Entry Money in the Anglo-Saxon banking systems, could not better
demonstrate the absurdity of allowing private, and therefore irresponsible, persons to exercise that power which should belong to
the gods alone, the power inherent in the creation and issuance of the Unit of Exchange amongst the peoples.
In a speech made six weeks before the fall of the Kerensky Government, Lenin made one of his most significant recommendations
and perhaps the one most suggestive of the possibility of his sincerity, even if in the rest he seems to have been misguided. It was
the one recommendation most indicative of his awareness of the deep-seated causes of the conditions that had given rise to
himself and what he stood for. Additional to proposing nationalization of the great monopolies already existing in Russia,
(primarily as the result of the admission of joint-stock banking into the country as concession to the victors of the Crimean war),
above all he recommended the total nationalization of banking. In his own words he says: “all banks to be merged into one and the
state control its operations, that is the nationalization of the banks.”
“To talk about regularization of banks,” continues Lenin, “means either to betray complete ignorance, or to fool the simple folk
with high sounding words, to control the delivery of bread, or in general, the production and distribution of goods, without
controlling banking practices, is an absurdity (Collected Works [1964], vol. 25, p. 329).8
Of course, six weeks later, when Lenin had physically seized power with the aid of his “armed bandits,” it was a small matter to
set up printing presses in the major cities in Russia that commenced to pour off paper roubles by the billion. Some fourteen or
fifteen thousand workers were busily engaged in the government printing shops of Moscow, Leningrad, Penza, Perm, and Rostov-
1
A. Goulévitch: Czarism and Revolution, p. 225.
2
Ibid. p. 223.
3
Ibid., p. 224.
4
Cyrus Adler: Jacob Schiff, His Life and Letters, New York, 1928.
5
Although it is really very difficult to see what exactly would have been left for this class of people, often multi-millionaires, to revolt against
by 1949, which also includes the hegemony of the Anglo-Saxon in the United States.
6
Also according to the author of Czarism and Revolution (p. 224), “in the Spring of 1917, Jacob Schiff openly boasted of having been
instrumental in overthrowing the Czarist regime.”
7
According to Dr. Carroll Quigley (p. 52.) in the review by W. Cleon Skousen outstanding characteristics of the international bankers were:
“… they remained different from ordinary bankers in distinctive ways: (1) they were cosmopolitan and international; (2) they were close to
governments and were particularly concerned with questions of government debts. (3) their interests were almost exclusively in bonds and very
rarely in goods. (4) they were accordingly fanatical devotees of deflation. (5) they were almost equally devoted to secrecy and the secret use of
financial influence in political life. These bankers came to be called ‘international bankers’ and, more particularly, were known as ‘merchant’
bankers in England, ‘private bankers’ in France, and ‘investment bankers’ in the United States. In all countries they carried on various kinds of
banking and exchange activities, but everywhere they were sharply distinguishable from other, more obvious kinds of banks, such as savings
banks or commercial banks.”
8
Arthur Zapolsky Arnold, Ph.D.: Banks, Credit, and Money in Soviet Russia, p. 57; Columbia; 1937. Also see the article by Lenin in “Pravda,”
May 29th-30th, 1917: The threatening catastrophe and boundless promises. Of equal interest and strikingly similar in the language used is the
comment of Lionel Rothschild on the subject of banking as quoted by Lord Beaconsfield (Benjamin D’israeli) in 1844: “Can anything be more
absurd than that a nation should apply to an individual to maintain its credit, and with its credit, its existence as a state and its comfort as a
people?”
The Babylonian Woe 46
on-Don, turning out tons upon tons of paper money. The printing of notes was simplified to a point where counterfeiting became
easy. 1
At the same time safety deposit boxes were seized, all accounts frozen and the banks were closed, so that there was no addition to
the circulation existing outside of banks at the start of this “operation,” a great part of which circulation would have been gold;
and no new money came on the scene other than the paper roubles of the Bolsheviki printing presses which immediately took the
place of that Ledger Credit Page Money by manipulation of which the banks had previously controlled a great deal of trade.
For a year or two the Monarchist roubles were printed as if there was intention to keep the people half expecting that the Czar
would be coming back, then for a short while a ‘Kerenki’ rouble was printed, presumably issue of the short lived Kerensky
government, as if to prepare the people for total resignation, and then finally, the Bolsheviki rouble which let the people know that
all was indeed lost. This continuing the money of a destroyed king seems to have been no new policy of international money
power, especially in the case of those kings, its particular enemies. An illustration of which, occurring in ancient times, was the
continued minting at the Sardis mint of the sigloi of Croesus long after he had been destroyed. The printing press money of the
Russian Revolution entered the circulation against government expenditures and against gold coin which it became illegal to
possess, no doubt being accompanied by an equal amount of counterfeit, also exchanged against gold.
These vigorous moves must have been cause for some misgivings amongst the bankers who continued to finance the “Revolution”
so far as went Bolsheviki needs in foreign exchange. But no doubt so closely surrounded was Lenin by their agents, 2 they would
have been justified in reasoning that they would come out on top again without too much trouble, especially with the new roubles
being so easy to counterfeit. And during that period of the so-called “New Economic Policy,” approximately 1920-24, they did so
come out on top.
In the archives of the State Publishers of Moscow is recorded the following eulogy to the printing press as being as great a force in
the so-called revolution as armies:
“Paper money of the Soviet Republic gave support to the young regime at the most critical period of its existence when there was
no possibility of raising direct taxes to meet the outlays of the civil war. Hail to our printing press! It is true that its days are
numbered but it has already completed three quarters of its work. In the archives of the proletarian revolution along with the
cannon, rifles, and machine guns of our epoch that vanquished the enemies of the proletariat, the place of honour will be given to
the printing press, the machine gun of the commissariat of finance that poured fire into the rear of the bourgeois system and that
made use of the laws of currency and circulation of that regime for the purpose of destroying it, and of financing the revolution.” 3
Typically enough the “Tyrant” himself, Vladimir I. Lenin, saw little or no profit out of all this, for himself, the Russian people, or
that ideal of world revolution in which it appears he sincerely believed. If he truly was the author of the above statements
regarding banking, then, when he died not so long after all these events, it was as a weary and disillusioned man. For that gold,
still very much the base for total control of world finance, which was wrung from the Russian people during the period of terror
between 1917 and 1922, seems to have almost all found its way back to the “Benefactors” of the original revolutionaries, Messrs.
Kuhn, Loeb, and Company of New York (Jacob Schiff’s firm), and it must have been clear to Lenin by the time he died in 1924
that he was but agent of a force that regarded him as merely another tool to be used towards the making of that which they
designed.
“Mr. Bakhmetiev, the late Russian Imperial Ambassador to the United States, tells us that the Bolsheviks, after victory, transferred
600 million roubles in gold between the years 1918 and 1922, to Kuhn, Loeb, and Company (Schiff’s firm)” 4 which makes pretty
good return for the mere 20,000,000 dollars granted by the philanthropic Mr. Schiff and which would have been as credits against
purchases at that!
At that time such amount of gold could be used to form the apex of an inverted pyramid of abstract money equal in amount to
beyond thirty times the number of units such gold represented in U.S. currency according to its official price.
1
P.N. Ure, M.A.: The Origins of Tyranny; New York; 1922.
2
Ibid.
3
P.N. Ure: The Origins of Tyranny, p. 8; New York; 1922.
4
It was the custom in ancient times to bury hoarded wealth (tangible) beneath the floor of the house.
The Babylonian Woe 48
money derives in consequence from lack of understanding of its true nature, and particularly from the confusing of money and
treasure. It is the persistent failure of mankind to realize that money is but the result of agreement being arrived at amongst a
sovereign people through their ruler, to provide themselves with a system of numbers by which their exchanges might be
facilitated, and so help them to live a better life. Treasure being but commodity by which the unit of value of whatever state may
be, can best be stored; even though such state cease to exist; because of that ancient and international convention in respect to the
valuation of such treasure such as has lasted from age to age; from the most ancient times, Palaeolithic or earlier, until today.
The evil lay and it may be said, lies, in the forgetfulness of the ruler to respect his duty to provide an adequate money supply for
his people regulated by himself and free of obligation to external forces, in such manner as had existed in the Ancient Oriental
civilizations in earlier times. It lay in the permitting to private and hence irresponsible persons the power to intervene in that
which was the most sacred responsibility of the ruler through the priesthood, the creation and regulation of the medium of
exchange: his people’s money.
Therefore the hidden force behind the setting up of a tyranny was the far reaching power of a conspiratorial secret society,
international in scope, controlling money emission in all countries which it penetrated through its continuing control of the sources
of supply of that silver treasure by weight such as constituted the base of the exchange systems long ago established by itself.
The tyrant, therefore, was clearly the front man for the local banker more than actually being the banker himself. He it was who
gave legality to the banker and the activities of that coterie of merchants, traders, and captains who flourished on the banker’s
financial organization, and, though this they did not understand, his connection with those international bullion brokers of the day.
These worthy businessmen depended for tiding themselves over difficult periods on that which the banker loaned them as money:
maybe an entry in a ledger transferable to the account of a fellow merchant, visiting captain, or trader in slaves, or other
merchandise; they also depended on the banker to be safe custodian for such treasure as came their way. The tyrant was therefore,
either naïve or corrupt, the instrument set up by the banker, firstly towards the legalization of his status, and secondly towards the
removal of that class who might yet challenge his peculiar and secret power, the natural aristocracy of Hellas.
This natural aristocracy, in a growing system that clearly sought the alienation and subversion of its free dependents with the
purpose of ultimately leading them into paid day labour or into slavery final and absolute, was uncertainly situated in states which
now owed their existence to the bankers, and their coterie of entrepreneurs, and manufacturers, and merchants, as clearly did so
many of the Greek states of the Greek industrial revolution.
The banker, lurking in the shade apart from men, knew that these proud noblemen, formerly lords of this lovely land which was
Greece, had forgotten the meaning of their own existence, and its relation to the total ordering of their society, and he despised
them as well he might, for permitting him to undermine the true order of life and cause these simple folk, their peasantry, to be
driven off the land one way or another, to the wage slavery of the potteries at Corinth, or Athens, or wherever it might be or
whatever it might be.
In the same way, the Lords of the Manors of England and Scotland had driven the peasantry off the common lands some 2400
years later; land now representing that magic of money of which previously they had seen little. The same peasantry drifting into
the new manufacturing and mining towns, dazed and leaderless, then formed a plentiful labour supply for that similar putrescent
wickedness which was the industrial revolution in England’s green and pleasant land. If they were lucky they were able to
emigrate.
In the lines of Theognis whose political aim was to prevent a recurrence of the Tyranny in Megara which was a centre for the
manufacture of textiles:
Tradesmen reign supreme: the bad lord it over their betters.
This is the lesson that all must thoroughly master:
How that in the world wealth has the might and the power.
Many a bad man is rich and many a good man is needy.
Not without cause, Oh Wealth, do men honour thee above all things.
Must men reckon the only virtue the making of money?
Everyone honours those that are rich and despises the needy. 1
The banker, trained from the money shops of Babylonia, knew that for him the only desirable political situation was where the
lowly and vulgar 2 held the appearance of power and wealth and “money,” for such would not question too intently the source
1
The Origins of Tyranny, p. 8, p.N. Ure, M.A., New York, 1922.
2
Hence the situation at Athens so similar to the situation in the Anglo-Saxon world today. Athens at that stage of the Peloponnesian War was
undoubtedly completely under the political control of the banks (or trapezitae). It was not long after the battle of Aegospotami, 405 B.C., in
which Lysander of Sparta destroyed the whole Athenian fleet as it lay drawn up on the beach, that the war ended with the usual results of such
“Great” wars in so called “democratic” states, and with Athens completely dependent on privately created money for its finances, that is, on the
International Bankers, and with such types of persons suitable to them and their plans for the future, occupying key positions. The victor,
Sparta, was equally dependent on their good will, as a result of those concessions undoubtedly made at the Treaty of Miletus, 412 B.C. in order
to obtain money such as was desirable internationally, and with which could be purchased the ships so necessary to defeat Athens, and without
which the war could not have been brought to definite conclusion.
The Babylonian Woe 49
from whence they derived that “money,” nor the nature of that “money” such as had paved their way to so-called power, for fear
its so necessary supply might be cut off. In the words of Aristophanes:
Often has it crossed my fancy that the cities apt to deal
With the very best and noblest of the Commonweal
Just as with our ancient coinage, and the fine new minted gold
These, sir, our sterling pieces, all of pure Athenian mould,
All of perfect die and metal, all the fairest of the fair,
All of workmanship unequalled, proved and valued everywhere,
These we use not. But the worthless pinchbeck coins of yesterday,
Vilest die and basest metal, now we always use instead.
Even so our sterling townsmen, nobly born and nobly bred,
Men of worth and rank and mettle, men of honourable fame,
Trained in every liberal science, choral dance and manly game,
These we treat with scorn and insult. But the strangers newliest come,
Worthless sons of worthless fathers, pinchbeck townsmen, coppery scum
(Whom in earlier days the city hardly would have stooped to use
Even for her scapegoat victims) these for every task we choose. 1
Where, as in a city such as Megara, one banking house might control all credit or money creation, to question and seek to know
how this was done would also mean search for knowledge of the banker’s secrets and this, our tyrant instinctively knew, was
dangerous for his continued success.
What are the gains that lead up to a tyranny? Is it not more probable that they are some form of payment received by the
commons (those that are bad) from the would-be tyrant?
Not at all. Merely the word was passed by that banking institution to which the majority of tradesmen or manufacturers in that
particular city were indebted, that the banker, giver of all, (and taker of all!), favoured this move. Ah! and indeed it would be good
for all, and to please the common people there would be plenty of work! It may safely be considered that the first legislation
passed by our new tyrant would legalize the position of his backers, which previously, as likely as not, had been illegal!
The tyrant at this stage of history, was a necessity to Money Power, and while possibly having the appearance of being wealthy,
he depended for his real finances on that backer whose interests he promoted. Those two officers of Alexander for example, who
accepted the tyranny of Asiatic cities could in no way have understood the reality of finance, international or otherwise, except
perhaps if they had been clerks in the paymaster corps of officer status. If they had so understood such finance, it is doubtful that
they would have been promoted as they were.
The tyrant was one who the banker could rely on to put through his “Levelling” programme, or in the double talk of today, could
be relied on to “Press ahead with Democratization,” and to work against the class from which he was supposed to have come. 2 He
was one who could be relied on to put through programmes of public works, maintain military expenditures etc.; for all such
activities strengthened the banker’s position as creator and regulator of the exchange unit, and therefore, from those exclusive
courtyards wherein he schemed, designer of the life of the city. The banker could not maintain his hold over the city, except his
product, ledger credit page entry money, however created, was in constant demand, and the local government deeply embroiled in
his schemes. The tyrant had to be one completely in accord with that so-called “democratic” political attitude, which the banker
always seemed to espouse. His ostensible purpose had to be to “Level”; such levelling meaning of course, tearing down
everything above themselves, (and above the banker too!)
Those fragments of verse as quoted here, reputed to be by Solon, leave little doubt of the sincerity of Solon, at least superficially.
The fact remains that as a merchant, whether of necessity or otherwise, he must have been marked with some of the outlook of
that class. His famous laws, amongst which was that law releasing the peasantry from the debt slavery into which their natural
rulers had permitted them to be drawn, and that was eating into the very vitals of Attica, in view of the fact that he offered
citizenship to any family moving to Athens with the intention of taking up some manual trade, might very well have been
promoted by his backers. The city was clearly very short of suitable free labour. It very well might be that his backers were those
money lenders and bankers that controlled the growing manufacturies of Athens, and who saw that there was more profit and
work for that which they loaned as money, in bringing the peasantry to Athens as free men (if a wage slave is really any more free
than a slave owned outright!) 3 and in having thus a plentiful supply of labour, than in tying such peasantry to the soil by debt
1
The Frogs of Aristophanes, lines 717 to 733, trans. by B.B. Rogers (with slight variations). (Page 138, Greek Coins, Charles Seltsman, M.A.,
London, 1933.)
2
In exactly the same way as Lenin, Dictator (or Tyrant) of Russia 1917-1922 was supposed to be drawn from the Nobility, or as Mao-Tse-
Tung, at a later date dictator in China, was supposed to have derived from a similar class in China.
3
The following letter circularized amongst American Bankers by European Banking interests during the American civil war gives a most
revealing light on this subject. There is no reason to suppose that the motives of the trapezitae of the Greek city states were in any way more
altruistic: “ Slavery is likely to be abolished by the war power and chattel slavery destroyed. This, I and my European friends are in favour of,
for slavery is but the owning of labour and carries with it the care of the labourers, while the European plan, led by England, is that capital shall
The Babylonian Woe 50
slavery, and in the case of distraint, their sale on to a surfeited market abroad. While there was still a healthy population of small
holders as well as the great landlords, there was always possibility of recovery by the enslaved state, and themselves, the
enslavers, as happened at Sparta in the time of Lycurgus, driven out of the land for hundreds of years. With a massive proletariat
beholden to the men of the city for their freedom (as day labourers!), the former aristocracy even if they should ever awaken to
their duty, would have no chance. Nor did they. All those “liberalizing” laws promulgated by Solon and his successors, steadily
deprived the ancient families of Attica of their former power and prerogative. The shadow of power was put into the hands of
ignoble persons, as indeed would have been so many of the “Demagogues,” and other “Democratic” officials, who, too often
would have been no more than blind creatures lifted up from the mob to the service of money power. By the devices existing as
part of what is known as “democracy,” such as Ostrakism through rumour put into circulation by the secret societies in the city,
controlled, as in today, by the bankers without a doubt, “Leaders” no longer “suitable” could be removed.
“The tyrants themselves are repeatedly found making it part of their policy to keep their subjects employed on big industrial
concerns. In more than one case we shall see their power collapsing just when this policy becomes financially impossible.” 1
In other words if that tyrant proved unsatisfactory to his masters, money that source of strength in political life, was cut off just at
the time it would be most needed, such as when he had become involved in heavy spending. Herein is further proof of the tyrant
being not money power itself, but front man for money power.
“This part of the tyrant’s policy is noticed by Aristotle who quotes the dedications (buildings and works of art) of the Cypselids at
Corinth, the buildings of Olymphian Zeus at Athens by the Peisistratids, and the works of Polycrates around Samos. To these
names we add Theagenes of Megara, Phalaris of Agrigentum, Aristodemus of Cumae and the Tarquins of Rome, all of whom are
associated with works of this kind.” 2
It is pointed out by Professor Ure that it can scarcely be an accident that the Tyranny of Athens ended almost immediately after
the removal of one of its two roots; the mines of the country of the Thracians and Paionians. 3 Which is to say that if the source of
bullion on which the money power of a so-called banker was founded, petered out, or was lost to enemy action, the tyrant he had
promoted could be discarded as having no further purpose.
Such activities being ordered by a class of persons who had achieved despotic power in the same period of history, roughly the
eighth, seventh, and sixth centuries B.C., the period which saw extensive development of mining in all of Europe including Lydia,
Cyprus, Spain, 4 Carpathia, Epirus, Illyria, Thrace and Greece itself, without mentioning the flow of precious metal plunder
deriving from the depredations of the Assyrian, can only have been the result of a policy deep laid, and far reaching in its
consequences. This policy can only have been created in some central point from which flowed the springs of world power such
as would have designed, wittingly, or unwittingly, so much of the ancient world.
The same period also coincided with the development of mining tools of hardened iron, highly efficient methods of reduction of
silver bearing ores, 5 and the growth of an adequate supply of slave labour from various sources and due to the above mentioned
depredations of the Assyrian etc.; all of which was so necessary towards profitable mining operations at that time. It may not
unreasonably be supposed that this central point was still in the cities of lower Mesopotamia, such as Babylon, Ur, Lagash, Uruk
etc. From this area the merchant houses would have continued to have spread their operations around the world 6 in the same way,
as, it is recorded, had been done from Ur as much as fifteen hundred years before during the so-called IIIrd Dynasty; 7 or for that
matter during the period of seeming glory and empire that so often follows the accession to power of private money creative force
in any organized and potentially vigorous state. A most outstanding instance of the latter in modern times exists in the period of
empire that came to Britain following the establishment of the Bank of England in 1694 A.D. 8
The silver which the international bankers drew from Greece etc. at a ratio of 10:1 or more, would have been used in settlement of
trade balances with India, Bactria, or China, at a ratio of 6:1 or less, as to gold. According to Alexander del Mar, this movement of
silver to the Orient from Athens, was arranged by the Athenian Government; 9 but except this early Athenian Government was
control labour by controlling wages.” This letter, known as the Hazard Circular, is to be found on Pages 44-45 in The Money Manipulators by
June Grem.
1
Ure: The Origins of Tyranny, p. 15.
2
Ibid. p. 14.
3
Ibid. p. 59.
4
Ibid. p. 46.
5
A. Del Mar: A History of the Precious Metals, pp. 47-51.
6
Cambridge Ancient History, p. 392, Vol. I.
7
Sir Charles Woolley: Abraham, p. 121-126.
8
A. Andreades: History of the Bank of England. Also see Tragedy and Hope, by Dr. Quigley.
9
A. del Mar: The Halcyon Age of Greece, p. 5. There also were to be found outlying places in the Orient where the ratio of gold to silver went
as low as l:1 during the 1st Millennium B.C., remaining so until a very late date, in certain instances. It is reported by Sir Henry J. Reid, who
wrote during the 19th Century, in his book Japan (Chapter XVIII), that the ratio of silver to gold, governing the use of the precious metals in
settlement of trade balances, was still 1:1 in Japan during the 17th Century A.D.; long after contact with Europeans. The advantage the
European bullion brokers took of this situation with its resultant disturbance to the status quo, was one of the main factors leading up to the
almost total expulsion of Europeans from Japan during the period 1624 A.D. - 1853 A.D.
