Privately Created Money
The
Ultimate Destroyer of Civilizations
By Capt.
David Astle
Privately created money, that is
to say, counterfeit money, is the ultimate destroyer of civilizations. And it
has all happened before—long before.
Both in the Code of Manu (a law structure
governing the order of life of that India which emerged from the Vedic period)
and in the laws of the Akkadian kings of Mesopo tamia, appear prohibitions of
either goldsmith workers in precious metals, or warehousers of valuables of
whatever nature, setting themselves up as in opposition to the king—that is to
say, the sovereign power. There is little doubt that this had been effected by
the circularization of receipts indicating valuables on deposit with them as
for safe-keeping, which obviously would lend itself to what clearly may have
been with them already an ancient practice, of the circulation of spurious
receipts; such as indeed, did the goldsmiths of Lombard Street in London, Eng
land, in the 16th and 17th centuries A.D., some 4,000 years later.
Thus, by this little piece of sleight-of-hand,
they could cause an unseen addition to such previous “whole measure of value”
as had existed and as created by the discriminate and controlled will of the
temple and the king in his capacity of being the viceroy of the god that ruled
in the temple, and thus they could stealthily undermine all natural authority
and ultimately all good order in life itself.
That no such prohibitions seem to appear in the
much more recent times of the Greek and Roman worlds, so much better known to
us, is because the world that carried forward from the decay of Sumeria
following on the debilitating civil wars therein, and that had ended in the
death of most of that which was Sumeria with the breaking of the remaining
threads which had held together its ancient life, was a world in which the overt
power of a private money creative force, even if not understood as such, had
come to be accepted as an inevitability.1
Ultimately, indeed as in Greece and Rome, the
situation arose that the great temples (or sanctuaries), though still drawing
the prayers and bounty of the devoted, and offering solace to downcast souls,
were too often but fronts for the activities of mysterious alien “bankers,”
so-called, who by now seem to have become an anciently established factor in
the current of history of civilizations as we know them.
Going back to ancient India and the Code of Manu
(IX, 292) we find: “But the king [maharajah] should cause a worker in gold who
acts in an unlawful manner, he being the most evil of all thorns infesting a
kingdom, to be chopped up into small pieces with sharp knives.”2
The above penalty, as prescribed in Manu, being
perhaps the most ferocious of all prescribed in the code, thus leaves no doubt
that there is some special significance therein.
Thus long, long ago, it was clearly understood
that the fascination for gold, already having been sought after all over the
known world, was as ancient as memory. Found in the bed of streams as flaming
yellow dust, it could be linked to the idea of wealth; and wealth itself being
already linked to the idea of money, then it too, became linked to the idea of
money; money in its true definition necessarily being an envincement of the
will of the ruler toward the creation of equitable exchanges.
This Law of Manu suggests that those miners and
prospectors and men of war, who brought gold to the city, could be inveigled,
in ancient times, as much as in modem times, into leaving their gold with the
goldsmiths; “on deposit” against a negotiable receipt.
It did not take long, it may reasonably be presumed,
for such goldsmiths to realize the immense potentialities inherent in such
toward their own aggrandizement, and even, at times the gaining of what may
have amounted to a secret control over the life of the kingdom itself.
Thus at a certain stage in the progress of the
rise of the goldsmiths at any time in history, in any city, they knew they
could become the “money creators.” For from ancient experience they had known
that it was possible to accompany such genuine negotiable receipts (promises to
pay) with perhaps unlimited spurious facsimiles of the same; which equally, no
one knowing whether they were genuine or not, came to function in the exchanges
as money, and indeed, became money. Thus this money that derived from the
criminal activity of goldsmiths, and others with whom they no doubt worked,
came to usurp the position in the life of the city of that money representing
the will of the king and the temple as creator of “whole measure of value,”
such as had previously governed the exchanges of the city, and, indeed, thence
the structure of life itself. Thus the will of the goldsmiths would take over,
and a situation arrived, which they un doubtedly sought to improve for
themselves where they were able to, by spreading corruption and demoralization
in all levels of castes and classes of society so that such confusion might
come to reign, that none might be able to unravel it, or understand it, or its
source, and hence know what measures to take to extirpate what had become a
growing malaise in life itself.
Obviously, by the time that Manu drew up his code
of Law and conduct by which the forming world of “Vamasrama dharma,”
known today as the “Hindu” world, was to live, the evils that could take place
in the state as a result of the criminal practices of the goldsmiths,
silversmiths etc, actually creating their own monetary circulation, had already
been experienced recently, or what was even then, of olden time. The severity
of the penalty as prescribed by Manu is the evidence.
