Harold Austerman
THE LEFT HAND OF DAWN
Both according to Fran�ois Lenormant (1) and the Cambridge Ancient History,(2) cheques were in use in Babylonia from the earliest times. Such use of cheques has also been verified as having existed at Ur during the 3rd and 4th Millenniums B.C. by Sir Charles L. Woolley, and no doubt, by other archaeologists at other sites.
As the only clear meaning that can be given to the law No. 7 of Hammurabi, indicates that also were known in the 3rd Millennium or earlier, the principles of private money creation through the creation of receipts as against valuables on deposit with persons of �Repute,� the existence of all the abuses against the men of the city, deriving from the exercise of the principles of inflation and deflation of the total number of such receipts indicating given numbers of the unit of exchange, may be deemed to have existed.
These inflations or deflations of the volume of the mass of abstract money, which indeed such false receipts may be called, and such as are particularly associated with the custom of making payments by cheque drawn on �deposits� created by such receipts as issued by such persons �of repute,� and which could be manipulated as suited themselves and their friends etc., were directed towards creation of total monopoly of wealth and industry.
Further, as according to Paul Einzig, �a credit system developed in Greece as in other parts of the ancient world long before the adoption of coinage,� (3) it may reasonably be supposed that well before the flood of refugees that must have poured out of Aram in the earlier days of the first millennium B.C. as a result of the Assyrian onslaught, Babylonian money power had already established branch agencies on the coast of Greece, and in the Mycenaean centers generally, from which they loaned their clay �promises to pay�, expressed in terms of silver no doubt, as against collateral.
Such loans could be used to purchase those luxury goods and arms which were brought from the Syrian or Mesopotamian cities; but although the original loan had been but an entry in the ledger of the agent, probably, in the final analysis costing little more than the labor of slave scribe, the repayment demanded would be silver or slaves, or other equally desirable goods.
Clear evidence of the existence of this Babylonian force in the Mycenaean cities was yielded by verification of the fact of the existence of the mythological Cadmus of Grecian Thebes, reputedly Phoenician (Phoenician being simply a word used by the Greeks to describe those people that came to trade from the ports of Syria and Canaan), having probably been reality.
This historical fact was revealed by the discovery in modern day Thebes in the area that in ancient times must have been the national storehouses, of cylinders containing seals of a high dignitary of the court of King Burraburias who reigned in the city of Babylon in the first half of the 14th Century B.C.; which unmistakably suggested Cadmus, and his real part in the affairs of Thebes and those cities with which it was connected.(4)
Further evidence of the activities of the Babylonians is indicated by the discovery of their seals in the Cyclades.
These trading stations established in Mycenae long before Homer, would have functioned very much as did the European trading stations on the West Coast of Africa during the eighteenth century A.D.(5) They were points from which agents of international money power could instigate internal warfare amongst the tribes, so that they would always have ready market for the products of their arms and other industries; the most desirable payment for these products being precious metals and slaves; as much in ancient times as in modern times.
As previously pointed out, the warrior princes of Mycenaean Greece had undoubtedly maintained steady supplies of these commodities as the result of their depredations over many years.
But once they had thrown all their resources and military power into the gamble across the sea which was the campaign of the King of Lydia and the �Peoples of the Sea� against Pharaoh Merneptah of Egypt, and which ended in total disaster for them at the battle of Perire, the years of strength, and plenty, and being feared by their enemies were over...
It may reasonably be assumed that their total destruction while in confederation with the tribes and kingdoms of the Western Mediterranean at Perire on the Western marches of the Egyptian Delta in 1234 B.C., by the discipline of the massed archers of Pharaoh Merneptah, would have marked the Apogee of the parabola of their rise and fall.(6)