Priesthoods of Power

The Rise of God-Kings and the Origins of Hidden Rule

It is generally assumed that human civilisations arose around 5000 years ago on the basins of the world’s largest rivers. Confined to the few written and archaeological accounts that remain, we have discovered early high cultures at the Nile, Euphrates, Tigris, Indus, and Yangtse river basins. Potentially, there are more rivers, such as the Amazon, that had larger communities thriving along them going back many millennia. The common property that each of these societies exhibited was a particularly intimate relationship between human coordination and the immense powers of those rivers. It is not by accident that we see the first instances of currency and written language at around the same time in those highly fertile, concentrated areas. Whilst pastoral and early agricultural peoples could sustain larger communities than tribal hunter-gatherers, we see a first population explosion when it comes to people cracking the code of their rivers’ ebbs and flows. It takes a highly coordinated society in order to control and divert the current of water in such a way that drought and flood are avoided in favour of that most fertile balance found in the river’s affluvium.

The Priesthoods of Finance

Especially when looking at cultures as long gone as the Sumerians, we need to be aware of the historical bias that leads us to generalise our idea of archaic life based on what is left to us from early civilisations. It is clear, that some kinds of cultural arrangements may not have been as successful in leaving persistent fossil remains as they did not construct megalithic temples. In the context of this, Lewis Mumford reminds us that the vast body of cultural achievements of any society predate industrial-scale constructions by many years.

The burial of the dead, the creation of art, the invention of language, the development of myth and ritual—these were the real treasures of early culture, not the stone axe or the digging stick. But because these leave no durable traces, our mechanical-minded archaeologists have ignored them, and our concept of early man has been distorted by our own technological bias.

- Lewis Mumford. Technics and Human Development: The Myth of the Machine (1967).

We can safely assume that the prehistoric period of our planet was teeming with a vast variety of human cultures, each adapted to different conditions. The harshness of the environment, the climate, nutrition, predators, prey, all of these factors contributed to an ecosystem that provided for a range of human strategies. For better or for worse, since then, a kind of selection seems to have occurred. A selection that has lead to the removal of human cultures and their eradication from our memory. Most of them will be lost forever and we will only ever know about those cultures that survived or managed to pass on lasting artefacts. The politically-motivated historian David Graeber points this out in his critique of the paradigm of patriarchy and violence that seems to dominate our understanding of our species’ history.

If there is a single overriding lesson to be taken from the past fifty years of research in archaeology and related fields, it’s that the picture of human history that most people are familiar with — the story that there was once a time when everyone lived in small bands of hunter-gatherers, that the invention of agriculture led to farming and the rise of cities, and that this in turn gave rise to civilization and, finally, something vaguely approximating the modern state — is simply wrong. It is not what happened. […] Human beings have lived in a bewildering variety of social arrangements; and, crucially, many of these did not involve kings, states, bureaucracies, or organized violence.

-David Graeber, Ian Wengrow. The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity.

Why was the strategy of the early river basin cultures so powerful that it is now commonly seen as the predecessor to the first regional empires? To understand the commonality between the river basin cultures, we need to look at what characterises a stable strategy. The idea of stable strategies originates from game theory, where the behaviour of various types of actors in a group leads to a self-perpetuating dynamic that sustains itself across time. The nomadic life of pastoralists that take their herds to greener pastures is an example for a stable strategy, however, it has strict confines on how many members it can sustain and how many such nomadic tribes can inhabit a region. The same applies to river basin people, only that their population grows to such an extent that they require a system that avoids the rise of thieves or vagabonds. In game theory, one commonly encounters the role of the thief as the actor that subverts the rules of the game to their benefit. Instead of putting in the arduous work of growing crops, it is much more immediately rewarding to steal the crops of another person. Therefore, group strategies evolve to punish such behaviour and facilitate more cooperation. As a general rule, however, the ‘black sheep’ will always occur due to the inevitability of that easily exploitable niche.

It is in this game theoretic scenario where we can understand the emergence of writing, currency, and administrative priesthood. We may now regard these things as separate, however, at the time, they all emerged together. Our archaeological records show that writing consisted mostly of accounting and laws, whilst currency was mostly held at the temples. It makes sense, given the fact that most people simply did not have the time and capacity to get initiated into the high arts of arithmetic and finance.

Some of the very first written documents that have come down to us are Mesopotamian tablets recording credits and debits, rations issued by temples, money owed for rent of temple lands, the value of each precisely specified in grain and silver.

David Graeber. Debt: The First 5,000 Years (2011).