Manu realized that “money power” (as this criminal
force has now come to be known) has no loyalties except to itself, and those of
its own caste with whom it pursues its course of dark deceit, and he saw the
necessity of total extirpation of everything concerned with the evil it represented,
should it arise, and without qualms the necessity of making example of the
transgressing goldsmith in such wise that none might forget.
Moving westward across the ages, and past what we
now know of as the Indus Valley civilizations of Mohenjo-Daro and Harappa, we
find that Hammurabi, Akkadian king in the city of Babylon around 1900 B.C., had
in scribed on his stele, as found at Susa, a recodification of the rules by
which men had to live in that which had been even then, an ancient world. He stated
in his Law No. 7, so near to the top of the stele: “If a man buys silver or
gold or slave, or slave girl, or ox or sheep or ass or anything 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.”3
From this law placed so high in the Code of Hammurabi,
it may be inferred that not merely had those dealing in precious metals in
Mesopotamia issued spurious negotiable receipts as against metals supposedly
“on deposit,” but that a species of “racket” had grown up, parallel to that of
the goldsmiths under which anyone with any supposedly warehoused goods “on
deposit,” such as slaves, slave girls, cattle of any species etc, could
circulate similar spurious “pro m ises to pay,” which could disturb the “whole
measure of value” in the state equally with those receipts or “promises to
pay,” spurious or otherwise, of the goldsmiths.
Clearly where any form of receipt or “promise to
pay” was issued, and there was no witness or contract in respect to the actual
valuables supposed to have been deposited, whatever their nature, there was
intent to deceive. The of fend er was not asked whether that was his intention.
It clear ly was his intention. Therefore, he was a thief, and in his particular
case a destroyer of all good order in life, and was to be put to death.
According to Prof. Bright,4 the Code of
Hammurabi was but a revision of two legal codes promulgated in Sumerian by
Lipit-Ishtar of Isin, and in Akkadian by the king of Eshnumua during the period
of the breakup of that power formerly wielded by the god at Ur. That is about
the same time as Ur was sacked by the Elamites in 1950 B.C. and Amorite and
Elamite political power was established over north and south Mesopotamia. Both
of these codes are well before the Code of Hammurabi and are evidence of the
latter being but revision of law codes existing in the days of Ur Nammu who
reigned at Ur 2278 B.C. until 2260 B.C., or be fore. According to C. Leonard
Woolley, excavator of Ur over many years,5 the Code of Hammurabi was
not a series of arbitrary enactments invented by the king in Babylon, but a
redaction of old partial, or local codes or customs, and the tradition it
embodied derived immediately from the Sumerian in which the code of Dungi, king
of Ur in the Third Dy nas ty, was perhaps the inspiration, or base. Before the
time of Dungi, there had been other codes, such as that of Urakagina.
The kings of Isin had codified the law, and there
were collections known as the laws of Nisaba and Hani which may date from their
time; of these, fragments were found at Nippur and Erech.
The penalties enacted by Hammurabi are the
principal changes from the Sumerian codes, which still largely belong to the
period of decay that preceded the ending, and which were distinctly liberal by
comparison with the penalties en acted in the Akkadian version of the law code,
thus showing the decay that was overtaking the Sumerians. For instance, in the
revised Akkadian version of the law code of Ham murabi, adultery involved death
for both parties. In the dying days of Sumeria which preceded the Akkadian
hegemony, adultery did not even mean necessarily divorce. There in is further
evidence of the “hidden hand” that steal th ily undermined the structure of
life in the late Su merian cities, and if any law existed similar to
Hammurabi’s Law No. 7, then it would doubtless be equivocative, and indeed ob
scure in wording.
The severity of the penalty and the placing of the
law so high in the Code of Hammurabi leaves little doubt that it was directed
at an evil that was by no means new, and may have been one of the deep-seated
causes of the invasions that devastated Ur toward the end, from the Gutim, the
Elam ites, Amorites and the Hittites. No doubt a corrupt in ter na tional Money
Power, now well organized, was so busy arming the enemies of the people among
whom it sojourned, as the people itself. Thus it is clear, effort was being
made many thousands of years ago to achieve a situation such as exists today in
which, in the English speaking world for sure, virtually no money circulates
except if it has been created on the books of the banks by pen entry out of
nothing. From thence being injected into circulation by loan as against
collateral goods or services. Where no longer slaves or slave girls are
available or permissible toward the creation of a deposit having such and such
a monetary value, or as collateral of such and such monetary value as against
such loans, valuables are created out of thin air; perhaps by suitably
engraving certificates of bond, shares etc.