The Babylonian Woe 51
fronting for the bankers, this could not have been so. International trade balances have always been settled from the world’s
banking capital or headquarters of the international bankers or bullion brokers, such as was London during the last three centuries
until very recently. In the days of which we write, this world banking capital was still located in Babylon city, it may reasonably
be assumed.
The money of the cities of lower Mesopotamia and the whole Near East for that matter, had been based for a long time on the
international valuation of silver by weight, and therefore these cities had long ago sought to obtain control of all sources of supply
of such silver. As far back as 2470 B.C., King Manishtusu of Akkad invaded Southern Persia with no purpose other than gaining
control of its silver mines. 1 When the rapid expansion of mining, as mentioned above, brought on to the markets of the world a
relative deluge of silver and gold, the latter taking no mean second place, those groups controlling International finance from
Babylonia, and possibly from Nineveh, decided no doubt to seek for further worlds to conquer, as it were.
The thing was to find a use for their surfeit of bullion, particularly silver, and of which metal they were now in a position to
arrange extensive supplies to any banker who would be able to use such advantageously towards the promotion of their general
worldwide plans. The growing commercial and industrial vigour of the Greeks showed them an answer to this problem. Thus the
significance of the advent of the tyrants as promoters of heavy public spending of moneys based originally, on the silver standards
of Babylonia, cannot be dismissed.
The policy of the bankers, for whom the tyrants fronted, would be to spread the main practice, at least their most profitable one, of
private money creation, one way or the other. Using silver as base, they knew full well the tremendous possibilities that existed
towards the creation of an abstract money whose equally efficient units cost them no more than entry by the slave scribe on the
clay tablet that sufficed as his ledger. Such policy spread, together with competition in manufacture, the need for that which the
international bankers of that day, faceless as in this day, loaned against collateral as money. This money was based on the silver
bullion they let it be known they were possessed of or held on deposit for their customers, be they individual, corporate body, or
state.
It is reasonable to assume that there was little difference as between that first tangible money of private issuance in England as
denoted by the goldsmiths receipts of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries 2 and the money as issued by the banks of the Greek
cities. Its efficacy in the exchanges, although it was in reality no more than a highly organized system of counterfeit, derived from
the total secrecy maintained by those involved in its issue. Little clear information exists on this subject today as in ancient times
and much of which, even if all the millions of tablets unearthed in Mesopotamia are ever translated and evaluated by scholars
competent to do so, must remain as but faint outline.
One such faint outline of particular interest, though not deriving from the Mesopotamian tablets, is discernible in this information
of Servius Tullius, slave king of early Rome:
“According to Charisius, Varro wrote: Nummum argenteum flatum primum a Servio Tullio dicunt, is IIII scripulis major fuit quam
nunc.” “It is said that silver money was first made by Servius Tullius and was IIII scripulis heavier than now.” 3
As it was Servius Tullius who ordered the establishment of the census at Rome that gave the basis for both taxation and military
service, both essential organizations as to a state being taken over by international money power, the truth of this statement by
Varro need not be questioned.
It is interesting to note in passing that although Servius Tullius was a usurper undoubtedly of slave origin, Livy carefully draws
him in rather more favourable light than the Tarquins, particularly Superbus, the last of the line. By the time of Livy (59 B.C.-17
A.D.) the most powerful sector of the Roman population, the equites or knights, was taken over by wealthy freedmen and
enfranchised foreigners. 4 Livy, when writing in that day under the threat of Lex Majestus 5 would clearly have seen the value of
finding and extolling true virtue in the character of the slave king, whether such virtue was there or not.
1
Sir Charles Woolley: Abraham, p. 122.
2
A. Andreades: History of the Bank of England, pp. 22-26.
3
Theodore Mommsen & Joachim Marquardt: Manuel des Antiquités Romaines, p. 12, Tome IX; De l’Organisation Financière chez les
Romaines, Paris, 1888.
4
Ibid. p. 68.
5
In its origins in 100 B.C., Lex Majestus (lex appuleia de maiestate imminuta) was an extension of the definition of treason as being internal
revolt, to include any act impairing the “Majesty” of the Roman people. By the time of the early Empire, this law had been extended to cover
almost any word or deed against the Emperor, and, it may reasonably be assumed, those who guided his policies. Spies and informers were
everywhere. Of this period Tacitus wrote at the very beginning of the Annals: “What has been transmitted to us concerning Tiberius, Caligula,
Claudius and Nero, cannot be received without great distrust.” He further wrote in The Histories: “But when the battle of Actium had been
fought and the interests of peace demanded the concentration of power in the hands of one man, this great line of classical historians came to an
end. Truth suffered in more ways than one. To an understandable ignorance of policy, which now lay outside public control, was in due course
added a passion for flattery or else a hatred for autocrats. Adulation bears the ugly taint of subservience, but malice gives the false impression
of being independent.” (The Histories; I.I.; Tr. K. Wellesley; London; 1964.)
The Babylonian Woe 52
.However, if Servius actually did exist, and there seems to be a school of thought amongst the scholars that questions his
existence, then it would be more likely as one who had raised himself up in a similar manner to Gyges of Lydia, 1 having at the
same time a special backing by local money power; possibly in opposition to that money power emigrant from Corinth to
Tarquinii in Etruria, which, according to Livy, was the Tarquin family.
The establishment of a silver standard as a base for monetary issuance might very well have been their reward for their assistance
towards raising Servius to the throne. The Census, supposedly established by Servius, while being the foundation of the
organization of the whole state for defence or aggression, would give that money power a complete picture of the people it was
their intention, one way or another, to exploit. In the same manner the doomsday books of the Middle Ages, while recording for
the reference of the king, all that in the kingdom was, also made valuable record for the money creative power, which had kings,
nobles, ecclesiastics, and the common people, groaning under a burden of debt quite impossible to meet (which certainly was one
of the main causes of the mood of the English that gave rise to Magna Carta, and of those events which followed until 1290 A.D.
when the tax-collecting and money-lending classes, such as had followed the “Conqueror” across the English Channel, were
finally evicted). 2
In a similar manner some 2500 years later, William III of England, owing his throne to the intrigues of the international bullion
brokers at Amsterdam, granted them as reward that which they wanted more than anything on earth, which was the establishment
of the legality of an undeterminable amount of abstract money, ledger credit page entry, or paper notes, to be based on their gold
loans to the state, and the creation of a “Bank” at London from which they might issue this money known as “Credit” as loan
against real collateral throughout the whole kingdom. This bank was to be given the appearance of a state department. In this case
such status was obtained by permitting it to be named: “The Bank of England.” 3
Considering the above known instance of reward to international money powers for their services, far reaching in its
consequences, and many other instances of which there is neither time nor place to write herewith, conjecture in respect to the
establishment of a silver standard at Rome by Servius, may not be too far afield. That Romans later rejected this standard as a base
for their money, and the calamity and loss of sovereignty it brought them also is clear, for there is no further reference to silver
money until that period when Rome was drifting towards the all-out struggle with Carthage: the year of the establishment of the
board of Moneyers for the striking of bronze, silver and gold money (289 B.C.): tresviri aere argento auro flando feriurado; 4
thereby no doubt yielding to the importunities of the International Bullion brokers, with the ensuing outbreak of war thus being
made a certainty.
One of the main purposes of those extensive public works which almost invariably followed the establishment of a tyranny, would
be towards the establishment of some kind of National Debt, in which is, and was in that day too, most control and profit to those
manipulating international finance. That there is no evidence of the existence of such state indebtedness in those days does not
necessarily mean that such did not exist. Excavation, or other methods, 2500 years from now would not reveal this indebtedness
for instance in the case of England, so far as its relation to the Bank of England was concerned, for, unbelievable though it may
seem, there is “remarkable absence of official records” for the first hundred years of the bank’s existence! 5 In the time of the
tyrants, failure to keep books or records would be even more of a certainty.
Valuable by-products of their extensive public works programmes would be:
1. The peasants would leave the land enticed by the money wages offered for work on these projects, and the pleasures and
excitement that could be bought in the city with such money wages. There, once the construction boom was over, they formed
a leaderless, hungry, and easily embittered “Proletariat.”
2. The same “Proletariat” could be manipulated by the agents of Money Power as a mob, towards such political purposes as
such Money Power might desire; including, besides removal of the natural nobility, removal of the so-called tyrant when his
purpose was served.
Professor Ure, author of The Origins of Tyranny, ventures as close to the truth in respect to the meaning of a tyranny as any others
who have written on the subject. Although attributing the rise of the tyrants to Money Power he does not define what this Money
Power may be; whether money creative power, or just those of considerable possession and treasure. In this omission he cannot be
1
It is to be noted that the seal to the establishment of Gyges on the throne of Candaules, otherwise known as Myrsilus last king of Hittite
descent on the throne of Lydia, and who he had cuckolded and destroyed, apparently with the ready assistance of Candaules’ wife, was the
pronouncement of the Pythian Oracle (Herodotus, Book I). Clearly the Oracles would be one of the most important instruments of the
international money creative power towards the furtherance of its purposes; and it would have sought, as much as possible, to keep them under
its control.
2
John Richard Green: A Short History of the English Peoples, p. 205; London; 1936.
3
A. Andreades: History of the Bank of England, p. 73; London; 1966.
4
R.A.G. Carson: Coins, Ancient, Medieval, and Modern, p. 106.
5
A. Andreades: History of the Bank of England, p. xxvii. In the words of H.S. Foxwell who wrote the preface to this work in giving the reasons
why no adequate history of the Bank of England appears to have been written previous to Andreades: “ The first is the remarkable absence of
official records in connection with the Bank, especially for the first century of its activity. It has often been observed that the English are
peculiarly fortunate in this matter of records;. The Bank of England stands out as a striking exception to the rule. It never seems to have
published any reports or even to have preserved its own minutes and accounts.”
The Babylonian Woe 53
blamed. Professor Ure for instance traces the source of the power of Peisistratus, Tyrant of Athens 561-527 B.C. according to
Herodotus, 1 as being partly from those silver mines in the district in Thrace through which flows the Strymon river, and partly
from the Laurion mines in Attica.
However, it must be pointed out that a man who apparently was a mining man and lived therefore within that restriction, would be
unlikely to understand the finer shades of monetary emission. It seems quite reasonable to suppose that the class of persons hidden
within the Aramaic speaking middle classes that permeated the whole Levant and Near East during the first Millennium B.C., and
whose business was money and all that stemmed therefrom, in that they were interfering with that which clearly was a power to be
exercised only by the very gods themselves, were scarcely likely to instruct their instrument, Peisistratus, therein. Therefore, it
may be concluded, the tyrant rose because he was the one who had found favour with the all-pervading money power of the day.
He was not money power itself!
In that most of the great public works of the Greek cities had been carried forward by the tyrants is the evidence; for as the
secretive money power of today, world-wide in scope, thrives primarily upon government loans directed to purposes of war and
the enormous spending that wars involve in order to strengthen their outrageous claims against the nations, in ancient days similar
heavy spending had to be devised. In that day, as previously pointed out, a great Acropolis or some other such magnificent public
work with whose construction and financial organization Money Power was fully conversant, sufficed equally well with war;
which, all said and done, with hardy aggressive peoples could also prove considerable danger to themselves, or their purposes.
So, with the tyrant, we see the force by which Greece, previously living in natural order, was moulded to an instrument more
suitable to those bankers: private money creative power, who, lurking in the shade as needs they had to, burned with rancour at the
natural rulers who but treated them as stewards, although the essence of power for all that, lay in their hands for more than such
rulers understood.
Thus were the simple and industrious and brave Greeks now raised up to be the new vehicle through which the final and
destructive purposes of those controlling international bullion and slave trades would be achieved, as they shepherd the peoples of
the world further down that road of no hope for themselves or the rest of mankind.
1
Herodotus: The Histories, Book I.
2
P.N. Ure, M.A.: The Origins of Tyranny, p. 280; New York; 1922.
3
Walter Leaf: The Journal of Hellenic Studies. p. 167.
4
The Origins of Tyranny, p. 281. In his footnote Dr. Ure remarks that Leaf might have gone on to quote the case of Timaeus the Cyzicene,
who, like Euaion, and perhaps Hermias, had been a pupil of Plato: “Timaeus the Cyzicene having granted bonuses of money and corn to the
citizens and having on that account won credit among the Cyzicenes as being a worthy man, after a short while made an attempt on the city by
means of Aridias. Athens XI. 509a. footnote p. 281, Origins of Tyranny.
5
“ if the praetor gave the money as it is set down, he drew it from the qoaestor, the quaestor from the public bank, the public bank derived it
either from revenue or tribute.”. Which does not suggest that the great Cicero also had too much of an understanding of money: this was said
over 2000 years ago. Orationes. Cicero. Book XIX, Pro Flaccus, p. 445. Vol. II, C.D. Yonge, B.A., Bell, London, 1883.
The Babylonian Woe 54
these respects, and ingratiated himself with Antiochus, son of Seleucus, by buying the body of Seleucus from Ptolemy for return
to Antiochus, 1 thus, through it all maintaining his position at Pergamum.
Philetairos proceeded to use the treasure to which he had so masterfully established almost total right, with a skill which could
only suggest training in the money shops of Babylonia, or Alexandria, or as close advisor, one so trained. The conception of the
9000 talents of treasure in itself being the sole maintaining force behind the extended power of Pergamum, would be quaint to say
the least; as quaint indeed as the story of the 6000 talents of silver held in reserve in the Acropolis at Athens as the sole finances
with which the Peloponnesian war was fought; or in a later day of the gold supposedly existing in the vaults of the Bank of
England or its predecessor, and its parent bank, the Bank of Amsterdam (the vaults of the latter on inspection by Napoleon 2 after
occupation of Holland, proving absolutely bare!). 9000 talents drawn on for military and civilian expenditures, extensive bribes,
etc., would not go very far.
Returning again to Professor Andreades, in his Finances De Guerre d’alexandre le grand, 3 the annual expenditures of Alexander
during the earlier years of his campaigning were 5000-7000 talents, which would, in the first year or two, certainly until the battle
of Issus (Oct. 333 B.C.), have been in hard cash for the most part, to use the terminology of today’s banker; that is, coined money
or silver bullion, or the gold bullion of which the mines at Phillipi had made steady yield. In the later years of campaigning,
Andreades estimated the annual expenditures of Alexander at 15,000 talents. If the money for this expenditure derived from
coined precious metal plunder, it would go even less far, for in newly occupied territories, the exploitation of the miseries of the
people usual to these circumstances would exist, and there would be a collapse of “Credit” or abstract money, until reorganization
set in. there would be total disturbance of the revenues deriving from taxes. silver, particularly, would either move eastward
against luxury trading, which seems to continue as much as ever in such times, or would disappear into hoards.
During the first Millennium B.C., the ratio of silver to gold never went below 10:1, being usually 13:1 in Europe and the so-called
Middle East. In farther Bactria, India and China, it was rarely more than 6:1 and in some parts as low as 1:1. 4 Therefore, once
precious metal coinage was spent, particularly silver coinage, and passed into the hands of merchants, contractors, etc., finally
returning to the bankers or money changers, with that field for assured profit by settlement of oriental trade balances with coined
silver or silver bullion such as clearly existed, as according to Gresham’s law, 5 its local circulating volume might be assumed to
decrease rapidly, and without a doubt did so decrease.
It might safely be said that the money power which enabled Pergamum to secure controlling interest over the cities of Pitane and
Cyzicus, 6 was not drawn from what might be left of that store of 9000 talents (the loan in the case of Pitane, probably a very
minor transaction, was sufficient to substantially ease the burden of a debt of 380 talents). It would have been part of a credit
inflation which would have used the 9000 talents, or the legend in respect thereto, as its base, and more than likely those interests
holding the debt of the city of Pitane were themselves indebted by another ledger entry transaction to Pergamum. Thus that
“Credit Money” transaction whereby pitane was loaned money would be no more than an entry in the books of pergamum as a
credit to pitane, automatically being thence debited and transferred to the credit column of the holder of the loan as previously
existing against pitane, and thus returning him to solvency.
In other words, Pergamum, at cost of pen, ink, vellum, 7 and slave scribe or perhaps (and more likely) cost of clay tablet and stylus
book entry, was now in a position to dictate the political affairs of Pitane. Perhaps the agent for the Babylonian bankers or their
Alexandrian counterparts, as the previous holder of the Pitane loan may have been, consequently recovered his liquid position so
far as Pergamum was concerned, and was now able to look around again for more profitable investments.
The extent of the semi-military operations of the Attalid Money Power of Pergamum was shown above all by their purchase of the
island of Aegina for thirty talents. 8 This island they most likely set up as a centre for entre-pôt trade and a financial outpost, i.e.,
“Branch Bank”: which had to be in opposition to the decaying athenian money power which at that time did not have the silver
resources of its earlier days on which to base its money power, and the legend of its great wealth.
The Laurion mines were petering out, and those markets in South Russia, 9 Thrace, etc., formerly supplied by Athenian
manufactured products, were fast failing at the time of Pergamum and the Attalids; having set up their own local manufacturies.
Athens, no longer centre of an Empire, neither military, or financial power, with fewer markets ready to settle debit trade balances
with those slaves so much required for silver mining, as had been South Russia, was likely just a pleasant place to live in; the
storms brewed by settlement of International Money Power as in days gone by, passed over.
1
P.N. Ure, M.A.: The Origins of Tyranny, p. 285.
2
A. Andreades: A History of the Bank of England, p. 80; London; 1966.
3
A. Andreades: Annales D’histoire economique et sociale, p. 330; Paris; 1929.
4
A. del Mar: A History of Monetary Systems, p. 505: Ratios.
5
A. del Mar: A History of Monetary Systems. p. 355; New York; 1969. In the Maxims of Theognis (line 21) is stated: “ nor will anyone take in
exchange worse when better is to be had.”
6
P.N. Ure, M.A.: The Origins of Tyranny, p. 285; New York; 1922.
7
A. del Mar: A History of the Precious Metals, p. 105; New York; 1966.
8
P.N. Ure, M.A.: The Origins of Tyranny, p. 285.
9
Mikhail I. Rostovtsev: A Social and Economic History of the Hellenistic World, Page 108; Oxford; 1941.
The Babylonian Woe 55
As Pergamum marks the beginning of that period when Delos and Rhodes were leading money and slave markets of the world, it
would seem that some kind of agreement must have existed between those who controlled trade and finance at all these points.
Considering the essential secrecy that necessarily attends the corrupt operations of so-called bankers, it may be quite reasonable to
suppose, that in Pergamum itself, in Aegina, Delos, Rhodes and for that matter, a dozen other trade centres, there was a class of
persons who very well understood each other’s interests, who very likely were related by racial and religious custom, and whose
supra-nationalism transcended all city boundaries and borders of states.
Money was their trade, and they married only amongst their own group as the best protection towards maintaining inviolable the
secret of that financial hegemony they had established internationally, and which in a way had put them above kingship; no doubt
in the fevered imagination of some of them, one with the gods. Through the illusion of the establishment of silver as the standard
of value internationally or nationally, and whose supply they totally controlled, it is true, they actually did wield that power which
formerly had been the sole prerogative of the gods in the cities of ancient Sumeria, through their sons upon earth, the Priest-Kings;
even if only as the venal and self-interested men that they were.
The activities of this group towards the instigation of wars, and disturbances never ceased. Out of the needs of peoples in despair
came their advantage and strengthened control; and because they controlled the fiscal affairs of the temples, whose very existence
became completely intertwined with their activities, 1 it may safely be said that they controlled the oracular pronouncements which
so often could decide yea or nay to war. Out of rumour generally they guided the moods of the peoples. Such wars were
necessary, as much as today, towards the maintenance of their great arms industry and their continued control through the sale of
the best and newest of weapons to that new “conqueror” who promised most of all to serve their purposes in the renewal of their
stocks of treasure, so necessary to maintain “confidence,” and their stocks of mine slaves. war also revived that feverish and
competitive demand for that treasure; and in the hurly-burly it created, merchants gladly accepted as money anything offered from
seemingly reputable sources including that abstract money denoted by ledger credit page entry; the loan of which but cost the
lender the entry by slave scribe on the clay tablet, though immense real wealth might be offered as “collateral” as against failure to
repay such alleged loan by the date stipulated.
The far-flung activities of Apollonius, economic manager to Ptolemy Philadelphus, as recorded by Professor Rostovtsev, 2 give but
a glimpse of this interlocking control by an Aramaic speaking middle class, within which the Hebrew may also have been an
interwoven thread. Perhaps the weft, although not the weft and the warp.
For indeed there is no evidence that he was all, and that such magnates that controlled the economy of the ancient world were
many of them Jews. Nevertheless the claim by the Universal Jewish Encyclopedia 3 that the Hebrews, as a people who absorbed
foreign cultures, yet rigidly maintain their national identity caused them to be most appreciated by the brilliant and ambitious
Alexander, should not be lightly dismissed. Alexander was trainee of Aristotle, who, as husband of the niece of Hermias, Banker-
Tyrant of Assos and Atameus, certainly should have come to learn something of the true meaning of Money Power. Alexander
therefore, presumably had substantial understanding of the meaning of money relative to Kingship.
