Before studying the Assyrians, we should again consider the international influence that was suffusing the entire ancient Near East.
This influence upon all of these societies was felt by the:
- Hittites
- Hurrians
- Mycenaeans
- Mittani
- Assyrians
and Babylonians as a constant need to fight over loot and to force others into paying tribute.
CIVILIZATION: ORIGINS OF ASSYRIA & GERMANY – Library of Rickandria
As you can probably understand by now, the money lending mechanisms of the Sumerian Swindle create war.
Or more accurately, the moneylenders who practice the Sumerian Swindle create war.
NEW WORLD ORDER: JEWISH BANKSTERS’ WAR ON AMERICA & THE WORLD – Library of Rickandria
The reason for this is that while a loan is real – that is, real silver or real grain – the actual interest on the loan is a phantom.
The interest on a loan is an arithmetical delusion of claiming and believing that more can be created out of less.
The delusion and the fallacy are that numbers are the same as physical goods and by multiplying numbers, you can alchemically create more physical goods.
Charging interest-on-a-loan, is a form of magical sleight-of-hand, a mere juggling of numbers and account books.
But instead of a magician pulling a rabbit out of a hat, the moneylender pulls money out of your pocket.
Just as it does to the modern fool who borrows on their credit cards and borrows from the swindling bankers, the numbers all make sense mathematically; one shekel on loan at fifty percent interest equals a shekel and a half in return.
Yes, that is true for numbers written on a clay tablet or on parchment or on papyrus or on a computer printout.
The math is all correct and true in its pristine intellectual perfection and theory.
But the numbers are only true on paper; they are not necessarily true in the physical world.
Mathematics can be used to describe the physical world just as written words can be used to describe the physical world; but neither the numbers nor the words are the physical world.
No matter the simplicity or the complexity of the problem, the biggest difference between the mathematics of the scientists and that of the moneylenders is this.
When a scientist’s math doesn’t accurately solve the problem, he honestly tries to find where the errors were made and to correct them.
But when a moneylender’s or a banker’s math doesn’t solve the problem, he lies and cheats and swindles and betrays so that the numbers still create a profit.
Business math is, by its very nature, a swindler’s math.
Juggling the books in science or engineering creates errors because mathematical measurements are identically related to physical objects and energies.
An error in either the math or the engineering, shows up in its complimentary science.
That is, both the mathematics and the physics must be correct and in harmony; but one of them cannot be correct alone while the other is in error.
If either the math or the physical entity is not correct, then the scientist tries to find out why and to find out where the error is.
But juggling the books in money lending and banking and business has a long tradition because interest calculations are inherently felonious.
The calculations of interest-on-a-loan create a mathematical swindle which is easily proven.
But because it also creates a huge profit for its dishonest perpetrators, the swindle is also feloniously hidden.
Using science and math, the scientists promote truth and precision.
Using business and math, the businessmen promote deceit and larceny.
This is how:
“it has always been.”
In the physical world, you can calculate the orbit of Neptune’s moons and the number of atoms in a drop of water and the exact yield of energy from an atomic reaction and the precise stresses on a skyscraper’s steel beams, but you can never create more of anything by charging interest-on-a-loan.
SCIENCE: TECHNOLOGY: MODERN PAST: ANCIENT ATOMIC WARFARE – Library of Rickandria
That is the clever deceit of the Sumerian Swindle.
The moneylenders claim that usury gives a real result because they have the arithmetical numbers on paper to “prove” it. But the credit calculations of a banker are a delusion.
Among all people, the bankers and financiers are liars and swindlers and criminals by profession.
Their mathematics are no more able to create physical things from interest-on-the-loan than Newtonian physics is able to calculate the orbit of an electron around a banker’s gruntle.
In the physical world of real things, it is totally impossible to charge interest-on-a-loan and to get back more than was loaned without eventually running out of physical things to get back.
Yes, you can write an infinite number of calculations on paper proving that charging-interest on-a-loan produces an infinite number of profits.
But this physical world is not infinite.
The entire planet is finite.
There is a limited amount:
- of rock
- of ocean
- of air
- of silver
- of gold
NEW WORLD ORDER: GLOBAL BANKING: GOLD: For Humans & Others… – Library of Rickandria
So, if you try to apply arithmetical calculations that approach infinity to a physical world that is finite, you will fail.
It does not compute.
It is impossible.
But because it is a swindle, the bankers insist that it is their “right” to not only demand the impossible but also to steal people’s property when the People cannot pay the impossible.
All banking and money lending is a swindle and all bankers are criminals.
The only reason these criminals have succeeded in betraying the People for so many millennia is because they have conspired with secrecy and falseness to protect their swindle from discovery.
The People are swindled and betrayed because they erroneously assume that the moneylenders are honest businessmen simply because they:
“have always been here.”
The money lenders have not always been here; nor have they ever, ever been honest.
You can put the entire planet out on loan, but no matter what the numbers claim, there is no way that you can get a planet and a third back in profits.
You can put the entire wealth of a nation out on loan.
At the Babylonian rate of 30% interest, it is physically impossible to get back 130% no matter what the numbers on the clay tablets say – impossible, that is, unless you cheat.
Although anyone can make 130% look real in an arithmetical equation by merely multiplying the numbers, try though you may by waving a magic wand over a shekel of silver, praying over it, demanding and cajoling it, showing it to your ledger book that claims that it should turn itself into a shekel-and-a-third, or beating it with your fists, it is no use whatsoever.
That shekel of silver cannot grow into a shekel-and-a-third to satisfy the moneylender’s numbers, unless you can steal someone else’s silver.
Only by stealing silver from someone else or from somewhere else, can the loan numbers be satisfied and the books be balanced.
Because of the stupendous size of the Swindle, the ancient bankers knew that by charging interest-on loans that over time, eventually, the People would have to give the moneylenders the entire world as well as their own lives as debt-slaves.
The moneylenders have practiced Secret Fraud #14 for the past five thousand years:
“Anyone who is allowed to lend-at-interest eventually owns the entire world.”
Once again remember that it was those who could read and write and calculate interest amounts who made their profits from the labor and sweat of the common man who was illiterate.
So, it was a great advantage to the moneylenders to keep the people ignorant.
Over the centuries, as the People began to understand how they were being defrauded through lending-at-interest, the moneylenders found that any such stirrings of dissatisfaction and rebellion and calls for “reform” were most effectively squashed using murder, the tyranny of enslavement and the chaos of war.
If the People could be physically defrauded and enslaved and clapped into irons before they realized their danger, then all is well for the moneylenders and bankers.
Once the people were enslaved, they were powerless to do anything about their losses.
And while they were being gradually swindled of their goods and freedoms, it was absolutely imperative for the moneylenders to keep the people stirred up and in a state of fear and anxiety so that they would not have the opportunity to figure out the real cause of their problems.
Miles Williams Mathis: The Real Matrix – Library of Rickandria
The People would not be thinking about beating and hanging the bankers if they were kept running about under a hail of sling stones and flaming arrows.
Because the money lenders and merchants profit so enormously from their frauds, they had the money enough to hire:
- mercenaries
- assassins
- troublemakers
- rumor-mongers
and seducers to make sure that there was always a controlled level of chaos in society.
When the People are sufficiently worried and stressed from rumors of war and manufactured crises, they don’t have the leisure to think of anything besides survival.
But enslaving the entire population was also impossible because that left no one able to pay the moneylenders.
There had to be a social class of the very wealthy to buy the goods offered by the merchant-moneylenders.
Slavery had its limits both as a means of collecting on the debt as well as for its use in terrorizing the People.
As long as Society had enough circulating wealth to buy the debt-slaves, the moneylenders could profit from their swindle.
But when the interest payments became so high that no one could afford to buy anything because all of their money was going to the bankers as debt-service, or when the rich were over-supplied with slaves and no one wanted to buy them from the moneylenders’ slave markets, then the entire Sumerian Swindle became paralyzed.
There had to be both poverty-stricken slaves and excessively wealthy awilum [Haves], as well as the chaos of war, in order for the Swindle to operate smoothly and profitably.
Through a continuing repetition of inflation and depression cycled back and forth, ad infinitum, the moneylenders could obtain all of society’s wealth like a snake swallowing its prey.
First chewing on one side and then on another side, little by little, back and forth, the bankers could swallow the entire country into their vaults and ledger books.
They could profit from both inflation and depression.
And so, they promoted first the one and then the other and back again while hiding their profits behind a hypocritical sham of:
“suffering from a downturn in business.”
However, one danger to the moneylenders was (and is) the rise of a middle class.
A well-fed middle class provides leisure and an opportunity for thinking men to ponder the causes and cures of social and political ills.
While a middle class provides a storage place for silver diffused throughout society during times of prosperity, such a silver-absorbing sponge needed to be squeezed out on a regular basis so that the Peoples’ hidden hoards and rainy-day savings of silver could once again cascade into the bankers’ hands.
Once the People are given an opportunity to prosper, ruthless application of Secret Fraud #11 of the Sumerian Swindle is the tamkarum’s [merchant moneylender’s] standard tactic:
“Dispossessing the People brings wealth to the dispossessor, yielding the greatest profit for the bankers when the people are impoverished.”
A middle class also provides potential competition because the ambitious and the moderately wealthy members of the middle class can discover ways to invest their small money to increase their wealth.
That would also increase the number of businessmen among the wealthy awilum [Haves], creating competition resulting in a drop in prices and in profits among the already existing tamkarum [merchant moneylender] class.
But eliminating competition by creating monopolies, had always been a top strategy of the moneylenders and merchants.
They adhered to Secret Fraud #7:
“Monopoly gives wealth and power but monopoly of money gives the greatest wealth and power.”
The moneylenders profited most when the very rich ruled over the very poor without the competition from a well-fed and educated middle class because the Sumerian Swindle was only successful as long as the People did not know that they were being defrauded.
Thus, the moneylenders preferred to destroy any middle class so that only the “Haves” and the “Have Nots” existed.
A middle class is also useful from whom interest can be swindled from loans and to whom merchants can sell their goods at a handsome profit.
As long as they are dependant upon the moneylenders, an indebted middle class is a source of huge profits, as can be seen in modern times.
But once the wealth of a middle class reached a point of being wealthy enough to be independent from the moneylenders, they would have to be:
- destroyed
- impoverished
- enslaved
No competition from outside of the tamkarum [merchant-moneylender] guilds could be allowed if the moneylenders and merchants wanted to maintain their extremely high profits, profits that gave them luxury and power over kings.
Also, a middle class is only useful to the moneylenders as a market for real estate and other goods as long as they buy it on credit.
But once they have acquired enough property to pay off their loans and to put themselves into the upper classes; and (through their hard work) once they have acquired enough cash so as not to require loans from the moneylenders, then they become independent from and competitors to the awilum [the Haves].
Once enough of the middle class has paid off their property to become property owners rather than mere debtors, then the middle class has to be destroyed.
They could not be allowed to keep what they had worked so hard for and earned.
If the middle-class property owners could be subjected to emergencies and social stresses, then those property owners who had purchased their homes and farms at interest from the moneylenders at a high price, out of desperation would either sell back to the moneylenders those same homes and farms at a low price or else lose them in foreclosure.
Creating poverty for others was the moneylenders’ guarantee of maintaining all wealth for themselves while crushing the People beneath their feet.
This was again Secret Fraud #11 of the Sumerian Swindle:
“Dispossessing the People brings wealth to the dispossessor, yielding the greatest profit for the bankers when the people are impoverished.”
Not only are the poor easily enslaved but all of their property is, out of their extreme desperation, cheaply purchased and easily swindled.
Throughout Mesopotamian history, slavery and the fear of being enslaved for debts, provided the necessary terror to induce debt payments to the bankers by both the rich and the poor.
Excessive wealth was only necessary among the awilum [the Haves] so that they could buy the debt-slaves and the luxury goods imported by the tamkarum [merchant-moneylenders].
Thus, the “Haves” always had their best interests served by the merchant-moneylenders since the merchant moneylenders were members of the same awilum [Haves] social class.
Even so, the wily merchant moneylenders always profited the most since they were the sellers, and the “Haves” were the buyers of all slaves and all imported items.
So, during the rise of the Assyrian Empire, the Assyrian moneylenders began to expand the Sumerian Swindle into its most advanced level of corruption, that is, the banker’s swindle known in modern times as the:
“business cycles of boom and bust.”
We modern people experience it today and accept it because:
“it has always been here.”
Times of plenty and times of dearth could be manipulated by the moneylender guilds simply by lending or hoarding silver and lowering or raising interest rates simultaneously across all of Mesopotamia.
Low-interest and zero-interest loans to the rich created richer awilum [Haves].
Any reduced profits were made up by making high-interest loans to the poor.
Since there were always more muskenum [Have-Nots] than there were awilum [Haves] then the profits were always greater by lending at low-interest to the rich who didn’t need the money while lending at high-interest to the poor who needed money the most.
Those who were poor enough and desperate enough, would accept the highest loan rates for just a temporary respite from their grinding poverty.
Being poor and illiterate meant that they could not understand that their thumb print on the wet clay tablet guaranteed that the moneylender would have them in slave’s shackles at the end of the loan period no matter how hard they worked under the hot sun from dawn to dusk.
In Assyria, times of plenty were arranged so as to increase commerce and thus profits.
Prosperity always threw the People into euphoric celebrations of their new wealth and freedom from want, causing them to over-indulge in happiness and full-stomachs and excess, all of which required loans to support their celebrations and land purchases.
During such times, business was good for the money lenders.
Because the tamkarum [merchant-moneylenders] controlled the price of grain and were constantly lowering the cost of labor through foreign immigration, the muskenum [Have-Nots] were kept in a constant and desperate state of inescapable poverty.
Such poverty enriched the awilum [the Haves] since both cheap labor and desperate borrowers were the result.
Yes, the moneylenders were wealthy, but their wealth was built upon the Sumerian Swindle.
The tamkarum [merchant-moneylenders] were all criminals.
As Assyria began to throw off its inferior status to Babylonia as well as to the Hittites, the scheming tamkarum [merchant-moneylenders] simultaneously began to solve their problem of too many slaves and not enough buyers.
When the total wealth of a country is held by and owed to the moneylenders, resulting in not enough silver to pay off the loans, the only way to keep the Swindle moving and producing more profits for the moneylenders is to induce the People to steal silver and gold from other people and to give it to the moneylenders.
In other words, the only alternative to enslaving and impoverishing the entire populace was to send that entire populace away to war.
Through war, the bankers could suck into their closed system of parasitic finance the outside sources of silver and gold that would keep the Sumerian Swindle afloat.
Since it was impossible to ever have enough silver in the country to pay both the principle and the interest on loans, then silver from some other country had to be stolen in order to balance the books by injecting real silver into the void left by the fallacious, phantom arithmetic of the Sumerian Swindle.
By calculation, 100% of the wealth of a nation loaned out at 50% interest could only be repaid by taking back the original 100% principle from the nation plus the 50% interest from some other nation.
Through moneylending, the bankers would first rob their own people.
And when their own people became too impoverished to pay the interest (debt-service), then through warfare the moneylenders would force neighboring countries to pay that interest by robbing them of their silver.
In addition, the Assyrian moneylenders found that war killed off large numbers of landowners.
The starving and desperate widows and orphans would sell their farms and properties cheaply.
And those farms that were vacant and abandoned because the owners had been killed in war could be cheaply acquired merely by paying the back taxes on the property.
With good farmland bought cheaply, the tamkarum [merchant-moneylenders] found that they could profit from war by selling these vacant farms to foreigners at high prices.