Although, as according to both Hindu and
Babylonian law structures as quoted, it is doubtful if any group (merchants,
precious metal smiths, or indeed criminals generally) could bring about the
state of affairs as exists today, which is close to their world hegemony, their
progress at that time being insufficient, they probably brought about disaster
and grief enough to Sumer in its declining years. Otherwise the firm, if not
ruthless revision of their ancient codes by the Akkadian Hammurabi, would
likely never have been thought of. That long period of the decay of the
Sumerian ethic from which later stemmed so much of that which is now known as
antiquity, undoubtedly arose from factors deriving from the departure of the
will of the god from his ancient place in the ziggurat, and the suborning of
his will in respect to money as the governing factor in the creation of
equitable ex changes.
In the dying days of the might of Ur, or Kish, or
Lagash or Erech, and other cities, long gone into nothing, it is clear the will
of the god, secure in his temple, had become but the will of those private
individuals such as the brothelkeeper, Ku-Bau, who was now able, it seems, to rise
to rulership of Kish during the period of the civil wars in Sumeria.
Purity of living and in thought was already gone.
All that remained was the stench of corruption and decay by way of endless
wars. A money power had broken the back of those ancient god-ruled cities.
Knowledgeable of the arts of destruction of purity
in life, in living, and in thought, and in what then was sovereign rule through
the god reigning in his temple, while still needing the appearance of the god
himself to be upheld before the eyes of the people to gain their trust, they
themselves came to rule; through proxies or as the case might have been. Such a
one would be Ku-Bau of Kish.
That the tablets reveal that she was originally
keeper of an Inn or a brothel would suggest that she was such an in strument as
described above and marked a period in the latter days of Sumerian history when
the power of the temple had come to nothing, and the life of the god Himself
lay in the dust; slain by the sub rosa growth of a criminal and counterfeit
money power which had usurped the essential power of the temple which lay in
the creation amongst the people of equitable exchanges; or as it is described
today, in “money creation.” The tablets of Kish6 reveal that, at the
period as given above, values were already expressed in terms of silver by
weight, or (who knows?) promises thereof. Consequently thus had the will of the
god been subverted. Clearly silver had become the governing factor in relation
to exchanges in the world of Sumer which had come to be.
The frequent references to purchases by “pieces of
silver” as money, as recorded in the book of Genesis of the dealings of
Abraham, refugee from Ur in its end times, and later of Joseph,7 add
further credence to the picture given above of the decay of temple power as
from war, and the never-ending activities of what must be described as a
private money creative power. Silver, the factor now governing exchanges, was
only obtainable from mines far distant from the alluvial plains of Sumeria and
its great cities. The controllers of its supply, who necessarily would be the
owners of the mines however distant, had achieved the actuality of rule in
those cities by one device or another. War was their constant need, for thereby
they maintained their supply of mine slaves. The records of Kish, Law No. 7 of
the Akkadian conqueror, the wealth of Abraham, the seizure of the silver mines
of Elam by Manishtusu, king of Agade, fragment after fragment, indicate that
buying and selling in terms of silver or “promises of silver” had long been
instituted, and, as in latter days, was the hidden force leading up to the
turmoil of the period of the civil wars in Sumer, beginning approximately with
the assumption of kingly rule by the Patesi or high priest of the city of
Lagash, in 2900 B.C., and that seemed to continue intermittently until the end
when Akkadian power finally superseded that of Sumeria with the destruction of
the Su mer ian cities and temples by Samsu-Iluna, son of Hammurabi, with fire
and sword.
Thereafter the pride of Sumer that had been,
became but fading memory so that the scholar could write many eons later as
well he might have so done of the English speaking world of today. As according
to Sir Leonard Woolley: “but the race had gone, exhausted by wars, sapped by
moral decay, swamped by the more vigorous stock which had eaten of the tree of
their knowledge.”8
And of their great kings, before the flood and
after, long lived giants among men, as recorded both from the Sumerian king
lists and the Book of Genesis, and truly the everlasting salvation of their
peoples, and whose inspiration derived from the voice heard in the stillness of
the night over the ziggurat, from the ruler of the universe Himself, it might
be as the Sumerian poet recorded: “Earth is their food, their nourishment
clay;—Ghosts like birds flutter their wings here,—On the gates and the gateposts
the dust lies undisturbed.”
This article was presented as a paper at The
Second International Barnes Review Conference on Authentic History & The
First Amendment in Washington, D.C., June 16, 2001.
FOOTNOTES:
1
Woolley, C. Leonard, The Sumerians, 181.
2 Tr.
Hopkins, Edward, Ph.D., Trubner; 1884.
3
Driver, G.R., & Miles, John C., Ancient Codes of the Near East, Vol.
II, 15; 1962.
4
Bright, John, A History of Israel, 44.
5
Woolley, op. cit., 91.
6
Astle, D., The Babylonian Woe, 1.
7 Gen.
XX, 16; xxiii, 3, 9, 16; xxiii, 18, 19; liii, 21; xlvii, 13-16
8
Woolley, op. cit., 82.
9
Woolley, op. cit., 20.