The population explosion of the river basin lead to an increased scarcity of land for each person to grow their crops and thus it became increasingly difficult for people to feed their families. Therefore, regulation of property ownership was needed. Here we observe the rise of the first ruling priesthood that was in charge of the temples and administered loan payments for land. While silver money was largely confined to the internal accounting of temples, the common people used grain for their exchanges. A debt for land would be accounted for by the temple in silver, but paid by the debtor in grain.

The solution was to designate grain and silver as the main monetary and debt-paying commodities – grain for the agrarian economy, and silver for the palatial economy that dominated foreign trade in its dealings with merchant entrepreneurs. This enabled balance sheets, monthly and annual statistics to be expressed in terms of a dual common denominator: silver and grain. A ‘quart’ of barley was set as equal in value to a shekel of silver (8 grams), and this ratio was used to denominate fees and other payments owed to the large institutions.

Michael Hudson. … and forgive them their debts: Lending, Foreclosure and Redemption from Bronze Age Finance to the Jubilee Year (2018).

The fascinating aspect about this initial rise of a ruling elite is that it combines several major systems of power in one: political, ideological, and financial. Over the course of human history, these systems differentiated into separate power networks, but it seems that in the beginning they were naturally aligned in a single elite. Elite theory will generally assume that there is always a singular elite with only a veneer of internal distinctions, but in this case there in fact is no such distinction. The temples of early antiquity became the place for commerce, business dealings, brothels, and oppressive extortion. Our most commonly held stereotypes about elite behaviour are found here. Sanctimonious priests secretly engaging in egregious sexual and predatory acts, whilst striking deals with foreign adversaries. It is no coincidence that ancient Sumer, or specifically ancient Babylon becomes the symbolic birthplace of esoteric cults and conspiracies that have been secretly ruling human civilisations in the shadows. Of course, the extent of their power is unclear as we know little about the degree to which their influence sustained itself into subsequent ages. It is unlikely that we are dealing with the same priesthood throughout all ages, but it is almost impossible to tell at what point one elite was entirely supplanted by another.

Mystery Babylon

It can be fascinating to engage with conspiratorial views of history. Regardless of how plausible many of their claims may be, they often uncover a common underlying principle of oligarchy and esoteric priesthood dynamics.

The reason Freemasons employ the language of masonry is because their goal is to bring about the completion of the 'Great Work' (Magnum Opus), symbolized by the reconstruction of the ancient Temple of Solomon, as described in the vision of Ezekiel. According to Morals and Dogma—the so-called 'bible' of Freemasonry, written by former Civil War General Albert Pike (1809–1891), Grand Master of Scottish Rite Freemasonry, and which had been required reading for every Scottish Rite Mason—that vision was completed in the Book of Revelation. However, explains Pike, the power of that book is not found in conventional Christian interpretation, but that it conveys the secrets of the Jewish Kabbalah, a mystical tradition which can be traced back to the sixth century BC, when the ancient cult of the dying-god was assimilated to the magic of the Chaldean Magi of Babylon.

David Livingstone. Ordo ab Chao: Vol.1 The Dying God

What a quote. Now while this passage by Livingstone can be seen as a far fetched loose association of historical anecdotes, it reveals something crucial about what was initiated in the early days of human civilisation: Regardless of the level of actual coordination across time, we have the real accumulation of a textual corpus of mythical, religious, and philosophical texts that has grown with time. Outside of the speculation on how far freemasonry or Cabbalah actually dates back, we have a very tangible strategy of literacy and spatial expansion of trade and religion. Those initiated into literature have represented an elite capable of esoteric communication simply by the scarcity of literacy throughout the ages. Moreover, while many sources have been lost with time, the body of knowledge our priesthoods could fall back on accumulated since the early ages of Sumer and Babylon. Bob Dobbs, the self-acclaimed expert on McLuhan and media theory, states that it was written language in combination with the phonetic alphabet that facilitated the spatial expansion of what he refers to as the Illuminati.

Well the concept of the illuminati is only possible in societies that have a written tradition. Roman times it would be papyrus and parchment. It disappears in the middle ages, the structure of the illuminati, and then comes back with the printing press. So the illuminati is a social structure social hierarchy made possible by the printing press, in simple terms a paper society. […] The illuminati is a structure that conquers space, over thousands of miles. The most popular image we have of that is Alexander the Great moving out over the Mediterranean and in the middle east and into India, a massive spread. He created a huge empire because he had the medium of papyrus to organize his armies.