Thus, the moneylender became the ultimate parasite who not only sucked the health and wealth out of his own people but in the end killed his People and then immigrated in foreign victims from other countries so that he could next parasitize them.
This is:
“how it has always been,”
the moneylender is a parasite who sucks the vitality of Society.
As the wealth of foreign nations was seized as a trophy of war, this injected circulating bullion into the moneylenders’ international system of fraud.
What silver and gold that was not directly paid to the moneylenders as debt service remained in circulation among the People as bullion that was spent into the tamkarum [merchant-moneylenders] network of family and guild monopolies such as:
- luxury imports
- real estate
- beer taverns
- brothels
- gambling halls
and slave markets.
Through their interlocking businesses, the merchant-moneylender guilds cast a wide net that caught all monies circulating in the ancient Near East.
For the above reasons, with the merchant moneylenders operating from behind the scenes as advisors and spies and financiers of the king, war became the major business of Assyria.
As we look into the history of Assyria, please understand and remember that because the Sumerian Swindle is a deceitful and dishonest scam, it can never be administered by honest men.
Although they strive to appear to be honest businessmen, banking and moneylending are intrinsically dishonest and criminal enterprises.
The ones who controlled it in ancient times as well as those who control it in modern times, were and are the evilest and the most corrupt creatures in all of society no matter how nice they look wearing fancy clothes and while pretending to be honest.
How could these old devils be anything other than criminals when:
- taking callous advantage of the weak and the poor
- enslaving entire families
- pimping out innocent boys and girls
- operating prostitution, alcohol, gambling
- pawning of goods
- smuggling, tax evasion
combined with the beating and murder of those who could not pay the larcenous debts and sending off millions of people into the hell of war?
How could such evil creatures be “honest businessmen”?
But this was all part of being a moneylender.
This most evil of all occupations is the same today as it was then.
The bankers and financiers and merchants today are nothing but criminals and traitors to all of Mankind just as they:
“have always been.”
As the long centuries passed, the moneylenders became no different than demons preying upon the:
- impoverishment
- enslavement
- starvation
- suffering
- illiteracy
- war-losses
and death of Mankind.
NEW WORLD ORDER: AMERICA: Death by Design – Library of Rickandria
Basking in the glory of their riches and the high positions granted to them by the deluded and corrupted kings, the moneylenders were – as they are today – the actual causes of the death and suffering of billions of people.
Under the pressure of cheap foreign labor, the resulting dislocation of native labor from the land gave the moneylenders and kings plenty of foreclosed and starving peasants to fill the ranks of the army in exchange for:
- land grants
- social status
- rations
Like a giant meat grinder, the tamkarum [merchant moneylenders] shoved the People into their war machine and swindled them out of all that they owned.
And after the poor immigrant farmers had built a new farm with their hard work, the tamkarum [merchant moneylenders] once again dispossessed them of their land because that was:
“how it had always been.”
So, these peasants, out of desperation, joined the army in order to be given an ilkum [military land grant] and some rations because that was the only avenue open to them.
Then, they would be sent out to fight other countries for loot which they gave to the kings and spent with the tamkarum [merchant-moneylender] businesses.
Of those who died, the kings confiscated their property and sold it for back taxes to the moneylenders.
It was a smoothly working scam that had taken centuries to perfect.
And it still works smoothly today.
What is consistently good for enriching the bankers and the merchants and the moneylenders, has always proven to be very bad for the People.
So, when you see a banker or financier, know that he has built his wealth upon the impoverishment and the destruction of tens of thousands and millions of other people.
A banker is a parasite.
A financier is a con-artist. Both are criminals.
Passing mention has already been made of the Hittites who attacked Babylon and then retreated, leaving the country in Kassite control.
With such a powerful army capable of defeating Babylonia, the Hittites were certainly a challenge to Assyria.
These earliest inhabitants of Asia Minor spoke dialects which were not Indo-European.
The Indo-European speakers among them began to arrive in the area in the first century of the second millennium.
Before following the history of the Assyrians, it would be good to understand the Hittites and their relationship with Assyria and the entire region.
The trading arrangements between Asia Minor and Assyria came to an end shortly after 1800 BC as the Hittites came into prominence and began to take control of the natural resources and trade routes within their own territories.
Before they asserted themselves in this way, the region’s trade had been conducted through trading colonies established by other countries.
Assyrian tamkarum [merchant moneylenders] had a trading colony in Cappadocia that monopolized the bronze trade from the region.
We find evidence from Hittite documents that in the second half of the second millennium the Hittites had trading relations not only with Mesopotamia but also with Egypt and the Mycenaean kingdoms in:
- western Asia Minor
- Rhodes
- Greece
The Hittites produced copper and silver in large quantities.
These resources alone gave them the buying power and the products that were in demand all over the ancient Near East.
So, they had the resources to build profitable trade relationships.
In addition, during part of the second millennium the Hittites had a virtual monopoly of iron, still a relatively rare metal.
Because of its superior strength and durability, iron could be smithed into light weight and extremely sharp swords and daggers that held an edge in combat and could cut through the:
- softer copper
- bronze
- brass
weapons.
Like any technology that gives a military advantage, the production and export of particular metals of military importance, such as:
- copper
- brass
- bronze
- tin
and iron, were frequently under state control in every country.
As a strategic metal, the export of iron was a royal monopoly.
With their monopoly of iron, the Hittites had a valuable trade commodity as well as a military technology superior to the
- bronze
- copper
- brass
weapons of the surrounding countries.
Thus, through their control of strategic metals and their military might, the Hittites became a major force in the region.
As always, a great deal can be understood about a people by inspecting their laws.
The Hittites did not use the lex talionis, eye-for-an-eye, cruelty of the Semites.
An example of the Hittite Laws from about 1650-1500 BC show that fees were paid for personal injury.
“If anyone blinds a free person or knocks out his tooth, they used to pay 40 shekels of silver but now they pay 20 shekels of silver.
He shall look to his house for it.” [218]
However, even in Hattiland, the Babylonian and Assyrian tamkarum [merchant-moneylenders] had wormed their way into the graces of the Hittite kings.
By claiming a superior social prestige, the merchants were especially protected as can seen by the difference in Hittite laws concerning the punishments for murder of a citizen versus the murder of a foreign merchant.
“If anyone kills a man or a woman in a quarrel, he shall bring him for burial and shall give four persons male or female respectively.
He shall look to his house for it.”
“If anyone kills a merchant in the foreign land, he shall pay 4,000 shekels of silver.
He shall look to his house for it.
If it is in the land Luwiya or Pala, he shall pay 4,000 shekels of silver and he shall replace his goods.
If it is in the land of Hatti, he shall also bring the merchant himself for burial.” [219]
Merchants were, once again, a special class.
Wages in Hattiland were 12 shekels of silver for a man and 6 shekels of silver for a woman per month.
Farm work paid 1500 liters of barley for three months, 600 liters for a woman.
Compare this to the low wages paid to the workers under Hammurabi’s first Dynasty of Babylon (1894-1595 BC) which established standards for all of Mesopotamia throughout its subsequent history.
In Babylonia, farm work only paid 1200 liters of grain per year, and only if the worker was a full-time employee rather than a mere seasonal worker which most of them were.
Wages paid in silver in Babylonia were only 4 shekels per year.
This difference is strictly a reflection of the corrosive influence that the tamkarum [merchant moneylenders] had on Babylonia.
Using the Sumerian Swindle, they had impoverished everybody in their society except for themselves.
These price differences could also be attributed to the fact that the Hittites had their own silver mines so that the metal was more common, and so prices reflected a temporary inflation.
However, this was not the case since wages were also paid in grain rations.
And it is these grain wages that reflect the values not just of goods but of a higher form of Humanity among the Hittites rather than was found among the Mesopotamian Semites.
The difference between a generous 1500 liters of grain paid to Hittite laborers for three month’s work versus the miserly 1200 liters of grain paid to the Babylonian and Assyrian laborers for a whole year’s work, cannot be a result of inflation but is rather a result of fairness between the Hittite “Haves” and “Have-Nots”.
The Hittites paid their people a fair wage while the Mesopotamian tamkarum [merchant moneylenders], specifically, and the Mesopotamian awilum [Haves], in general, swindled and robbed their people at every opportunity.
The Hittites had not been subverted and betrayed by the moneylenders as had the Babylonians and Assyrians because Hattiland was ruled by a king for the sake of his people rather than by moneylenders for the sake of themselves.
Furthermore, because the Hittites were not dominated by the materialistic merchants and moneylenders, theft was not considered such a bad thing.
The thief merely paid a fine of 12 shekels of silver.
In addition, the sexual perversions of the tamkarum [merchant-moneylenders] were abhorred by the Hittites.
Unlike the societies of Mesopotamia that were dominated by the perverted merchant moneylenders and the homosexual bankers, in Hattiland sexual relations with one’s mother, daughter, son or a beast was punished with execution.
But there were other people besides the Hittites who had contact with Assyria.
It is appropriate here to refer to the part played by Syria as a middleman in international trade.
Located between Assyria and the Hittites, Syria was in the Hittite orbit for a time because Northern Syria always formed a terminal of one of the main trade routes from Mesopotamia.
The Alalakh district was a terminal for trade routes from both southern Mesopotamia and Cilicia as early as the fourth millennium.
In the second millennium, the Amorite city of Alalakh had a checkered career politically, coming under the control successively of Egypt, northern Mesopotamia and the Hittites.
But this very fact is an indication of its commercial importance. [220]
Although this city would later be destroyed by the Hittites, it should be noted that one of the kings of Alalakh, Idrimi, recorded on his statue in the 15th century BC that he gained his throne by winning the support of the:
“Hapiru people in the land of Canaan.”
These Hapiru recognized him as the:
“son of their overlord Barattarna”
and
“gathered around him.”
After living among them for seven years, he led his Hapiru warriors in a successful attack by sea on Alalakh, where he became king.
Keep these Hapiru tribes in mind since we will be dealing with them again.
It is of interest here because of the wide range of the Hapiru or Habiru or Apiru or Hebrews outside of Canaan.
These Semitic goat-rustlers and bandits were widespread throughout the entire region.
And it is noteworthy that they were allied with an Amorite Syrian and not with any kings of Canaan.
Other trade colonies were established in Hittite territory by Mycenaean merchants.
There were also Assyrian and Egyptian colonists present, to judge by a document listing wine deliveries for people of these nationalities.
As to values, it is stated in the cuneiform texts that gold was at this time worth three or four times its weight in silver. [221]
This low ratio was the result of the huge amounts of gold bullion that had been released into circulation from the Hyksos plunder of Egypt.
It was still in circulation in the markets and hidden in hoards and had not yet fallen completely into the hands of the moneylenders.
Another large and important group of people were the Hurrians, who were moving southwards during the first half of the second millennium BC.
Associated with the Hurrians at this time was an aristocracy of the race which we know as Indo-European or Aryan.
The Aryans derived ultimately from the steppes of Russia, one of the original homes of the wild horse.
Because of this, the Aryans were always found in association with the horse, and it was the Aryan migrants of the second millennium who introduced the horse-drawn chariot as an instrument of war.
This chariot-owning Aryan aristocracy, ruling over a population which was largely Hurrian, had succeeded in establishing a powerful kingdom shortly before 1500 BC centered upon the Habur River area.
We know this kingdom as Mitanni. [222]
Mitanni at its greatest extent stretched from Lake Van to the middle Euphrates and from the Zagros Mountains to the Syrian coast.
The kings of Mitanni bore not Hurrian but Indo-European names, while the old Indian gods:
and the Nasatiyas were worshipped.
In Hurrian documents, particularly those concerned with horses and warfare, technical terms occur which have cognate forms in Indo-Aryan.
It is also significant that unlike all the earlier peoples of the Ancient East, among whom burning of the corpse was rare and sometimes regarded as a horror transcending death itself, burning was the proper mode of disposal for the bodies of the early Mitannian kings.
All this points to the presence of an Aryan warrior caste ruling over a largely non-Aryan population.
There is some evidence of the same kind pointing to the presence of Indo Aryan elements among the Kassite ruling caste also. [223]
The kingdom of Mitanni is, oddly enough, best known not from evidence found in the kingdom itself, but from documents discovered in the land of the Hittites, in Syria, and above all in Egypt.
These documents point to the considerable, if temporary, importance of Mitanni.
The sources from Egypt are of two kinds.
One is the Egyptian hieroglyphic documents, which have references to armed conflict with Mitanni in the Syrian region, the area in which the two States came into competition.
The other Egyptian source, surprisingly, consists of clay tablets inscribed in cuneiform.
These tablets are the famous El Amarna letters constituting part of the diplomatic archives of the Egyptian Pharaohs at a period around 1400 BC.
These documents include letters to the Pharaoh from various princes of Palestine and Syria, from the kings of the Hittite land, Assyria and Babylonia, and from the King of Mitanni.
The part of the correspondence involving Mitanni clearly shows that at the time Mitanni was on an equality with Egypt.
These letters show that marriage alliances were made between Mitanni and Egypt and give evidence of several instances in which Mitannian princesses were sent as brides for the Pharaoh.
(It may be added that the Kassite ruler of Babylonia also made marriage alliances of this kind with Egypt).
The kingdom of Mitanni was so powerful at this period that its eastern neighbor Assyria was completely eclipsed and indeed at one time became actually a vassal of Mitanni.
By 1350 BC, however, Mitanni, torn by internal dynastic strife, had become so weak that it was virtually a dependency of the Hittite ruler Suppiluliuma.
Assyria was now able to reassert its independence, and this period, during the reign of Ashur-uballit I (1365-1330 BC), marks the beginning of the emergence of Assyria as one of the great Powers of the ancient Near East. [224]
The Assyrians of the period 1350-612 BC were one of the most important, as well as one of the most maligned, peoples of the ancient world.
Situated in northern Mesopotamia on the open plains immediately south of the great mountain ranges of Armenia, the people of Assyria had borne the brunt of the pressure generated by Indo-European peoples on the move from the steppes of Russia.
We have already seen that Assyria was for a time actually a vassal of Mitanni, and in the following centuries, up to about 1000 BC, it was to be subject to constant pressure from Aramaean peoples in the region to the west.
The human response to this continual pressure was the development of a sturdy warlike people prepared to fight ruthlessly for their existence. [225]
And their Semitic ruthlessness and cruelty is what gave them the worst name among all of the other cruel and ruthless peoples of the ancient Near East.
Assyrian political history from 1350 BC onwards shows a curious rhythm between periods of expansion and decline.
First came a period of about a century in which Assyria secured itself from the threat of domination by Babylonia and finally settled the Mitannian problem by turning what remained of that once powerful kingdom into the westernmost province of Assyria. [226]
The kingdom of Mitanni was finally brought to an end when Shalmaneser I (1274-1245 BC) conquered the last king, Shattuara II.
This conquest is of some sociological interest in that over 14,000 prisoners were deported.
This marks an early instance of the deportation policy later extensively used by the Assyrian empire. [227]
This:
“curious rhythm between periods of expansion and decline”
was the result of the moneylenders systematically shifting their silver back and forth between kingdoms while hoarding or lending this same silver to whichever kingdoms most favored their profits and had the strongest armies.
As long as they could work in secret, hiding both the source of their wealth and the wealth, itself, they could manipulate kings and entire countries because it was a mystery to the kings as to where the silver came from or where it went.
Keeping their silver out of the hands of kings, unless it was loaned at interest, meant that the location of their bullion had to be secretly shifted from time to time.
This was accomplished through the temple strong rooms protected by the gods, since the treasuries of the gods were not open to review by the kings.
Whether looking for commercial advantage or for military intelligence, the use of spies was common throughout the ancient Near East.