The Hebrew, as equally skilled in money and trade as the Aramean and equally fluent in Aramaic, since he was established in
most of the important cities of the ancient world, from the Pillars of Hercules to India in which Aramaic, certainly existed as
lingua franca, at least in those cities between India and the Levant, could very well have been a major part of that vehicle
constructed by Alexander to spread his dream of Pan-Hellenism. His special concessions to Jaddua, High Priest in Jerusalem in
333 B.C. in respect to those Jews of both Judea and Babylon, and also in respect to the foundation of Alexandria, 4 certainly
suggest deference to a power far beyond that power visibly represented by that relatively small group of people who dwelt at
Jerusalem and on the highlands by which it was surrounded. According to the Universal Jewish Encyclopedia: during the siege of
Tyre by Alexander, Jaddua, High Priest of Jerusalem, not wishing to offend Persia and Darius, had refused Alexander the troops
and provisions he sought. 5 After the fall of Tyre, Alexander advanced on Jerusalem, ancient ally of Tyre as the assistance of
Hiram, King of Tyre towards the building of the Temple of Solomon will call to mind; 6 undoubtedly with the intention of
reducing that city should no satisfactory settlement be reached.
As Alexander neared the Temple, so the story goes, the High Priest clothed in full vestments of gold and purple, and the Priests in
their sacerdotal robes, and a great multitude dressed in white, went out to meet him, the decision having no doubt been arrived at
that discretion was the better part of valour. Alexander, seeing the High Priest and his mitre on which was written the Name of
God, reverenced the Name and saluted the High Priest. He said he had seen a figure such as the High Priest in a dream, who had
told him he would give him Lordship over the Persian Hosts.
Then Alexander entered the city, and, as was his usual custom with submissive cities, he sacrificed to their God.
1
Oskar Seffert: A Dictionary of Classical Antiquities, p. 91; (Trans. a Nettleship, M.A., New York; 1904.)
2
Mikhail I. Rostovtaev: A Social and Economic History of the Hellenistic World, p. 227, Vol. I.
3
Universal Jewish Encyclopedia, p. 172, Vol. I.
4
Ibid.
5
Ibid.
6
Chronicles, Book II. Chapter 2.
The Babylonian Woe 56
The fact that he gave the Jews of Palestine such special concessions as a years remission of taxes which was also extended to the
Jews of Babylonia, and specially invited any Jew to settle in his city of Alexandria, would suggest that the visible help refused
him by Jaddua had been more than made up for by assistance of a less visible nature such as, it might reasonably be expected, had
helped to secure the fall of Babylon, to Cyrus, ancestor of Darius, and founder of the Achaemenid Dynasty of Persia. 1
The stress on the Aramaic speaking middle class of all those “Empires” from the assyrian, until the successors to alexander, and
perhaps beyond, is more than justified in view of the results of the studies of various scholars. if aramaic was the language of
officialdom under the achaemenid rulers of the persian empire, and remained so under alexander and the successors, it may
reasonably be supposed that the official and merchant classes that used aramaic as their everyday language, had gone far beyond
the borders of the persian empire, both to the east and to the west. as has been previously pointed out, with that aramaic
interstratum moved also to the east and west, the agents of that money power centred in mesopotamia, heir to the secrets, not only
of the sumerian priesthood, but of the priesthood of much more ancient times, selling as they went along the idea of the use of
precious metal money.
No sooner had short sighted rulers instituted the use of precious metal money, than the agents of such money power, to whom by
now the ruler was beholden for supplies of bullion, were setting up “modern” banking houses. in short order the various practices
of dubious legality that are the foundations of such money power would be instituted; firstly that of the creation, relatively without
limit, of abstract units of exchange as through the institution of ledger credit page entry money, under whatever cover to create
legality, and which the banker claimed was backed by his “Credit”!--(As if he could have more “Credit” than any sovereign
people and their ruler!)--and which was usually backed in final analysis by little or nothing other than the sanction of a foolish
prince. Secondly, from the point of view of maintenance of “confidence” so far as lesser trade was concerned, was the issue of
intrinsically valueless facsimiles of existing precious metal coinage, for every one of which a customer who accepted them in the
exchanges, thought that there was a precious metal original lodged in the local temple or acropolis.
To our Lord Jesus Christ, Aramaic was the everyday language that would have enabled Him to travel, and converse freely with
scholar, poet, priest, and merchant, certainly as far East as Peshawar. Aramaic is used in the Syrian Christian Church, in the
Jewish liturgy, and still lives in the villages of the Anti-Lebanon, in South East Anatolia, and on the Eastern shores of Lake Urmia
in Armenia. 2
Thus the opinion of Emil G.H. Kraeling 3 that the Aramean was the vehicle by which the so called eternal values of Hellas and
Israel were communicated throughout the Orient, in a way concurs with the Opinion of the Jewish Encyclopedia referred to
above. 4 That those values denoted by Hellas withered and almost disappeared, while those as denoted by Israel through
Christianity, flourished until relatively recently, is merely further proof that money power must destroy the body on which it
feeds, and is nourished, and the body it fed on at the time herein recorded, that is, immediately after Alexander, was Hellas, and
indeed, Israel itself. It cannot flourish alongside blind belief and simple faith which instinctively tear off its impudent claims as
they gnaw their way into the very heart of the Tree of Life.
Nevertheless, out of Babylonian money power itself, oblivious it seems to its own real self interest, carrying Christianity as far as
those limits unto which its total hegemony prevailed, Christianity itself rose as an island of love and goodness in an ocean of
hatred, confusion, greed, and depravity that had come to exist as the ultimate result of at least three thousand years of the
depredations of such private money creative power. With one convulsive shrug it threw off the snake like coils, reestablishing
thereafter the natural order of life, of god, priest-king and priesthood and the people, all living as was ordained, with faith, piety,
and sure belief. Thereafter, for a thousand years, International Money Power can only be faintly discerned, as a smouldering
ember; a fire not entirely extinguished; evidence thereof being an occasional wisp of smoke as it waited for a day when a certain
evil wind might blow, and flames come forth again to deal man total woe.
1
On this matter The Universal Jewish Encyclopedia reads: “The objection that alexander could have no interest in the Jews is answered by his
own life and subsequent actions. An astute statesman of penetrating vision, alexander was quick to grasp the indispensable value of the Jews in
the cultural, political and intellectual sphere of his world empire. Alexander’s aim was the synthesis of Occidental and Oriental cultures into the
mould of Hellenism; undoubtedly he appreciated the capacity of the Jews to absorb foreign culture, while rigidly maintaining their national
identity thus making them an ideal vehicle for his civilizing enterprise. As Jews were already an International commercial power, numbers of
them being found in most countries of Alexander’s domain, he granted them many political privileges when he founded Alexandria, and even
gave them a portion of Samaria with exemption from taxes in order to gain their support. It is even possible that alexander had first heard of the
jews from his teacher, aristotle who, according to the report of josephus, had met a jew who was a veritable philosopher and a “Greek” not only
in language but in soul.” Universal Jewish Encyclopedia, p. 172. Vol. I.
2
Peter Bamm: Alexander the Great; Power as Destiny. p. 72. London; 1968.
3
Emil G.H Kraeling: Aram and Israel, p. 1.
4
Present work, p. 148.
The Babylonian Woe 57
among them in various forms for a long time previously. 1 Little knowledge remains of such systems of exchange as existed prior
to the assumption of international bullion and slave interests of total hegemony over a great deal of Greece, but exist such systems
did, and the significance of its monetary units issued against state expenses, and as opposed to issue by private persons as against
collateral security, was understood, as the evidence of the Sparta of Lycurgus indicates.
On this subject Babelon, French Numismatist of the 19th Century says: “Having established the existence of these salmons or
spits of iron that were the circulating money of the Pewloponnese, it will be easy for us to define clearly the part played by this
prince (Pheidon). He was not inventor of money, but the same as Servius Tullius, a reformer. He introduced into the Peloponnese
a definite system of weights and measures, instead of the numerous systems that had thrown confusion and disorder into
commercial relations; he adapted the weight of the new money to the new system of weights, and he officially abolished the old
and cumbersome iron money, of which he consecrated several samples in the Temple at Argos.” 2
Numismatists airily dismiss the suggestions of the symbols of money as being indicated in ancient times on leather, wood, or
baked clay, which are found in both Cedrenus, Suidas, and Seneca, 3 but study of so-called primitive currencies of today, such as
the shell moneys of Oceania, leave little doubt that our forefathers, fully understanding of the true philosophy of money, may very
well have used such intrinsically valueless materials to record the values of their tangible money, prior to the commencement of
precious metal coinage; in the same way as the Melanesians and Micronesians have used shells for such purpose, from time
immemorial. 4
There can be no doubt that those social organizations such as existed prior to the establishment of precious metals as a standard by
which values were assessed, were often, in the case of the Northern Mediterranean and Anatolia, erected on a structure, of which
integral part was system of exchange constructed according to the teachings of such philosophy.
However, that the numismatists dismiss the significance of such money and question it as having ever existed, is not surprising
considering that they merely record the money towards the creation of which the controllers of bullion supplied the material; thus
in a way controlling its issue and such order of society as it gave rise to, and therefore the numismatists themselves. Consequently
the dismissal by the numismatists of other materials for money and its symbols, not internationally desirable or controllable by
their masters might be expected.
According to Professor Fritz Heichelheim in his Ancient Economic History, Suidas ascribes the monetary use of leather and
“ostrakina” (pieces of shell and pottery) to the romans previous to numa pompilius. shells appear on the coins of magna graecia,
especially those of tarentum, which may be an indication that shell money was known in the italy 5 of historical memory, at that
time. Oyster shells discovered by Heinrich Schlieman in the Royal graves at Mycenae together with obsidian weapons, indicate
that in an age when obsidian weapons were still in use, also remained respect for certain shells that in former times had been
evincement of stored wealth. 6 But equally as any other, such a currency only had value insomuch as it carried with it the will of
the ruler.
In the Hittite language there are many words almost identical to their counterpart in Latin: 7 (
Troy fell to the Greeks under Agamemnon in 1250 B.C. according to the modern dating and the opinion of Herodotus. That Troy
was the outpost of the Hittite empire that controlled the Dardanelles, and that the rulers of Troy spoke a Hittite language, is
reasonable supposition. 8 The destruction of Bog-Haz Koi, the Hittite capital is now accepted as being 1225 B.C. This event, which
could only have taken place as the result of investment by experienced, disciplined, and well organized forces, with an excellent
engineering corps, considering that so many well walled cities had fallen before them, brought the Hittite world to fragmentation. 9
1
See p. 17, present work. Also Note 2, p. 28.
2
Après avoir bien constaté l’existence avant Pheidon, de ces saumons ou broches de fer qui était la monnaie courant de Peloponnes, il nous
sera facile de définir nettement le rôle de ce prince. Il ne fut pas l’inventeur de la monnaie mais seulement, comme servius tullius, un
réformateur. il introduisit dans le péloponnèse un système fixé des poids et mesures, a la place des systèmes multiples qui jetaient la confusion
et la désordre dans les relations commerciales; il adapta le poids des nouvelles monnaie au systèmes pondéral nouveau; il demoneta et aboli
officiellement la vieille et encombrante monnaie de fer dont il consacra quelques échantillons dans le temple d’Argos”. Les Origines de la
Monnaie, p. 211, Ernest Babelon, Paris, 1897.
3
François Lenormant: La Monnaie dans l’antiquité, pp. 215-216, Book II, Tome I.
4
Kingston-Higgins & Paul Einzig: A Survey of Primitive Money and Primitive Money, respectively.
5
Fritz Heichelheim: An Ancient Economic History, p. 478, Vol. I.
6
Robert Payne: The Gold of Troy, p. 199.
7
Christopher Dawson: The Age of the Gods, p. 255.
8
The kings of the dynasty ruling in Lydia until 689 B.C., or Phrygia as it may then have been, of which Myrsilus (or Candaules) was the last,
mostly bore Hittite names. According to Del Mar in his History of Monetary Systems, p. 41, the Phrygian (or Lydian) chronicles extend back to
1300 B.C. (when Bog-Haz Koi and Troy still existed). According to Professor W.F. Albright (The Amarna Letters from Palestine, Cambridge
Ancient History, Vol. II; p. 43.), “The Hittites had established several vassal states in northern Syria.” “At least two of them, Carchemish and
Aleppo, were ruled by princes of the imperial Hittite dynasty. In a third state, Khattina, the reigning princes still bore names derived from
imperial Hittite history as late as the ninth century B.C.”
9
Although the fall of Bog-Haz Koi undoubtedly ended forever the system of empire over which the kings of the Kheta presided, fragments
established local autonomy thereafter. Such fragments were the state of Khattina above mentioned and the cities of Marqasi, and Carchemish.
The Babylonian Woe 58
Therefore during the years from the time of the crossing of the Dardanelles and the sack of Troy, to the time of the total collapse
that must have followed the destruction of Bog-Haz Koi, refugees would have sought freedom by sailing westward, which
direction it seems was the only way to go. To the North and North-West were the “Peoples of the Sea,” to the south-east was
Assyria, obviously ally of the same “Peoples of the Sea,” and to the south, Ugarit and Alalakh were empty ruins, and the coast to
the sinai border occupied by the enemies of the hittites.
Therefore it seems reasonable that the legend of the settlement of Aeneas, refugee from Troy in the territory of Latinus as
recorded by Livy 1 the same as most legends, had a basis of fact. This is further shown by the close resemblance between the
Hittite, Trojan, Latin languages as pointed out above. According to Dawson 2 the production of leather in the Hittite world was a
state monopoly. Such monopoly of leather production would suggest the possibility, if not the likelihood of leather as the material
on which the symbols of their money were recorded.
For any state to be as strong as indeed was the Hittite state for a relatively long period of time, and, moreover, stable, it had to
control, not merely the issue of the unit of exchange, but also the material of which its visible symbols were made; which, of
course had to be total monopoly. The fact that the Hittite state appears to have been one constructed to the same order as those
early Mesopotamian cities, that is, of God, Priest-King and priesthood and the devoted living in natural order, makes this
deduction the more likely.
The similarity of language, together with the legend relative to Troy would certainly suggest the forefathers of the patricians of
Rome derived from Northern Anatolia, and therefore from within the Hittite (or Bog-Haz Koi) sphere of influence. If so, would it
not be natural for them to reinstitute the same monetary system amongst themselves as they had known in their homelands?
The numismatists and historians date the Aes Grave, considered by them to be the first true metallic currency of Rome, from 338
B.C. 3 accepting the opinion of Professor Haeberlin. 4 What then did Rome use for money prior to that date considering the
relatively exact property valuations and taxes of Servius? That they used rough lumps of copper (Aes Rude) as everyday money,
cannot be accepted. There is no vestige of a doubt that a refined system existed by no means unrelated to the exchange systems
definitely known to have existed in Greece, and in which a form of “Credit,” too often a privately created abstract money, was
made use of. This system may have been no more related to silver bullion, than it may have been to any other commodity, and
international silver bullion interests would exercise no definite control therein.
There would be no reason whatsoever to discredit Suidas’ remarks in respect to leather and clay money previous to Numa
Pompilius. The clay “scarabs” still being unearthed in Etruria may very well represent evidence of the clay units. Leather money
of course would long since have perished. nor is there reason to think that the fiduciary money of clay undoubtedly issued by the
bankers of athens in the 5th Century B.C., 5 was in anyway a new idea. As throughout the Near East clay was the principal
medium for the keeping of records, the use of clay money follows naturally, and might well be expected in Etruria or wherever the
agents of the Babylonian or Greek bankers traded; the clay coin itself also being record; a tangible evincement of the creation of a
unit of exchange, or divisible or multiple thereof.
According to Livy, relative to the financing of the cavalry of Rome of the Kings: “Each century had a grant from the treasury of
10.000 aeses for the purchase of horses, with a further grant levied on rich widows of 2000 a year for their feeding and
maintenance.” 6
If then there was neither minted silver or copper at the time of Servius, are we to understand that the rich widows came to the
treasury with bags of pieces of rough copper? 7
Where taxes withdraw units of exchange from circulation, there must be a force which injects such units of exchange into the
circulation. What therefore was the source of such units of exchange or moneys as were injected into the circulation in order that
the people of Rome of the kings might estimate their worth with some exactitude and according to a certain standard? Clearly
there is no reason to doubt this record of Livy.
In the Panadects of Justinian, Tenth Book, occurs this remarkable passage from Julius Paulus, jurisconsul of the third century of
our era:
“The origin of buying and selling began with exchange. Anciently money was unknown and there existed no terms by which
merchandise could be precisely valued but everyone according to the times and circumstances, exchanged things useless to him
against things which were useful; for it commonly happens that one is in need of what another has in excess. But as it seldom
coincided in time that what one possessed, the other one wanted, or conversely, a device was chosen whose legal and permanent
value remedied by its homogeneity the difficulties of barter. This device being officially promulgated, circulated, and maintained
1
Livy; Book I.
2
Christopher Dawson: Age of the Gods, p. 304; London; 1928.
3
E.J. Haeberlin: Aes Grave; Frankfurt; 1910.
4
Accepting the opinion of Mommsen however, the Aes Grave dates from 454 B.C.-430 B.C. Manuel Des Antiquités Romaines. Tome X. Paris;
1888.
5
François Lenormant: La Monnaie dans l’Antiquité, p. 66, Book II, Tome I.
6
Livy: Book I; (Aubrey de Selincourt: An Early History of Rome, p. 66; London; 1960).
7
The Aes Rude.
The Babylonian Woe 59
its purchasing power, not so much from its substance as from its quantity. Since that time only one consideration in an exchange
was called merchandise, the other was called price.”
Whether those devices such as governed the exchanges of early Rome and Etruria were clay or leather or wood does not really
matter. As such they were true money being intrinsically valueless, and only of value because of that law which ordered their
acceptance in the exchanges and that they be of value as according to their scarcity or otherwise relative to the goods and services
for sale. What would above all matter would be the ease with which they could be counterfeited, no doubt the source of their
ultimate failure, and whether they were loaned into circulation by private persons against so-called collateral, or paid into
circulation as against government expenses, as were the Aes Grave at a later date.
This fragment from Paulus repeating the words of a commonwealth scholar of whose work even then little remained, did no more
than express the opinions of all the philosophers-scholars of antiquity, at least, those of whom record exists. Almost all of them
wrote of numerical or fiduciary systems of money as being the only natural systems. None of them, however entered into
discussion as to whether issuance should be as against state indebtedness. It was so obviously a necessity for good order and well-
being in life, that such discussion never seems to have occurred to them. The success of private monetary emission in this day and
its boldness now that its former criminal activities are recognized and accepted as inevitable, such men could not even imagine,
not even Aristotle, who it is certain by reason of his family connections, must have known something of the undercurrents of the
financial world as it existed at that time.
Aristotle, Plato, Socrates, Zeno, all seemed to have been clear on the subject, and all lived at a time when fiduciary systems were
still in existence, both in the Greek states although there is little record, and elsewhere. 1 Plato was most clear on the subject and no
doubt had studied the numerical system that had obtained at Sparta not long before when he was a young man. Living between
429 B.C. and 347 B.C., he must have been at Athens during the Peloponnesian War when such system certainly must still have
existed in Sparta, or have been a recent memory; even if, as seems most likely, as a result of the war, it had been replaced by the
Athenian system of private money issue based on the fiction of precious metals or valuables in reserve. As Aeschines, also pupil
of Plato was conversant with that fiduciary system of Carthage, 2 it is more than likely that Plato was so instructed. As no coinage
in precious metal was struck at Carthage itself until 340 B.C., 3 it may reasonably be supposed that at the time of writing The
Laws, either 348 B.C. or 349 B.C., there would have been Carthaginian agents at Athens, well able to explain their monetary
system to enquirers. On the subject Plato wrote:
“Further the Law (of the ideal Republic) enjoins that no private individual shall possess or hoard gold and silver bullion, but have
money only for domestic use, such as is necessary for dealing with artisans and servants, sojourners and slaves. Wherefore our
citizens should have a money current amongst themselves but not acceptable to the rest of mankind. For foreign expeditions,
journeys, embassies, the expense of heralds (abroad) and such matters, the government must also possess a fund of coins in other
states. When an individual needs to go abroad, let him obtain the consent of the Archon and go; but on his return if he has any
such money remaining let him deposit it in the treasury and receive an equivalent sum in local money. If he is discovered to have
concealed it, let it be confiscated, and let him who knows and does not inform, be subject to anathema and dishonour equally with
him who brought the money, and also to a fine not less in amount than that of the universal money which had been brought
back.” 4
Gathering together further fragments of evidence we see that Aristotle less than 400 years after Pheidon of Argos, made comment:
“Numisma (Money) by itself is a mere device which has value only by law (Nomos) and not by nature; so that a change of
convention between those who use it, is sufficient to deprive it of value and its power to satisfy our wants.” 5
In The Ethics, Aristotle states further: “By virtue of voluntary convention, Nomisma has become the media of exchange. We call it
Nomisma because its efficacy is due, not to nature but to Nomos (Law) and because it is always in our power to control it.” 6
Thus despite at least four hundred years of control of trade by the masters of precious metal bullion, the scholars still clearly
understood the actuality of money and that it was an evincement of the law. They still understood it was but so many numbers
injected into a circulation amongst the people relating value to value, and not in any way influenced by the material on which
these numbers as laws were recorded. The scholars must, however, have been aware that in the case of these laws being recorded
on precious metal, if the convention in respect to the value of the unit of exchange was changed, so far as financial houses with
facilities for smelting and export of bullion were concerned, there was no loss. If the change in convention was disadvantageous to
such holder of precious metal coin, such coin could be reduced to bullion and quietly exported to that country offering the most
advantage to holders of such bullion.
1
Augustus Boeckh: The Public Economy of Athens, Vol. I; p. 43; London; 1828.