The investigation into secret elites, representing the few ruling over the many, raises the question about monarchy and kingship. According to Aristotle the rule of one is the third part of the puzzle to power dynamics in human civilised societies.

The true forms of government, therefore, are those in which the one, or the few, or the many govern with a view to the common interest; but governments which rule with a view to the private interest, whether of the one, or of the few, or of the many, are perversions. For the interest of the community is the interest of the state.
— Aristotle, Politics, III.7 (1279a)

In most times, all three constellations of government coexist alongside each other, though one form may dominate the other at certain times. In ancient Rome, if a dictator was appointed for 6 months, the rule of the one triumphed temporarily over the rule of the few (in this case the Roman senate). Conspiratorial perspectives will have us believe that the rule of one represents a façade, kings and queens, and now presidents pretend to hold power, whilst the priesthood reigns supreme. While there is a case to be made that today presidential offices have become increasingly ceremonial in practise, it is not clear to what extend this assessment applies to monarchs of the past.

The God Kings of Mankind

We are now approaching something of a chicken-and-egg dilemma. It is impossible to know with certainty when exactly kings dominated their associated aristocracies and priesthoods and when the reverse was the case. What we do observe, however, is that the priesthood in many cases came first and the kings either arose out of necessity or through foreign invasion. For instance, in the case of Sumer, the problem of land distribution can easily lead to a game theoretic dilemma in which the distribution is not sustainable, yet the growth of the priesthood class would have lead to a stalemate where the greed of the elites inhibits any attempts at serious reform. The polity degrades and opens up a wide niche for a courageous and strong commoner that purges the elites and brings about a radical break in land policy. Similarly, the corruption of the elites may lead to an increasing amount of commoners emigrating from society and allying with external enemies, such as steppe horseback riders whose stable strategy had been the conquest and plunder of settled communities. Temporary destruction of the home society is also a kind of reform.

As our sources on that particularly early period are limited, we must take an example of the much better documented classical age, where we can observe the rise of Hellenistic tyrants in the late 7th century BC.

Tyrants, therefore, are the first rulers known to have passed laws to limit competitive luxury. The main reason was not that the costs of such luxury would be better diverted to public use for the community’s good. Luxury was divisive in the upper class and a threat, too, to the tyrant’s own pre-eminence. [...] After a particular outrage, a fellow aristocrat, perhaps a commander in war, could urge the citizenry to take up the new style of ‘hoplite’ arms, eject their most troublesome aristocrats and install himself as their ruler instead. He would stop faction, ‘set things to rights’ and preside over high society’s spiralling competition.

Robin Lane Fox. The Classical World (2008)

Similarly, we find in the Old Testament that the ancient Israelites where guided and lead by prophets, priests and judges, before they eventually demanded a king to rule over them. Arguably, the scripture is going to be biased against the rule of kings over priests, but the prophet Samuel issues a profound warning when it comes to the rise of kings.

So Samuel told all the words of the Lord to the people who were asking for a king from him. He said, ‘These will be the ways of the king who will reign over you:
He will take your sons and appoint them to his chariots and to be his horsemen and to run before his chariots;
and he will appoint for himself commanders of thousands and commanders of fifties,
and some to plow his ground and to reap his harvest,
and to make his implements of war and the equipment of his chariots.
He will take your daughters to be perfumers and cooks and bakers.
He will take the best of your fields and vineyards and olive orchards and give them to his servants.
He will take the tenth of your grain and of your vineyards and give it to his officers and to his servants.
He will take your male servants and female servants and the best of your young men and your donkeys and put them to his work.
He will take the tenth of your flocks, and you shall be his slaves.
And in that day you will cry out because of your king, whom you have chosen for yourselves,
but the Lord will not answer you in that day.

1 Samuel 8:10–18

Conversely, we can also find kings being overthrown by coordinated priesthoods. The most prominent example for conspiracy theorists, historians, and anthropologists alike is the mysterious reign of pharaoh Amenhotep IV or Akhenaten in the New Empire of ancient Egypt. This pharaoh offended the Heliopolitan establishment priesthood with his insistence on the worship of the sun disk Aten. He banned all other cults and subjugated the priesthood to his chosen religion. After his death, the priesthood took revenge and strove to remove all records of Akhenaten. They cursed his name for many centuries since. The complicated relationship between kingship and priesthood becomes even more muddled if we can give any credence to Sigmund Freud’s controversial stance on the origins of Judaism.