Much of the military and administrative efficiency of the Assyrian Empire rested ultimately upon an efficient system of communications and intelligence.
An Assyrian King, gratefully acknowledging an intelligence report of tribal movements in Babylonia, says:
“The man who loves the house of his lords, opens the ears of his lords to whatever he sees or hears.
It is good that you have sent a message and opened my ears.” [228]
So, there was always an aura of secrecy and alert wariness in everything that the moneylenders did.
Spies were everywhere looking for something that would earn them a reward from their masters.
The cartel control that the conspiring moneylender guilds had over the availability of silver, gave them the power to determine national and political direction.
In the two hundred years since the Hyksos had looted Egypt, the tamkarum [merchant-moneylenders] had absorbed that looted silver and gold into their treasuries, always protected by the temple gods and ready to be loaned-at-interest at any time.
But to loan it, they had to keep it; and to keep it, they had to hide it.
A horse is more powerful than a man.
But if a man can control the head of the horse, then he can make the horse carry him anywhere.
In this same manner, a country and its people are mightier than a merchant or a moneylender.
But if the tamkarum [merchant moneylenders] can control the king and his ministers, then they can deceive entire countries into following the head that they control.
By the time Assyria began its rise to Empire starting around 1350 BC, the tamkarum [merchant-moneylenders] had mastered Secret Fraud #12:
“All private individuals who control the public’s money supply are swindling traitors to both people and country.”
By smuggling silver from rich countries to poor countries, the tamkarum [merchant-moneylenders] could cheaply buy goods, lands and slaves in war ravaged lands and thereby set up their guild members and extended families as monied investors among the poor survivors.
The Sumerian Swindle provided to the tamkarum [merchant-moneylenders] such huge profits that they needed the manpower and secrecy of their extended families to help them manage their wealth and their properties.
No man could manage such huge amounts of bullion, thousands of farms and other properties, various businesses, and tens of thousands of slaves all by himself.
But through trusted family members and guild brothers, the financial empire of the various tamkarum families could work quietly and profitably behind the political storms.
One man could only smuggle a few pounds of silver or gold at the most, but a hundred or a thousand members of the same guild or extended family or tribe could smuggle gold and silver in hundreds of tons without detection.
Combine the smuggled bullion that the moneylender guilds could move secretly with the temple hoards that the priests could move hidden in the base of idols that were carried from temple to temple so that the gods could “visit” one another, and you can see how many tons of:
- gold
- silver
- electrum
and gemstones could be shifted between kingdoms without the knowledge of the kings.
Banking was a big and secretive business in ancient times just as it is today.
By working secretly in their tribal gangs, the wealth of the ancient Near East flowed back and forth between countries at the bottom of grain sacks and in oil jars or in hollow planks on the sides of wagons.
As the silver was shifted away from the rich countries, these rich countries became depressed, and the resulting financial stress created lower prices which could then be taken advantage of by the tamkarum [merchant-moneylenders] families.
By shifting business and cheap goods back and forth between countries, the total wealth of Mesopotamia gravitated into the hands of the moneylenders and merchants through the so-called:
“business cycles of boom and bust”
Assyria was the first time that the international cartel of moneylenders was able to manipulate quantities of silver so as to create national increase and decline as a trade strategy of their guilds and thereby to manipulate as a recurring swindle the prosperity of an entire nation.
By 1350 BC, the Sumerian Swindle and its related side-businesses along with the huge amounts of looted Egyptian bullion gave the moneylender guilds the power to manipulate kings and to finance armies as they shifted trade between countries.
But it was always the “great king” who got the credit for military expeditions which so much benefited the merchants and moneylenders.
While the moneylenders stood among the crowds waving and cheering the “great king”, the crowds were busy looking at the king and not at the moneylenders.
These voracious parasites were safe just as long as a “great king” was given the glory or the blame for wars and the:
“cycles of boom and bust.”
Glory and blame cost them nothing.
So, they were willing for the king to get both glory and blame, just as long as they got the profits from the cycles of boom and bust.
By 1350 BC, the moneylender guilds were able to first gain profits through expanding trade and then gain more profits through depressing trade.
Since the entire civilized world by that time was then practicing trade and commerce with weighed silver and gold as basic standards of value, the moneylenders could expand or shrink trade simply by expanding or shrinking the amount of silver in circulation by hoarding it and not making any new loans.
Not as individual moneylenders but as organized and conspiring international moneylender families and guilds could they do this.
Secret Fraud #8 of the Sumerian Swindle is:
“Large crime families are more successful than lone criminals or gangs; international crime families are the most successful of all.”
By making cheap loans in unison, the tamkarum [merchant-moneylenders] could cause trade to f lourish.
Of course, trade would flourish anyway without loans.
But what a loan did was to allow a businessman a large amount of capital so that he could use the economics of scale to make wholesale purchases at the moment good deals became available.
Although loans were not necessary for business, they certainly increased the speed and efficiency (and therefore the profitability) with which business could be accomplished.
Availability of loans increased the flow of goods.
Rather than requiring a slow accumulation of capital without being able to borrow, loans saved time by supplying immediate capital.
As you can see from this system, the moneylender and the merchant are both two elements of an interlocking partnership.
They made a profit for themselves through their symbiotic collusion, one lending the silver at interest and the other selling his imported goods at a profit.
At all times, both sought a monopoly.
Not in a single day, but gradually and secretly as they hoarded silver, the economies of entire countries could be thrown into depression.
And because the silver seemed to just gradually disappear of its own, neither kings nor peasants could understand why society slowed down and crashed.
As the kings paid out the contents of their treasuries to keep their governments operational, the tamkarum sucked this silver into their secret hoards from the profits of their businesses and income from the Sumerian Swindle.
With not enough money to pay government employees or the workers who maintained the vital canal system, such depressed economies gave the tamkarum [merchant-moneylenders] profits as desperate people borrowed against their farms and children just to survive.
And the tamkarum [merchant-moneylenders] greatly profited through the buying up of the cheap lands and cheap goods and cheap personal possessions offered by desperate and starving people needing to sell whatever personal property that they had.
Thus, the moneylenders profited both in good times and in bad times.
And they learned how to become the actual cause of both good and bad times since planning such events was more profitable than becoming the victim of events.
The tamkarum [merchant-moneylenders] were not just a social class of passive parasites sucking the blood of their victims through loans-at-interest but, rather, they were parasitic, demonic predators who set traps and pushed the unwary to destruction.
With the inevitable profits from the Sumerian Swindle and their manipulative methods of controlling the economies of entire nations, the moneylenders began to see themselves as greater than kings.
To be successful with their swindles, all they needed was deceit, ruthless greed, and a safe place to hoard their silver.
The moneylenders of Mesopotamia had all three in abundance, two in their hearts and one in the temples under the protection of the gods and the priests.
But extreme caution was also necessary. As you can see from the mixed history of the region, by 1350 BC Sumeria and Babylonia were not the racially homogeneous countries that they had once been.
The lands were filling up with and were being surrounded by a variety of different races and tribal groups.
So, the moneylenders could not always rely upon tribal affiliations or loyalty to city-states upon which to trust their business deals.
The world was being populated by many different peoples and in much greater numbers than had been present during the rise of a racially homogeneous Sumeria and the first empires of Sargon and Hammurabi.
In those earlier days, their empires only had the surrounding tribal confederations to contend with.
A medium sized army of farmers and thick, mud-brick walls were enough to ward off most attacks.
Now, kingdoms and empires of the entire ancient Near East were surrounded by other kingdoms and empires, all jostling one another for land to live on and trade goods to make their lives easier and more prosperous.
First copper, then bronze, then iron, gave these peoples the military tools to break down the thickest city walls and to cut down the bravest of enemies.
Iron plows allowed agriculture to extend into areas of heavy soil that had previously been impossible to farm.
As a result of increased food supplies, the world was becoming a more crowded and a more dangerous place for Mankind, not because of the physical threats of wild animals or adverse weather, but because of the spiritual poisons of greed and covetous grasping.
The earth had plenty of resources and food enough for everybody.
But those brutally greedy people who took more than they needed for themselves, consequently left less than was necessary for everybody else.
The world was purposely thrown into warfare and chaos because of deceit and greed.
And most of all, these evil passions burned blackest in the demonic hearts of the moneylenders and merchants.
It was during this period that Assyria first felt the pressure of a new wave of Aramaean peoples, called the Akhlamu, moving in from the west.
At this time also, there arose in the mountains of Armenia a new tribal confederation, known as Urartu (the Biblical Ararat). [229]
As king of Assyria, Tukulti-Ninurta I (1244 1208 BC) succeeded his father, Shalmaneser I, and won a major victory against the Hittites at the Battle of Nihriya in the first half of his reign.
This gave Assyria control over the remnants of the former empire of Mitanni.
Tukulti-Ninurta I later defeated Kashtiliash IV, the Kassite king, and captured the rival city of Babylon to ensure full Assyrian supremacy over Mesopotamia.
But Assyrian domination was always cruel no matter over which people they ruled.
Neither the Babylonian people nor the Babylonian moneylender guilds could endure the Assyrians for long.
After a rebellion in Babylon, Tukulti-Ninuta used that as an excuse to replenish his Assyrian treasury.
He plundered Babylon’s temples.
Once again, a king stole from the gods’ treasure house where the Babylonian tamkarum [merchant-moneylenders] had their silver and gold on deposit.
Did the gods not care about or protect the moneylenders’ treasure?
After this expansion into Babylonia, there was a sudden decline in the fortunes of Assyria.
This was in part a direct consequence of the preceding period of expansion in that repeated armed conflict with peoples to the north, east and south took a serious toll on the cream of Assyrian manpower, just as modern wars kill the best and bravest today.
However, a more important cause was the disturbed condition of the Near East as a whole.
There was no longer a kingdom of Mitanni to wield political control in the Syrian area.
Egypt, which had frequently exercised suzerainty over Palestine and parts of Syria, was now in a defensive posture caused by raids from Sea Peoples and Libyans and was unable to make its influence felt beyond its own boundaries.
After their loss to the Assyrians, the Hittite Empire, which formerly had given political stability to Asia Minor and northern Syria while protecting the trade routes, came under attack by the Sea Peoples migrating from Europe.
By 1200 BC, the Hittites were powerless, and their empire was in ruins.
But most important of all was the increasing and secret power of the moneylenders.
This power was secret because the workings of the Sumerian Swindle were secret.
An enemy whose attack could be seen and defended against was less of a problem than an enemy who secretly stole the money out of your country and made all wealth drain away into countless private hiding places.
One day there was plenty of silver to manage the State and to nourish business and to pay workers; and the next day there was not enough silver to pay soldiers or buy swords or repair buildings.
It was a recurring problem that was a mystery even to the kings.
And if the moneylenders were asked where the silver went, they would just open their empty palms and shrug their shoulders and whine about how business was so bad that they could hardly make a living.
Or they would point to a possible cause such as a neighboring country having all of the wealth and, thus, giving the kings a pretext for war.
Once Assyria expanded its borders and seized the wealth of Babylon, thereby creating a temporary glut of silver and a boom in the general wealth of the Assyrian people, the tamkarum [merchant-moneylender] guilds in unison began hoarding their silver into their strong rooms and not lending it out.
The silver entered through the payments on loans but did not leave.
The merchants absorbed the silver through sales of goods but did not reinvest in new goods to sell.
The tamkarum [merchant-moneylender] guilds had plenty of silver to feed their families and pay their workers, so their businesses remained profitable without pause.
But nobody else had such large reserves of silver since so few people were moneylenders.
The effect of this conspiratorial hoarding was to create a silver shortage.
As the silver began disappearing from circulation, the Assyrian government increased its reliance on taxes and tolls for its operating capital.
These taxes were collected with typical Assyrian brutality since they were so vital to the State.
From lack of silver, the State pulled back its troops, curtailed spending for civil improvements and generally went into an economic recession.
This “recession” was carefully crafted to be easily escaped through the simple expedient of going to war financed by loans from the moneylenders.
But whether Assyria went to war or remained within its own borders, the entire civilization of Mesopotamia had by that time developed a commercial system based on silver which was controlled by the private tamkarum [merchant moneylender] guilds.
The ones who had the silver, had the power to arrange events for their own profit.
The ones who had the silver became a secret power that was not based upon the divine duty of king’s or the holy duty of priests to protect the people.
They became a secret power based upon the ownership of property and the hoarding of silver, all of which was stolen from the People through the Secret Frauds of the Sumerian Swindle.
The tamkarum were a secret cabal of criminals posing as honest merchants and moneylenders.
(As a modern Reader, are you beginning to see identical larceny being practiced upon the countries of the world by today’s:
- bankers
- financiers
- merchants
Entire countries are enslaved and held ransom by moneylenders today,
“just as it has always been.”
Yet, why should swindlers be allowed both to betray the People and to keep the loot?)
The disturbed situation throughout much of the Near East around 1200 BC, left the trade routes insecure and the villages depopulated.
This was mainly the result of a southward movement of the Sea Peoples from Europe, of which the Greeks and the Biblical Philistines were a part.
It was these Sea Peoples who ultimately destroyed the Hittite Empire, broke up Egyptian authority in Syria and Palestine, and seriously weakened Egypt herself by a direct attempt at invasion, which was beaten off by a great sea battle in about 1190 BC.
In these circumstances Assyrian trade with the Mediterranean region and Asia Minor was disastrously affected, so that Assyria was unable to obtain adequate supplies of such basic materials as metals, for which Asia Minor was still one of the chief sources.
For a short period, Assyria fell under the suzerainty of Babylonia, which by reason of its geographical position was largely screened from the troubles caused by the Sea Peoples invasion in Asia Minor and Syria and along the Mediterranean coast. [230]
But protected as it was by its geographical distance from the Sea Peoples invasions, Babylonia did not altogether escape the effects of this general dislocation and mass migrations throughout the Near East.
Because the Assyrian king Tukulti-Ninurta (1244-1208 BC) had plundered their bullion from the temples of Babylon, the Babylonian tamkarum [merchant moneylenders] moved their secret hoards to safety in Elam.
The Babylonian moneylender guilds had found the corruptible kings of Elam to be more useful in ridding themselves of any restrictions upon their criminality.
The Elamite temples were strongly built, and the Elamite king was greedy for bribes.
Between the thieving and violent Assyrian kings and the good Kassite kings of Babylonia, the moneylenders wanted more power and profits without being murdered by the Assyrians or restricted in their own thievery by Hammurabi’s Laws that the Kassites were enforcing.
Under king Shutruk-Nakhkhunte, who was king of Elam between about 1185 to 1155 BC, Elam amassed an empire that included most of Mesopotamia and western Iran with its capital at Susa.
Miles Williams Mathis: Iran’s Jewish Rulers – Library of Rickandria
Under his command, Elam defeated the Kassites and established the first Elamite Empire.
During his reign, the Law Stele of Hammurabi was hauled off to Susa as a trophy of war where it remained.
Three thousand years later, it was discovered there by French archeologists in the winter of 1901-1902 AD and was carried off to the Louvre Museum in Paris as a trophy of archeology. [231]
It is less important that Hammurabi’s Law Stele was carried to Susa, than what the Elamites did with his Laws.
What the power of the moneylenders was during the days of Hammurabi and how his laws (much to their chagrin) had curtailed their power, has already been covered.
It is interesting to note, however, what the Elamites did with that Code of Laws.
They chiseled out some of them.
Modern archeologists have been able to fill in the chiseled blanks on the Stele from a variety of other copies found throughout Mesopotamia.
So, we know what had been there.
Interestingly enough, the laws that the Elamites erased from the stele were the laws that put the most restraints upon the tamkarum [merchant-moneylenders].
