[PDF]Clason Richest Man In Babylon

“A Classic From
The Diamond’s Mine Library”


The Richest
Man In Babylon


1926


George S. Clason





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The Richest Man In Babylon


1926


Public Domain Notice


This classic writing compliments of The Diamond’s Mine Online Library. It is
public domain and may be distributed freely.


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Index


ADOUE THE AUUHON cess ccnwkenssdurteaansiawkenesbessnsnwanskenduadaeerats 6
FOPEWORG -isavinspiandi acacia keisadatsdanineiansaieineinisaaaaaniatees 7
An Historical Sketch of Babylon ............ ccc cece cecccccceceeeeees 8
The Man Who Desired Gold...............ccccccccccccccccccccccccecs 14
The Richest Man In Babylon.............ssssscscccccccccccccccccccces 20
Seven Cures For a Lean Purse. ............ccccccccccccccccccccccccce 30
Whe First Cure kieciaiicicnaciariaiiiaaiierainatannetiereariaiians 34
Start thy purse to fattening. ..............ccecscesccesccesccesccesccesccescees 34
ThE SECON CULE 6 csisccisdvccndennedsiasanccanaedeceineseaneanceneceds 37
Control thy ExpeNditures..ci..si.ssdeseesvedsvessvedavessvedareeavedavesstedse 37
THE TRING CONE vascasscsciaccnnccenckecseprecnaneaedersseensawsenaseees 39
Make thy gold multiply. ................cccccesccecccecceeccesccesccesscessoesees 39
WHS FOUrelh Gul S ic cineddousivedenrshacciuedanssenvariesiunsinedeowsnnn 41
Guard thy treasures from IOSS. ............ccescccccccccccscccccccscccsccescees 41
WHS FIP GUPE vciesccesaccaacendecasiceanetuweds sduxkeristamtendsbesnens 43
Make of thy dwelling a profitable investment. ...............scsceeceseees 43
WS SIRE CUS isaniciicincrsidsiadaniamidarainetonmndeieenaariaienies 45
INSULe a FUTUTE INCOME. ........ccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccceees 45
The Seventh Cure ........... cc cc cccc cece ccc cccccccccccccccccccceccees 47
Increase thy ability to Carn. .............cceescecceesccesceecccesccecceesceees 47
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Meet the Goddess of Good LUCKk...............ccccccccccccccccccees 50


The Five Laws Of Gold ............ cece cece ccc cece cece ccc cccccceccees 62
THE FIVE LAWS OF GOLD ssscsacccccccescscscceccseccceccsdccceecsecessscsecenas 66
The First Law of Gold..............cccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccecccccece 70
The Second Law of Gold .............ccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccecs 70
The Third Law of Gold..............ccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccs 70
The Fourth Law of Gold .............cccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccecccccecece 71
The Fifth: Law Of Gold sce isssaedacessss dade scan dadessee dods ssn daceseee dadeteee de 71

The Gold Lender of Babylon ..............cccccccccccccccccccccccces 73

The Walls Of Babylon iiscsiscsssenatsascasveceiecdsssavacnsssendeadane 84

The Camel Trader of Babylon..............ccccccccccccccccccccccces 88

The Clay Tablets From Babylon .............ccccscssesccsscsccccees 98
Tablet NOs bl ivsiisa sedicanantinds dvaccindasade de dhawacsindedwdededeawedsindaswdadodsaweces 99
Tablet. NOe Wissescdsccsescdesnsescddscsescdesssesedeswacssdeswseseaeewaescaees selec 100
Tablet, NOs Wasisssadesdaccasescsasadesesseesasenaseeesduasenesssesseessnsserenenas 101
Tablet NOs IV ssssisssdeases de dsasastadeasesdedaawastadeasendedessensadeasendedeases 101
Tablet. NOe V sivicdessscsdadsascscteseacscadsacscteswacscsdseacsotessacscsdsaae’es 103

The Luckiest Man In Babylon.............ccccccccccccccccccccccces 107

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Ahead of you stretches your future like a road leading into the distance.
Along that road are ambitions you wish to accomplish...desires you wish to
gratify.


To bring your ambitions and desires to fulfillment, you must be successful
with money. Use the financial principles made clear in the pages which
follow. Let them guide you away from the stringencies of a lean purse to
that fuller, happier life a full purse makes possible.


Like the law of gravity, they are universal and unchanging. May they prove
for you, as they have proven to so many others, a sure key to a fat purse,
larger bank balances and gratifying financial progress.


