AN ECONOMIC CRISIS IN

Evening Post, Volume CXXIV, Issue 3, 3 July 1937, Page 31

AN ECONOMIC CRISIS IN

ANCIENT BABYLON

. The. ancient, world, it is thought, was nevSr. confronted, by economical problems such, as now : perplex the nations and peoples .Of the.:earth, -'says'; a writer in the. "Chicago. Tribune." : All-.these conjectures:-'haf|.b.een rudely upset.by .discoveries-: recently unearthed, ; that prove;' that; Babylon '_. had .to face economic crises ■.brought about., by- circum'stances':thaf":were' sfrcjfigry~alike *to thbse confronting the world today. Inflation and high"prices brought'-all but ruin in their..train. Read what'some of the latest astounding discoveries of archaeologists have revealed-about the economic difficulties in Babylon nearly 3000 years ago. . ■

Two thousand . five hundred years ago, in her fertile valley at: the head of the Persian Gulf, Babylon stood in ail .her. splendour. ...

'".Yet, splendour or no, depressions, high taxes, and inflation plagued her people and set scribes busy recording the. results.

Under the direction ot Dr. John Albert Wilson, patient archaeologists of the Oriental Institute a' the University of Chicago are busy decoding the thousands of clay tablets the scribes left.

When the-work.is, finished more will be known' about the economic history of Babylonia throughout .3000 years of her .history. than.. about any ,period Eince. , >

So far, the ar'ch'aedlbgists have found that, economically.at least, there's nothing new under the sun. After four years of work, they have made a complete/history .of. the period between 600 B.C. and 400 .B.C. ■ ' '■'.

They- discovered that the. Babylonians, experienced a sharp rise''in-.prices in 539 8.C., after the Persians had conquered the country. The conquerors levied heavy taxes. The price of farm lands rose abruptly. Farmers, unable to pay, lost their property, much of it being turned over eventually to grazing.- .. : But city rents went up even.faster •than-, the, price of .farm• lands.. City

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prices soared.. The conquerors hoarded the precious metals, meanwhile exacting more and more money from the people, until the resulting inflation all but bankrupted ■ the country1. •

Directly in charge. of the. work o£ compiling an economic history of Babylonia is Dr. Waldo-Dubberstein. Ha •has been.at it since .1931, i-:. beginning with a painstaking reconstruction of Elamite, Assyrian, and Aramaic dictionaries to permit translations of the ancient documents. About 25,f)00 tablets found by the Oriental Institute in Babylonia are still to be. translated.

Fragments of history remarkably detailed are being pieced together by Dr. Dubberstein. The stories of the great banking families of 3000 years ago are being worked Out. The- trouble caused by women working in industry, .and how they were replaced by slaves, is revealed. Charts like those in a broker's office are being made, showing the relative changes in the prices of foods and other commodities.

The thirty-century story of the Babylonians, all but lost in the dust of time, is only one- of the histories of civilisation's dawn being brought to light by the Oriental Institute. It is the largest organisation in existence for salvaging ancient records.

Launched in 1919 with a gift from John D. Rockefeller, jun., it has sent twentj'-six scientific expeditions into the "fertile .crescent" of Asia Minor and Egypt, where civilisation was born. Eight expeditions are now in the field. "The Oriental; Institute . -.-. endeavours to trace the course • of human development from the merely physical man ... to the rise and early advance of civilised societies," explains a report recently published. ■ "A generation of archaeological research has dispelled all doubts as to the'scene of this evolution, which is now recognised as having been, the ancient Near East, the region folded like a horseshoe ar.ound the eastern ond of the Mediterranean."

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