The Elamites chiseled out the laws numbered 65 through 100 which were written to protect the People from the moneylenders and merchants.
Thus, it is obvious who it was who financed and controlled the Elamite Empire.
Under Elamite rule, the moneylenders were once again allowed to buy feudal estates from the fief owners.
They were allowed to swindle people out of their rented houses by charging them rent for a year in advance and then kicking them out whenever they wanted to rent to somebody else at a higher rate.
The moneylenders were not restricted in what they could charge in interest because Hammurabi’s 20% interest maximum cap was erased from the stele.
Under the Elamites, they could charge for a loan whatever interest they could get away with.
Secret Fraud #4 of the Sumerian Swindle was reinstated:
“Loans of silver repaid with goods and not with silver, forfeit the collateral.”
Erasing this Law meant that the People could no longer pay back a loan of silver with grain or goods of equal value but had to pay back the loan only with silver or else lose their property.
Hammurabi’s Laws had lost the tamkarum [merchant-moneylenders] millions of shekels in profits, property and slaves.
But with the Elamites as rulers of Babylonia, the tamkarum had an unrestricted acquiescence for grand larceny.
Thus, the Sumerian Swindle had no restraints in the Elamite Empire.
The merchants were allowed to charge compound interest and to swindle the farmers by not writing down their payments with the updated sums in a new contract.
The merchants were allowed to switch the weights so that they could buy from the People with a heavy weight and sell to the People with a light weight on the balance beam.
The merchants were allowed to make whatever deals that they wanted with their agents and peddlers.
They were no longer restricted to a 50-50 share of the profits but were allowed to make whatever unfair deals that they could. [232]
And so, it is easy to see who controlled the Empire of the Elamites, the tamkarum [merchant moneylenders] controlled Elam and the areas to the east in Persia.
The Elamite Empire was financed by the tamkarum guilds of Babylonia.
Although the moneylenders of Babylonia had allied themselves with the king of Elam, their Elamite Empire proved to be very short-lived.
Whether they accepted the bribes of the moneylenders or not, kings were always a power not easily controlled.
While Assyria was occupied with its own troubles in the north and west, Nebuchadnezzar I (1124 1103 BC) of Babylon conquered Elam around 1120 BC, bringing that empire to an end and extending Babylonian control over the mountain regions to the east and northeast. [233]
Once again, the moneylender’s treasures on deposit in the temples of Elam were seized by a king.
But as long as there remained a “remnant”; that is, as long as there remained even one moneylender with silver to loan, they could use the Sumerian Swindle to regain their lost wealth.
And one way to gain wealth was to sell some of their foreclosed properties.
So, the Kassite tamkarum began selling the lands in the south to some new immigrates called Chaldeans.
But the Chaldeans were not fools.
They could clearly see the advantages for themselves to occupy the land and the disadvantages to the Babylonian and Kassite farmers.
So, their natural suspicions prompted them to ask,
“Why are you selling the land to us?
Are you not betraying your own people by doing this?”
But the wily merchants and moneylenders, expert salesmen that they were, always had a ready answer to overcome such an objection.
“What are those people to us?” they replied.
“They are not our friends because they hate us and wish to do us harm.
We have loaned them silver and helped them to buy land and purchase property.
As mighty Sin is our witness, we have done everything that we can to help them buy the best farms and the finest orchards.
But still, they hate us for our goodness and generosity because they are full of hatred.
But you are our friends, so we will give our friends a good deal in buying the land.”
And so, the bargain was made.
The Chaldeans had no reason to hate the Kassite moneylenders — yet.
So, they accepted the offers of cheap land.
And to prove their friendship and generosity to the new immigrants, those Chaldeans who could not afford the full price, the tamkarum let them buy on time at low interest rates.
Like bloodsucking fleas, the Kassite moneylenders jumped from their old victims who hated them onto their new victims who innocently accepted the moneylenders as their friends and guides and mentors.
The ancient snake, once again with soft words and low interest rates, coiled around its prey.
Its bite would come later.
The establishment of stable conditions in Babylonia and the securing of the trade routes from farther east had a cumulative effect on the whole of Mesopotamia, and the end of the twelfth century marks the beginning of a new period of Assyrian expansion under Ashur-resh-ishi (1133-1116 BC) and his son Tiglath-Pileser I (1115-1077 BC).
The former threw off the political suzerainty of Babylonia and took the offensive both against the Akhlamu to the west and the mountain tribes to the east, thus giving security over a considerably greater area and the possibility of economic prosperity.
Tiglath-Pileser had to deal with the direct threat resulting from the southward movement of the Sea Peoples.
This occurred when a large body of Mushki (the people known in the Old Testament as Meshech and in Greek literature as the Phrygians) moved into the Assyrian province of Kummukh in South Asia Minor.
Tiglath-Pileser penetrated into Asia Minor to drive off these invaders and thereby ensured Assyrian security in the north-west.
With his northern flank secured, he was now able to conduct an expedition to the coast of Syria, where he received tribute and trade agreements with the Phoenician cities for timber and other commodities.
Tiglath-Pileser also made diplomatic contact with the Pharaoh of Egypt, from whom he received a live crocodile as a gesture of good will.
The increased material prosperity resulting from Tiglath-Pileser’s success in opening and maintaining the trade routes across western Asia is reflected in a considerable amount of building activity for the temples of Assyria. [234]
Repairing and enriching the temples appeased the gods, satisfied the priests, gave prestige to the city, provided work for the People, and all while protecting the temple treasury where the Assyrian tamkarum [merchant-moneylenders] kept much of their loot.
Trade always produced not only wealth for the tamkarum [merchant-moneylender] families but wealth through taxes and import duties for the kings.
Dredging the canals and rivers, improving the quays and rebuilding the temples was the inevitable result of both a commercial investment and a religious duty.
And the tamkarum [merchant-moneylenders] profited from all of this, especially when it was paid for by others.
The precise relations between Assyria and Babylonia during the reign of Tiglath-pileser was ambivalent.
There were raids in both directions and the Assyrians may have gained some border territory.
But there is no indication that Tiglath-pileser ever attempted to conquer Babylonia.
There would, indeed, have been little or no advantage to Assyria in so doing.
All the principle trade routes of Western Asia were in Assyrian hands and trade flowed uninterrupted from the Phoenician seacoast and the ports of north Syria to Babylonia with great profits to Assyria as the middleman.
But the Aramaean pressure already so evident intensified after the reign of Tiglath-pileser so that his successors inherited national decline and disaster. [235]
Soon after the death of Tiglath-Pileser in 1077 BC, the pendulum swung once again.
A long period of difficulty and stress followed a time of relative prosperity.
The main cause of the setback on this occasion was the growing pressure of these promiscuous and ever-growing populations of Semitic Aramaean tribes and kingdoms.
Once again, after taking careful accounting of the relative wealth and strengths of each side based upon their business knowledge and their merchant-spies, the tamkarum [merchant-moneylenders] found it to their benefit to offer easy assistance to the invaders and subverters of the country.
Hiring cheap labor and selling foreclosed properties had become a traditional way of enriching themselves and a subversive way of bringing foreign people and foreign power into the region.
Any country filled with foreigners, becomes easy to over-throw when attacked because these foreigners were not only outside the walls with a massed army but also inside the walls as a fifth column posing as laborers and small landowners.
These immigrants behind the walls would rise up in revolt as their compatriots attacked from the borders.
The victors were only too happy to guarantee the wealth and the property of their merchant-moneylender “friends” and to promote these same moneylenders to positions of influence in the new government in appreciation for their help in betraying their people.
By encouraging foreigners to immigrate and possess the country, the moneylenders replaced old and grumbling debt-slaves with new and energetic ones.
Since the new debt-slaves were more easily swindled, the moneylenders were enriched more quickly.
And they could hide their treachery behind nothing more than making loans-at-interest:
“just like it has always been.”
The enemies that they had made from among their own People were pushed aside and dispossessed of all wealth and power by the new immigrants who were only too happy to protect their “friends”, the moneylenders, from the grumbling “bigots” who hated them.
These grumbling “bigots” were always the Majority of the population who despised the moneylenders for defrauding them and who resented the immigrants for dispossessing them.
So, the tamkarum [merchant moneylenders] practiced Secret Fraud #20,
“Champion the Minority so that they dispossess the Majority of their wealth and power, then swindle the Minority out of that wealth and power.”
In this way, they would find allies from among the Minority Groups no matter who these groups were or what they represented.
The moneylenders tended to always pretend sympathy and camaraderie toward Minority Groups of every description as a means of using them to destroy the Majority.
Whatever wealth and property that the moneylenders allowed the Minorities to acquire, could always be tricked away from them later through the Secret Frauds of the Sumerian Swindle.
This time, however, the Semites to the north of Babylonia were not a minority.
Semites were the majority of the population of both Assyria and Babylonia.
But because of the residual mixed population of:
- Sumerians
- Sealanders
- Kassites
their presence affected Babylonia even more than Assyria.
Ultimately, an Aramaean prince, Adad-apla-iddina (1064-1043 BC), was able to usurp the throne of Babylonia.
The Assyrian ruler of the time, Ashur bel-kala (1074-1056 BC), was not willing to assist the legitimate Babylonian ruler but instead recognized the usurper and made a marriage alliance with him. [236]
And behind all changes in dynasties and kings, regardless of either racial color or city-state loyalties, were the moneylenders asking their eternal question:
“How can we tamkarum profit from this?”
The color and politics of silver was everywhere the same.
The pressure of the Aramaean racial movement had passed its peak by 1000 BC, and during the following century Assyria made a slow recovery.
This became marked during the reign of Adad-nirari II (911-891 BC).
Under him, Assyria effected a military expansion.
He was able to safeguard his boundaries to south and east, and to protect the trade routes to the west by establishing fortified posts along the Middle Euphrates and in the Habur region.
The security achieved by Adad-nirari II’s policy is reflected in economic well-being, and in one inscription this King writes:
“I built administrative buildings throughout my land.
I installed plows throughout the breadth of my land.
I increased grain stores over those of former times….
I increased the number of horses broken to the yoke….”
As always, river trade was of prime importance and is reflected in the rebuilding of the quay wall of the capital of Ashur on the Tigris.
Agriculture flourished. [237]
Tribute flowed in from vassals in the form of:
- chariots
- grain
- horses
- golden vessels
- cattle
and
- sheep
- wine
- food
in general.
The increased wealth was applied to the economic development of Assyria.
It was also Adad-nirari who imported Bactrian camels for the first time into Assyria and bred them in herds.
For the next sixty years Assyrian kings followed a consistent policy of consolidating the work of Adad nirari.
The security of central Assyria demanded the control and conquest of the hill peoples to the north and east and also control of the trade routes into Cappadocia and to the Mediterranean. [238]
No matter how great the empires of Assyria or Babylonia became, they were always dependant upon the trade routes for all supplies except for:
- grain
- water
- mud
and sunshine.
In Palestine, the Semitic Hebrew tribes crystallized at this time into the two kingdoms of Israel and Judah.
Moreover, since the turn of the millennium, Aramaean influence had been penetrating Babylonia ever more strongly, both in the social institutions and in the language.
In the former, by emphasizing tribal organization, it had tended to weaken the basis of the old city-state system much like a Mafia family system weakens a modern city.
The Semitic social groups were dependant upon their patriarchal tribal genealogies even within a city.
This tribal unity suited the secretive moneylenders quite well.
Since there was such an emphasis on “members” and “non-members” of every tribal group, the members could remain related to one another even as they joined various city governments and infiltrated other tamkarum guilds.
Also, the Semitic Aramaic language had the advantage of being the native tongue of a much more widely spread ethnic group than was the Semitic Akkadian used in Assyria and Babylonia.
For writing purposes, the alphabetic script of Aramaic with its twenty-two letters was a far easier vehicle of communication than cuneiform writing with its over six hundred signs.
So, the numbers of scribes and businessmen who could write Aramaic increased more quickly than the scribes of Babylonia and Assyria who required ten years to become proficient in the written Akkadian language.
While Akkadian cuneiform written on clay tablets was still the means normally employed for drawing up legal documents, Aramaic writing was sometimes used as a more convenient way of endorsing such tablets for filing purposes.
Only the learned could, after many years study, ever master the use of Akkadian cuneiform; and it was among the learned that cuneiform writing remained in use for scholarly and esoteric purposes for some centuries more.
By 140 BC, cuneiform had completely disappeared except among a few priests who employed it for religious purposes for another half century, and among astronomers.
For astronomical texts, cuneiform continued in use right down to the time of Christ. [239]
RELIGION: CHRISTIANITY: Why Jesus was Not a Jew – Library of Rickandria
And yet, even with the racial changes and the tribal changes across the millennia, to the very end of the period with which we have to deal, Babylonian civilization retained a Sumerian framework and many points of detail characteristic of the earliest times. [240]
Especially was this true of its most carefully guarded secret, the Sumerian Swindle.
Only the moneylenders understood it for what it was, and they were very careful to keep it for themselves alone.
As:
- swindlers
- pimps
- betrayers
- frauds
- perverts
and warmongers without a shred of decency, they used every moral and immoral stratagem for retaining control of the swindled wealth and the enslaved victims whom they considered to be rightfully their own property.
Along the Euphrates, the presence of these many small and often mutually hostile tribes must initially have imposed considerable hardship upon the Assyrians in that there was no power able to keep open the trade routes upon which the Assyrian way of life depended.
Again, remember, Mesopotamia had an abundance of food, more food than anywhere else in the ancient world, but nothing in the way of natural resources.
The vast deposits of petroleum beneath the land were of no use to these ancient peoples except where it oozed to the surface as a source of bitumen for sealing their boats and water-proofing their building foundations.
- Mud
- water
- sunshine
were all that they had in abundance.
Other than:
- grain
- vegetables
- livestock
and mud bricks, these people had to import and trade for everything else that they needed or wanted.
So, maintenance of the trade routes and canals was vitally important to the very existence of every Mesopotamian city-state and dynasty.
In Babylonia, Semitic tribesmen had been able to pass through the lands between the great cities and settle on the eastern bank of the Tigris, while the southern marsh area, the “Sealands”, was occupied by the Kaldu, a people related to the Aramaeans.
These both were in a position to interfere with sea-borne trade up the Persian Gulf.
But with the gradual settlement of these Aramaean tribes, their consolidation into settled states and their recognition of the connection between their own prosperity and unhindered international traffic, trade continued to flow across the land. [241]
Trade continued without interruption by these tribes because their “friends,” the Babylonian tamkarum [merchant-moneylenders], desired such trade.
The new immigrants didn’t want to interfere with the business of their “friends” because the Babylonian moneylenders had been so generous in selling them the land.
It is appropriate at this point to say a word about the organization of the Assyrian army.
The religious theory was consciously held by everyone that the land and its population were the property of the tribal god.
Acting through his representative the king, every able-bodied man might be called upon to bear arms if the national god proclaimed war.
No other “reason” needed to be given other than that they must fight and kill and die because the god had decreed it.
This decision was usually based upon the chief priest divining the liver of a sheep, accompanied by smoky holocausts of the carcass and solemn ceremonies designed to impress the superstitious onlookers.
During the Fixing of Destinies at the New Year Feast celebrations, every year the People were told whether their god wanted them to be at peace or to go to war.
The priests determined this by how they “read” the signs on the sacrificial sheep’s liver.
These same priests also kept the account books that recorded how much bullion was on deposit in their temple treasury.
These same priests were exempt from military service as were the merchant-moneylenders whose gold and silver rested in the temple treasury.
In practice, many of the wealthier citizens could buy exemption from bearing arms.