LO, MONEY IS PLENTIFUL
FOR THOSE WHO UNDERSTAND
THE SIMPLE RULES OF ITS ACQUISITION


—


. Start thy purse to fattening

2. Control thy expenditures

3. Make thy gold multiply

4. Guard thy treasures from loss

5. Make of thy dwelling a profitable investment
6. Insure a future income


7. Increase thy ability to earn


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About The Author


GEORGE SAMUEL CLASON was born in Louisiana, Missouri, on November 7,
1874. He attended the University of Nebraska and served in the United States
Army during the Spanish-American War. Beginning a long career in publishing,
he founded the Clason Map Company of Denver, Colorado, and published the
first road atlas of the United States and Canada. In 1926, he issued the first of
a famous series of pamphlets on thrift and financial success, using parables
set in ancient Babylon to make each of his points. These were distributed in
large quantities by banks and insurance companies and became familiar to
millions, the most famous being "The Richest Man in Babylon," the parable
from which the present volume takes its title. These "Babylonian parables”
have become a modern inspirational classic.


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Foreword


Our prosperity as a nation depends upon the personal financial prosperity of
each of us as individuals.


This book deals with the personal successes of each of us. Success means
accomplishments as the result of our own efforts and abilities. Proper
preparation is the key to our success. Our acts can be no wiser than our
thoughts. Our thinking can be no wiser than our understanding.


This book of cures for lean purses has been termed a guide to financial
understanding. That, indeed, is its purpose: to offer those who are ambitious
for financial success an insight which will aid them to acquire money, to keep
money and to make their surpluses earn more money.


In the pages which follow, we are taken back to Babylon, the cradle in which
was nurtured the basic principles of finance now recognized and used the
world over.


To new readers the author is happy to extend the wish that its pages may
contain for them the same inspiration for growing bank accounts, greater
financial successes and the solution of difficult personal financial problems so
enthusiastically reported by readers from coast to coast.


To the business executives who have distributed these tales in such generous
quantities to friends, relatives, employees and associates, the author takes
this opportunity to express his gratitude. No endorsement could be higher
than that of practical men who appreciate its teachings because they,
themselves, have worked up to important successes by applying the very
principles it advocates.


Babylon became the wealthiest city of the ancient world because its citizens
were the richest people of their time. They appreciated the value of money.
They practiced sound financial principles in acquiring money, keeping money
and making their money earn more money. They provided for themselves
what we all desire...incomes for the future.

G. S.C.


rs


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An Historical Sketch of Babylon


In the pages of history there lives no city more glamorous than Babylon. Its
very name conjures visions of wealth and splendor. Its treasures of gold and
jewels were fabulous. One naturally pictures such a wealthy city as located in
a suitable setting of tropical luxury, surrounded by rich natural resources of
forests, and mines. Such was not the case. It was located beside the
Euphrates River, in a flat, arid valley. It had no forests, no mines—not even
stone for building. It was not even located upon a natural trade-route. The
rainfall was insufficient to raise crops.


Babylon is an outstanding example of man's ability to achieve great
objectives, using whatever means are at his disposal. All of the resources
supporting this large city were man-developed. All of its riches were man-
made.


Babylon possessed just two natural resources—a fertile soil and water in the
river. With one of the greatest engineering accomplishments of this or any
other day, Babylonian engineers diverted the waters from the river by means
of dams and immense irrigation canals. Far out across that arid valley went
these canals to pour the life giving waters over the fertile soil. This ranks
among the first engineering feats known to history. Such abundant crops as
were the reward of this irrigation system the world had never seen before.


Fortunately, during its long existence, Babylon was ruled by successive lines
of kings to whom conquest and plunder were but incidental. While it engaged
in many wars, most of these were local or defensive against ambitious
conquerors from other countries who coveted the fabulous treasures of
Babylon. The outstanding rulers of Babylon live in history because of their
wisdom, enterprise and justice. Babylon produced no strutting monarchs who
sought to conquer the known world that all nations might pay homage to their
egotism.


As a city, Babylon exists no more. When those energizing human forces that
built and maintained the city for thousands of years were withdrawn, it soon
became a deserted ruin. The site of the city is in Asia about six hundred miles
east of the Suez Canal, just north of the Persian Gulf. The latitude is about
thirty degrees above the Equator, practically the same as that of Yuma,


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Arizona. It possessed a climate similar to that of this American city, hot and
dry.


Today, this valley of the Euphrates, once a populous irrigated farming
district, is again a wind-swept arid waste. Scant grass and desert shrubs strive
for existence against the windblown sands. Gone are the fertile fields, the
mammoth cities and the long caravans of rich merchandise. Nomadic bands of
Arabs, securing a scant living by tending small herds, are the only inhabitants.
Such it has been since about the beginning of the Christian era.


Dotting this valley are earthen hills. For centuries, they were considered by
travelers to be nothing else. The attention of archaeologists were finally
attracted to them because of broken pieces of pottery and brick washed
down by the occasional rain storms. Expeditions, financed by European and
American museums, were sent here to excavate and see what could be found.
Picks and shovels soon proved these hills to be ancient cities. City graves,
they might well be called.


