http://www.jrbooksonline.com/pdf_books/the_babylonian_woe.pdf
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. by
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. Augustus Boeckh ; Translated; The Public Economy of Athens, P. 7; Book I. London, 1828.
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
2
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
3
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.
It must not be supposed, therefore, that there is lack of
understanding of the importance of these matters; nor that there is
any special conspiracy of silence, even though there might indeed
be temptation to arrive at such a conclusion.(1) Rather it were better
to accept things as they appear, and assume that these scholars
merely present the fragments of fact as they unearth them; leaving
speculation of the true significance of such fragments of fact in
relation to the weft and warp of life, to those considered to be
particularly specialized in the various fields represented. In the case
of money and finance, the scholars concerned would be classified
as economic or monetary historians.
Thus little enough seems to be available on the subject of
money and finance in ancient days. Nor seems to exist examination
of the significance of such money and finance relative to the
progress about which so much has been written in modern times.
Apart from that of Alexander Del Mar who wrote in relatively recent
days, and apart from that of the philosophers of antiquity such as
Plato, Aristotle, Socrates, Zeno, etc., almost no speculation seems to
be available from scholarly sources in regards to the unprejudiced
PHILOSOPHY of money, in ancient times. On the all important
subject of the consequences of the creation and issuance of money
by private persons as opposed to its creation and issuance
according to the will of a benevolent, instructed and dedicated
ruler, almost no speculation seems to exist in ancient or in modern
times. Of those forces that sought throughout history to undermine
any ruler who may have been firmly in the saddle because of his
exercise of that prerogative which is the foundation of the State
Power or God-Will of which he is the living evincement, insomuch as
he maintained firm control of the original issuance of money and its
injection into circulation amongst the people as against State
expenditures, almost nothing seems to be known. Very little
information is available of the means those forces employed
towards this purpose through injection into circulation amongst the
peoples of silver and gold, and of instruments indicating possession
4
of the same.
Practically no information seems to exist of the growth of
private money creation in the days of the ancient city states of
Mesopotamia, of which, because of their records being preserved
on fire-baked clay, more is known than of more recent civilizations;
and the gap must necessarily be filled by a certain amount of
speculation. Little is known of the beginnings of the fraudulent
issuance by private persons of the unit of exchange, as in opposition
to the law of the gods from whom kings in ancient times claimed to
derive their divine origin; nor is there any information on the
significance of such practice relative to the continued stability of
the natural order of life in which obtained that system wherein the
fount of all power was the God; such power descending to man by
way of king and priesthood
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