In addition to the national militia there was a small standing army with an elite corps at its center, shock troops, royal guards, and young noblemen who had the privilege of running beside the king’s chariot.
Obligation to supply militiamen was not confined to Assyria proper but extended to the provinces, and such troops must, for obvious reasons of language and camaraderie, have been organized largely according to nationality.
The main Assyrian army, on the other hand, was organized in a more specialized manner, in units of:
- chariotry
- cavalry
- archers
- shock troops
- engineers
and what would correspond in modern times to service corps.
Recent estimates of the size of an Assyrian army in the field have been in the range of one to two hundred thousand. [242]
Adad-nirari II’s successors (Tukulti-Ninurta II, 890-884 BC; Ashur-nasir-pal II, 883-859 BC; and Shalmaneser III, 859-824 BC) successfully continued the policy of military and economic expansion.
Through warfare, as a means of balancing the Assyrian moneylenders’ books with stolen silver and to guarantee the Assyrian merchants’ monopoly of trade, these kings gradually extended the area controlled by Assyria until the whole region from the Mediterranean coast to the Zagros Mountains and from Cilicia to Babylonia was either directly administered by Assyria or ruled by vassals accepting Assyrian overlordship.
All the trade routes of the Near East, except those of Palestine, thus came into Assyrian hands. [243]
Armies and people require food above all.
So, Tukulti Ninurta continued the policy of Adad-nirari, assisting agricultural development and grain production by irrigation and forced re-settlement of populations. [244]
Assyrian warfare always made use of terrorism, the cruelest tortures, and the most punishing techniques that could be devised.
Everybody hated and feared the Assyrian army.
So, the Assyrians spread as much:
- arson
- torture
- death
- destruction
and fear as they could before, during and after their attacks.
At the beginning of Ashur-nasir-pal’s reign (883 – 859 BC), the vassal states occupying the tributaries along the Habur and upper Euphrates Rivers, began to rebel.
The high taxes demanded by the Assyrians were irksome.
So, the Aramaean leaders thought that the time was ripe to take the country for themselves.
In the city of Suru, a puppet king from Bit-Adini had been installed as king.
But prompt and vigorous action by Ashur-nasir-pal secured the submission of the insurgents and the capture and torture of the pretender.
The list of loot removed from the palace and temples of the defeated city gives some idea of the wealth of the riverine Aramaean states.
In addition to the usual items of cattle and sheep, silver and gold, the list mentions vessels of:
- bronze
- iron
- lead
- precious stones
- unguents
- textiles of wool and linen
and cedar and other aromatic timbers.
The rebel leaders suffered death in the usual cruel Assyrian way by impaling, flaying alive or by immurement in a wall, and these severe measures secured peace for the area for five years. [245]
Terror
torture
cruelty
was a major military tactic and strategy of the Assyrians and was a major reason why the peoples of the entire ancient Near East hated them.
But this use of terrorism as a state strategy was a lesson that the tamkarum [merchant moneylenders] appreciated because it was so much in line with their own policy of severity toward nonpaying debtors.
Protecting their pampered persons and ruthlessness in collecting debts and enslaving debtors made for a self-centered and severe business personality.
The moneylenders had practiced:
- terror
- beatings
- bullying
- confiscations
and enslavement for over two thousand years, so they valued the uses of terrorism to get what they wanted.
The Machiavellian principle that:
“If you cannot be loved, then you should be feared,”
became a strategy of the moneylenders two thousand years before Machiavelli was born.
An example of the cruel Assyrian mindset of the Semites can be found by reading some of the Assyrian civil laws from 1076 BC.
Cruel though they were, the Assyrians were as religious and god-fearing as any of the other peoples of the ancient Near East, relying on their priests and messages from the gods as received through divination.
“If a woman, either a man’s wife or a man’s daughter, should enter into a temple and steal something from the sanctuary in the temple and either it is discovered in her possession or they prove the charges against her and find her guilty, they shall perform a divination.
They shall inquire of the deity; and they shall treat her as the deity instructs them.” [246]
“Any royal women either the king’s wives or any other women of the palace who fight among themselves and in their quarrel blasphemously swear by the name of the god ….
They shall cut the throat of the one who has cursed the god Ashur in their quarrel…” [247]
Mutilation was a common punishment among the Assyrians:
“If either a slave or a slave woman should receive something from a man’s wife, they shall cut off the slave’s or the slave woman’s nose and ears; they shall restore the stolen goods; the man shall cut off his own wife’s ears.
But if he releases his wife and does not cut off her ears, they shall not cut off the nose and ears of the slave or slave woman, and they shall not restore the stolen goods.” [248]
“In addition to the punishments to a man’s wife that are written in the tablet, a man may whip his wife, pluck out her hair, mutilate her ears, or strike her with impunity” [249]
Rape was punishable by death.
And for kissing a woman against her will, the kisser’s lower lip was cut off.
Adultery was punishable by death for both parties.
Although the Assyrians were also victims of the Sumerian Swindle, they did not allow the perversions of the Babylonian moneylenders to enter their society.
Homosexual perverts, so common among the Babylonian moneylenders, were punished in this manner:
“If a man sodomizes his comrade and they prove the charges against him and find him guilty, they shall sodomize him [with a stick] and they shall turn him into a eunuch.” [250]
In addition to their cruelty and practice of terrorism, the incessantly acquisitive demands of the Assyrian tamkarum [merchant-moneylender] class were a major driving force behind the kings.
Silver was made available to the kings’ ambitions while both the principle and interest were repaid by the kings from taxes, tribute and the war-prizes of loot.
And
“as it has always been”
it was the People who paid the full price in their blood for the ambitions of the politicians and the greed of the moneylenders.
And because the Sumerian Swindle produced more debt than there was silver to repay it, the Assyrian kings used warfare as their main method of obtaining that phantom silver.
It was during the reign of Shalmaneser III (858 – 824 BC) that Assyria first came into conflict with the kingdom of Israel, although the incident concerned is known only from the Assyrian records and not from the Bible.
The clash occurred when the Syrian and Palestinian States formed a coalition against an Assyrian expedition to the Mediterranean in 853 BC.
According to the Assyrian records the coalition forces included:
“2,000 chariots and 10,000 soldiers of Akhabbu of the land of Sirala”
Akhabbu of Sirala was unquestionably Ahab of Israel.
Shalmaneser claimed a defeat of the coalition forces, a claim borne out by the fact that a monument of four years later shows an emissary of Jehu, Ahab’s successor, paying tribute. [251]
Assyria was thus in complete control of Syria and of all the trade routes into Asia Minor.
Iron production, still largely a monopoly of Asia Minor, came under Assyrian control, as did timber production in the Lebanon and the silver mines in the Amanus under Shalmaneser.
Syrian craftsmen and artists were deported to the Assyrian cities. [252]
Syrian craftsmen were famous for their skill in ivory carving, and so from this time onwards the Assyrian kings carried off such men to the cities of Assyria, where they were employed in beautifying the royal palaces.
Great quantities of carved ivory have been found at Nimrud, the site of the ancient capital Calah. [253]
Shalmaneser III was succeeded by his accepted heir, Shamshi-Adad V (823 – 811 BC).
This King continued the policy of his predecessors, undertaking military action in the north and north-east to defend Assyrian interests against Urartu and the Medes (an Iranian people who had migrated into Northwest Persia).
He also extended the area under his direct control to include the north-eastern edge of Babylonia, along the Diyala, and even intervened within Babylonia itself to impose submission upon some tribes called the Kaldu, whom we later known as Chaldeans.
These tribes, occupying the most southerly part of Babylonia, were virtually independent of the weak Babylonian King and were not paying their tribute. [254]
Urartu gained a firm grasp on the regions immediately south of Lake Urmia and so controlled the trade routes from northern Iran.
More serious still was the situation in the west where the Urartian thrust dispossessed Assyria of almost the whole region north and west of Carchemish, thereby taking from Assyria control of the metal trade of Asia Minor.
Besides the economic consequences, this had a direct effect upon the military efficiency of Assyria, since almost the whole of the area upon which Assyria depended for the supply of horses was now in Urartian hands.
The economic effects of the cutting of the routes into Asia Minor led to disturbances in Syria, and a number of campaigns were undertaken against:
It was during this period of Assyrian weakness that the reign of Jeroboam II of Israel is to be placed. [255]
From about 800 BC, Urartian influence began to expand, especially in the North Syrian area, at the expense of Assyria.
The following half century saw a drastic decline in the fortunes of Assyria. Conditions within the homeland became so bad that in 746 BC during a revolt in Calah, the capital, the whole of the royal family was murdered. [256]
The man who came to the throne, who was probably of royal descent though not of the family of his predecessor, was a certain Pul, who took as his throne name Tiglath-Pileser III (745-727 BC).
He was one of the most able of Assyrian kings.
He undertook extensive administrative reforms, reducing the power of provincial governors and at the same time increasing the efficiency of provincial administration.
His reign saw a fresh extension of Assyrian influence to Babylon in the south and to Syria and Palestine in the west.
His successor, Shalmaneser V (727-722 BC) maintained the same general policy.
Shalmaneser V is best known from Biblical accounts for his siege of Samaria, the capital of Israel, which culminated in accordance with the usual Assyrian policy in the deportation to Assyria of the best of the population. (2 Kings 17:6) [257]
The story of the remaining period of the Assyrian Empire is one of continual expansion up to just after 640 BC, and then a catastrophic collapse.
The principal kings of this period (known as the Sargonid period after the first of them) were:
- Sargon II (721-705 BC)
- Sennacherib (705-681 BC)
- Esarhaddon (681-669 BC)
and Ashurbanipal (669-631 BC).
Sargon II seems to have had a taste for poetry, and some of his annals are written in an elegant verse form as against the dry prose of most other Assyrian kings.
Sennacherib is generally thought of as a ruthless barbarian, not without justification, for he was one of the few conquerors of Babylon to sack that center of culture.
At the same time, he was very interested in technological progress.
He claimed that he had invented a new method of metal casting, devised new irrigation equipment, and found new mineral resources.
He was also proud of having laid out Nineveh as his new capital, with parks to beautify it and a new aqueduct to give it a plentiful supply of good water. [258]
These were certainly not the accomplishments of a barbarian.
Secretly, the tamkarum [merchant-moneylenders] had once again moved huge quantities of their bullion to the easily corrupted kings of Elam since that country seemed to offer the safest haven for their loot.
This resulted in another depressed Assyrian economy.
Sennacherib did not understand how Elam could so quickly acquire wealth while Assyria floundered.
But he recognized that Elam was now the decisive factor in Babylonian politics.
Sennacherib undertook action to neutralize this danger.
In 692 BC, an Assyrian attack was made against Elam from the province of Der, to which the conquered Elamite territories were now annexed.
But climatic conditions ended an attempt to penetrate into Elam proper.
In Babylonia, Mushezib-Marduk refused to acknowledge the authority of the Assyrian governor and raised a rebellion, which, however, the local Assyrian authorities were able to contain.
Escaping to Elam, he returned with an army and had himself proclaimed king of Babylon.
He sent a considerable bribe to Elam from the temple treasuries of Babylon with a request for military assistance.
The assistance was forthcoming.
The Elamite moneylenders could foresee huge profits while the Babylonian moneylenders bewailed their loses as yet another king had confiscated their bullion.
So, Mushezib-Marduk gained the wrath of the gods as well as the hatred of the moneylenders when he took their silver.
In addition, by contributing to an anti-Assyrian army, the Babylonian temples placed themselves on the losing side and gave Sennacherib enough reason for again looting them after his victory.
This occasional looting of their hordes of precious metals gave the crafty moneylenders reason to question the power of the gods.
They could not help but notice that whenever a king looted a temple treasury nothing serious happened to him such as leprosy or being struck by lightning.
The question no doubt arose in their guild meetings as to why the gods had not protected their treasures.
Had they not served their gods enough or sacrificed to them enough?
Had they sinned in some way as to make the god angry with them?
How could the king take their treasures from the temple treasury and not be punished?
Was the king stronger than the god?
The idea began to arise among certain tamkarum [merchant-moneylender] guilds that perhaps if their gods abandoned them then the moneylenders should search for new and more powerful gods.
The king of Elam mustered a great army from his own land and from the disaffected vassals who had formerly owed allegiance to Assyria.
With these combined forces, he joined with the army of the Chaldeans.
This great force marched northwards into the province of Arrapkha, and met the Assyrian army at Halule on the Diyala.
The annals of Sennacherib give a graphic picture of the slaughter which ensued.
Assyrian chargers wading through blood; the plain littered with mutilated bodies of the slain, hacked to bits for the sake of their rings and bracelets or for mere bloodlust; terrified horses dragging chariots of the dead – with such graphic strokes the annals describe the carnage.
Though claiming a victory, the Assyrian army had suffered such losses that it could not follow up its advantage during the succeeding year.
In 689 BC, internal affairs in Elam took a turn which kept the ruling house fully occupied, and the Assyrians, having made good the losses at the battle of Halule, were able to deal with Mushezib-Marduk.
The Chaldean forces retreated into Babylon, where they stood siege for nine months, finally succumbing to famine and disease.
The Assyrian army entered the city and looted and sacked it, taking whatever valuables that they could out of the temple treasuries [259] and private mansions whose treasures he had looted or by his older sons who had been passed over in favor of Esarhaddon, Sennacherib was murdered in 681 BC.
A word may be said here about the succession in Assyria.
Although the kingship was normally treated as hereditary, it did not necessarily pass to the oldest son.
Esarhaddon was Sennacherib’s youngest son by an Aramaean second wife.
Esarhaddon specifically emphasized that he was the chosen heir despite his being a younger son: [260]
“Of my big brothers I was their little brother. At the command of Ashur [and other gods], my father formally promoted me in the assembly of my brothers, saying thus:
‘This is the son of my succession.’
When he asked the gods Shamash and Adad by liver divination, they answered him a definite ‘Yes!’, saying thus:
‘He is your successor.’
He therefore paid respect to their solemn word, and he assembled the people of Assyria, small and great, with my brothers the seed of my father’s house, and he made them swear their solemn oath before Ashur [and other gods], the gods of Assyria, the gods who dwell in heaven and earth, to protect my succession.” [261]
The accession of a king, if approved by the gods, was accompanied by various favorable signs.
Esarhaddon said that when he ascended (after putting down an attempted usurpation),
“there blew the south wind, the breath of Ea, the wind whose blowing is good for the exercise of kingship; favorable signs appeared in the heavens and on the earth.”
Even at this late date, over 2,000 years later, when the memory of Sumeria had already disappeared from both Mankind and written record, the Sumerian god, Ea, was still worshipped in Assyria. [262]
EXTRATERRESTRIALS: ANUNNAKI: Who is Ea? – Library of Rickandria
Thus, it should be remembered that although these people came from a variety of races, they all accepted the ancient culture:
“just as it had always been.”
In their piety they relied upon the gods communicating with them through divinations over the liver of a sheep and with “favorable signs” such as which way the wind was blowing or the appearance of certain birds and animals.
This is not to say that God does not communicate with Man using such methods but to rely upon them without ameliorating them with common sense can lead to disaster as was the case numerous times in ancient history.
Good omens or not, Esarhaddon still had to fight a six-week civil war against his brothers to keep his throne.
In 681 BC, he was declared king.
He immediately began rebuilding the Esagila temple of Babylon.
Whether at the instigation of the moneylenders Note should always be taken of the piety of all of the Mesopotamian people at all stages of their history.
They were not the total barbarians that the lying rabbis claim that they were, but they were sincere worshippers of God.