Babylon was one of these. Over it for something like twenty centuries, the
winds had scattered the desert dust. Built originally of brick, all exposed
walls had disintegrated and gone back to earth once more. Such is Babylon,
the wealthy city, today. A heap of dirt, so long abandoned that no living
person even knew its name until it was discovered by carefully removing the
refuse of centuries from the streets and the fallen wreckage of its noble
temples and palaces.


Many scientists consider the civilization of Babylon and other cities in this
valley to be the oldest of which there is a definite record. Positive dates have
been proved reaching back 8000 years.


An interesting fact in this connection is the means used to determine these
dates. Uncovered in the ruins of Babylon were descriptions of an eclipse of
the sun. Modern astronomers readily computed the time when such an
eclipse, visible in Babylon, occurred and thus established a known
relationship between their calendar and our own.


In this way, we have proved that 8000 years ago, the Sumerites, who
inhabited Babylonia, were living in walled cities. One can only conjecture for
how many centuries previous such cities had existed. Their inhabitants were


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not mere barbarians living within protecting walls. They were an educated
and enlightened people. So far as written history goes, they were the first
engineers, the first astronomers, the first mathematicians, the first financiers
and the first people to have a written language.


Mention has already been made of the irrigation systems which transformed
the arid valley into an agricultural paradise. The remains of these canals can
still be traced, although they are mostly filled with accumulated sand. Some
of them were of such size that, when empty of water, a dozen horses could
be ridden abreast along their bottoms. In size they compare favorably with
the largest canals in Colorado and Utah.


In addition to irrigating the valley lands, Babylonian engineers completed
another project of similar magnitude. By means of an elaborate drainage
system they reclaimed an immense area of swamp land at the mouths of the
Euphrates and Tigris Rivers and put this also under cultivation.


Herodotus, the Greek traveler and historian, visited Babylon while it was in
its prime and has given us the only known description by an outsider. His
writings give a graphic description of the city and some of the unusual
customs of its people. He mentions the remarkable fertility of the soil and
the bountiful harvest of wheat and barley which they produced.


The glory of Babylon has faded but its wisdom has been preserved for us. For
this we are indebted to their form of records. In that distant day, the use of
paper had not been invented. Instead, they laboriously engraved their writing
upon tablets of moist clay. When completed, these were baked and became
hard tile. In size, they were about six by eight inches, and an inch in
thickness.


These clay tablets, as they are commonly called, were used much as we use
modern forms of writing. Upon them were engraved legends, poetry, history,
transcriptions of royal decrees, the laws of the land, titles to property,
promissory notes and even letters which were dispatched by messengers to
distant cities. From these clay tablets we are permitted an insight into the
intimate, personal affairs of the people. For example, one tablet, evidently
from the records of a country storekeeper, relates that upon the given date a
certain named customer brought in a cow and exchanged it for seven sacks of
wheat, three being delivered at the time and the other four to await the
customer's pleasure.


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Safely buried in the wrecked cities, archaeologists have recovered entire
libraries of these tablets, hundreds of thousands of them.


One of the outstanding wonders of Babylon was the immense walls
surrounding the city. The ancients ranked them with the great pyramid of
Egypt as belonging to the "seven wonders of the world.” Queen Semiramis is
credited with having erected the first walls during the early history of the
city. Modern excavators have been unable to find any trace of the original
walls. Nor is their exact height known. From mention made by early writers,
it is estimated they were about fifty to sixty feet high, faced on the outer
side with burnt brick and further protected by a deep moat of water.


The later and more famous walls were started about six hundred years before
the time of Christ by King Nabopolassar. Upon such a gigantic scale did he
plan the rebuilding, he did not live to see the work finished. This was left to
his son, Nebuchadnezzar, whose name is familiar in Biblical history.


The height and length of these later walls staggers belief. They are reported
upon reliable authority to have been about one hundred and sixty feet high,
the equivalent of the height of a modern fifteen story office building. The
total length is estimated as between nine and eleven miles. So wide was the
top that a six-horse chariot could be driven around them. Of this tremendous
structure, little now remains except portions of the foundations and the
moat. In addition to the ravages of the elements, the Arabs completed the
destruction by quarrying the brick for building purposes elsewhere.


Against the walls of Babylon marched, in turn, the victorious armies of almost
every conqueror of that age of wars of conquest. A host of kings laid siege to
Babylon, but always in vain. Invading armies of that day were not to be
considered lightly. Historians speak of such units as 10,000 horsemen,

25,000 chariots, 1200 regiments of foot soldiers with 1000 men to the
regiment. Often two or three years of preparation would be required to
assemble war materials and depots of food along the proposed line of march.
The city of Babylon was organized much like a modern city. There were
streets and shops.


Peddlers offered their wares through residential districts. Priests officiated in
magnificent temples.


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Within the city was an inner enclosure for the royal palaces. The walls about
this were said to have been higher than those about the city.
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