2
According to Aeschines: “The Carthaginians make use of the following kind of money; in a small piece of leather a substance is wrapped of
the size of a piece of 4 drachmae (3s); but what this substance is no one knows except the maker. After this is sealed and issued for circulation;
and he who possesses the most of this is regarded as having the most money, and as being the wealthiest man. But if any one amongst us had
ever as much, he would be no richer than if he possessed a quantity of pebbles.” (A.J. Church: Carthage, pp. 122-123; New York; 1914.)
3
R.A.G. Carson: Coins, Ancient, Medieval, and Modern, p. 75; London; 1962.
4
Plato: The Laws, Book V.
5
Aristotle: The Politics, I, 9.
6
Aristotle: The Ethics, V, 5.
The Babylonian Woe 60
To say that money as such began with the striking of precious metal coinage is therefore incorrect. The statement that an
international control over money came about as a result of a certain group of private persons, members of which were located in
all major states of the world, creating a monopoly of those precious metals of which its symbols were coming to be made, or,
better put, on which they were imprinted, would be more to the point.
The evidence that the earliest coinages in Greece had essentially a local circulation in no way alters the picture previously outlined
of silver money as being part of an international conspiracy. All Greek states apart from Athens and Samos, Siphnos and Corcyra,
and possibly one or two others, had to obtain silver bullion for their coinage from abroad, which necessarily obliged them to deal
with those traders who specialized in dealing in bullion. Such trade in bullion had to be in the hands of a small and highly
secretive group, as much on account of the sources of supply being relatively few and scattered as it were out to the ends of the
earth, as on account of the fact that it would be only such a group that could also control those supplies of slave labour and their
purchase from triumphant peoples whose warlike activities, as likely as not, they had instigated themselves; slave labour so
necessary to the success of their mining operations.
For example, the fact that the Carthaginian mines of Spain show no signs of even the use of the ordinary propping and shoring
associated with mining, 1 cannot but indicate that the miners were most likely captives of war from distant parts, purchased for a
song from a victorious general, and driven under threat of the lash.
At that period it would appear, such labour was so plentiful that the cost of purchase of new slaves, would have been less than the
cost of ordinary safety precautions. The silver mines of Spain as worked by the Romans, show interestingly enough an entirely
different story. 2 All safety methods, including the use of concrete, were used; which also agrees with the fact that Rome, even
when silver money was in use, particularly in foreign trade, so far as internal exchanges were concerned, had a relatively ample
supply of money for the details of day to day organization in the overvalued bronze fiduciaries, the most grandiose aes and its
parts or multiples. 3
History has proven over and over again that a precious metal coinage will move one way or another to where it might realize the
most profit either as coin or bullion. The so-called law of the economists known as Gresham’s law states just that: “Bad money
drives out the good.” which means that the silver in circulating would be replaced by that less intrinsically valuable money, if such
also circulated, and which the economists described as “the bad,” (the question of course being bad for whom?); such silver being
hoarded and exported to whatever market offered the best price or advantage.
Cases of wider application of this so-called law are without number, and as much as of application to a lesser degree. A few
outstanding ones are:
a. The disappearance of silver from Athens and its replacement by baked clay facsimiles during the 5th Century B.C. and by
yellowish copper (or orichalcum) at the end of the same century.
b. The drain of silver from Rome during the late commonwealth and the early Empire, particularly to the Orient, 4 where the
ratio varied around 6:1 to gold as compared to that established by Caesar of 12:1, and its replacement by bronze or orichalcum
fiduciaries.
c. The drain of English silver coinage to India after the act of 1666. 5 Such silver being replaced by the “Bad” money of the
goldsmith’s receipts and the Bank of England notes and ledger credit page entries.
d. The disappearance of the silver roubles in Russia 6 during the 18th Century almost as soon as they left the mint, their place
being taken by the “Bad” money of the copper roubles, and, later, after catherine, by the “Bad” money of the paper roubles
(assignats).
e. The almost complete disappearance from the circulation between the years 1967-1973 of silver coins of our own country of
Canada: such silver being replaced by coins fabricated from base metal alloys, relative to the silver coins, without intrinsic
value.
Returning to Ancient Greece, Professor Heichelheim states: “Such hoards as found previous to 560 B.C. are found in the areas in
which they were minted and never in other countries.” 7 Which fact indicates that prior to 560 B.C. it is probable that laws
governing the export of coin were strictly enforced in Greece. Any silver that left a state would do so covertly as bullion. The
1
A. del Mar: A History of Money in Ancient Countries, p. 323; London; 1885.
2
Ibid.
3
According to Harold Mattingly, (Roman Coins, p. 53): “The bronze coinage of rome was the original coinage of the land; it always served the
home market and played little part in rome’s expansion abroad. It is perhaps not surprising then that it resisted change more persistently than
the world currency of the denarius.” (Italics by present author.)
4
Both Cicero (Pro Flaccus; Orationes; Book XXVIII), and Pliny (Naturalis Historia, xii, c.18), make mention of this flow of silver Eastward.
Cicero says that gold moved Eastward to the temple at Jerusalem. This may also have been so.
5
A. del Mar: Barbara Williers or a History of Monetary Crimes; pp. 8-44.
6
A. del Mar: Money and Civilization, p. 303; London; 1886.
7
Fritz Heichelheim: An Ancient Economic History, p. 251; Vol. I.
The Babylonian Woe 61
following Athenian Edict is evidence that such laws existed: “Let no Athenian or sojourner lend money to be exported unless (to
pay) for corn or some such commodity allowed by Law.” 1
By the time of Plato, something less than two hundred years later the real weaknesses of precious metal systems of coinage were
beginning to show, hence the increasing discussion of the matter of money in the schools of philosophy, although such discussion
does not seem to have given rise to any vigorous action by the Grecian States. The establishment of the Aes Grave system at
Rome may have been a direct result of such discussion, and the establishment of this numerical coinage of bronze certainly bears
close resemblance to that internal coinage as recommended by Plato for the ideal Republic. 2 By the date generally accepted as the
commencement of the Aes Grave system, that is 338 B.C., Roman scholars would have been fully aware of the teachings of Plato.
This city state, already stirred by consciousness of its world destiny, would have neglected no instrument towards the maintenance
of morale and strength in the structure of its internal life. Such an instrument was the Aes Grave system in which the national
money was paid into circulation by the state, and only of value insomuch as the symbols on which its numbers were recorded,
were scarce or otherwise.
The weaknesses inherent in precious metal coinage systems as becoming apparent in the time of Plato were as follows:
a. The coins wore out or were hoarded out of circulation.
b. Hard rock mining was never profitable without slave labour so far as the Master Miner was concerned. 3
c. The mine slaves died and sometimes, there being no wars, they could not be replaced so easily.
d. The mines themselves became exhausted.
e. In a time of national calamity, when coinage was most of all needed, it disappeared into hoards, largely held by
foreigners, members of that secret class of persons to whom wars were but opportunity to drive harder bargains yet again, with
mankind and his states and peoples.
f. Even in time of peace, captains and merchants, if permitted, were ever seeking a cargo for their return trip. If such cargo
was not available, they would take away their balances in precious metals or slaves.
A country such as Greece, by no means rich agriculturally as was the Egyptian Delta, yet having a relatively large population to
feed, in its declining days would usually have an unfavourable balance of trade; which further, despite laws to the contrary,
drained away its precious metal coinage or bullion. At the time of Plato, this condition must have been really showing and its
significance.
The Laureion mines were petering out despite the agitation by Xenophon for the Government of Athens to purchase ten thousand
slaves to lease to mine owners, 4 (presumably to be obtained from his financial sponsors), and where in days gone by there had
been considerable silver circulating at Athens particularly, now it had become scarce and there was an insufficiency.
The numerous clay facsimiles of Eastern Mediterranean coinages, still being found at Athens, 5 show that the foreign bankers, in
accordance with Gresham’s so-called law, were quietly filling the void now appearing with issues of a fiduciary character such as
our paper money, exemplified in their case by the baked clay facsimiles mentioned by lenormant which the bankers clearly were
injecting into circulation to their own private account, and, of course, that of their most useful greek agents. This would be
effected by pointing out to a customer to whom the banker was prepared to make a loan, how much safer the actual silver would
be if left with the banker’s reserve in the Acropolis where it would be guarded by the gods themselves, and how these clay
facsimiles which all the customers were accepting, could always be redeemed in silver if really necessary. (!) 6
Seltsman in Greek Coins 7 says that about this period, following the complete collapse of the Athenian Empire, Athens resumed its
previous financial activities through the growth of powerful “Banks,” such as that of pasion which operated in all major Greek
cities, providing a money market for all of the Greek world. however, seltsman makes no mention of abstract expansions of the
monetary unit, nor of the clay facsimiles which were the tangible evincement of such expansion, and whose power to inspire
1
Potter: Antiquities of Greece.
2
Plato: The Laws, Book V.
3
W. Jacob: An Historical Enquiry into the Production and Consumption Metals. Del Mar, quoting from this book, gives a most reasonable
analysis of the apparent loss associated with the working of the silver mines of New Carthage in Spain, by the Carthaginians. (A. del Mar:
History of the Precious Metals, p. 68.)
4
Xenophon: A Discourse upon improving the Revenues of the State of Athens, (Pages 317-322, The Political and Commercial Works of
Charles Davenant LLD; 1771)
5
François Lenormant: La Monnaie dans l’Antiquité, pp. 215-216, Book II, Tome I. Several Athenian and Corinthian residents have these clay
coins in their possession (N. Boucara of Corinth).
6
In London 2000 years later, when the goldsmiths operated exactly the same “racket,” the confidence of the public was gained through the
connivance, witting or unwitting, of the Royal House, and the storage of the goldsmiths reserves in the Tower of London. The fact of their
being in the Tower offered the same sanctity to the goldsmith’s practice of issuing receipts as against non-existing reserves, i.e., fraudulent
receipts, as had been offered to similar practice in ancient times by the undoubted storage of the reserves of the trapezitae in the Acropolis. In
either case to encourage the circulation of his receipts, he could plead the difficulties and the dangers of the formalities attached to withdrawal
of the metal itself for the purpose of settlement of an account.
7
Charles Seltsman, M.A.: Greek Coins, p. 179; London; 1933.
The Babylonian Woe 62
confidence was the main source of that renewed financial activity, and whose existence and purpose was defined by françois
lenormant, even if somewhat diffidently. (p. 27, present work.)
What Seltsman really points out to us in stressing that Athens resumed its previous financial activities with powerful banks such
as that of Pasion operating in all major Greek cities, is the correctness of our previous conjecture that the real underlying purposes
of the “Great” peloponnesian war was to establish private common money market across the greek world totally controlled by the
trapezitae or bankers in modern terminology. Banks, too, could not thrive and realize full potential except that government was
become their instrument, and that Government, the creator of the laws of the land, was in their debt, as according to these same
laws of the land, as much as private citizens. The foundation of this god-power, to which, as a result of the utter exhaustion of
Athens and Sparta, and the death of their noblest, there were none to offer resistance, was government borrowing of the banker’s
fictitious “Credit” money; and although there may be little evidence of such in athens at that time, it is clear that this situation had
been brought about. the frantic efforts of the athenian government after the war to devise methods to stimulate increase of
government spending, such as the donatives and the theorica, while at the same time devising methods to withdraw money from
the public circulation, such as by sales tax, 1 reveal that Athenian Government was now more firmly than ever in the hands of
International Money Power, if Sparta was but now rearrived there after absence of three hundred years or so. 2
Both Athens and Sparta were in no better a position than they were before the war. Neither one had won and neither one had lost.
Both lay exhausted, and over their prostrate bodies the servants of this same sardonic Money Power drew the chains of their
slavery.
Although Seltsman says the source of the renewal of the prosperity of Athens was the new markets in Cyrene, Chalcidice, and
South Russia, Rostovtsev points out that the South Russian market, the most important of all, was closing due to local
manufactures, and in the fourth century, Attic and Ionian imports disappear entirely in South Russia, 3 where, in the sixth and fifth
centuries they had been extensive. 4 According to Rostovtsev, at Athens during the fourth century B.C., both population and
unemployment increased, prices rose, and there was so-called “class struggle” and discontent. 5
Increase in prices is usually indicative of increase of the number of monetary units in circulation, that is, of the money supply
relative to goods and services for sale. Unemployment would not cancel out such increase in the money supply; for money had to
be created for the Donatives and theorica which belong to this time. Herein is further proof of some artificial and invisible growth
of the monetary unit. So while the markets for Greek agricultural and industrial products had shrunk considerably, and were no
more able to absorb the goods that were being offered to them by Greece, 6 money was still being created, in Athens particularly,
and being put into circulation as against “Free Bread and Circuses,” such as indeed were the donatives and theorica; consequently
causing inflation and the rise of prices of record. considering the findings of professor rostovtsev as being more likely than those
of seltsman, it is clear that what athens exported, and possible some other cities in greece where such as pasion had branches, was,
after the “Great” peloponnesian war, privately created capital. 7 Thus in what we know of as Antiquity, the full meaning of the unit
of exchange as a purely abstract conception, regardless of what material it was recorded on for the purposes of day to day
exchanges, was clearly understood; and without a doubt this knowledge was inheritance from ancient days, long before the advent
of exchanges based on silver by weight.
Judging by Sparta, perhaps some of the Greek states mentioned by Boeckh, 8 and later by Rome itself, it seems that in ancient
times there was some considerable understanding of the power inherent in precious metal money to destroy, by lending itself to
manipulation, the status quo of any race or state. The tremendous possibilities inherent in its use as the material on which the
visible units of money were recorded towards the manipulation of prices and the consequent monopolization of wealth which
always derived therefrom, through the process of loan against collateral security inflating the money supply, and giving rise to the
seeming prosperity of great activity, followed by the “calling” of such loans, under one excuse or another, when the resultant
prosperity was at its height, was well understood by the “Bankers.” Also was known how to create periods of “lack of
confidence,” during which prices fell to less than the previous cost of manufacture, and when consequently manufacturers became
disheartened, and were glad to sell out to anyone to whom the banker directed them for whatever they could get. That is, if they
1
Royal Ontario Museum Display.
2
From the time of the Institution of the Financial Reforms of Lycurgus.
3
Mikhail I. Rostovtsev: A Social and Economic History of the Hellenistic World, p. 108; Vol I, Oxford; 1941.
4
Ibid. p. 106.
5
Ibid. p. 108.
6
Ibid. p. 104.
7
Perhaps an internationally functioning unit like the Euro-Dollar, originating from that form of ledger entry money known as the “swap”
deposit. While doing the world’s business, relative to the work it does, it bears little relationship to the workings of the originating financial
system. Such “swap” deposit money, although it will buy a loaf of bread or, at the other end of the scale, a ship, and therefore is money as
much as any other kind of money, originates free of control of governments or central banks. Such Euro-currencies “can expand by the process
of money creation without infusions from oil nations or payments deficits.” Clearly they largely exist more as a special convenience to a certain
group of people whose “business” is manipulating world currencies, and therefore prices, for their own needs and profit without reference to
the good or authority of the state that permits the generating of such externally circulating monetary units, or to the good of its peoples. For a
detailed explanation of the Euro-Dollar see Report of the Royal Commission on Banking and Finance. pp. 138-140; Ottawa; 1964.
8
Augustus Boeckh: The Public Economy of Athens, Vol. I; p. 43; London; 1828.
The Babylonian Woe 63
were lucky. If they were not quite so lucky, then their stock and factory would be seized as against the supposed debt, and sold at
auction. No doubt such auctions were rigged in ancient times, just as much as they often are today.
Those states previously mentioned, understanding therefore the evils of private emission of precious metal money, and that
precious metal money must always be private money emission, except the state owns the mines, and takes absolutely total
precaution to prevent the export of its metal except by its own decision as against its own needs, clearly, when all other states and
princes were succumbing to the world drive of the international bankers, rejected banking as such, and the bullion brokers its
founders. It was not until the 4th Century B.C. that they finally gave in, to what was undoubtedly an unremitting pressure, and this
more likely as a result of the conquests of, firstly, the Achaemenid Princes of Persia, and secondly, the conquests of Alexander.
After Alexander there do not seem many states left in which precious metal money did not constitute the circulating medium, and
therefore could not be influenced by the activities of that secret and international group of people who made the so-called
Gresham’s Law very much of a reality to the undoing of rulers and their peoples.
The sequence of “Boom” and “Bust” just as in today, can be traced as follows:
In the first place bankers and their agents no doubt worked together to cause this money, which it may safely be said, originally
cost them no more than entry by slave scribe on the clay tablet, to be seemingly plentiful. As a result, business flourished, wages
increased and prices rose. This rise in prices ultimately caused a situation in which foreign merchandise sold competitively on the
home market. In consequence some home manufacturers, unable to compete, went into bankruptcy. The panic thus created
amongst manufacturers beholden to the banks, prepared them for the inevitability of the likelihood of demand by their bank for
repayment of loans outstanding. By now the bankers were telling everyone that Times were bad. “There was a freeze in Credit.”
and “No Money about”. so when such loans were “Called,” the manufacturers dutifully hunted up all the silver they could find,
and if they were able, paid off the banker. when this collapse of industry, and consequently prices, reached a certain point, it
became no longer profitable for foreign merchandise to sell on their home market, creating the opportunity for resumption of their
own industries. the bankers, satisfied that the “Depression” had yielded sufficient rewards, and with a new crop of industrialists
now directly under their thumbs, or in control of their trusted agents, industry would be resumed. loans again were forthcoming
from the banker’s overflowing strong rooms, or simply the same place as that from which originated the previous loans, his
ledger; being therein merely a creation of stylus and clay tablet. Thus were the foundations laid for a new steady rise in prices.
Herein, in this everlasting “Boom” and “Bust” of the so called “Empires” and “Civilizations” of the last few thousand years is the
root cause of the desperate situation in which the indo-european peoples now find themselves, and, in which, seemingly having
everything, in reality they have nothing except total exhaustion and the spectre of total anarchy and destruction looming ever more
clearly before them, for they no longer have the will to be.
With planned miscegenation and what could very well prove to be planned race self-extermination through the promotion of the
use of conception aborting “medicines,” and of abortion itself by “operation” involving the tearing of the living fetus from the
womb, the so-called indo-european peoples, who writhe in torment as a result of these incredible plans undoubtedly originating in
the first place from the muddled minds of the money masters or their agents, fast dwindle to a fraction of the world’s population;
soon, as may very well come to pass, to be entirely obliterated by those other races of the world who watch with glee this self-
destruction of those who they had so recently believed to be one with the gods, such was their seeming superiority. International
Money Power, whatever it really is, or whoever they really are, could not care less! Herein was its own design.
But one thing such designers of all this forget. In the magnitude of the total disaster that looms so threateningly in these last days
over the path of life, is also final disaster to the planners of this evil; whether this they had expected or otherwise; their own
complete obliteration for sure along with the rest.
For if God’s kingdom on earth is to arise, it is to arise in a world where little of the sicknesses that trouble us today, will be left,
and the binding threads of incompetent thinking, and of evil itself, will be totally unwound. it will arise where the humble and the
meek, such as remain, bow down in total acceptance of that natural order as was ordained: of god, which is the self-conscious
everlasting itself: of priest-king in whom is the voice of god reigning in earthly glory understandable to men: of priesthood trained
to total understanding of all the forces which mould men, and the devoted themselves, those who go about their affairs trusting in
the sincerity and ability of their rulers, and who seek no more in life than the glory of their eternal master, and that they
themselves always walk in the ways of righteousness.
Thus, returning to Athens and its money in ancient days: the emission by the bankers of Athens of the baked clay facsimiles of the
silver coinage they were reputed to have in storage in the vaults of the Acropolis, would have exactly the same effect on prices as
the emission of silver coin; it would cause them to rise. Conversely, contraction of that clay coinage by calling of loans, would
similarly cause prices to fall; and thus, as in today, “when the depression is over,” that is when prices are at rock bottom without
totally wrecking the state, the “Banker” merely enters a few figures in his ledger to the credit of one of his agents, so it was in
athens in that day. did the so-called customer require ready money over and above the money required for settlement of balances
owing, such as could be met by debit, and transfer, and recredit, i.e., by cheque, then the so-called bankers at athens or the piraeus,
merely set slaves to work to cast and bake clay coins as fast as they could go! Admittedly the baking of clay coins was a little
more expensive than the pen and ink required for ledger entry money, or than the high speed printing press necessary for the paper
facsimiles of today.
1
P.N. Ure, M.A.: The Origins of Tyranny, p. 2; New York; 1922.
2
p. 155. Present Work.
3
“The Smithsonian report for 1876, p. 399, mentions clay stamps for printing cotton cloths (in ancient times). These could scarcely have failed
to suggest baked clay coins such as were used in China, Chaldea, und Egypt.” History of Money in America, p. 44. A. del Mar (in reference to
Mexican money).
4
He might have added, pursuing the matter further, that the paper note of today merely act as small change for that abstract money created by
the mass of cheques in transit, and behind which exists no more than the misappropriated will of the gods themselves.
5
C.M Kraay & Max Hirmer: Greek Coins, Preface. London; 1968.
The Babylonian Woe 65
“As I see it, the great contribution which Dr. Carroll Quigley unintentionally made by writing Tragedy and Hope was to help the
ordinary American realize the utter contempt which the network leaders have for ordinary peoples. Human beings are treated en
masse as helpless puppets on an international chessboard where giants of economic and political power subject them to wars,
revolution, civil strife, confiscation, subversion, indoctrination, manipulation and outright deception as it suits their fancy and their
concocted schemes for world domination.” 1
.For the original Rothschild (Amschel) who uttered that now famous line: “Let me issue and control a Nation’s money, and i care
not who writes its laws,” 2 one cannot but have some grudging admiration, rogue though he was and should have been dealt with
as such; but for those place-seeking persons, cynical or merely naïve, who nowadays prostrate themselves before the doors of the
international bankers, as members of the societies dedicated to One World Government, such as The Council on Foreign
Relations, The Canadian Institute of International Affairs, The Royal Institute of International Affairs, etc. one can have little
respect.