In fact, the rituals that the perfidious rabbis claim were given to them by their Yahweh god as their very own, are not so very different, if at all different, than the rituals practiced by every religion of the ancient Near East.
RELIGION: CHRISTIANITY: YHVH: The Truth About “Yahweh/Jehovah” – Library of Rickandria
So, one may ask:
“If the Yahweh god was such a unique and new discovery, why were his temple and laws so typically Babylonian?”
What the Jews have been claiming as something unique is really nothing new in the ancient world of gods and goddesses.
RELIGION: DEMONS: The Pagan Gods of Hell – Library of Rickandria
The only difference between the gods of the ancient Near East and the Yahweh god of the Jews, is that the ancient people would tell you what they believed while the Jews lie to you about what they believe.
For example, consider this priestly description of the proper way to make sacrifice to the Assyrian and Babylonian Moon God, Sin, and see if it is much different than that recommend in the Old Testament:
“At night you shall sweep the roof before Sin; you shall sprinkle holy water.
You shall pile up a pyre; upon the pyre you shall fix seven loaves of emmer.
You shall divide up a pure lamb, without blemish.
Three measures of flour which a male has milled, One measure of salt, you shall prepare;
And seven clay bottles you shall fill with honey, ghee, wine, beer and water, And pile them on the pyre; You shall pour a libation of the concoction and do obeisance.
The remainder you shall cast into the river.”
Another example, among many examples which could be cited, is this prayer to Ishtar (represented by the planet Venus) implying a quite noble conception of the relationship between Man and the deity:
“O heroic one, Ishtar;
the immaculate one of the goddesses, Torch of heaven and earth, radiance of the continents, The goddess, Lady of Heaven, first-begotten of Sin, first-born of Ningal, Twin-sister of the hero Shamash [the Sun-god];
O Ishtar, you are Anu [the supreme god], you rule the heavens;
With Enlil the Counselor you advise mankind;
The Word, creator of liturgies and rituals of “Hand-washing”….
Where conversation takes place, you, like Shamash, are paying attention
You alter the Fates, and an ill event becomes good;
I have sought you among the gods; supplications are offered to you;
To you among the goddesses I have turned, with intent to make entreaty, Before you is a protecting shedu angel, Behind you a protecting lamassu angel, At your right is Justice, at your left Goodness, Fixed on your head are Audience, Favor, Peace, Your sides are encompassed with Life and Well-being.
How good it is to pray to you, how blessed to be heard by you!
Your glance is Audience, your utterance is the Light.
Have pity on me, O Ishtar!
Order my prospering!
Glance on me in affirmation! Accept my litany!
I have borne your yoke; set tranquility for me!” [263]
These were not the crass and benighted people whom the lying rabbis have slandered for the past 2,500 years.
They were a pious and religious folk who valued Justice and Goodness.
Innana, later known as Ishtar, held a position of vast significance in the Sumerian and the subsequent Babylonian religion.
Particularly after the Semitic Amorites (Aramaeans) had become predominant and women began losing their social position and prestige, she remained as virtually the only female deity.
Eventually, she assimilated the personality and functions of all of the other goddesses, until the word “Ishtar” became synonymous with the word for “goddess”.
This reduction in the number of goddesses from a minimum of one wife-consort for each of the thousands of gods, down to just Ishtar alone, reflects the lower status of women under the Semites than had been experienced by women during the more egalitarian Sumerian times.
As the number of slaves, brothels and temple prostitutes increased as a result of the corrupt wealth of the Semitic merchant-moneylenders with their harems of wives and concubines, the high status of women declined.
As has been universally demonstrated, what is good for the moneylenders is bad for the people.
And to further enslave both women and men, Ishtar became:
- the goddess of prostitutes
- the goddess of love
- the goddess of war
And no one loved reducing women to prostitution, and no one loved throwing men into the bloody jaws of war, more than did the tamkarum [merchants and moneylenders]. Ishtar revealed herself as the planet Venus; and her two aspects – goddess of love and goddess of war – have been related to her manifestation respectively as Evening and Morning Star.
But the significance of the goddess of love also being the goddess of war, has been overlooked.
It was a wily stratagem of the moneylenders.
Like the Sun God, Shamash, she was the child of the Moon-god, Sin.
Ishtar was worshipped in most periods and places, from at least Proto literate times in Uruk down to the century before the Christian era in Babylon.[264]
Four thousand years of religious devotion complete with temples, priests and millions of devotees, is an entrenched religious culture that would be difficult to replace with one god overcoming another.
After all, the mythology of those times clearly showed that all of the gods were related to one another like a family genealogy.
Ishtar, as a child of the Moon God, naturally became the tool of those who prayed to the Moon God, that is, the tamkarum [merchant-moneylenders] who profited from both the whore house and the battlefield.
Even though the societies of the ancient Near East were increasingly being diverted into materialistic engines that produced more and more wealth for the awilum [the Haves] at the expense and the hardship of the muskenum [the Have-Nots], the gods were very much loved, respected, prayed to, and feared by all members of society from kings to slaves.
God consciousness was at the foundation of all human societies, that is, until the moneylenders began their frauds and betrayals.
But regardless of what the moneylenders did, ancient societies were ultimately tied together by religion.
Every day was begun and sustained by prayer to the gods.
Perhaps relying too much on liver divination and propitious signs from Heaven and perhaps remembering the hard feelings that he had experienced from his older brothers upon his ascension to the throne, Esarhaddon tried two new ideas, both of which had disastrous results.
One was to attempt to incorporate Egypt into his Empire.
This over-stretched Assyrian military resources and was one factor underlying the later collapse of Assyria.
The other new policy was to bequeath Babylonia to one son and Assyria and the rest of the Empire to another.
The result here was that the two brothers, at first the best of friends, became personally involved in the old tensions between Assyria and Babylonia, so that civil war broke out. [265]
The son to whom Esarhaddon bequeathed Assyria and a major part of the Empire was Ashurbanipal.
This King prided himself on his literacy and tells us:
“I grasped the wisdom of Nabu (the god of the scribes), the whole of the scribal art of all the experts!”
Certainly, he was keenly interested in cuneiform literature, for it was he who was mainly responsible for collecting one of the great cuneiform libraries at Nineveh. [266]
While Esarhaddon (681-669 BC) managed his vast empire filled with fighting and squabbling petty kingdoms, it fell to Ashurbanipal (681-626 BC) to fulfil the arrangements for the attack planned upon Egypt.
Egypt had been controlled by non-Egyptians since 945 BC when Libyans through marriage inheritances took control under Shosheng I (943-924 BC).
This was the Libyan or Bubastic Dynasty.
The Libyan Dynasties were followed by the Negroes of Kush forcing them out.
RELIGION: Jews Have Cursed the Black Race – Library of Rickandria
There is some evidence that they were aided by the Egyptian priests who did not find the Libyans to be pious enough.
In 730 BC, the Negroes from Kush attacked and established the 25th Dynasty.
First, Piye was black Pharaoh until 715 BC when Shabok inherited the throne.
And then Taharqa came to power.
Taharqa was the black Pharaoh whom Assurbanipal attacked.
But as a result of Ashurbanipal’s other commitments, Egypt remained undisturbed for three years.
First, he had to settle a treaty by which the Phoenician king of Tyre made his submission.
Then, he had to install Shamash-shum-ukin as king of Babylonia, after which he fought a punitive campaign into the Kassite area.
Finally, in 671 BC, a strong Assyrian army with contingents from:
- Syria
- Phoenicia
- Palestine
and Cyprus, marched into Egypt.
The black Pharaoh was defeated and withdrew to Thebes.
Once again Memphis was in Assyrian hands.
In Egypt, the Assyrians freed a large number of Semitic slaves.
These descendants of the Hyksos had been held in bondage since 1550 BC.
He allowed them to depart Egypt and settle in Canaan and Sinai.
With the prospect of Assyrian occupation, a subsequent attempt at rebellion was made by the native princes, led by Necho.
But Assyrian forces arrested the ringleaders and quashed the conspiracy.
In view of the necessity of using acceptable native princes for the administration of a country such as Egypt, with a venerable and efficient bureaucratic system, the captured princes were treated with clemency and after being taken to Nineveh to be loaded with gifts and favors and no doubt to enter into treaty-relation, they were returned to their posts with Necho installed as Pharaoh. [267]
Finally, the civil war between Ashurbanipal and his brother in Babylon very seriously weakened the Empire.
None the less, when Ashurbanipal finally captured Babylon in 648 BC, his position seemed superficially as strong as ever, so that between then and 639 BC, using Babylonia as an operating base, he was able to undertake a series of campaigns against Elam.
There were, however, fresh factors on the world scene.
In Iran, north of Elam, the Medes, a group of vigorous Iranian tribes (a branch of the Indo-European race) who had migrated into the area at about 900 BC, were becoming a powerful force.
Already at the time of Esarhaddon, they had been of sufficient importance for him to bind them by treaty to support his arrangement for the succession after his death.
By 650 BC they had consolidated themselves into a powerful kingdom which successfully opposed Assyria.
North of Assyria, the kingdom of Urartu had been destroyed by fresh hordes of Cimmerians and Scythians from Central Asia, who occupied territory deep into Asia Minor.
Although Ashurbanipal succeeded for a while in using these hordes to his own advantage (as when he set them against a king on the coast of Asia Minor who was supporting the independence movement in Egypt), it was only a matter of time before some of them turned against Assyria itself. [268]
With hordes of Cimmerian and Scythian cavalry roaming over Asia Minor and the territories of Urartu, trade with the northern region of Asia Minor was at a standstill, and one of the principal sources of iron was cut off.
To the East, the numerically powerful Median tribes of Iran, generally described in the annals of Tiglath-Pileser III and Sargon II as “the mighty Medes” or “the wide spreading Medes” in recognition of their wide geographical extent, were now settling and coalescing into powerful units which ultimately became a kingdom able to meet the military might of Assyria on equal terms.
Their confederacy deprived Assyria of another important source of metals and horses and cut the routes bringing spices and semi-precious stones from India.
To the South, Babylonia was being over-run by the Chaldean tribes who had been new immigrants and cheap labor for the Kassite moneylenders.
They had purchased farmlands and learned the ways of civilization from their “friends” the moneylenders.
These Semitic Aramaeans (Amorites) had been sold the disposed farms that the Kassite tamkarum had swindled from their own people.
When conditions in Babylonia became unstable, they rose up and seized the whole of southern Babylonia as well as substantial areas in the north.
In the course of the recurrent rebellions, they had learned from the Assyrians much of the science of warfare and from the native Babylonians the arts of peace. [269]
And from the Kassite moneylenders, the Chaldeans learned the Secret Frauds of the Sumerian Swindle.
We know very little about Ashurbanipal’s reign after 639 BC except that the situation for Assyria was becoming increasingly grave with anti-Assyrian coalitions forming on the North, East and South of Assyria.
When Ashurbanipal died in 626 BC, a certain Nabopolassar, relying on support from the Chaldean (Kaldu) tribes of Babylonia, assumed the kingship of Babylonia.
However, Ashurbanipal’s successors, Ashur-etillu-ili and Sin-shar-ishkun, still tried to retain authority in parts of Babylonia.
But Nabopolassar made an alliance with the Medes, and his complete success against a weakened and surrounded Assyria was almost inevitable. [270]
At the very end, Assyria found an unexpected ally in Egypt.
Assyria had freed Egypt from the Negro Pharaohs and had re-installed native Egyptians as kings, so the Egyptians owed a debt of gratitude to Assyria.
The Egyptian support was, however, too late and Nineveh fell in 612 BC.
The remnant of the Assyrian forces with their Egyptian allies, made a last stand at Carchemish in 605 BC, only to meet with final defeat.
The Assyrian Empire was irrevocably at an end. [271]
And Babylonia, under the command of Nabopolassar, became inheritor of the conquered Assyrian territories.
But at his moment of victory, Nabopolassar died.
His son and successor Nebuchadnezzar II had been his father’s Commander-in-Chief and was a general of great experience and ability.
He grasped the remains of the Assyrian Empire and, thus founding the Neo Babylonian Empire, extended his authority to the Egyptian border.
His two attacks upon Jerusalem in 597 and 587 BC and the deportation of the Jews to Babylonia are well-known.
The Jews make a big deal out of these events as if their flyspeck of a kingdom was a great loss to history.
Nebuchadnezzar’s actions were, in fact, simply small incidents in his struggle to impose his authority over Canaanite lands which the new Egyptian dynasty regarded as its own sphere of influence.
The Medes at the same time grabbed some Assyrian territory and extended their realm to include the old kingdom of Urartu and much of Asia Minor.
Once Assyria was destroyed, one finds in the Neo Babylonian empire far less concentration of power in the hands of the king.
The domestic history of Babylonia during the following century was in some aspects a struggle for power between the dynasty and the temples, a struggle in which the temples were finally victorious.
In Assyria, the king was consecrated at the beginning of his reign once and for all, and so became the representative of the gods without limitation.
However, in Babylonia, even to the very end, the king had to lay his insignia humbly before the god each year, submit to personal indignities at the hands of the high priest, make a declaration of good intentions, and only then receive re-investiture with the royal authority by once again:
“taking the hand of the god”
This power of the Babylonian priests over the king became a great danger to the authority of the king if he was ever out of favor with the priests.
Besides the slaps on the face and the ear-pulling that the king received from the priests of Marduk as a part of the ceremony, there was always the danger that the priests would use a liver divination or some other sign from the gods to remove the king’s authority.
And what king could retain his authority if the gods were against him?
His own people would leave his services out of fear of the gods.
Thus, in Babylonia the king remained a tenant at-will of the god and as such was less able to gather temple lands into his own hands and thereby into permanent royal control.
This power of the temple in political and economic affairs was envied by the tamkarum [merchant-moneylender] class because it was a power that they could not buy.
However, they could corrupt and steal it. In all of these ancient societies, even if a king ruled, it was the god of the temple priests who had the greatest power over all.
In the provinces of the Neo-Babylonian empire, the general lines of Assyrian policy continued to be carried out.
Thus, the deportations by Nebuchadnezzar II, in 597 BC and 586 BC of sections of the people of Judah were nothing but a continuation of the policy instituted by Ashur-nasir-pal II (884-859 BC) and developed by Tiglath-Pileser III (745-727 BC) to deal with recalcitrant vassals.
At the same time Nebuchadnezzar II, like the Assyrian government in similar circumstances, appears to have made strenuous attempts to preserve a native administration for governing the people who were not deported.
After the surrender of Jerusalem in 597 BC and the deportation of the young king Jehoiachin along with his administration and his court clowns dressed as rabbis, Nebuchadnezzar II attempted indirect rule by using Zedekiah as a vassal prince bound to Babylonia.
For nine years the experiment was successful.
Even after the siege and capture of Jerusalem consequent on Zedekiah’s ultimate yielding to the pro-Egyptian party, Nebuchadnezzar still did not abandon the attempt to employ some form of indirect rule.
So, he appointed a Jewish nobleman, Gedaliah, as governor.
It was only after Gedaliah’s assassination by Jewish zealots that Judah came under direct Babylonian administration. [273]
It was during the Neo-Babylonian Period that the power of the moneylender guilds was at its highest.
These secretive brotherhoods of schemers had cemented their business relationships well enough through guild membership and marriages that they no longer needed to use written contracts for their business transactions between one another.
SECRET SOCIETY: The Brotherhood – Library of Rickandria
Such was their mutual trust!
The tamkarum [merchant moneylender] guilds were international in membership.
They controlled the flow of goods and bullion across the borders of all kingdoms, without bothering to notify the kings of their true loyalties.
Since Sumerian times, it had been the practice to commit every transaction to writing.
