The Richest Man In Babylon

by George S. Clason

Foreword

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

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.

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.

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.

An Historical Sketch of Babylon

In the pages of history there lives no city more glamorous than Babylon.

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...

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 When those energizing human forces that built and maintained the city for thousands of years were withdrawn, it soon became a deserted ruin.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, Arizona. It possessed a climate similar to that of this American city, hot and dry.

Thời tiết của thành phố Babylon

Euphrates,

Nomadic bands of Arabs,

Christian era.

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.

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.

Positive dates have been proved reaching back 8000 years.

this way, we have proved that 8000 years ago, the Sumerites, who inhabited Babylonia, were living in walled cities.

Their inhabitants were 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 ...

In size they compare favorably with the largest canals in Colorado and Utah.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

The later and more famous walls were started about six hundred years before the time of Christ by King Nabopolassar.

This was left to his son, Nebuchadnezzar, whose name is familiar in Biblical history.

Against the walls of Babylon marched, in turn, the victorious armies of almost every conqueror of that age of wars of conquest.

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...

The Babylonians were skilled in the arts.

Many samples have been recovered from the graves of its wealthy citizens and are now on exhibition in the leading museums of the world.

The Babylonians were clever financiers and traders. So far as we know, they were the original inventors of money as a means of exchange, of promissory notes and written titles to property.

The eons of time have crumbled to dust the proud walls of its temples, but the wisdom of Babylon endures.

Money is the medium by which earthly success is measured. Money makes possible the enjoyment of the best the earth affords. Money is plentiful for those who understand the simple laws which govern its acquisition. Money is governed today by the same laws which controlled it when prosperous men thronged the streets of Babylon, six thousand years ago.

Babylon was like this — a mixture of grandeur and squalor, of dazzling wealth and direst poverty, crowded together without plan or system within the protecting walls of the city.

Thereupon Arkad remonstrated with them, saying, “If you have not acquired more than a bare existence in the years since we were youths, it is because you either have failed to learn the laws that govern the building of wealth, or else you do not observe them.

Do là mày chưa hiểu nguyên tắc của đồng tiền thôi.

Advice is one thing that is freely given away, but watch that you take only what is worth having. He who takes advice about his savings from one who is inexperienced in such matters, shall pay with his savings for proving the falsity of their opinions.’ Saying

Arkad,’ he continued, ‘you have learned your lessons well. You first learned to live upon less than you could earn. Next you learned to seek advice from those who were competent through their own experiences to give it. And, lastly, you have learned to make gold work for you.

You have taught yourself how to acquire money, how to keep it, and how to use it. Therefore, you are competent for a responsible position. I am becoming an old man. My sons think only of spending and give no thought to earning. My interests are great and I fear too much for me to look after. If you will go to Nippur and look after my lands there, I shall make you my partner and you shall share in my estate.’

Opportunity is a haughty goddess who wastes no time with those who are unprepared.”