Moses was not a Jew, but an Egyptian, probably a nobleman, a high dignitary who adhered to the monotheistic belief of the Pharaoh Akhenaten. […] He gave the Jews not only this religion but also the Egyptian custom of circumcision. […] [Aten] was a universal god, in the beginning the god of the sky and sun, later identified with the god of the wind and the spirit. The Jewish god, Jahve, was one among many, who through Moses became the only one. [...] The Mosaic religion was an offshoot of that of Akhenaten.

Sigmund Freud. Moses and Monotheism (1939).

Fingerprints of the Gods

At this point, we have still not seen the full picture. While the rise of the militaristic tyrant came after the priesthood, we can find examples of a different kind of a more animistic kingship preceding even the priesthood. Bertrand de Jouvenel, a historian focusing on the genealogy of kingship and power structures, identified various phases with different kinds of sovereign rulers. The earliest form of kingship was the magical god king of animistic prehistory.

It is not to the warrior but to the magician that the primitive king is assimilated. […] In the beginning, the king is not chief of the army, he is the source of fertility and the channel of divine energy. His virtue brings the rains, makes the herds multiply, and ensures the fruitfulness of the earth. He is not yet a ruler, but a being set apart, and often dreaded, more like a god than a man.

Bertrand de Jouvenel. On Power

Of course, none other has studied the traditions and customs of primitive cultures more that Sir James Frazier, thus we must add a quote from his monumental magnum opus:

The king was a god. Everything that he touched became holy. He was held responsible for the fertility of the earth, the fecundity of women and cattle, the success of the crops and the regularity of the seasons. Should he fail, the land failed with him; and to preserve the community, the god-king was sometimes sacrificed.

James George Frazer. The Golden Bough

Whilst in Mesopotamia we do not have any artefacts indicating the existence of kings before the rise military leaders like Sargon of Akkad, Egypt does seem to have not entered the age of priesthood rule until the fifth dynasty. The current consensus is that up until the fourth dynasty, famous for building the pyramids of Giza, Egypt was dominated by powerful god kings like Cheops and Chefren. At this point it must be honestly admitted that we are entering the realm of pure speculation. Similarly in the vein of Freud’s assumption that the Israelite cult was engineered by an Egyptian priesthood, we find that the king of conspiracies, Milton William Cooper, identifies the entire Egyptian pantheon with an older, hidden ruling elite of princes. Cooper first describes the canonical myth of Seth and Osiris as described by Plutarch.

[Seth] fashioned a chest exactly to the [measurement] of the body of Osiris which chest he caused to be brought into the banquet hall where the princes of Egypt were feasting their king's return. [Seth], simulating jest, promised this elaborately ornamented box to the one whose body, upon trial, most nearly fitted it. […] Osiris himself lay down in it. Immediately the seventy-two conspirators rushed to the box, clamped the cover up on it, fastened it with nails and poured melted lead over all the cracks and crevices. […] They carried the chest to the bank of the Nile and cast it into the river. […] Isis returned to Egypt and hid the coffin in a remote place: but [Seth], hunting by moonlight, chanced to find it, and divided the corpse into fourteen pieces.

William Cooper (citing Plutarch. Isis and Osiris). Mystery Babylon

He follows it up with his interpretation of the characters in this myth and their relationship with similar characters in the Old Testament.

The college, the adepts, the initiates, the priests were scattered all over the world when Seth, the son of Noah, came with an army and defeated Nimrod, and this is where the legend really comes from because Seth chopped Nimrod up into little pieces and scattered him all over the land. In the legend of the Osirian cycle, Osiris was chopped into fourteen pieces... It is now known as the Lost Word Freemasonry, and the phallus is represented by the obelisk, the monolith.

William Cooper. Mystery Babylon

Not to leave any theories and speculation unmentioned, we must consider the remaining hypothesis that could explain the pre-existence of kings of mysterious origin in ancient Egypt. Whilst this exploration could be indefinitely extended to include theories about ancient extra-terrestrial invaders, it suffices to provide a glimpse into a possible pre-history of humanity.

The ancient Egyptian civilization did not spring ready-made from the Nile Valley soil. It was the legacy of a much earlier civilization, one that had been destroyed in a cataclysm but remembered in myth and enshrined in stone. The gods of Egypt were not gods at all, but the deified survivors of that lost world.

Graham Hancock. Fingerprints of the Gods

While we can never be certain, we must remain conscious of the possibility that time represents a filter that blurs the traces of our ancient ancestors. Perhaps the remnants that we have uncovered are only the most recent artefacts of a much older human history that has vanished in the ages.