The first requisite for a man to be truly honoured amongst the people is that he bestow honour. Amongst these to whom the paths
of meaningless ambition come first before any concern for their own, for they are largely drawn from that class of dead souls that
is international in this, that every race and people on this earth is afflicted by them in more or less degree, the word honour too
often will be meaningless. According to another recent writer: “James P. Warburg is one of the most ardent propagandists and
financiers of the World Government Movement in the U.S.A. today. This same James Warburg had the audacity and arrogance to
proclaim before the U.S. Senate (2-17-50): ‘We shall have world government whether or not we like it. The only question is,
whether world government will be achieved by conquest or consent.’” 3
World Government is total government world-wide in which no independent race or people shall be except the rulers, who
necessarily will have to be an exclusive caste. Total consent of all presumptuous, if not imaginative, bankers will never be; but out
of the weakness and confusion created by them amongst us towards these their own vain purposes, the world Government they
mutter about, may come through conquest, though it is not they who will be the conquerors, though indeed, they will be the
principal instrument. There would be no way of bringing about that total monopoly of money, industry and empire, which is world
government, save through the manipulation of the credulity of man-kind, and the pathetic trust he still maintains that his rulers are
the voice of God on earth for him, as he blindly stumbles on, except it be by armed conquest. Armed conquest in its turn in these
latter days, cannot be effected without the connivance of conspiratorial money power, although such conspiratorial money power
in its virtually insane search for paths towards its own establishment towards World Rule forever and ever, has now become an
institution, which in the horror of the weapons of total destruction and obliteration leading to final subjection that it has called into
being, and, in its blindness, has also given to our enemies, can only be described as a juggernaut completely out of control, an all-
engulfing Terror, as much for its creators, as he, who, in its original conception, such Terror was supposed to engulf.
1
W. Cleon Skousen: The Naked Capitalist, p. 112.
2
John R. Elsom: Lightning over the Treasury Building, p. 78.
3
W.B. Vennard: Conquest or Consent, p. 12.
4
Humphrey Michell, M A: Sparta, p. 27; (Cambridge University Press; 1952.)
5
Further than the findings of archaeology, the deductions of some of the classical scholars also attribute the so-called reforms of Lycurgus to
the sixth century B.C., being therein the so-called Eunomia, c 610 B.C.; clearly, therefore, either inspiring the events at Athens brought about
by Solon, or being inspired thereby. According to the writer on this subject in the Encyclopedia of World History. (p. 50).” By the so-called
Eunomia, the Spartans, fearing further revolts (of the Messenians) completely reorganized the State to make it more severely military. Youths
from the age of 7 were taken for continual military training. Men of military age lived in barracks and ate at common messes (syssitia,
phiditia). Five local tribes replaced the three Dorian hereditary ones and the army was correspondingly divided, creating the Dorian Phalanx.
In the tribes were enrolled as citizens many non-citizens. The gerousia, comprising 28 elders and the two kings, had the initiative in legislation
though the apella of all citizens had the final decision. The chief magistrates, ephors were increased to five, with wider powers especially after
the ephorate of Cheilon (556 B.C.). Later ages attributed the reforms (the financial sector of which is ignored by this writer) to the hero
Lycurgus in the ninth century, perhaps because the new laws were put under his protection.”
The Babylonian Woe 66
and that only a sort of money of iron should be current, a great weight and quantity of which was very little worth. So that to
lay up twenty or thirty pounds, there was required a pretty large closet, and to remove it, nothing less than a yoke of oxen.
With the diffusion of this money, at once a number of vices were banished from Lacedaemon for who would rob another of
such coin? Who would unjustly detain or take by force or accept as a bribe, a thing which was not easy to hide or a credit to
have, or indeed of any use to cut in pieces. For when it was red-hot they quenched it in vinegar, and by that means spoilt it and
made it almost incapable of being worked.
In the next place he declared an outlawry of all superfluous arts; but here he might have spared his proclamation; for they of
themselves would have gone after the gold and silver, the money which remained being not so proper payment for curious
work, for being iron it was scarcely portable, neither if they should take the means to export it, would it pass among the other
Greeks who ridiculed it. So now there was no means of purchasing foreign goods and small wares, no itinerate fortune teller,
no harlot monger, or gold or silver smith, engraver or jeweller set foot in a country which had no money; so that luxury
deprived little by little of that which fed and fomented it, wasted to nothing, and died away of itself. For the rich had no
advantage here over the poor as their wealth and abundance had no road to come abroad by, but were shut up at home doing
nothing.” 1
Plutarch, of course, lived in a city and in an age when all wealth was assessed in terms of precious metals by weight. Needless to
say, in order to have the cooperation of the real ruler, local money creative power, towards the publication of his works, he wisely
followed that trend which undoubtedly had been instigated in Athens of making a mockery of Spartan customs, a trend which is
still followed to this day by many so called scholars. Sparta, early in the Millennium had come to understand the real significance
of precious metal money, as being part of an international confidence game. Sparta also realized the destructive forces inherent in
the activities of its controllers and the foreign luxury traders they encouraged and financed in order to debilitate the people, and so
make absolute their own secret hegemony, such as destroyed all racial pride in that people on whom they were battening, and thus
destroying their will to resist through creating obsession with pleasure. The evidence is in the findings of the British School at
Athens from their excavations at the site of the city of Sparta:
“The excavations of the British School at Athens at the site of the city of Sparta reveal a flourishing state of the arts and
manufactures in Laconia carried on, if not wholly by Laconian workmen themselves, at least by foreign artists who were
welcome and encouraged to ply their crafts without any of the dark suspicion of strangers that was so marked in latter times.” 2
The so-called Spartan way of life derived from the necessity of the Spartans to always be prepared for total war from abroad, as
their final rejection of international money power made certain would come, and to be always prepared for war from within; i.e.,
insurrection; an equal certainty deriving from the same causes.
The first Messenian War (736-716 B.C.) was entered into by King Theopompus of Sparta for the usual reasons for any war in a
state indicated by archaeological findings as being under the thumb of international money power: instigation by that money
power in favour of its arms industry and its other long range purposes. The long drawn out character of the war indicated that the
Messenians had equal access to international arms industry with Sparta. Armies are not raised and maintained in long drawn out
wars without finances acceptable in international trade and ready access to the best of weapons and equipment; and it is clear the
Messenians were not short of such. This war served that purpose most desirable to money power of reducing the power of kings:
“The first and second Messenian wars were both followed by constitutional crises. The first settlement was a victory of the
Spartan peers over the kings and a curbing of royal prerogatives and powers.” 3 Such would have been typical of the progress of
international money power in its usual insidious takeover of any state or civilization. “The crisis after the second Messenian war
was at least within the ranks of the Spartans themselves, a democratic one, if that very dubious word can be used.” 4 The long
drawn out character of the second Messenian War indicated the same underlying factor of the original war of conquest:
international money-power extending its favours to both sides, to the insurgents and to Sparta. The final edicts of Lycurgus as a
result of the constitutional crisis that followed the second Messenian war, certainly indicate he was aware of the loss of
sovereignty that came to any state that based its money system on the product of the international bullion brokers, and which
meant dependence on their good graces; the more especially if such state had no mines of its own.
The Second Messenian war which was doubtless to have established total “Democracy,” that is, total rule of the international
banking fraternity, failed so far as such purpose was concerned. Lycurgus’s answer to a man who insisted he create a democracy
in the state was “First create a democracy in your own house.” Certainly an apt answer!
The complaint of Theognis, admirer of Sparta, visitor from Megara, whos e political aim was directed towards the prevention of
the recurrence of a Tyranny at Megara, should not be forgotten, and bore light on the conditions at Sparta, as well, and that gave
rise to Lycurgus:
1
Plutarch: Lycurgus (The Lives: Dryden Translation).
2
Humphrey Michell, M.A: Sparta; p. 12.
3
Ibid. p. 23.
4
Humphrey Michell, M.A.: Sparta, p. 23.
The Babylonian Woe 67
“Tradesmen reign supreme, the bad lord it over their betters,
This is the lesson that all must thoroughly master.” 1
Of the reforms of Lycurgus, their cause, and those forces they were directed against, there is no doubt whatsoever, and verification
through the findings of archaeology such as the work of Dr. Blakeway in Laconia reestablishes the time as being, as remarked
above, after the second Messenian war, namely between 600 B.C. and 550 B.C.
“He has demonstrated from archaeological evidence that between 600 B.C. and 550 B.C., foreign imports into Sparta
practically ceased. Corinthian pottery which had been common in Sparta in the early or Proto-Corinthian period is
exceedingly rare after c.600 B.C. Ivory, amber, Egyptian scarabs, and Phoenician goods likewise cease before 550 B.C. and
the same is true of gold and silver jewellery.” 2
There is no doubt that early in the sixth century B.C., the Spartans totally excluded the international money market, such as
controlled the rest of Greece through silver and gold money, and the banker’s practices relating thereto. They also excluded
foreign trade as being equally destructive of the order of life they wished to preserve.
The notion created by Plutarch of that national currency of iron as being something ridiculous and requiring also an ox-cart may
be dismissed as part of the steady stream of propaganda no doubt being created in Athens against everything of ancient days,
particularly the customs special to Sparta. If it is true that the pelanors were of such weight as ruled out their being readily passed
from hand to hand, then it may reasonably be assumed that they denoted wealth in much the same manner as the stone rings of
Uap and the ancient Indus Valley civilization; 3 more in the nature of a reserve, the circulating money being the leather notes
referred to by Suidas as circulating in Lacedaemon, just as the circulating money of Uap was shell strings, similar to Tekaroro of
the Gilbert Islands. 4 It may equally have been a system whose origins were lost in remote ages; perhaps bearing relationship to
that system existing in Europe during the 4th Millennium B.C., 5 when it is clear that the spondylus shell had greater significance
than that ascribed to it as “Prestige Possession,” and was part of a world wide use of shells as money.
Sparta was indeed fortunate to possess considerable reserves of iron ore, the principal deposits being at the Malean Cape and the
Taenarian Promontory. 6 Thus, both for her money and for her arms, she was therefore independent, and needed no assistance from
abroad. The Laws of Lycurgus excluding international money and trade, directly continued the fomentation of that warlike spirit
and racial and national pride bred in the Spartans out of the trials of the long drawn out Messenian wars; and which brought them
in as saviours at Thermopylae, and, indeed, of Carthage at the end of the first Punic War (255 B.C.) when the army of Regulus
encamped before the city was destroyed by Xantippus the Spartan.
The very fact that the power of the kings had been undermined by the first Messenian War, although their position as absolute
leaders of the people in war still existed, became a blessing in disguise. History has shown that the point to which international
money power immediately gravitates when penetrating any people living in natural order, is the top, the king himself, either
directly, or through the priesthood. Given his sanction and connivance in respect to their schemes, then peoples whose very souls
have leaned towards the king as to the Lord’s anointed, are easily subdued, and their minds filled with arithmetical calculations
and obsession with their animal needs, instead of that great glory of a oneness with the Deity, a oneness with the harmony of the
universe, and their being lords of their own world with dominion over all other life.
One of the first steps of such money power towards total assumption of rule has been the eradication of kings and kingly power.
Even though a king might be lead into connivance with the banker’s schemes, through lack of understanding, he always could still
awaken and discover his mistake, and realizing the sword was still in his hand, take measures to regain his prerogative. Therefore
he had to be disposed of, or reduced to paid and willing servant.
In Sparta there seems to have been another obstacle to the promoters of that “Phony” democracy advocated by international
money power, namely the Ephorate whose existence was undoubtedly linked to that national money power of Sparta as instituted,
or reinstituted under the protection of Lycurgus. Of the Ephors it may be said their main objectives were: “First the maintenance
of home defence and limiting of Spartan dominion to Messenia and Laconia (i.e. no imperial entanglements). 7 Second, the
fostering of a steady policy which lead to intervention in the struggle at Athens with the Peisistratids, and the expulsion of the
family; third an unrelenting hostility to the pretensions of royal power in the state.” “The Ephorate was a profoundly democratic
institution that feared and fought against tyranny both within and without the borders of Lacedaemon.” 8
Accepting the tyrant as front man of those alien agents of international money power, the trapezitae, in which category the
Peisistratids certainly fell, then the meaning of the policies of the Ephorate becomes clear; with the limiting of Spartan dominion
1
P.N. Ure, M.A.: The Origins of Tyranny, p. 8.
2
Humphrey Michell: Sparta, p. 27.
3
Paul Einzig: Primitive Money, pp. 36-40; also see E.J.C. McKay in Further Excavations at Mohanjo-Daro, p. 582.
4
Kingston-Higgins: A Survey of Primitive Money, p. 140. London; 1949.
5
Colin Renfrew: The Emergence of Civilization; pp. 483-544; London; 1972.
6
Paul Einzig: Primitive Money, p. 224; London; 1949.
7
Bracketed comment by present author.
8
Humphrey Michell, M.A.: Sparta, p. 30.
The Babylonian Woe 68
to Messenia and Laconia, was the establishment of an area from which Spartans could derive total economic freedom, sufficient to
maintain themselves, and that which above all maintained their way of life and its source, their national monetary system.
The intervention at Athens and the total opposition to the Peisistratids was obvious policy in view of the unrelenting pressure of
Athenian money power as a branch of International Money Power, against Sparta, city that had made mockery of the power of the
counting houses of the world financial centres, and had set up example in the world which would become inspiration to others.
The hostility to kingly power by the Ephorate, would be guided by what they doubtless saw was the need, if their national life was
to be maintained, of making sure that kings in no way had the power to surrender themselves, and the people they represented, to
the blandishments of international money power, whose opportunity, alas! has always been a weak and ill-instructed king.
However the remark of Archidamos, King of Sparta at the commencement of the “Great” Peloponnesian war reveals, even at that
day, 428 B.C. how the corruptive forces outpouring from Babylonia, with its immediate agents, had certainly reentered Sparta to
some degree.
“And war is not so much a matter of armaments as of the money that makes armaments effective.” 1
In his speech to his own people Archidamos also warns them of the 6000 talents war chest supposedly held by the Athenians in
the Acropolis. Both of these statements show no understanding of that in which a king should above all be instructed, National
Monetary Emission, and prove how right were the Ephors in the controls with which they surrounded kingship. Archidamos
privately was close friend of Pericles, scion of the Alkmeonidae, whose destiny, Greek history shows, to have always been closely
linked to that of international money power.
During the period when the national currency of Sparta maintained its integrity, it might be safe to say that the Spartan, in so far as
it is possible for true freedom to exist, was a free man. Indeed the helots were more than likely more free by a long way than are
the labouring classes of this day; and certainly more free than those classes of the semi-mass production lines of the other Greek
Cities, whose monetary systems were almost all, whether fiduciary and of state issue or not, at the mercy of the bankers, and
therefore the manipulators of the value of bullion and slaves, wherever it was they maintained their centre; generally assumed to
be Babylonia and its outposts, Lydia, and Naucratis in the Nile Delta, and Phoenicia, and Athens, and Cyzicus and Colchis and
many other cities in key positions to trade with the world beyond.
A monetary system, simple, inviting neither peddlers of luxury, panders or pornographers to make mockery of the lives of the
people, issued and regulated by a benevolent state, and undoubtedly with its units paid into circulation with care and attention to
the result on the national well-being and strength, bred a sturdy independent people completely contemptuous of the gold madness
raging elsewhere. They were an example by which other great peoples came to profit, outstandingly the Romans. They lived with
a feeling of great superiority to the Athenians, who, while having a plentiful currency, except during the periods of exhaustion of
the Laureion silver mines, were exposed to all the evils of control over their political life by alien money power through the
trapezitae.
History gives much information about the means whereby money was collected and raised and spent, but nothing as to those
shadowy figures who institute its units in the first place, and, as in the case of the banker’s “democracies,” inject them into the
circulation.
As to when international money power reentered Sparta, there is little enough evidence. But the outlook of King Archidamos
suggested it had made quite some progress by the date of the commencement of the Peloponnesian war, and it may be safely said
that to win that war, out of which could come nothing but gain to international money power, Sparta had to make almost total
concession. The final victory over Athens and her Empire, which ended the war, achieved the purposes of the international bullion
and slave traders as surely as final defeat would so have done. As it will be remembered, the relaxation and luxury that inundated
Rome after the second Punic war, as a result of the concessions that had been made to international bullion and slave traders in
order to be able to re-arm after Cannae, and ultimately drive Hannibal out of Italy, and defeat him in his own territory, within 25
years dragged the Romans down 2 to a debauched money mad mob, though still mighty through the employment at arms of the
defeated peoples.
Similarly, after the Peloponnesian War, like causes had done the same for Sparta, and it was but 25 years later, in 371 B.C., the
Spartan Phalanx, softened to the core, crumbled into bloody ruin at Leuctra, to Epaminondas the Theban and never again
recovered the élan that had made it the victor of a hundred battles, for the Spartans now, more than any, were consumed by the
corrupting diseases of money madness and its attendant liberalism.
1
Thucydides: The Peloponnesian War, Book I, Ch. 6.
2
Sallust who lived from 86 B.C. to 35 B.C. drew the following picture of the state of society at that time: “ When freed from the fear of
Carthage, the Romans had leisure to give themselves up to their dissensions, then there sprang up on all sides troubles, seditions, and at last
civil wars. A small number of powerful men, whose favour most of the citizens sought by base means, exercised a veritable despotism under
the imposing name, sometimes of the Senate, at other times of the ‘People.’ The title of good or bad citizen was no longer the reward of what
he did for or against his country for all were equally corrupt; but the more anyone was rich, and in condition to do evil with impunity, provided
he supported the present order of things, the more he passed for a man of worth. From this moment the ancient manners no longer became
corrupted gradually as before; but the depravation spread with the rapidity of a torrent and youth was to such a degree infected by the poison of
luxury and avarice, that there came a generation of people of which it was just to say, that they could neither have patrimony nor suffer others
to have it.” Sallust: Fragm. I.12-13.
The Babylonian Woe 69
That by 360 B.C., the ancient money system that had been the factor behind the morale of the Spartan of Thermopylae was little
more than a memory, is revealed by the following quotation taken from Alexander Del Mar:
“The crime of Gylipus, B.C. 360 and the decree offered upon its exposure, viz. ‘That no coin of gold or silver be admitted into
Sparta, but that they should use the money that had formerly obtained,’ shows that as this decay of the state and weakening of
credit went on, gold or silver coins, at or near their bullion value, gradually crept into circulation as money. The failure of the
decree to pass is conclusive that the iron numerical system was no longer practicable.” 1
In other words, the damage to that which had been Sparta and its people done by the ruler who first of all turned a blind eye to
dealings in the precious metals, the regrowth of international trade, and no doubt the holding of deposits in Athenian Banks, and
who failed to deal with ferocity with those who interfered with the pelanors either by counterfeiting or speculation, was
irreparable. It seemed this time the clock could not be turned back.
Thus while Sparta finally collapsed before the unremitting pressure of the Athenian, or better put, the international money market,
seeming to yield its ancient strength and the sources of its independence, the Athens that carried on, as well, partly for reasons as
elsewhere given, was but a shadow of itself with the approach of the exhaustion of the mines, and thence the failure of the base of
its money power and the “confidence” essential to its maintenance. Moreover, still in the hands of the bankers as a centre of trade
for trade’s sake, Athens was become but a name. As with Rome by the time of the Civil Wars, its original people had disappeared
into that mass of freed slaves, and immigrants from elsewhere, the “sojourners,” who were now a large part of the Athenian
population, and for whose leaders Xenophon the journalist obviously fronted when he proposed that special taxes should be lifted
from foreigners who at the same time were not to be required to do military service. 2 (Here it might be remarked that it is perhaps
unfortunate that should still survive the writings of a paid propagandist, so similar to the writings of some of his brethren today,
when so little remains of Greek literature relative to the total output.)
Of Spartan money as reinstituted under the patronage of Lycurgus, Ernest Babelon, famous French Numismatist of the 19th
Century, wrote:
“A long time after the use of money had been spread throughout the Hellenic world, Sparta continued as through tradition, to
make use of ingots of iron as a means of exchange. These bars were known under the description of (gâteau de pâtisserie).
Each one weighed an Aeginetic Mina, and to carry only six of them, that is to say about 536 Kg., a wagon drawn by two oxen
was required. This information supplied to us by Xenophon and Plutarch agrees with that from central Italy where
cumbersome bars of bronze were carried in carts; ‘Aes Grave plaustris quidam convehentes,’ said Titus Vivius. All kinds of
stories circulated on the subject of the famous Pelanors of Sparta that seem to have remained in use until the Persian Wars. It
was said, for instance that the iron used in the manufacture of this money was unsuitable for any other purpose and was
rendered brittle by an operation consisting of heating it until red-hot, then quenching it in vinegar. In the conservative capital
of Laconia it appears that these ingots of iron were the sole money in use and all citizens were forbidden under penalty of
death to possess any other money. When Epaminondas died he was so poor that nothing was found in his house in the way of
wealth other than an old iron. At Thebes the native land of Epaminondas where money was known and struck at an early date,
found in the residence of the hero could have no more than a superstitious character.”
This surprises us less especially as since the 7th century, Pheidon, King of Argos, when he struck the first silver money of Aegina,
and introduced a standard system of weights and measures into the Peloponnese, withdrew the former iron spits from circulation
that had served as money until then, and consecrated a certain number of samples, “in Ex-voto,” in the sanctuary of Hera at Argos.