But for the first time, the Neo-Babylonian wholesale merchants seem to have preferred oral agreements supplemented by a variety of operational devices. [274]
With oral agreements between trusted guild brothers, all sorts of schemes and plots were possible without fear of detection or proof of treachery.
But a dearth of clay tablets does not mean that contracts were not used at all.
It was during these times that cuneiform characters written on durable clay were being replaced by Semitic alphabets written on perishable parchment.
Aramaic had become the international language of business and politics.
At the death of Nebuchadnezzar II in 562 BC, he was succeeded by his son Amel-Marduk (Evil Merodach of 2 Kings 35:27 and Jeremiah) who after a brief reign of two years was killed in a revolution.
Little is known of him beyond the statement in 2 Kings 25:27-30 that he showed special favor to Jehoiachin, one of the two ex-kings of Judah held at Babylon.
Curiously enough there is a direct reference to Jehoiachin in some cuneiform tablets found at Babylon and datable to the reign of Nebuchadnezzar.
These tablets are lists of ration issues and the relevant part of one of them reads:
“For Ya’u-kina king of the land Yahudu, for the five sons of the king of the land of Yahudu, (and) for eight Yahudaeans, each one-half sila (one-half liter) of grain per day.”
Philologically, “Ya’u-kinu of Yahudu” is unmistakably the name which the Bible translators render Jehoiachin of Judah.
The man who benefited by the death of king Amel-Marduk and the one who led the revolution to depose him, was Nergal-shar-usur (Neriglissar of the Greek accounts, Nergal-shar-ezer of Jeremiah 39:3), a son-in-law of Nebuchadnezzar II.
It is now known from a Babylonian chronicle that he undertook a great and foolish campaign across the Taurus Mountains, wasting the men and strength of Babylonia.
After initial success this usurper suffered a serious defeat and returned to Babylon in 556 BC, dying so soon afterwards that one is tempted to wonder if his personal rivals at home took advantage of his loss of prestige to hasten his end.
Certainly, his son, Labashi-Marduk, who attempted to assume the throne in succession, was very shortly removed by a rebellion of the chief officers of state, who put on the throne Nabu-na’id (Nabonidus), the diplomatist who had been commissioned by Nebuchadnezzar II to assist negotiations between the Medes and Lydians in 585 B.C.
Why would the chief officers of the Neo Babylonian empire want Nabonidus to lead them rather than someone of the lineage of Nebuchadnezzar?
A desire for honest government was the reason.
That Nabonidus had been a wise and loyal diplomat who could lead effectively was important.
But most important was that he was a sincerely religious man.
He had the trust of the chief officers who had rebelled against the usurper, Nergal-shar-usur, and his son, Labashi-Marduk.
And he was a devotee of the Moon God, Sin, the god of the moneylenders of Ur.
Nabonidus (555-539 BC), already in his sixties, ascended the throne after many years of service to Nebuchadnezzar II.
He was not a member of Nebuchadnezzar II’s family.
He was to be the last of the Neo-Babylonian kings.
As he wrote:
“I am Nabu-na’id who has not the honor of being a somebody – kingship is not within me.”
Certainly, a humble comment from a king! Nabonidus was not of the royal family of Nabopolassar but was the son of a nobleman and of the high priestess of Sin, the Moon God at Harran.
This lady may have been of the Assyrian royal house, for she was born in the middle of the reign of Ashurbanipal. It is well known that before and after this time the high priesthood of the great shrines was commonly bestowed upon princes and princesses of the royal family.
Thus, over the millennia, the priesthoods of Mesopotamia had been corrupted in their holiness by the political insertion of unqualified relatives into the office of high priest.
Mixing political and religious power while keeping both powers under the authority of the king, gave control over the entire population as well as control over the finances of the temples.
That is, the kings had control of everybody except for the moneylenders who hypocritically gave an outward show of obedience to the will of both king and god while secretly making plans and plotting schemes of their own.
Being the son of the high priestess of the Moon God, would have had an effect upon anyone born to such a position.
For Nabonidus, the effects were extreme.
He was a very religious man whose life was ruled by his god.
Once again remember that this was an age when the divinations over the liver of a sheep or the meaning of dreams or the consequences of omens in the heavens, were all piously accepted as messages from the gods.
That Nabonidus became king, whose mother was priestess to the Moon God, are facts that don’t seem to have been properly understood by the atheist archeologists who profess confusion over the subsequent historical events.
At the beginning of his reign, Nabonidus had a dream in which Marduk ordered him to rebuild the Temple of Sin at Harran.
This temple had lain desolate for fifty-four years.
This was his mother’s temple and he no doubt wanted to please her since she was still living at Harran.
And now that he was king of all of Babylonia, he had the power to do so.
Once again note the piety of these kings of the ancient Near East.
Based upon a dream wherein the god, Marduk, spoke to him, Nabonidus changed both state policy and the destiny of his entire kingdom.
All based upon a religiously inspired dream! Remember this when we explore the dreams and fantasies of the Jews in Volume II, The Monsters of Babylon.
A surviving cuneiform text records the dream in which Marduk instructed the new king to undertake the work at Harran.
Nabonidus wrote:
“At the beginning of my reign the gods let me see a dream.
In it there stood both Marduk, the Great Lord, and Sin, the light of heaven and earth.
Marduk said to me:
‘Nabu-na’id, King of Babylon, bring bricks on your own horse and chariot and build the temple of Ehulhul [lit. ‘the house of joy’] that Sin, the Great Lord, may take up his dwelling there.’
I replied to Marduk, the chief of the gods, ‘The Medes are laying siege to the very temple you have ordered me to build and their armed might is very great.’
But Marduk said to me, ‘The Medes of whom you spoke, they, and their country and all the kings who march at their side, shall cease to exist!’
And indeed, when the third year came to pass, Marduk made rise against them Cyrus, King of Anshan, his young servant, and Cyrus scattered the numerous Medes with his small army and captured Astyages, King of the Medes and brought him in fetters into Cyrus’ land.
That was the doing of the Great Lord Marduk, whose command cannot be changed.” [275]
Nabonidus rebuilt the temple and re-dedicated it to the Moon God, Sin, though with some considerable opposition from the priests of Babylon.
He also gave special attention to the centers of moon worship at Ur and later at the oasis of Tayma in Arabia.
His growing devotion to the Moon God was a religious change which caused friction with the traditional religious factions in Babylonia.
Nabonidus’ mother, Adad guppi, was devoted to this god at Harran.
According to her biography, Adad-guppi lived 104 years.
So, her life spanned the entire Neo-Babylonian period. [276]
In his dedications, Nabonidus’ inscriptions expressed what he considered the impiety and lawlessness of his subjects. [277]
This pious king could see for himself the rampant fraud and ruthless avarice of the Babylonian society which was under the oppressive debts and the debauching of the tamkarum [merchant-moneylenders].
Through licentiousness and desperation, both of which were promoted by and profited by the merchants and moneylenders, the People had abandoned the holy way of devotion to the gods.
Making money to give to the tamkarum had become their main concern.
This long decline in public morals and piety can be seen in the changes that occurred in the Peoples’ allegiance to the gods over the millennia.
During Sumerian times, the ancient Ubaidian city of Uruk was home to the temple of Anu, the god of heaven and king of the gods.
Every Mesopotamian city had its chief god residing in its main temple.
But every city also had numerous smaller temples and chapels devoted to the lesser gods of that city.
Until the end of the Third Dynasty of Ur when the Sumerians still controlled their own culture, Anu was the Sumerian god of heaven, and he resided in the biggest temple in Uruk.
His daughter was the goddess Ianna, the Sumerian goddess of love and warfare.
She resided in a small temple.
But as the tamkarum [merchant moneylenders] gained debt-slave ownership of women through their money lending scams, and as the prestige of women was degraded through slavery and prostitution, the Peoples’ devotion to Anu, the god of heaven, decreased and the devotees of Ianna (Ishtar) increased.
As the Sumerians were replaced by the promiscuous Semites (variously called Akkadians, Amorites and Aramaeans); and as the Sumerian culture was replaced by the ruthless, materialistic, Semitic Babylonian culture; and as the protective authority of the kings and the moral authority of the priests were subverted by the money-grubbing power of the tamkarum [merchant-moneylenders]; the temple of Anu became less prosperous while the temple of Ianna (Ishtar) became predominant.
In a culture that was dominated by:
- moneylenders
- merchants
- bankers
and whoremongers, the temple of Ishtar (the goddess of love and war) became the biggest temple in Uruk by Neo-Babylonian times.
Despite its great agricultural wealth, the Neo Babylonian empire suffered severe economic constraints.
During the previous wars against Assyria and against the Medes, manpower had been diverted to the army while the fields and canals fell into neglect.
This was always a recipe for famine.
The military and building campaigns of Nabopolassar and Nebuchadnezzar had taken their toll and the disastrous military adventures of Nergal-shar-usur had drained away dwindling resources.
Some of Babylonia’s major trade routes in the east fell to Median control.
The merchants, no longer limited by the ancient Laws of Hammurabi, raised prices by fifty percent.
Babylonia also suffered from plague and famine.
Nabonidus tried to explain the famine as a result of the impiety of the Babylonian people. [278]
This was the usual belief for all of the peoples of the ancient Near East when faced with either good or bad events.
That is, the benevolence or wrath of the gods was the result of the holiness or wickedness of the people.
Even in bad times, as the People implored the gods to save them, the temples received gifts and donations of land and gold as sacrifices to the gods.
But matters of godly provenance aside, the temples always had a source of gold and silver in their treasuries.
It is clear from the cuneiform documents which have come down to us that the kings in the Neo Babylonian period took a share of the temple revenues.
Special royal officers were installed in the temples for this purpose. Among revenues which certainly went to the temples in the first instance were tithes on date crops and catches of fish, rents (payable in kind) on grain-land, a cattle tax, customary offerings made by farmers at the time of particular festivals, and other dues of a more or less obscure nature.
There were also death duties which were levied on rich private citizens and which, like the tolls in certain of the canals, went wholly to the king even though the temple authorities may have been responsible for their assessment and collection.
This was made possible by the sons and daughters of the kings being installed as high priests and priestesses.
All in all, in the course of the sixth century BC the Neo-Babylonian kings managed to get control of an increasingly large share of the temple revenues.
This increased the wealth and power of the king but tended to throw the temple priesthoods and laity into opposition to him.
It must be remembered that temples were not just places of worship but were also profit-making corporate entities that manufactured trade goods, practiced farming and animal husbandry and were the repositories of bullion in their treasuries.
For large commercial transactions between temples, the idols “visited” other temples in ostentatious processions.
The priests carried the idols of their god on a palanquin through the streets accompanied with music and fanfare.
The procession would visit a temple across town or in a neighboring city and have a feast and celebration.
The gold and silver bullion hidden in the idol’s base could be secretly transferred between temples in this way so that the account books could be balanced with the gods acting as witness.
On the other hand, it must be borne in mind that, in the light of Nabonidus’ attempt on behalf of the Moon God, Sin, to usurp Marduk’s place as head of the pantheon, the reasons for that king’s unpopularity were more religious than fiscal. [279]
Nabonidus wanted to make the Moon God both of Ur and of his mother’s city of Harran as the supreme god of the Neo Babylonian empire.
The supreme Babylonian deity, Marduk, an old Sumerian sun god specifically associated with the city of Babylon, did not have the supreme place in the pantheon of the Semitic Amorites, Aramaeans or Arabians because they worshipped the Moon God, Sin.
This worship of the Moon God by the Semites is explained in Volume II, The Monsters of Babylon, where-in you will discover how the Moon God, Al Lah, became the supreme god of the Muslims.
A point at which the economic and religious problems met was the city of Harran.
The very name “Harran” means “road” and was applied to this city because it was the great meeting point of the routes northwards from Babylonia on the one side and from:
- Egypt
- Arabia
- Palestine
on the other.
CIVILIZATION: HARRAN – Library of Rickandria
Harran was also one of the cities whose legal status differed in essential points from that of any other community.
In Babylonia, the cuneiform tablets indicated that there were certain privileged and “free” cities such as:
- Nippur
- Babylon
- Sippar
And in Assyria, Harran and the old capital Asshur in Upper Mesopotamia were “free cities”.
The inhabitants of these “free cities” were exempt from:
- conscripted labor
- military service
- taxes
The privileges accorded the inhabitants of these cities were under divine protection.
Their status had both legal and religious implications. [280]
To commence his work of restoring the Moon God’s temple in Harran, Nabonidus ordered a general levy of troops from the western provinces.
The Medes, occupied in battle with Cyrus of Persia, withdrew from Harran just as Nabonidus’ dream had predicted.
And Nabonidus was able to use his levies to commence the projected work of restoration.
Being conscripted into the army and then being ordered to re-build the temple of the Moon God at Harran, had the effect, however, of promoting a mutiny among the people of the great cities of Babylonia whose people were devoted to Marduk.
There is evidence that Nabonidus had been preparing for something of the kind.
The king owned large estates in southern Babylonia, and contracts from the temple archives prove that at the very beginning of his reign he was handing over, in return for a fixed annual payment, control of these to the administrative authorities of Eanna, the great and wealthy temple corporation in Uruk.
Eanna was the temple of Ishtar.
This temple for the goddess of love and prostitutes had acquired much wealth in those societies which were being profiteered by merchants and moneylenders.
Eanna, the great temple at Uruk, seems to have owned almost all of the land of Babylonia from Ur in the south to within sight of Babylon to the north.
At the beginning of the Neo-Babylonian empire, this temple was controlled by three principle administrators:
- the Shatammu (a title possibly meaning “Guardian of the Precincts”)
- the Qipu (“Warden”)
- the Scribe
As always throughout the history of the ancient Near East, the Scribe, as one of the few people who could read and write, had great power and importance.
Standing as he did at all royal, priestly and commercial junctures, he offered great opportunities to any moneylender who could acquire his services and learn the secrets that he knew.
It is probable that the Qipu (“Warden”) was a royal nominee, but it is clear from his diminishing importance in the documents of the period that he was gradually being elbowed out of any real share in control of temple affairs.
The king therefore needed to take measures to reinforce his representative’s waning influence in the temple administration. [281]
The king had certain privileges in connection with the temple, such as a share of particular revenues, and Nabonidus in the third year of his reign, 553 BC, installed two royal officers (the “Royal Officer Lord of the Appointment” and the “Royal Officer over the King’s Coffer”) ostensibly to safeguard such interests, in fact as a counterpoise to the power of the Shatammu (“Guardian of the Precincts”). [282]
Reforms in the administration of the temples were begun at this time.
At Uruk new appointments were made to all the senior posts in the early years of Nabonidus’ reign, something that did not endear him to the priests.
Nabonidus’ restoration of Ehulhul, the Moon God’s shrine and his mother’s temple, undoubtedly had both religious and filial allegiance for him.
But his increasing devotion to Sin, the Moon God, constituted a religious innovation which proved exceedingly unpopular with conservative elements in Babylonia, an unpopularity which this “young servant” of the dream text was later to exploit.
The Harran inscription records rebellion in Babylonia:
“The sons of Babylon, Borsippa, Nippur, Ur, Uruk, Larsa, priests and people of the capitals of Akkad, against his great divinity offended … they forgot their duty.
Whenever they talked, it was treason and not loyalty; like a dog they devoured one another; fever and famine in the midst of them …”
Clearly Nabonidus’ religious and administrative reforms had provoked great resentment, while the wars and extensive building programs of his predecessors had proven to be a severe burden on the country’s resources.
Large numbers of economic texts reveal severe price gouging, a situation now made worse by the spread of plague.
