Chapter 3

Per Me Dei Regnant

Astle does suffer from some common modern delusions, such as government having as its purpose the good of the people, that farm laborers of early antiquity had a healthy life [1], and that Anglo-American white slavery was a benign institution. [2] Despite a strong Christian bias, which has him end his book with a long quote from Revelations, he is also sympathetic to early pagan faiths and their priest kings:

“...this god-king from whom descended the legend of that company of Olympus, was already surrendering his might, and the freedoms of his peoples, to those inscrutable shadows that lurked in the dimness of the distant Babylonian counting houses.”

The rising warlords [Odysseus being one] that dashed such priest-kings as Priam of Troy to dust, who toppled them all, 6 of 7 emperors, save the Pharaoh of Egypt, are shown by Astle as witless mercenaries for the money power, creatures of passion serving creatures of manipulation. More specific evidence will be brought out. This book I have read three times now, ends in the 200s B.C. with its case bleakly made, in detail. It is easily seen by Astle that modern bankers no longer have to sell us by the thousands a day into slavery. Rather they can sell our jobs overseas, bring in cheaper labor to displace us, and reduce us to a billable commodity in our same place, hollowing out the nation and drinking its life.

The focus of the inquiry, as the Bronze Age Collapse is nigh, becomes Egypt and secondarily Isrаel. Abraham is described as a “refugee from Ur about the time of its destruction by the Gutim.” The use of precisely weighted jewelry, largely in ring form, as money is sighted in Biblical and Egyptian record, which in Astle’s hands rarely disagree. A litany of Egyptian decline from the death of Pepi II in 2476 B.C., including a couple of recoveries, is demonstrated to be related to the inroads of international bankers, to include Joseph as their slave agent and eventual Vizier of Egypt, the Hyksos invasions of 1675 B.C., [3] and the ensuing chariot empire and Sea People wars, as financed by these nefarious actors from Babylon. By 1167 Egypt is the last Bronze Age empire standing, and is forever weakened, saved only by its geographic isolation.

Indeed, the manufacture of chariots, run by the bankers in Syria, which the Hyksos used to conquer Egypt, by the time of King Solomon [c. 955 B.C.] was based in Egypt, indicating that the money powers were in place to prop of the last empire standing of those they had financed attacks upon. Though Egypt was still intact, “the barbaric but definitely more pliable Libyan dynasty had become established.” [4] By 1198-67 B.C. 1 in 50 Egyptian people were owned by the temples, who owned 1 in 7 portions of land. This imbalance, and the need for labor to make these lands fruit, would place the temples in thrall to whoever controlled labor, beings slaves. The slave drivers were the bankers whose human currency walked or were shipped to the point of service.

“...it was not long before international money power re-penetrated the substructure of Egyptian life and established its usual behind-the-scenes influence.”

He names these men as the “worshippers of the anti-god” and notes that they were perfectly partnered with warlords, who enslaved and looted and needed fences to convert their booty to luxury goods. On page 42 he gives good evidence that the Danaan of Homer [Ajax] and Dan of the Bible [Samson] were the Danae, or Danes, that were recruited from Denmark among the Sea Peoples. If this seems unlikely, note that Punic Nordic trade had been going on since at least 1770 B.C. to access copper from North America, where there are extensive pre-Columbian mines and few artifacts, to smelt with the tin from Cornwall to make Bronze. For the copper of Cyprus were not adequate in supply. Hanno of Carthage, circumnavigator of Africa, left an inscription in New England in the 700s B.C.

Once a money system is in place any disaster that does not wipe out that system perpetuates it. The bankers win every war no matter the victor. So it follows that such financial concerns back both sides. I have here severely treated in brief the chronology of Bronze Age decline, so that I might select some more human texture from this very dense work.