At the time of Aristotle they could still be seen in the Temple.” 3
Babelon, most learned scholar as he was, however reflects the complacent attitude of the bankers of the end of the last century,
which was founded on the idea, such had been their luck during the previous century, that their millennium had finally come. With
him, money was precious metal, and precious metal was money. Although of interest, his information, a repetition of Xenophon
1
A. del Mar: A History of Money in Antiquity, p. 165.
2
Xenophon: A Discourse upon improving the Revenues of the State of Athens, pp. 311-13; (Trans. Charles Davenant, London, 1771).
3
“Longtemps après que l’usage de la monnaie eut été partout répandu dans le monde Hellénique, Sparte continuait par tradition, a se servir de
lingots de fer comme intermédiaires des échange. Ces lingots était connu sous le nom de (gâteau de Pâtisserie). Ils pesaient chacun une mine
éginétique et pour en transporter six seulement, c’est a dire environs 4536 Kg il fallait un chariot attelé de deux boeufs. Ce renseignement qui
nous fournissent Xenophon et Plutarch, est conforme a ce qui se passait dans l’Italie centrale où les encombrantes lingots de bronze étaient
transporté sur des chariots: “aes grave plaustris quidam convehentes,” dit Titus Vivius. Il circulait toutes sortes de fables au sujet du fameux
Pelanor de Sparte, qui parait être rester en usage jusqu’a l’époque des guerres médiques: on disait par exemple que le fer destiné a fabriquer
cette monnaie était impropre à tout autre usage et rendu cassant par une opération qui consistait à la faire rougir au feu et a la tremper ensuite
de fer était, parait-il exclusif, et défense sous peine de morte, fur faite à tout citoyen de posséder une autre monnaie.
Quand Epaminondas mourut il était si pauvre qu’on ne trouva dans sa maison, pour toute fortune, qu’un vieil en fer. A Thèbes, la patrie
d’Epaminondas ou la monnaie fut connu et frappée de bonne heure, trouve dans la demeure du héros ne pouvait avoir qu’un caractère
superstitieux. Ceci nous surprendra d’autant moins que dès le septième siècle, Phidon, roi d’Argos, lorsqu’il fit frappés un système régulier de
poids et mesures, retira de la circulation les vieilles broches de fer qui auraient servit de monnaie jusqu’à là, et en consacra un certain nombres
d’exemplaires en “ex-voto” dans la sanctuaire de Héra à Argos En temps de Aristotle on voyait encore dans le Temple.” (Ernest Babelon: Les
Origines de la Monnaie. p. 79; Paris; 1897.)
The Babylonian Woe 70
the journalist and Plutarch, offers not much more light. Though over two thousand years had gone by, precious metal money and
its promoters still ruled, despite a dozen great kingdoms and empires having risen at its behest and having fallen at its behest Did
Babelon see the shadow which lurked behind the throne, he closed his eyes and turned his head away!
Lycurgus was without doubt inspired to reestablish this national monetary system by the clear understanding he must have come
to have of the evil effects of this gold and silver madness, and its disastrous effects as a result of the operations of the trapezitae or
bankers, relative to the destruction of national morale and being. Precious metal coinage was currency whose total circulation the
state could in no way control because of the desirability of its material internationally. In the common money market of the silver
bullion brokers it was material, which, whether minted into money by state authority or otherwise, produced a money always of
value regardless of local convention. Its value was dictated by the arbitrary decision of that international fraternity who controlled
its mining, and the slaves that mined it, and out of manipulation of that pyramid of abstract money they created thereon, controlled
the political affairs of states.
The money that had been established in Sparta was of value to Spartans alone. Although no record exists of such matter, it may be
safely assumed that the Pelanors and the leather multiples or divisibles of Suidas, entered the circulation as against state
indebtedness; thus reducing taxation, that vicious destroyer of peoples, to relatively negligible amounts. Their pitted and otherwise
worthless appearance deriving from their being immersed in vinegar when red hot, made them of no value for any other purpose
than that for which they were intended. The use of this national money was the force that gave Sparta the leadership of Hellas
until the end of the Peloponnesian War, even if decline had commenced with the execution of the great General Pausanias 1 by the
Ephors in 479 B.C., and was that which necessarily dictated the policy of the extirpation of the tyrannies; the tyrant always being
representative for the agent of international money creative power through precious metal control. There might be temptation to
assume the pelanors were a system of “Iron Greenbacks.” But while they resembled the “Greenbacks” in this that they were the
total will to be of the Spartans, 2 assuming the truth of their great weight, as pointed out above, they may have been more in the
character of that monetary system of very ancient days of which the stone rings of Uap are a last remaining evincement.
A healthy wholesome people who controlled totally their state and existence would have little reason to accumulate money
fortunes, and wealth as distinct from the land which was their patrimony; and as such money fortunes begin and end as little more
than figures in the banker’s ledger, nor could they be guided into becoming mouthpieces for the policies of the bankers. Meals
were eaten in common amongst men as in Carthage of earlier days, and a genuine contempt for luxury existed. A simple life was
not sought after, so much as it came of its own accord as a natural outcome of such monetary system created for their better and
right living, and which preserved them from the encroachments of that liberalizing, demoralizing, and debt creating force of
international trade, and its destructive effect on the esprit de corps of any particular race or people who are foolish enough to
permit its proponents to have their way.
Although it was said of the early days of the Laws of Lycurgus and his monetary reforms that precious metals seized in War were
deposited with the Arcadians, of later days Augustus Boeckh wrote of gold and silver in Sparta:
“Sparta during a period of several generations, swallowed up large quantities of the precious metals; as in Aesop’s Fables, the
footsteps of the animals which went in were to be seen, but never of those which came out. The principal cause of this
stagnation was that the state kept the gold and silver in store, and only reissued them for war and foreign enterprise; although
there were instances of individuals who amassed treasures according to the law.” 3
Xenophon stated that Lycurgus made the privilege of citizenship equally available to all who observed what was enjoined by laws,
without taking any account of weakness of body, or scantiness of means; which would mean that no Spartan suffered in respect to
the mess or syssition to which he was entitled to belong, on account of economic condition. Xenophon had lived in Sparta and was
writing before the loss of Messenia. Aristotle who declared failure to pay dues entailed political disenfranchisement, wrote after
the loss of Messenia in 370 B.C., and the certain penetration by the bankers of the Piraeus, and the assumption of control of
Spartan fiscal affairs which it may safely be said, they were already conceded by an already corrupted Sparta, ready to accept any
humiliation to save itself from total ruin. The final military collapse at Leuctra rose from that weakened condition that followed
the apparent victory of the “Great” Peloponnesian War, and those concessions that already would have been made to the
international bankers, now in the Persian court, as a result of the desperate need of the Spartans for ships. The loan of 5000 talents
towards the building of ships which was granted to Sparta by Persia as a result of the Treaty of Miletus, 412 B.C., would not have
been granted without major concessions being exacted; most likely abrogation of those Spartan edicts forbidding the sojourn of
1
Pausanias was the commander of the fleet of the Greek allies. After his success against the Persians on land at Plataea, in the same year, 479
B.C., he reduced both Cyprus and Byzantium. According to the record, he was executed by the Ephors by being starved to death in the temple
of Athena of the Brazen House, having been found guilty of (kingly) domineering which was supposed to have alienated Ionia. The real reason
of his disgrace and execution would have been buried amongst the secrets of National or International money power. He had most likely
entered into secret dealings with the latter. (Thucydides: The Peloponnesian War; Book I; Ch. 10.)
2
According to A. del Mar, the iron currency of the pelanors was strictly a numerical system; confined to Sparta, it was a national system
having no relationship to International Standards or ratios with other metals; thus being identical in character to the “Greenback” paper money
issued by President Abraham Lincoln, during the American Civil War, and by which means the schemes of the international bullion braking
fraternity were temporarily frustrated.
3
Augustus Boeckh: The Public Economy of Athens, p. 43, Vol. I.
The Babylonian Woe 71
foreign traders etc. on Spartan territory. It would not take long, once such traders had been admitted, for them to undermine the
morale of that which had been Sparta, by spreading the money madness, and the promotion of luxury 1 and the creation of
unnatural concern with sex, and body needs. Of this situation Polybius, as quoted by Humphrey Michell wrote the following:
“As long as they aspired to rule over their neighbours or over the Peloponnesians alone, they found the supplies and resources
furnished by Laconia itself, adequate as they had all they required ready to hand and quickly returned home whether by land or by
sea. But once they began to undertake naval expeditions and to make military campaigns outside the Peloponnese, it was evident
that neither their iron currency nor the exchange of their crops for commodities which they lacked, as permitted by the laws of
Lycurgus, would suffice for their needs. These enterprises demanded a currency in universal circulation and supplies drawn from
abroad, and so they were compelled to beg from the Persians, to impose tribute on the islanders, and exact taxes from all the
Greeks. For they recognized that under the legislation of Lycurgus, it was impossible to aspire, I will not say to supremacy in
Greece, but to any position of influence.” 2
The fact is however, Sparta, while following the Laws of Lycurgus had dominated Greece in more or less degree. As soon as she
lost sight of the meaning and purpose of such laws, she became just another petty state; an agency for the subterranean control by
international banking through manipulation of the silver and gold bullion basis of her currency; each man, concerned with his own
need and greed, aimlessly following the pretty bubble which was the illusion of the banker’s “wealth.” The old order, and that
which had given them strength and national morale, was soon destroyed through the promotion of foreigners and the lower castes,
and the helots, who merely took the name but not the meaning; also by the stirring up of women towards rejection of their
subordinate place in life, and therefore instituting insidious attack on the natural order of the home, out of which is bred the
natural order of life itself.
The later age of Aristotle, with its hard and realistic facts as referred to by some writers, was no more realistic than the earlier age
of Xenophon. Rather it was less so. It was the age of the triumph of those international interests whose arming and instigation of
the Messenian helots in an earlier age had decided Spartans to accept that structure of law as advocated by Lycurgus, which meant
surrender of so much ease of living, rather than become the same as most other Greek states, an alien money manipulators
paradise, with, as Theognis of Megara put it: “Tradesmen reigning supreme and the bad lording it over their betters.”
As the earliest finds of the clay facsimiles of precious metal coinage at Athens, seem to date around the middle of the fifth century
B.C., 3 it may be assumed that one way or the other, either through Spartans permitted to reside at Athens, or through those
Spartan mercenaries who travelled the world seeking employment for their skill at arms, the lust for having, one man more than
his neighbour, slowly became injected into them. Perhaps Spartan mercenaries, who always required to be paid in those
international currencies of silver and gold, returning from abroad via Athens, had been inveigled into depositing their pay in such
gold or silver, with the bankers of the Piraeus, with whom it might “grow” from interest; taking home the baked clay coins as
evidence of their account, and thus evading contravention of the Spartan laws in respect to possession of gold and silver.
With the resumption of the rule of international money power in later Spartan history, one of the most outstanding instances of
that sickness rotting the fibres of their racial morale, was the tale of those Homoioi who seemed to have fallen in the social scale
and were no longer able to take their places in those great messes, the syssitiones, the breeding places of that esprit de corps that
was Sparta. Scholars give various reasons for these “disenfranchised” Spartans apparently known as the hypomeiones. The reason
for their coming to be is however more than clear. They are the direct result of the power to discriminate, which is the natural
outcome in favour of the banker, of that actual god-power he exercises once installed as local money creator.
More than likely after the Peloponnesian War, and certainly after the battle of Leuctra in 371 B.C., the reestablished bankers,
following usual policy, would have taken care that certain families, who this caste of men instinctively realized might yet create
opposition to them, were dispossessed by one means or another. With that banker created money as being now the necessary
qualification for membership to the syssitiones, it was a small matter to make sure that such persons whose disenfranchisement
they planned, never had enough. 4 Clearly in such later day, the syssition or mess charges, being assessed in silver money whose
issue the bankers controlled, those to whom such alien bankers extended no favours, and therefore ultimately dispossessed through
mortgage and foreclosure, not having any longer the wherewithal to pay, no longer belonged. Further, seeing their former helots
raised up to place of honour and riches by bankers created wealth, and certainly by the reign of King Cleomenes III (228-219
B.C.), 5 actually sitting in their place in the syssition, little desire to retrieve such a distinctly lost cause remained.
The Spartan, whether poor or whether rich (in land), in the days of the national currency had been the social equal of any other
Spartan; however, as much as anything, the slow decay of the Spartan principle derived from a most outstanding omission in the
1
Aristotle: The Politics, Book II, Ch. 9.
2
Polybius VI. 49. (Humphrey Michell: Sparta, p. 305.) François Lenormant: La Monnaie dans L’Antiquité, p. 215-216; Book II, Tome I.
3
François Lenormant: La Monnaie dans L’Antiquité, p. 215-216; Book II, Tome I.
4
By corollary, those prepared to promote the bankers’ policies, however subversive or destructive, would be amply provided for. Of this period
Professor A.H.M. Jones (Sparta, p. 39; Oxford; 1967) makes comment: “After Aegospotami there was such an influx of gold and silver that the
conservatives tried to revive the Lycurgan ban, and it was decided that the treasury might hold gold and silver but not individuals. Nevertheless
part of the Spartiate’s mess contribution was in Aeginetan Obols.” (Italics present author’s.)
5
Humphrey Michell, M.A.: Sparta, p. 78.
The Babylonian Woe 72
constitution which was total lack of provision for the redistribution of wealth at certain definite intervals, and the cancellation of
debt as in the Hebrew custom of the 49th year. 1
Needless to say, even in the days of the national currency, there must have been tendency towards economic inequality resulting
from such omission; 2 but the rapid increase of such economic inequality after the return of the bankers, that certainly followed the
“Great” Peloponnesian War, additional to furthering the breakup of the caste system that previously had obtained in Sparta in
some degree, and wherein each man had known his place in the order of society, also caused a further breakup in the natural order
of life of Spartan man as master of home and family.
In that Spartan society wherein women had always known considerable freedom relative, say, to their Athenian sisters, the control
of wealth however designated, passed substantially into the hands of women. 3 Concern for the growth of “Money,” no doubt, just
as in this day, replaced care for their men, and concern for themselves as mothers of the race, and concern for the growth of their
children.
“Two fifths of the land and wealth had come into their hands, simply because lack of men left them as heiresses, and this wealth
they used extravagantly, maintaining race horses which they exhibited at the Olympic games, costly equipages and fine clothes.
They meddled in the affairs of state and brought undue influence upon the conduct of the government.” 4
In such society, this stratum of wealthy women have no respect for men as such, too often. While perhaps not classified as
hetaerae, who all said and done, had served some useful purpose to men, they clearly lived public lives very much the same as the
hetaerae.
Such women, their heads full of figures and pride, would have served most usefully those alien money powers who ever have
sought to further their purposes through corrupt and malleable persons. Women, rarely corrupt in the sense that a man may be
corrupt, because of their natural need to shelter behind what seems to be strength, as arrogant Money Power would appear to
them, are malleable. Their own Spartan men, either dead, and if not dead, completely confused with the new liberalization
programme of the returned bankers, were virtually enslaved; therefore they turned for the protection they needed to what seemed
to be the new strength, pudgy and gross though it may have been.
1
Leviticus; Ch. 25: (King James Version).
2
Aristotle: The Politics, Book II, Ch. 9.
3
Ibid.
4
Humphrey Michell: Sparta, p. 50.
5
Further support is given to the opinions of the present author in respect to money creation and issuance by the remarks of Dr. Paul B. Trescott
in his work: Money, Banking, & Economic Welfare (Page 55), in which the process of deposit creation in modern times (which would be
known as money creation if more direct language were used), is briefly, but aptly summarized.
According to Dr. Trescott, in order to make a loan of $1000.00 to a customer, “a bank needs only to credit his account with $1000.00 in its
books by a stroke of the pen.” The following words of Dr. Trescott certainly convey the impression that, despite the fact that nothing has been
given by the bank in question that will cause any decrease in its assets, the customer will give the bank something of real value “in exchange
for the deposit credit,” his IOU, “or an interest bearing security.” According to Dr. Trescott, this process by which deposits are created,
consequently causes increase in the total money supply. Dr. Trescott further remarks: “The process of creating deposits is obviously a simple
and painless one for the banks.”
The Babylonian Woe 73
enthroned. Such “Politicians” as turned to look a little too closely at the hand that fed them, promptly found their “Perks,” 1 or
“Political Rewards,” cut off.
Should any government begin to be restless, and unwilling to accept the axiom that it should have no real say in that most serious
matter of all, monetary emission, the line of communication from the god in heaven to the people, then it would be but a short
time before private money creative power transferred its favours to the so-called opposition. Funds would be made available
sufficient to guarantee under normal circumstances their winning the “Election” and their consequent assumption of the
government. At the same time funds would be withdrawn from the “Political Party” previously in control of the “government”;
which would very likely mean that, in the following confusion, men more “suitable” and “pliable” would force their way to the
top; so that even if that particular government was reelected, private money creative power would have no further fears. The price
was always continuance of those policies most needed by such private money creative power necessary for its own real purposes,
and therefore the continuance of its hegemony.
The greater part of the units of exchange as emitted by private money creative power are of no intrinsic value other, perhaps, than
those denoted by precious metal symbols, and with which the confidence of peoples and rulers was gained. Therefore the cost of
instituting that total control of any state so “captured” by private money creative power, i.e., the bankers, was virtually nil, since
clearly such state financed its own lamentable condition!
It is clear that each unit issued into circulation, of fraudulent origin or otherwise, reduced by an exact valuation, the worth of
previous units as worked in the exchanges; transferring such loss of worth to the holder of the new unit. If later, with growth of
industry deriving from the creation of such unit, all circulating units increased in worth, such increase in worth rarely caught up
with the original decline in worth, or purchasing power of those previously existing units.
The steady decline in worth or purchasing power, of the unit of exchange at any place and in any period of history, will be
sufficient proof in itself of the existence of secret creation and manipulation of abstract units of exchange by a relatively invisible
force. Only under most unusual circumstances would even a sharp rise in the number of precious metal units circulating, cause
distinct and disturbing inflation of values, without an accompanying fraudulent, and secret expansion of the total number of
working units, through issuance of false receipts against non-existing valuables or non-existing warehoused goods, or by creation
of transferable ledger credit page entry money against assignment of “collateral”. Precious metal units in themselves soon wear
out, disappear for purposes of speculation abroad, or are hoarded.
Thus the creation and issuance of money constitutes free gift to the issuer when such issuer be private person. It automatically and
immediately despoils he who thinks himself to have money or to be a person of worth. It is an indirect and hidden form of taxation
no less than any other such indirect or hidden tax. 2
If, continuing to speak of ancient times, such units of money, fraudulent or otherwise, were accepted by the simple folk as money,
and seemed to serve equally well as had served that lawful money of earlier times yet again, which had been an order on the
treasury or warehouses of the god of the city, then indeed, such units were money to all intents and purposes of the immediate
needs of exchange. The fact of their legal issuance as a loan at interest against goods and services as collateral pledges, placed in
the hands of their creator and issuer the power of total discrimination, formerly recognized as being the sole and absolute
prerogative of the god, through his servants the priest-kings of ancient times; those who were the carriers of the breath of Life
Eternal from God to Man. As time went on, the fact of their creation, issue, acceptance, and effectiveness in the exchanges, once
the people had resigned themselves to slow inflation of values, placed in the hand of this private creator of these originally
fraudulent exchange units, All-Power!
1
In days gone by it was customary for most who did business with ships, to make a gift, usually money, to both Master and First Mate. These
gifts were known as “Perks”. The “Perks” of the Master were unknown to the First Mate; in some degree they took the place of commissions
that shipmasters had formerly received on cargo bookings in the days before the advent of telegraphs etc., when they truly were kings of the sea
in many senses of the word.
2
Hence the existing situation in what is left of Anglo-Saxon governments: As their (unnecessary) expenditure beyond tax income is financed
by the creation of debt directly to private persons, which indeed are the Banks (that everyone so unquestioningly accepts these days as an
established feature in living) under incredible conditions,* units of exchange in circulation automatically suffer increase, and consequently
there is a steady fall in their purchasing power.
Such fall in purchasing power immediately and arbitrarily constitutes a hidden tax on all who hold monetary units in one way or another.
Levied in an unseen manner by those private persons who supposedly make the so-called loan to the government, its effects are not understood
by the people, nor its origin.
*For a clear statement of the workings of this unbelievable system in Canada, see Brief submitted to the Royal Commission on Banking and
Finance by Mel Rowatt, Ottawa, 1964.
Further than this hidden tax imposed with dubious legality, there is the absurdity of an interest rate, which, parallel to that of previous so called
loans, creates a yearly interest bill which in itself necessitates further such borrowing, without ever thinking of paying off the principal; such
system necessarily compels a government that has been trained to unquestioned acceptance of its financial liabilities to be servant in some
considerable degree, of those private persons, its supposed benefactors.
For the opinions of orthodox Political Economy see: James M. Buchanan: The Public Finances; pp. 359-69. Homewood; Illinois; 1965. Reuben
A. Kessel and Armen A. Alchian: Effects of Inflation, Journal of Political Economy, Vol. LXX, pp. 521-37, December, 1962.
The Babylonian Woe 74
Whatever the material on which the units of exchange or their divisibles or multiples were recorded, the customer still thought in
terms of silver, as even today most still think in terms of gold though none to speak of has circulated for thirty five years or so. So
long as the ruler concurred in the first place in the conspiracy to denominate these exchange units as being as acceptable as those
previously issued by the god and his people, and between whom the king had been the connecting link, then the power of
preferment or rejection was soon in the hands of the banker as agent for what corresponded in that day to the international bankers
of today totally in opposition to that natural order of life in which the unit of exchange represents the will of the benevolent god.