Between 560 BC and 550 BC, prices rose by up to 50%, and from 560 BC to 485 BC, when Darius assumed power, the total increase amounted to some 200%.
After he was assured that the temple of Ishtar in Uruk would provide a steady payment to the palace, he began preparations to leave Babylon.
Based upon another religious dream that he had had, Nabonidus now made an extraordinary move.
Installing his son Bel-shar-usur (the Belshazzar in the Book of Daniel) as regent in Babylon, he led an army through Syria and Lebanon and finally on to the oasis of Tayma in northwest Arabia where he was to remain for the next ten years. [283]
During his period of residence in the west, he pushed two hundred and fifty miles farther southwards through a number of places which can be identified until he finally reached Yatrib (Medina) on the Red Sea.
Nabonidus specifically states that he established garrisons in and planted colonies around the six oases which he names.
He describes the forces used as:
“the people of Akkad and of Hattiland”
that is, both native Babylonians and the Hittites from the western provinces.
A fascinating side issue is that a thousand years later, five of the six oases named were, at the time of Mohammad, occupied by Jews. [284]
As you will see in Volume Two, those Jews were none other than the descendants of the tamkarum [merchant-moneylenders] who had accompanied Nabonidus as merchants managing the trade routes that passed through those oasis rest stops along the Arabian “incense route” from Tayma to Yathrib (Medina).
To the goat-rustling Arabians, the conquering army of Nabonidus, arriving from some distant land to do nothing more than establish trade centers and to pray to the Moon God, was a wondrous sight.
The Semitic Arabs had been devoted to the Moon God from the earliest times.
Their faith in that deity was certainly increased by the king of Babylonia arriving with an army to establish worship to his god, Sin, who was none other than their own Moon God, Lah.
They certainly did not object to Nabonidus re-naming a vast wilderness of their territories as “Sinai”, that is “Wilderness of Sin.”
After all, the Moon God, El Sin, of Nabonidus was identical to the Moon God, Al Lah, of the Arabians.
Nabonidus increased the fanatical faith of the Arabs in their Moon God, Allah.
It is possible that Nabonidus’ motives were saner than Babylonian tradition later recognized.
At Tayma the caravan routes from Damascus, Sheba, the Arabian Gulf and Egypt met.
It was an oasis rich in water wells.
The city was a natural center for Arabian trade, and the acquisition of a new trading empire in southern Arabia would have been an achievement worthy of a king who saw himself in the mold of Nebuchadnezzar.
Yet to impute such a motive to the now aging Nabonidus is certainly to exceed extant evidence.
One fact is certain; Nabonidus cannot have hoped to increase his popularity in Babylon by a prolonged absence during which the New Year Festival could not take place without the king.
The New Year Festival was the most important festival in Babylonia.
In it, the king:
“took the hand of the god.”
But before doing so, he had to endure slaps upon his face and having his ears pulled by the priests.
Only when tears were observed in his eyes would the priests declare that the god was pleased with the king.
But the chief god of Babylon was Marduk, and his priests would not be gentle with the king who had taken away their preeminence and had given it to the Moon God at Harran and Ur.
Through a liver divination, there was even the danger that the priests would divest him of kingship.
After ten years in Tayma, at the age of seventy, Nabonidus returned.
In a dream, Sin had told him to re-build the temple of the Moon God at Harran and at Ur.
And in a dream, Sin had also told him to travel to Arabia, stay for ten years, and establish the worship of Sin there.
“I hied myself afar from my city of Babylon … ten years to my city Babylon I went not in.”
A passage in the Harran inscription implies divine direction.
“In ten years arrived the appointed time, the days were fulfilled which Sin, king of the gods, had spoken.” [285]
This inscription re-affirms that he had attempted to supplant Marduk with Sin as king of the gods.
This religious king thus gave his reasons for moving his court to Arabia and leaving Babylonia.
The trade routes were secondary to his religious reasons.
And those trade routes did not produce necessities for Babylonia but rather luxury goods such as incense and pearls for the tamkarum [merchant-moneylender] guilds.
After ten years, and now in his 70’s in age, he left Tayma.
The work at Harran was completed and that city survived for many centuries as a center of the worship of the Moon God whose crescent symbol still appeared on Roman coins minted there down to the 3rd century AD and appeared again on the Muslim flags of 622 AD.
Miles Williams Mathis: ROME – Library of Rickandria
Yet for the city of Babylon the end was near.
The “young servant” of Nabonidus’ dream was engaged in the conquest of an empire that was soon to exceed even the greatest aspirations of the Babylonians.
This young servant was Cyrus, a Persian of the royal line of Achaemenes, the 7th century founder of the dynasty known by his name. [286]
The Persians were an Indo-European tribe who settled in the territory of ancient Elam, their name deriving from Parsua (modern Fars), one of their first strongholds.
One of their princes, Cambyses, had married the daughter of the Median king Astyages, perhaps a recognition by the latter of the rising strength of the Persians.
Of this union was born Cyrus who was to become the subject of legends recorded by Herodotus and reminiscent of those circulated about the Akkadian Sargon.
In 539 BC, the New Year Festival was celebrated in Babylon, apparently for the first time since Nabonidus’ retirement to Tayma.
During the ceremony a plentiful supply of wine was distributed, and to judge from the accounts of Herodotus, Xenophon and the author of the Book of Daniel, not only were the revels prolonged but the memory of them remained fresh for many years.
During this time, however, Cyrus was advancing on Babylonia.
Again, revealing his extreme religiosity, Nabonidus ordered the collection and transport of the country’s gods into Babylon to secure their holy protection, but:
- Borsippa
- Cutha
- Sippar
refused to comply.
In the month of Tishri, Cyrus successfully assaulted Opis on the Tigris and then marched on Sippar which was taken without opposition.
Nabonidus fled, and two days later Ugbaru, governor of the Guti, and the army of Cyrus entered Babylon without a battle.
Herodotus attributed this to the Persian stratagem of breaching the Euphrates, which constituted one side of the defenses of the city, and leading the river into a depression, thereby rendering the main stream temporarily fordable.
There is no reason to reject the story, but the real reason for the collapse of the city was not a weakness in its defenses but the presence within the city of a “fifth column” [287] of tamkarum [merchant-moneylenders] promoting the cause of whatever side would protect their profits by opening a gate to let their new allies in.
Once again, the moneylenders had betrayed their own people and had embraced their “new friends”.
It would appear that Cyrus’ liberal religious views were welcomed after the discontent aroused by the heresies of Nabonidus.
Indeed, an inscription of Cyrus from Babylon relates how Marduk, whom Nabonidus had neglected, marched with him and his army:
“as a friend and companion.”
Nabonidus was later captured in Babylon where, according to Xenophon, he was killed.
Cyrus entered Babylon in triumph, forbade looting and appointed a Persian governor, leaving undisturbed the religious institutions and civil administration.
Thus, came to an end the last native dynasty to rule the city.
At the beginning of the following year, Cambyses appears to have represented his father in the temple New Year ceremonies, legitimizing Persian rule [288] by:
“taking the hand of the god”
But something more than Persian rule was legitimatized when Cyrus disallowed the looting of Babylon.
The bullion on deposit in the temple treasuries was allowed to accumulate under the accounts of the tamkarum [merchant-moneylenders].
Like so many kings before him who owed their success to the moneylenders, Cyrus honored the ones who had betrayed their city and opened the gates to him.
He honored the ones who had financed his armies and who provided the military intelligence for the best timing for his attack while the Babylonians were busy with their New Year celebration prayers.
Before the time of Cyrus, Babylon had seen many foreign dynasties come and go and had in turn successfully assimilated each of them.
Now, however, new forces were at work in the Near East and new religious and political ideas were gradually replacing those of ancient Mesopotamia.
Social institutions were also changing, and even the system of writing, long a unifying force, was being superseded by the more efficient Aramaic alphabet of only twenty-two letters.
Cuneiform continued to be employed, however, especially for religious and astronomical treatises, a number of the latter are known from as late as the 1st century AD.
Cuneiform also remained in use for at least some economic documents, and we have numerous records in this script of prosperous merchants and banking houses in Babylon and Nippur.
Indeed, on the surface, the private lives of Babylonian citizens appear to have changed very little under Persian rule.
Religious forms were preserved and commercial activity prospered. It was business as it:
“has always been.”
Under Persian rule, Babylonia continued to thrive.
By the time of Cyrus, not just the debt-slaves but all women had finally been reduced to the level of chattel and prostitutes under the profiteering scams of the tamkarum [merchant-moneylenders].
Herodotus (~484 – 425 BC) tells us of the debauched status of women under the laws and the cultural decay induced by the merchant-moneylenders of Babylon:
“In every village once a year all the girls of marriageable age used to be collected together in one place, while the men stood round them in a circle; a [tamkarum] auctioneer then called each one in turn to stand up and offered her for sale, beginning with the best-looking and going on to the second best as soon as the first had been sold for a good price.
Marriage was the object of the transaction.
The rich men who wanted wives bid against each other for the prettiest girls, while the humbler folk, who had no use for good looks in a wife, were actually paid to take the ugly ones, for when the auctioneer had got through all the pretty girls he would call upon the plainest, or even perhaps a crippled one, to stand up, and then ask who was willing to take the least money to marry her and she was knocked down to whoever accepted the smallest sum.
The money came from the sale of the beauties, who in this way provided dowries for their ugly or misshapen sisters.
It was illegal for a man to marry his daughter to anyone he happened to fancy, and no one could take home a girl he had bought without first finding a backer to guarantee his intention of marrying her.
In cases of disagreement between husband and wife, the law allowed the return of the purchase money.
Anyone who wished could come even from a different village to buy a wife.”
Herodotus was describing the low status of women in Babylonia as it:
“used to be”
before his time.
But Secret Fraud #6 of the Sumerian Swindle never stops until its victims are totally destroyed.
Secret Fraud #6 is a relentless technique:
“High morals impede profits, so debauching the Virtuous pulls them below the depravity of the moneylender who there-by masters them and bends them to his will.”
So, merely reducing women to the level of trade goods was not degenerate enough for the demonic merchants and moneylenders who found their greatest profits in the perversion of the innocent.
Herodotus goes on to describe the status of women in Babylonia in his own day as he continues his narrative:
“The above admirable practice has now fallen into disuse and the [tamkarum] have of late years hit upon another scheme, namely the prostitution of all girls of the lower classes to provide some relief from the poverty which followed upon the conquest with its attendant hardship and general ruin.”
That is, Herodotus is describing the general ruin of the muskenum [Have-Nots].
The merchant moneylenders were pimping not just their debt-slaves but the poor muskenum [Have-Nots] as well.
From auctioning all girls into marriage contracts, to pimping the daughters of the poor as prostitutes, the tamkarum [merchant-moneylenders] surreptitiously pulled society ever downward into wickedness.
Herodotus continues with his description:
“There is one custom amongst these people which is wholly shameful.
Every woman who is a native of the country must once in her life go and sit in the temple of Ishtar and there give herself to a strange man.
Many of the rich women, who are too proud to mix with the rest, drive to the temple in covered carriages with a whole host of servants following behind.
And there wait.
Most, however, sit in the precinct of the temple with a band of plaited string round their heads.
And a great crowd they are, what with some sitting there, others arriving, others going away.
And through them gangways are marked off running in every direction for the men to pass along and make their choice.
Once a woman has taken her seat she is not allowed to go home until a man has thrown a silver coin into her lap and taken her outside to lie with her.
As he throws the coin, the man has to say, ‘In the name of the goddess Ishtar’.
The value of the coin is of no consequence.
Once thrown it becomes sacred, and the law forbids that it should ever be refused.
The woman has no privilege of choice.
She must go with the first man who throws her the money.
When she has lain with him, her duty to the goddess is discharged and she can go home, after which it will be impossible to seduce her by any offer however large.
Tall, handsome women soon manage to get home again, but the ugly ones stay a long time before they can fulfill the condition which the law demands, some of them, indeed, as much as three or four years.
There is a custom similar to this in parts of Cyprus.” [289]
Cyprus was a major mercantile port for the tamkarum.
This degrading of women was always profitable to the merchants and moneylenders because they were always looking for something to sell.
To the tamkarum [merchant-moneylenders], women were just like any other saleable item.
As slaves, they could work; as whores they could bring in a profit.
Under the influence of the tamkarum, the women of Babylonia had become mere cattle.
Cyrus offered peace and friendship to all, and compensated those who had suffered under Nabonidus, or so he tells us.
Wherever he went Cyrus called on the support of the local gods, a policy which proved highly successful.
Equally acceptable was the new Persian administration.
For the most part local officials were retained in office, but governors known as satraps were installed in the various provinces.
Their power was effectively restrained by holding the treasurer and garrison commander in each capital city responsible solely to the king. [290]
Thus, both monetary and military power were tightly held in the fists of the king.
And behind the king stood the moneylenders of Persia and of Babylon.
The Persian Empire, into which Egypt was incorporated in 525 BC, now exceeded in extent any which had gone before it.
At the height of its power, the empire spanned three continents, including territories of Afghanistan and Pakistan, parts of Central Asia, Asia Minor, Thrace, much of the Black Sea coastal regions:
- Iraq
- northern Saudi Arabia
- Jordan
- Palestine
- Lebanon
- Syria
and all significant population centers of ancient Egypt as far west as Libya.
Certainly, this territory far exceeded the insignificant smudges upon geography that are called by the lying Jews,
“the Great Kingdoms of Israel and Judah”
Of the Persian Empire, Babylonia and Assyria together formed only one province.
Babylonian and Assyrian culture had, however, a continuing influence.
Persian art, civil administration and military science owed much to their Babylonian and Assyrian roots.
Babylon was, if not the political, certainly the administrative and cultural capital of the whole Persian Empire, so much so that Aramaic, the language of the tamkarum [merchant-moneylenders], became the official language of the Persian Empire.
It was only when Darius I (~550 – 486 BC) had acquired the Persian throne and ruled it as a representative of the Zoroastrian religion, that the old Sumerian and Babylonian and Assyrian tradition was broken and the claim of Babylon and the Babylonian gods to confer legitimacy on the rulers of western Asia ceased to be acknowledged.
After 500 BC, the Persian Empire came into collision with Greece.
The conflict continued intermittently until in 331 BC when the Macedonian, Alexander the Great, overthrew the Persian power at a battle near Arbela, proceeding afterwards to extend his authority to the borders of India.
NEW WORLD ORDER: 7 Reasons Alexander the Great Was, Well, Great – Library of Rickandria
Had Alexander lived, it was his intention to establish a world empire with its capital at Babylon, but his premature death at Babylon in 323 BC, at the age of thirty-two, left his territories to be divided up among his generals.
The eastern provinces, including Babylonia and Assyria, eventually fell to the Greek general, Seleucus I (301-281 BC).
E-Saggila, the great temple of Marduk, however, still continued to be kept in repair and to be a center of Babylonian patriotism, until at last, the foundation of Seleucia diverted the population to the new capital and the ruins of Babylon became a quarry for the builders of the new seat of government.
Under the Greek Seleucids, Babylonia and Assyria came increasingly under Hellenistic cultural influence, and Akkadian, which had already been superseded by Aramaic as the language of everyday speech, was no longer even written, except for religious or astronomical purposes.
The old culture of Babylonia and Assyria was dead, and the future lay with:
- Palestine
- Greece
- Rome
[291]
These events are covered further in Volume II, The Monsters of Babylon.
BOOK: The Sumerian Swindle: How the Jews Betrayed Mankind – Vol. I – Library of Rickandria
The Sumerian Swindle: How the Jews Betrayed Mankind – Chapter 7: The Assyrians & the Goat Rustlers