“Out of death and destruction came the releasing in that day of the all important hoards of stored bullion, and the renewal of the slave herds to be consumed in mining ventures in distant places, garnering the increase of such precious metals…”

A footnote takes us to a quote from Diodorus Siculus, describing mining in Nubia 50 B.C. These were folks of all races used in the manner common to use all over the ancient world. Even Alexander, who treated enemies more humanely than other conquerors, consigned traitors to “the mines” a service regarded as certain death. Indeed, mining under Conquistadors in the Americas 1500 years later was 100% lethal.:

“There are thus infinite numbers thrown into these mines, all bound in fetters, kept at work night and day, and so strictly surrounded that there is no possibility of escape. They are guarded by mercenary soldiers of various barbarous nations, whose language is foreign to them and to each other, so that there are no means of forming conspiracies or of corrupting those who are set to watch them. They are kept at incessant work by the rod of the overseer, who often lashes them severely. Not the least care is taken of the bodies of these poor creatures; they have not a rag to cover their nakedness; and whoever sees them must compassion their melancholy and deplorable condition, for though they may be sick, maimed or lame, no rest nor any intermission of labor is allowed them. [5] Neither the weakness of old age, nor the infirmities of females, excuse any from the work, to which all are driven with cudgels; until borne down by the intolerable weight of their misery, many fall dead in the midst of their insufferable labors. Deprived of all hope, these miserable creatures expect each day to be worse than the last, and long for death to end their sufferings.”

I would like to end it there, but:

“Criticizing the prescription by Plato of community wives, etc. for the ruling classes of the Republic, Aristotle wrote: ‘It would be far more useful applied to the agricultural class. For where wives and children are held in common there is less affection, and a lack of strong affection among the ruled is conducive to obedience and not to revolution.’

In all things Aristotle the student is more practical than Plato the teacher.

Astle instructs: “Aristotle as tutor and advisor to Alexander The Great, also a husband of the niece of Hermias, banker-tyrant of Assos and Atarneus, had clearly seen efforts towards practical application of these mischievous philosophies of political conduct. [6]

Astle does relate pre-Hebrew, pre-Christian prayers, which one may well understand were heartfelt in a world where physical abuse was as rampant as mental abuse now is:

Sumeria

“God [7] hath set me free.

God is my help.

God hath bestowed upon me.”

Assyrian

“God [8] is my protection.

God is my hero.

God is exalted.

God is my [salvation] rock.

God is my strength.”

Arabian

“God [9] is my Father.

God is my Right Hand.

God is King! Lord of All!”

To counter such hope embodied in sacred tradition, from the earliest days, the masters of the counting houses, the bankers and their many agents, promoted the ideas of perpetual progress [10] and of “Permanent Revolution.”

Chapter 3 closes with beautifully lettered maps of the world from Ur to Athens to Karnak, drawn by Astle in 1973.

Notes

-1. See He: Gilgamesh Into the Face of Time. Farmers of the region were tiny compared to their masters and their own ancestors.

-2. See So His Master May Have Him Again and the Greatest Lie Ever Sold.

-3. Exodus 12:36 and 3:22 describes Isrаelites stealing jewelry from Egyptians in advance of their flight. According to Albright in Armarna Letters, “It became particularly obvious that the previously enigmatic occupational background of Abraham becomes intelligible only when we identify the terms Hebrew with Apiru, literally ‘person from across or beyond.]

-4. By this logic America would still be America if it were taken over by a coup by Haitian refugees. Translations of clay records, ironically preserved through baking when the cities were burned, indicates that Bronze Age Syria had cities with dozens of work houses each, marking a level of industry similar to mid 1700s Philadelphia.

-5. The history of 1600s Plantation America is congruent, with food a great expense in distant resource extraction sites. If these slaves were healthy, beautiful, athletic, they might have been sold for long term abuse. Here, only the guards need to be fed, perhaps water to the miners. In the 1820s, this work was done in England by little boys typically worked to death before age 13.

-6. Aristotle’s boss was killed in an uprising. Based on his subsequent A list hire by Hegemon Phillip, the tyrant must have ignored some sound counsel.

-7. Sin

-8. Nashu

-9. Ai

-10. Progress upward, onward, outward and forever, whether through slavery or mechanized industry or automated creation, at once devalues humans through displacement, enabling the extraction of real estate and precious metals from the peoples who are left holding devalued money, reduced through parallel inflation. The revolt of Thebes, for instance, resulting in its own genocide, seems to have been such a case of revolution for its own sake. See Arrian later in this narrative and in my history of Alexander and Arrian titled The Son of God.