Needless to say, this person would not extend his preferment to those who instinct told him might be able to come to understand
the real truth of the emptiness of those shadowed vaults from which his hand reached forth. It might safely be assumed that
discrimination would be exercised against those whose obliteration was included in the overall plans of those mystic, if not satanic
figures that lurked in the inner sanctuaries of temple, mint, or counting house; in which secret places were formulated those
policies that decided the promotion or otherwise of kings, tyrants, dictators, or political parties.
The extraordinary wealth and power according to the standards of the day of this secretive, and apparently humble money power,
is shown clearly by the following extract from Babelon: 1
“We know that the Greek bankers were money changers; all the more important financial transactions were negotiated
through their agency. Their counters were the meeting place of businessman and the stock market. They controlled at the same
time the sea-borne trade, and the affairs of the caravans, above all, in Asia Minor. The exploitation of mines was often in their
hands. These guardians of treasure received the precious metal deposits belonging to private persons or traders, keeping open
account for their clients, thus accumulating enormous amounts; they hoarded, they loaned to Princes as well as private
individuals. Listen then to the story of Nicholas of Damascus more eloquent than any commentary:
‘Wishing to carry the war into Caria, Alyatte, King of Lydia (610-561 B.C.) gave the order to his commanders to bring him
their contingents at Sardis, by a certain day. Amongst the generals chosen was Croesus, the oldest son of the King, at that time
Governor of Adramyttium and of the plain of Thebes. Negligent and prodigal, ill regarded by his father on account of his
dissipations, very desirous of being received back into his father’s good graces, and of confounding his calumniators, but not
having the wherewithal to raise and hire mercenaries, the young Prince, in order to overcome his embarrassment, resolved to
contract a loan. With this purpose in mind he sought out Sadyattes, the richest merchant of Lydia. This person, occupied with
his ablutions, firstly let Croesus wait impatiently at his door. Then he agreed to receive him, but this was only to refuse him
money; ‘If I must lend to all the sons of Alyattes,’ he cried, ‘there will not be enough!’
Rebuffed, Croesus proceeded to Ephesus. There, an Ionian friend, Pamphaes, learning the reason of his visit, obtained a sum
of a thousand gold staters from his father, Theocharides, who was possessed of considerable fortune, and which he hastened to
bring to the necessitous prince. Thanks to these subsidies, Croesus, furnished with troops, was the first of all at the rendez-
vous, and regained the favour of his father who took him in as partner in this expedition.’
Croesus later on revenged himself on Sadyattes who had turned him away, confiscating his treasure to the endowment of the
temple of Artemis at Ephesus. The plunder taken from the unhappy banker was large enough to make two pillars of gold and
the golden calves, with which the temple of the Goddess was adorned.
Later we see a banker of Caelenae, Pythias, of Lydian extraction, make a gift to King Darius of a plane tree in gold and a vine
in gold. Some while afterwards, doubtless in fear that his immense fortune might only come to excite the covetousness of the
prince, Pythias made up his mind to ward off the danger by making a concession. Spontaneously he offered Xerxes subsidies
for the war. As the Great King was questioning him in kindly curiosity as to the extent of his wealth, the banker confessed, not
without misgivings that he possessed in his coffers two thousand talents of silver, and that he was short of four million darics,
by only seven thousand darics.
Sadyattes, Theocharides, Pamphaes, Pythias, wealthy guardians of treasure, possessing the confidence of the public who as
well as princes, envied their riches, struck monetary ingots in the doorway of their counting houses.”
The above excerpt from Babelon and Nicholas of Damascus illustrates a clear cut case in ancient days of effort by money power
to control political succession; for the real reason of the refusal by Sadyattes of the loan to Croesus, although not recorded by
Babelon, was that Sadyattes had already pledged himself to the support of Panteleon, Croesus’ half-brother 2 and probably was
also the source of the rumours in regard to the “unsuitability” of Croesus for succession to the throne, and the unsatisfactory
reports to Alyattes. Panteleon was clearly more “suitable,” and more “pliable” than the strong minded Croesus, who, Sadyattes
probably knew via his spies, would be his enemy; although his offensive conduct towards a royal son would suggest he considered
his position inviolable. The surly arrogance of this Sadyattes in causing the young Croesus to wait at the door, and then refusing
him his request in no pleasant manner, so typical of this class of person today, as much as in Croesus’ day, undoubtedly caused
Croesus to enquire a little more deeply into this precious metal money “Racket” when he finally did become king, a “racket”
which allowed low and unsavoury persons to make a mockery of kingship. The results of his enquiries undoubtedly showed him
that above all, for his kingship to be meaningful, monetary emission had to be removed from the control of private persons.
Further evidence of history would suggest, in Lydia at least, Croesus destroyed the arrogance and power to subversion of this class
1
Ernest Babelon: Les Origines de la Monnaie, p. 106.
2
Herodotus; The Histories; Book I.
The Babylonian Woe 75
of persons, not the most noble amongst his subjects, by the institution of the issue of equal weights of precious metal or coin, as
state prerogative; thus, he thought, returning to himself as representative of the god on earth, that essential power so necessary
towards the maintenance of true order in life, the total control of monetary emission. That the reputed fate of Croesus after
conquest by Cyrus, the new Persian Monarch, founder of the Achaemenid Dynasty somewhat later on, was influenced by the
longing for revenge of those leaders of finance in Babylon City, in one way or another the main force behind Cyrus and his
conquests and for whom Sadyattes would very likely have been important agent or co-conspirator, as previously pointed out,
seems reasonable supposition.
Hence the real source of the so rapid decay of all relatively recent civilizations and so called empires of the last 6000 years, whose
establishment was so often due to the behind the scenes activities of bankers as agents for what was necessarily an internationally
spread network of bullion interests, was the complete dearth in the later days of such civilizations or empires, of dean and noble
men in places of control and power.
Such natural and truly dedicated leadership had been destroyed, either by the planned discriminatory activities of the bankers, or
by the never dying fires of war that maintained these so-called “Empires”. Their places had been taken by the progeny of their
slaves, or, as in Sparta, by their women.
Clearly in that day almost all money in circulation arrived there created and issued by private persons of a class stranger to the
whole world, and whose only guide was never more than their indifference to the miseries of mankind. Today, despite the
continuance of the naïve belief of those who toil from day to day, that this money is created and injected into the circulation by the
presumably benevolent will of the state, it is the same as in the days of the corruption and crumbling of the god-given distribution
systems of the Ancient Orient, in the face of the attack on their integrity, by the privately issued commodity currencies of silver.
This attack later having been intensified when, as a result of the stripping of the ornamentation from tomb and temple, both in
Egypt, and right across the ancient oriental world, that silver apex to the inverted pyramid of abstract money by which the great
banking houses were manipulating the exchanges, became further augmented by gold, the magic metal so long dedicated to
ornament for the god-kings, in life as in death, or to holy ritual. That burning metal, almost a god in itself, now falling into the
greasy hands of the money-changers, exchanged with silver in the ratio, so far as the middle East was concerned, of about 13:1. 1
So far as ancient Persian and Greek history is concerned, it will be quite safe to say that the apparent beneficiaries of such system
were front men for a wider and more international system extending from China to Britain, of which evidence in China may have
been that strange Hebrew community whose decaying fragments were found south of Pekin by the Jesuits who entered China in
the 17th Century; a community that knew nothing of the Talmud, or of Jesus Christ, and who consequently thought in terms of
Christians as in terms of a sect of themselves, and who undoubtedly were the descendants of the agents of a most ancient trading
community. 2 The evidence of this world wide financial system in Britain exists in the gold staters of the Iceni, Cassivellauni,
Brigantes etc. still existing, 3 and which circulated there long before Julius Caesar. Although gold was obtained in Wales and in
Ireland, its use as money could only have been inspired and organized from that central point where the original staters were
minted, the Near East and the cities wherein dwelt the controllers of international trade and mining.
Amongst other principles of political control by money power, certainly one of the most important of all, used in ancient times,
just as much as today, was that which is known as liberalism. Liberalism in simplified language meaning that he who hath shall
give to him who hath not; not so much out of proper charity, but so that he who hath not may come to put his foot on the neck of
him who (formerly) had, and who now foolishly gives him his own strength. Thus money power, by injecting liberalism along the
very arteries of society through those underground channels under its control, made sure that what might be described in the
language of today as “Permanent Revolution,” would prevent any power group from having control long enough to see the true
source of that which is the power of the ruler, if he is to truly be in the saddle, namely, monetary emission. Money Power, then as
today, fully understood the necessity towards the continuance of its hegemony, of the promotion amongst the leading families of
the states of corrupt persons who took pleasure in destroying their own; persons basically corrupt who had deeply drunk of the
poison of liberalism, persons possessed of the wealth of kings because so pleasing to the central designing force, though at the
same time having the natural outlook of the slave. truly strange combination!
One such family identified in ancient times with the promotion of liberalism and its attendant sister, welfarism, both equally
beneficial to money power, was that Athenian family known as the Alkmeonidae, who, although suspected at the time of the
Battle of Marathon (490 B.C.) as being the source of the heliograph that sent information across the bay of Marathon to the
Persian commanders, 4 strangely enough continued to maintain power and place at Athens. Equally strange had been the awarding
of the contract for the rebuilding of the Temple at Delphi after it had been burned down (548 B.C.), to this same family in exile
from Athens.
As previously surmised, International Money Power above all must have sought control of the great temples and oracles. Delphi
was such, and the oracle at Delphi was highly regarded over the ancient world. The building of a major temple was a gift which
1
A. del Mar: A History of Monetary Systems in Various States, p. 29, and pp. 35-53.
2
William C. White: Jews in Kaifeng; Toronto; 1966.
3
R.A.G. Carson: Coins, Ancient Medieval, and Modern, p. 70. London; 1962.
4
A.R. Burns: Pericles and Athens, p. 11; London; 1948.
The Babylonian Woe 76
must have been arranged by those interests who were best of all served by the family policies of the Alkmeonidae. It might safely
be said that if this same family had been rejected by Athens, the gift came from that financial force whose favour they had clearly
enjoyed from generation to generation: namely the money power that guided the policies of the Achaemenid Rulers of Persia and
Babylonia.
Pericles, scion of this notorious family, while being the front man for those forces driving Athens into war with Sparta, was the
instigator of the Donatives and later, of theorica, 1 outstandingly undermining factor to Athenian self-esteem and national morale.
Theorica allowed two oboli per person to the lessee of the Oratorium 2 and thus two corrupt purposes were served:
1. It made sure all or at least a great part of the citizenry attended the plays, thus keeping their minds off more serious matters as
do cinema and television particularly in this day; more especially keeping their minds off that most serious matter of all which is
true understanding of politics; in other words, understanding of the meaning of the essential forces that guided their existence.
2. It assured the lessee of the Oratorium (and that politician who most promoted his interests), a certain profit.
A third purpose would also have been served, although there is absolutely no record that says so: the maintenance of an
unbalanced budget and consequent stimulation of government indebtedness to private money creative power, i.e. the bankers. If
the sophistication of Sales Tax was known to Periclean Athens, 3 it may safely be assumed were also known the sophisticated
practices in relation to government indebtedness as practised particularly in Anglo-Saxon countries today. 4 Officially theorica was
drawn from the fund for war preparedness. The only conclusion that can be drawn as to the true meaning therefore of the
establishment of theorica, 5 so far as the bankers were concerned, was to further increase necessity of government borrowing in
time of war, and so strengthen the hold of that so called National Debt almost certainly held by themselves. 6
Thus the principles of the total hegemony of private money creative power were as clearly understood by its masters yesterday, as
much as they are today. The limiting factors to the complete destruction with which we are now threatened as a result of the flare-
up in this all consuming cancer which began about some three hundred years ago, and now rages on virtually uncontrollable, were,
at that time, that kings and councils still ruled, and kings still thought of themselves as the sons of God, the saviours of their
peoples. If in any way they had understood the malignance of this growth that had penetrated the sub-structure of life it would
have been short shrift for its controllers. Hence the necessity for an absolute secrecy most restrictive in its effects. Clay, the
material on which records were kept throughout Babylonia at least, did not have any of the potential of paper so far as went the
keeping of records. Parchment and papyrus while not standing up to constant use, were becoming increasingly rare and expensive,
and vellum, relatively rare, was not known until the time of Pergamum where the first books written on this material appeared in
198 B.C. 7
Neither did those states escape a certain international control of their money such as did not adopt the relatively new idea of
coined precious metal money, but continued to use copper, bronze orichalcum, or iron, and whose value depended on the scarcity
or otherwise of its circulating symbols relative to the need for them; designated a fiduciary money.
For instance, in the case of Greece, the silver bullion brokers who were clearly based at Athens, obviously would be able to
control the exchange rates of such cities as used their own fiduciary or national currencies, 8 if, as usually would be the case, such
cities sought the good graces of Athens towards obtaining food and raw materials and towards marketing their manufactures.
Thus, through the exchange rates, the bankers and bullion traders would also be able to exercise some control over the political
life of such cities. The City of Athens itself, its monetary system based directly on their internationally required products, silver
1
According to Augustus Boeckh in The Public Economy of Athens (Vol. II; p. 289): “The Public donations or distributions amongst the peoples
were of frequent occurrence. To these belong the distributions of corn which have been mentioned before, the cleruchiae and the revenues from
the mines, which, before the time of Themistocles (471 B.C.) were divided amongst the citizens; and lastly the money of the Theorica for the
introduction of which, Pericles is chargeable.”
2
Ibid. p. 290.
3
Display in the Royal Ontario Museum, 1972.
4
Bray Hammond and the staff of the Federal Reserve System (1939): The Federal Reserve System; Omni, Hawthorne, Calif. 1958.
5
Augustus Boeckh: The Public Economy of Athens, p. 289, Vol. II.
6
Ibid. p. 277. Vol. II. Analysis of the remarks of Demosthenes as quoted hereunder leave little doubt in respect to this matter:
“In ancient days” says Demosthenes “ everything that belonged to the state was costly and splendid, and no individual distinguished himself
from the multitude; and the proof of it is, that if any of you know the houses of Themistocles and Miltiades, and the famous men of that time,
he will see that they are not more magnificent than those of other people; but the buildings and construction of the State were of such size
and number, that it is not in the power of succeeding generations to surpass them--the Propylaea, the Docks, the Porticoes, the Piraeus, and
other works with which you see the city adorned! But now all who are concerned in the management of public affairs have a superfluity of
riches, that some have built private houses more magnificent than many public edifices and some of them have purchased more land than all
of you who are sitting in the court are together possessed of; but your public buildings and works, it is disgraceful to tell how scanty and
contemptible they are. What indeed can be said of your works? What of the parapets we throw up? Of the roads we construct and the
fountains and trifles at which we labour? Thus speaks the ardent enthusiast for the happiness and fame of his country; his speeches of
admonition might with a few alterations be adapted to the present age, in which such vast sums have been squandered away without
producing anything useful or durable.”
7
A. del Mar: History of the Precious Metals, p. 105; New York; 1968.
8
Augustus Boeckh: Public Economy of Athens, p. 43, Vol. I. London; 1828. Also Michael Grant, p. 3.
The Babylonian Woe 77
and gold, was clearly under their immediate control. If the state owned the mints, of which there seems to be no knowledge, it
would make no difference. The states own the mints today for what it means; which is little or nothing so far as goes control of
Monetary Emission. 1
With the end of the bronze age in warfare, from one end of the world to the other, enormous amounts of copper and bronze must
have come on to the markets of the world as scrap; much of which would have been obtained at little more than the cost of its
removal from national arsenals by the money changers or their agents.
Where copper and bronze fiduciaries, as at Rome, circulated at values many times more than their value by weight of metal on the
international bullion markets, relative to their value in silver or gold bullion, clearly such copper and bronze bullion such as came
on to the markets as military scrap, would have been more useful towards the counterfeiting of such currencies, than sold at its
bullion value. For instance, if the value of one libra of copper as offered on the bullion market (if such could exist) at Rome was
one Aes, the value of a minted Aes of one libra weight in an overvaluation of the minted coin relative to copper bullion prices
internationally, would be as the demand for them rose and fell, according to supply and demand.
It appears that at Rome during the middle Commonwealth, the overvaluation of the Aes relative to the same weight of bullion was
400-500%; in the countryside and more distant colonies often being far more. If in latter times (during the 18th Century A.D.), the
copper rouble of czarist Russia, issued at an overvaluation of up to 800% according to the value of copper bullion relative to the
price internationally of silver bullion, 2 brought into Russia a very inundation of counterfeits minted in Western Europe, 3 clearly
the of Aes at substantial overvaluation, made the creation and of counterfeit coin an equally profitable affair in ancient Rome.
Thus international money power would have succeeded in diminishing the beneficial effects of such national currency, continuing
to use Rome as the example, by mass counterfeiting, which would have seen rapid increase once gold and silver commenced to
circulate alongside the Aes after the Second Punic War. Clearly the main purpose of the counterfeiters, then, as agents in some
degree of the international silver bullion traders, would be to inject their copper or bronze counterfeits into circulation at the best
overvaluation possible, which would be through money-lending in the provinces, at the same time requiring repayment, if
possible, in silver and gold. Hence the steady disappearance of the precious metals from the circulation, was either due to the
activities of the smaller moneylenders dealing in counterfeit, or due to the activities of the Argentarii or Numularii making loans
in exactly the same manner as the bankers today, loans which never saw light as money, being always cheques in transit, but
which, in the final repayment were as often as not, gold, silver, or Aes; the later being immediately convertible into gold or silver,
which seems largely to have then moved Eastward.
This disappearance of the precious metals from the circulation 4 Eastward seems to have been a factor inspiring the vehemence of
Cicero in his Oration: Pro Flaccus. The indignation of Cicero as recorded in this Oration may be traced to the indifference of
certain persons who lived close to the Aurelian steps, to the good of the Roman State wherein they lived and whose solidarity
enabled them to arrange to have mobs intimidate the proceedings of the court which heard a person, probably a member of the
banking family known as the Lollii, 5 attempt to smear the reputation of Lucius Flaccus, who, as Praetor of Syria, had issued edict
forbidding this movement of precious metals Eastward for deposit at the Temple in Jerusalem. 6
Of Roman banking the great 19th century scholars, Mommsen and Marquardt, wrote: 7
“The conduct of banking was done for the most part through the intermediary of the argentarii and of nummularii: these last
were known under the name of collectarii mensularii. In countries of Greek origin there was a kind of state bank as at Tenos,
at Ilium, and at Temnos in Aeolide; they were also in Egypt: in every Nome was found a beneath the direction of a royal
employee, and through him as intermediary it was customary to make certain contracts and payments. Among the Romans, on
the contrary, it was only in the most extraordinary circumstances that public banks were organized under the direction of state
functionaries (mensa publica); thus amongst others, in 402-352 (B.C.) under the direction of quinqui viri mensarii, in order to
facilitate the liquidation of debts, by advances made against guarantees, with state funds, and during the period 538 to 543-216
to 211 B.C. for different reasons, and finally to carry out the collection of funds loaned free to the state.
1
The Royal Commission on Banking and Finance. Ottawa; 1964. Brief submitted by Mel Rowatt, and page 138 on “Swap “ deposits etc.
2
During the brief reign of Peter III (1762-1763 A.D.) the pood of copper was coined into 32 roubles, copper bullion itself being approximately
5 roubles per pood.
3
According to the memoirs of Count Munnich, to his knowledge 6,000,000 counterfeit roubles entered Russia from Western Europe being
exchanged as against the silver rouble at a profit of 566%. This amount was known. The unknown amount must have been much greater. A. del
Mar: Money and Civilization, p. 303; London 1886.
4
Naturalis Historia, xii, c. 18. Pliny. Minimaque computatione millies contena millia sesertium annis omnibus India et Seres peninsulaque illa
imperio nostro adimunt. Tanto nobis deliciae et feminae constant. (History of Monetary Systems, p. 126. A. del Mar.)
5
Michael Grant, (From Imperium to Auctoritas. p. 57.), makes mention of a banking family known as the Lollii. Cicero speaks of a Laelius;
(Orationes: Pro Flaccus, Book XVII.). They are more likely members of the same family.
6
Cicero: Orationes: Pro Flaccus, Book XVII. Clearly transfer of the precious metals in the time of Cicero meant transfer of prosperity in the
same way as it did in the European controlled world until recently.
7
Manuel des Antiquités Romaines, pp. 78-85; Tome Dixième; De l’Organisation Financière chez les Romaines. Théodore Mommsen, and
Joachim Marquardt. Paris. 1888.
The Babylonian Woe 78
It was about that time that the tabernae argentariae were established of which the first indications are in 443-399 B.C.; often
occurring later on.
It is through the intermediary of the argentarii that most payments were made, as also they were entrusted with the collection
of moneys due, the placing of capitals at interest, the sale of merchandise, and particularly the liquidation of estates by way of
auction sales and finally investments of all kinds; exchange transactions, notably the changing of foreign moneys and the sale
of Roman money appear originally to have been reserved to the nummularii.
Under this heading we must first of all take a look at the dealers in exchange, who had to check the qualifications of new
money; as such they seem to have had a mensa from which they put new money into circulation, taking in the course of their
business old money as well as foreign money, and it was their custom to set the rates of exchange; outside of Rome the
publicae mensae nummulariorum appeared to have existed. In second place this description applied to private persons whose
business was dealing in the precious metals. Concurrently with the argentarii, they conducted all the activities that go with
banking business; they accepted capitals for deposit, they made payments for the account of other people, they placed capitals
at interest and for exchange transactions they levied a charge or bonus. these bankers, the argentarii, the same as the
nummularii, were placed under the surveillance of state functionaries, praefectus urbi, at Rome during the empire, and in the
provinces under the surveillance of the governor. They were probably the subject of the granting of a franchise, or investiture,
that was only accorded to a very limited number of people; in the case of dispute they were obliged to produce their books
(rationes edere), which were evidence of payments made and transactions entered into. For their franchise they were
subjected to legal regimentation.
These books were of three kinds: in the first place was a cash book, codex accepti et expensi in which in order of date were
recorded the deposits and withdrawals of the argentarius with mention of the nature of the business and the names of the
persons interested. In second place, a running account (rationes, liber rationum) in which the banking operations of the
argentarius with every person involved were kept by debit and credit; thanks to which, it could be known at a moments notice
how much the merchant was owed by every one of his clients, and how much he had to pay out to him.
In third place a book was kept, adversaria, in which was preserved record of the transactions under way, and even having
their designation in code. Amongst these books, that which is peculiar to the argentarii, is the running account book, rendered
necessary by the great number of transactions; the cash book, on the contrary, in which were entered by order of date the
deposits and withdrawals, expensum ferre, acceptum referre, was kept by every head of a family until the IIIrd century A.D.,
in which period this custom fell into disuse.
mensae scripturae: The mensae scripturae served in that which touched the activities of banking, as much to establish
contract, as to furnish proof, and the greater part of payments were effected by transcriptions and endorsements recorded in
the account books of the argentarii; direct payment (domo ex arca sua) was rarely made, but it was very often made through
the intermediary of bankers (de mensa scriptura),whether moneys had been deposited with them for which they were obliged
to give account (rationem reddere), or whether it had been possible to open a credit with them out of which they made
payment following an assignment.”
The above excerpt from the works of two scholars of vast learning, is revealing. No doubt will be left with the reader who
understands modern day banking practices, that just as in today 95% of all money in circulation, is cheques and assignments in
transit, often written against credits granted by bankers where no actual funds previously existed, but however without which the
drive and turmoil of this civilization could not have come to be, so it was in Rome and in Greece. Indeed, for all those movements
of vast armies, and for all those movements of peoples through the consequent sale and transfer of slaves, and for the erection of
all those great works in stone, many of which still stand, from the pillars of Hercules to Parthia and Arabia, the instigative factor
was the same as the instigative factor behind all the mighty works and mysteries of today. It was none other than the driving force
of that abstract money that none can see, but that functions just the same as that which can be seen, the mysterious “Credit” of the
banker; force that once had been the will of a benevolent god, but now was an instrument towards the wilful redesign and
enslavement of mankind. In the late Roman Commonwealth and the early Empire, the assignments and cheques in transit may not
have equalled 95% of all money in circulation, and it is by no means impossible that they were even more, taking into account the
fact that today’s high speed printing presses and coining machines, the fount of the 5% of the circulation that can be seen, can
create these visible units on which the inverted pyramid of the invisible units is erected, at a hundred thousand or more times the
speed of slaves striking and finishing metal units of money by hand. 1
In Harpers Dictionary of Classical Literature and Antiquities, Roman banking is dealt with as follows, in close agreement with
Mommsen and Marquardt:. “The Argentarius thus did almost the same sort of business as a modern banker. Many persons
entrusted all their capital to them (Cicero: Pro. Caec. 6.16) and instances in which the argentarii made payments in the name of
those whose money they had in hand, are mentioned very frequently. A payment made through a banker was called per mensam,
de mensa or per mensae scripturam, while a payment made by the debtor in person was a payment ex arca or de domo. An
argentarius never paid away any person’s money without receiving a cheque (perscriptio), and the payment was then made either
1
According to A. del Mar in A History of the Precious Metals, (p. 88). “At that period when the coining press was unknown, the work of
coinage was done altogether by the hammer, shears, and file. A workman could scarcely finish more than twenty coins a day.”
The Babylonian Woe 79
in cash, or, if the person who was to receive it kept an account with the same banker, he had it added in the banker’s book, to his
deposit. This was likewise called perscribere or simply scribere. we also find that argentarii made payments for persons who had
not deposited any money with them: this was equivalent to lending money; which in fact they often did for a certain percentage of
interest.” 1
Thus banking was carried on in almost the same manner in the Roman world as in our world of today, and to those who
understand the significance of the practices of modern day banking, nothing could be clearer. Even the ostentatious display of a
metal safety deposit vault is recorded by the antiquarian, Lanciana, 2 of the time of Hadrian; doubtless to encourage people to leave
their valuables with the bank and so strengthen their “confidence.”
In the earlier days when the senate was truly government in the saddle, that is until the end of the integrity of the numerical
currency, with the resumption of the striking of silver money and therefore reentry into the orbit of the silver bullion brokers,
mining of the precious metals had been forbidden in Italy, 3 and copper mining had been state monopoly, clearly indicating the
futility of any discussion of whether the striking of coinage had been free or otherwise. Where the policy of the state had been to
maintain an overvaluation of its bronze coinage relative to bullion prices, 4 it is quite clear that it could in no way permit private
individuals the privilege of the mints, free or otherwise. To do so would be to concede them the right and the power to manipulate
price levels, and so, confounding the economy, dismay the rulers. Thus it was not until the time of Cicero that evidence appears of
private persons bringing bullion to the mints, 5 significantly coincidental with the general collapse of the ancient manners, and the
essential forces that had guided Rome, as is described by Sallust. 6
Such matters of state finance seem to have been well understood during the middle commonwealth. However, as a result of the
second Punic war and Trasimeno and Cannae 7 and the desperate need to rearm quickly that followed these unfortunate battles,
Rome clearly had been obliged to allow the whole currency system to become based on the international valuation of silver as
common denominator of values. She also had been obliged to permit the reduction of the value of the aes coinage to the value of
its weight as bronze bullion relative to the arbitrary value internationally of silver bullion.
It follows that it was only after Rome had thus surrendered much of her sovereign prerogative in money matters to the
international silver bullion brokers, reluctantly, as was shown by subsequent events, that growth of liberalism, and consequent
undermining of the morale of the people and their government, finally gave rise to the warlords known as the Triumvirate and the
beginning of rule which might best be described as complete negation of that which had been government by decree of the senate.
With the reckless abuse of the powers of their Imperium through those bankers who supported them, particularly in relation to
their right to strike money in the field, the warlords derived virtual independence from the auctoritas of an already corrupted
senate and when, in 23 B.C., the aes coinage which had been the backbone of the Republic, was returned to the senate with S.C.
Senatus Consulto (by decree of the senate) 8 stamped thereon, it was more in the nature of a concession to a dignity and authority
that once had been the reality guiding Roman political life, but now had become a meaningless front, a shadow.
Thus with the rise of the warlords, who were in effect, would-be tyrants under arms, each with his own Money Power, was the
triumph of the empire concept. In the case of Caesar, his supporting bankers appear to have been the L. Cornelius Balba for whom
the A. Hirtius of Caesar’s aes coinage as issued in the country of the Treveri in Gaul, seems to have been agent with H. Clovius,
emittor in Cisalpine Gaul of Caesar’s orichalcum (brass) issues. Also C. Vibius Pansa and Q. Sulpicius Rufus, all of whom are
described by Michael Grant as “eminent financiers.” 9 Of this period An Encyclopaedia of World History says: “If the crossing of
the Rubicon marked the final fall of the Republic, the battle of Actium signalized the final triumph of the Empire. The last century
of the republic was characterised by the collapse of popular government, because of the wide extension of the citizenship, the
considerable adulteration of the citizen body at Rome by the introduction of un-Romanized orientals, chiefly through the
manumission of slaves, the growth in Rome of an unemployed proletariat, the rise of demagogues, and the complexity of the
problems of government. The increasingly corrupt senate had lost control of the assemblies, the armies and the generals. The
financiers as well as the governors, saw in the provinces only a field for exploitation.” 10
Clearly moneyers and bankers reigned supreme as far as it was possible behind some powerful military figure such as had been
Caesar or Anthony or Octavian, or in some measure of direct authority as seems to have been the case with Sosius, moneyer and
financial organizer to Anthony, who also came from a banking family. The same Sosius when quaestor and governor of Syria and
1
Harpers Dictionary of Classical Literature and Antiquities, p. 1598, Harry T. Peck, Coopers Square Publishers, New York, 1965.
2
Alexander del Mar: A History of the Precious Metals, p. 105; New York; 1968.
3
Ibid. p. 55. (Pliny, Books iii, xxxiv, 5. and xxiii, 21.)
4
According to Harold Mattingly (Roman Coins, p. 19): “In the second period c.280-268 B.C., the aes and its parts were issued as before, but a
coinage of silver was added for the purposes of the war in S. Italy. The chief coin was the Didrachme. the bronze coins of the series are struck
at very variable weights and certainly represent values above their metal.”
5
Harold Mattingly: Roman Coins; p. 91; London; 1923.
6
Footnote p. 183, present work.
7
216 B.C.; in this terrible battle, 86,000 Romans and Italians were virtually annihilated and all their equipment lost to Hannibal.
8
R.A.G. Carson: Coins, Ancient, Medieval, and Modern; p. 127; London; 1962.
9
Michael Grant: From Imperium to Auctoritas, p. 19; Cambridge, 1969.
10
An Encyclopedia of World History, p. 100, Boston, 1948.
The Babylonian Woe 80
Cilicia, dethroned Antigonus, the last of the Hasmonean kings of Jerusalem in 37 B.C. after six months siege, replacing him with
Herod, later known as “The Great,” first of the Idumean line in that city. 1
Considering how extensive a part the coinage of Sosius had played in the fortune (or lack of fortune) of Anthony, Sosius was
lucky to have been spared by Octavian. 2 The absence of Herod from the deciding battle of the civil wars, the battle of Actium (31
B.C.) under the excuse that he was detained more urgently in Arabia fighting the King of Arabia on Anthony’s behalf, 3 may be
the answer here. No doubt Sosius, in the same way as any good banker in ancient or in modern times, knew how to keep a foot in
each camp; equally wise was also his friend Herod. Q. Oppius who emitted the orichalcum coinage inaugurated by Anthony, also
appears to have belonged to a well known family of bankers. 4
The name of the bankers behind Augustus does not appear to be known, but the extent of their massive operations is revealed by
the widespread circulation of their heavy weight aes coinage from their mint at Nemausen, right across the Empire; from Britain,
to Portugal, to Pannonia. 5 It may safely be concluded that their coinage circulated without discount and at par value with all other
aes coinage previous or present, state issued, or otherwise, or by imperium or auctoritas.
The question would be: was this excellent and adequate coinage which so well met the needs of great military and civil day to day
expenditures, and which undoubtedly was the origin of the sure accession to power of Augustus, emitted by an organization of
similar character to the Bank of England of recent world power, or more recently again, the Federal Reserve Bank of the United
States of America? Both of which, though apparently state departments, in reality were private international organizations set up
by the international circle of bullion traders, or, as they are now generally known, the International Bankers.
That which seems to be clear out of the fragments of information existing, is that there was no such thing as a permanent interest
bearing state indebtedness until the period which may mark the beginning of the decline of imperial Rome; the significance of
which is that no Roman Government ever entirely lost control of that power so essential to the maintenance of its sovereignty, the
power to directly inject the unit of exchange into circulation as according to its own needs.
Of this period until the 3rd Century A.D. the most learned Professor Heichelheim wrote: “There were regular lending associations
while usury constituted quite an important item in the legal provisions of the Corpus Iuris and the Talmud. Only State Usury was
rare, for the Roman State was still in a supreme position. 6 At the most, autonomous areas were the only exceptions here. Large
interest free loans advanced to the state by individual citizens or chance patrons for reward in the form of honours or other more
indirect advantage, were quite frequent up to the 3rd Century A.D.” 7
However, it may reasonably be assumed that even during the period of the Commonwealth and the true greatness of the Roman
people, though Roman Government had endeavoured to monopolize all sources of the material of its tangible currency, and had
prevented as much as possible the circulation of precious metal, which clearly would undermine the integrity of the state issued
unit of exchange, the grandiose aes, it still could not prevent counterfeits from entering the circulation. It could not prevent the
corrupt practices of oriental banking after the extensive reentry of silver into the circulation as a result, clearly, of concessions
made to the international bullion traders during the 2nd Punic war, nor thereafter the functioning of Gresham’s so-called law
which such entailed. “Bad money drives out the good”; which, of course, depends on what is bad and what is good! Nor,
therefore, could it control the extent in absolute, right across the Roman Empire, of the activities of that underground that garnered
the precious metal from the circulation for more profitable use elsewhere.
As a consequence of the rejection by growing and powerful states such as Rome of the early and middle commonwealth of the
claim of silver bullion interests that all tangible money should be founded on their product as base and common denominator of
values, and the creation and paying into circulation of their own tangible money, with value deriving from its scarcity or
otherwise, using largely copper or bronze as the material on which its numbers were recorded, as previously pointed out, much
copper or bronze that came the way of the international bullion brokers would, undoubtedly have been used in what must have
been an extensive industry devoted to counterfeiting of these fiduciary currencies. The product of this industry which would have
been carried on abroad no doubt, while yielding handsome profit, through disturbance of that mass of abstract money based on the
tangible currencies into which such products would have been injected, would also create instability of price in the states
concerned.
Thus would be created conditions in which foreign money lenders would be better able to flourish, and secure the establishment of
their own peculiar systems of private money emission based usually on the fiction of valuables on deposit for safe-keeping. Under
such systems, when fully under way, the next step would be political control through so called political parties that such money
power would bring into being, each necessarily dedicated to some “cause” through a so-called “Leader,” also chosen through the
agency of such money power and by those forces it controlled. Such leaders would be “suitable” men, and would be chosen
1
William Smith, LLD: The History of the Bible; p. 550; London, Ontario; 1885.
2
Michael Grant: From Imperium to Auctoritas; p. 41; Cambridge; 1969.
3
Britannica, 9th Edn.
4
Michael Grant: p. 61-69.
5
Ibid pp. 71-72. C.H.V. Sutherland (Coinage in Imperial Roman Policy) also makes frequent reference to Nemausen.
6
Italics by present author.
7
Fritz Heichelhiem: Ancient Economic History; p. 243, Volume III, Leyden; 1958-1970.
The Babylonian Woe 81
because pliable and, too often, naturally corrupt. Raised as likely as not from the lower ranks of society, and therefore dazed by
the dizzy heights to which fortune had lifted them, such men would be most likely to carry out without question the policies
required for the fulfilment of their master’s purposes and dreams; principally that of World Government; which should raise such
masters, strange thought though it might be, to the position of world rulers, and therefore heirs of the god-kings of ancient days, in
their own eyes; although to the eye of any clear-seeing man they might better have been called the anti-god, or in the language of
the naïve Christians of a somewhat later time to the god-kings, demons.
1
Colchis was a district at the Eastern end of the Black Sea, South of the Caucasus and North of Armenia and Pontus. In Greek mythology it
was famous as the destination of the Argonauts, and, as abode of Medea, a special headquarters for sorcery. An independent state at the time of
Alexander, when that area subject to Mithridates was invaded by Pompey, Colchis was paying nominal homage to Mithridates. On his defeat it
was made a Roman province.
The houses of the scarcely ruined streets of its principal sea port which long since sank beneath the sea as a result of some forgotten earth
tremor, still stand in ghostly stillness deep below the surface. The Russians have a submarine which travels these streets for tourist purposes.
The Babylonian Woe 82
economic or otherwise. sickness and death struck all and the rotting bodies of trapezitae or his slave were thrown on the mass
funeral pyres together with that of hoplite and his wife. With the flames consuming the dead, most of the immediate schemes of
the bankers turned into a wisp of smoke and disappeared into the heavens with an accompanying odour of burnt flesh.
Those precious metal pieces, those copper fiduciaries, those clay facsimiles, all those ledger entries, credits against no funds,
money created out of the thin air as by the hand of the gods, all these were the secret of that endless urge and turmoil of the city
states of Greece, and of the tumult which finally culminated in the dark years of that miniature “World War,” out of which could
come no winner but the International Money Power. The “Great Peloponnesian War,” as it came to be called, saw a whole system
of life crumbling to pieces, just as did these last two so-called “Great” world wars of our time; and still in the final ending not
being replaced by that system most longed for by those who have guided us so far along this road of hopelessness.
In these brief moments of time since the fall of so much of ancient ways; faintly discernible as beginning about the period of the
collapse of the Middle Kingdom in Egypt under the impact of the horses and chariots of the Hyksos, and that period of turmoil
and destruction amongst which was the fall of that Ur of Ibi-Sin, the last great ruler of Sumer before it was eclipsed in its day of
glory by all those Semitic peoples spreading Southward, so that even its language almost disappeared. 1 God seems to have more
and more withdrawn his face from mankind, now moving without guide along the uncertain ways of time.
One thing stands out clearly from the fitting transfer of Ledger Credit Page Entry Money, evinced by tattered fragments relating to
man and his money in very ancient days, and that is, ONE WORLD! Through the whole web of confusion, this faint design grows
clearly more distinguishable, concept of those who by nature of their secret trade, money, standing apart from life, think they
know and understand all the paths of men and life; and because of the international character of that which they now control,
delude themselves into believing that they, as designers of it all, rising into the firmament as gods, shall be heirs to it all.
These secret classes who live shut in by the four walls of their exclusivity, had originally believed that one more step would place
them forever on the now empty thrones of the god-kings who formerly reigned in lordship over all; towards which place of all-
power they had so long guided themselves through the devious paths of knowledge of precious metal money creation and
emission, and all the deceits against mankind, to which it had loaned itself. With the establishment of the so-called United Nations
Banking complex via the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, otherwise designated “The World Bank,”
knowing no master on this earth other than God or the Devil, as the case might be, and with advent of the settlement of
international trade balances PAPER GOLD, as the final deceit, 2 these secret classes behind it all, well might believe that the total of
human activity, whether as towards War or Peace, depended on their instigation alone. With such triumphs resulting from the long
years of planning and waiting, well might they have been justified in concluding that the end of a long and weary way towards
WORLD RULE had been reached; perhaps the only question remaining being: “Who should be the Ruler?”
But for them already is the bitter assurance that this promised land, even if faintly glimpsed, will never be; and that they stand on
the same threshold as the rest of the Indo-European peoples, if not mankind. Beyond this threshold, where in the fatuity of their
vain imaginings, was to have been a money changer’s World Kingdom, and for them and theirs, life everlasting, are in reality the
desolate ways of the gulf of time and infinity, no less for them as for all. Those absolute weapons dreamed into existence as
instruments towards the final realization of such world kingdom, mainly through the genius of the Indo-European peoples, have
also been placed by the unruly agents of these secret classes, in the hands of other races of the world; races who now thrust God-
wards, and whose hearts may be an ocean of envy, if not hate itself, for the same Indo-European who now totters towards the
grave to which he was being led, sick unto death.
And even should this ONE WORLD come to be, what of INTERNATIONAL MONEY POWER itself and its fatuous dream of a money
changer’s world dominion? and what will happen to it when the Indo-European who was its unwitting host and protector for so
long, is gone? for, except for some unforeseen change in the course of events, gone he surely will be, and one or the other will
have taken his place as world leader.
The present day Chinese, for instance, who very well may be strong in the competition for the throne of the gods from whence
ONE WORLD would be ruled, in the event of their accession to such throne, either by election, or by force of arms, would not be
likely to tolerate this finance core, privately and irresponsibly controlled, and from which has been drawn the threads of evil that
have so long tormented the so called Indo-European world; which long since has been totally entrapped in the web that has been
woven. No more did the Chinese of ancient imperial days extend toleration to such activities throughout their long history.
But it may not be doubted; little if anything will be left anyway. Even should this world we know be spared total obliteration, after
the pestilence of decay, once again will be just shattered columns, crumbling concrete, paper that turns to dust with the touch and
ruin over all. Life’s urgent clamour will be followed by the silence of its extinction. The brief and fading evidence of all this
turmoil will be but faint shadows on the accumulating dust.
THE END
1
Sir Charles Leonard Woolley: The Sumerians, p. 168 et seq. (Norton Edn.).
2
June Grem: The Money Manipulators, pp. 137-178; Enterprise Publications, Inc. Oak Park, Illinois. 1971. Also see The Toronto Star, p. C9;
“Monetary Experts favour new System”; Fri., June 14th, 1974.
The Babylonian Woe 83
And there came one of the seven angels which had the seven vials, and talked with me, saying unto me, Come hither; I will show
unto thee the judgement of the great whore that sitteth upon many waters:
With whom the kings have committed fornication.
So he carried me away in the spirit into the wilderness: and I saw a woman sit upon a scarlet beast, full of names of blasphemy.
***
And upon her forehead was a name written, a mystery, BABYLON THE GREAT, THE MOTHER OF HARLOTS AND OF ABOMINATIONS
OF THE EARTH
***
And he saith onto me, The waters which thou sawest where the whore sitteth are peoples, and multitudes, and nations, and
tongues.
***
And the woman which thou sawest is that great city, which reigneth over the kings of the earth
***
And the kings of the earth who have committed fornication and lived deliciously with her, shall bewail her, and lament for her,
when they shall see the smoke of her burning.
***
For in one hour so great riches is come to nought. And every shipmaster and all the company in ships, and sailors, and as many as
trade by the sea stood afar off,
***
And they cast dust on their heads and they cried weeping and wailing, saying, Alas, alas that great city wherein were made rich all
that had ships in the sea by reason of her costliness! for in one hour is she made desolate.
Revelation xvii. 1. to xviii. 21.
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