INTRODUCTION
“Pay yourself first.”
You’ve heard that phrase—now a popular and widely used personal finance principle—and it came from the book you’re about to read.
The Richest Man in Babylon might be the most famous and powerful book you’ve never heard of. Even though the book has sold millions of copies since its original publication in nearly one hundred years, and has influenced countless people to live a richer life, it’s still not as well-known as some of its counterparts, such as Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill and As a Man Thinketh by James Allen. The Richest Man in Babylon, however, is every bit as effective and potent as those classics.
So what is this book you are about to read? Well, The Richest Man in Babylon actually began as a series of pamphlets that author George S. Clason created as a result of the success he experienced in his business. Clason had founded a publishing company, the Clason Map Company, in Denver, Colorado, and is credited with having created the first road map of the United States and Canada (he beat Rand McNally to the market by a year).
His success prompted him to create a series of pamphlets with tips for saving money, planning for the future, and more, which he published and distributed to companies, banks, and other organizations. He collected many of these pamphlets into a book, The Richest Man in Babylon, which he published himself just as the Great Depression had caused many businesses to fail, including Clason’s own. The book connected with readers and sold very well, so that Clason was able to live well off of the book’s success for the rest of his days.
What’s the big deal, you might ask, about a series of pamphlets that gave personal finance advice? Aren’t there countless other pamphlets and books with financial self-help ideas that have come and gone over the years? Why has this one endured all of these years, and still sells as well if not better than ever?
Clason wanted to share his ideas about wealth-building with others, but he had a unique “hook.” Instead of writing a dry how-to that could bore readers and quickly become dated, Clason shared his wealth-building tips in the form of parables. These short parables all take place in ancient Babylon. Since they are parables, Clason was able to impart important financial wisdom in a delightful, fun manner. And since the parables are set in ancient Babylon, they have an almost biblical “feel” to them.
Furthermore, the advice Clason gave was timeless and easy to apply. Consider some of the chapter titles in the book:
Seven Cures for a Lean Purse
Meet the Goddess of Good Luck
The Five Laws of Gold
How could someone who needs advice about money, or is a little down on their luck, not want to read those?
And now it’s your turn to meet the charming characters of The Richest Man in Babylon, including Bansir, Kobbi, and especially Arkad, the wise teacher. Here’s what I’ll suggest: at the end of each chapter, pause and reflect on what the main point or points were in the chapter, and consider how they could apply in your own life. In this way, the book will go from something you just read to something that you use.
We’ve also included something special in this edition, the full text of “Acres of Diamonds” by Russell H. Conwell, a well-known minister, orator, lawyer, and writer in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
“Acres of Diamonds” is one of the most popular inspirational pieces ever published, and has sold tens of millions of copies since its first publication. Just as The Richest Man in Babylon began its life as a series of pamphlets, “Acres of Diamonds” began its life as an inspirational speech, inspired by Conwell’s travels in the Middle East, and first given in 1890. The response was so overwhelming that Conwell was asked to give it again to a new audience, and then again, and again. In fact, he gave the speech a reported 6,152 times in his lifetime. He would often tweak it slightly in various retellings, but the bulk of his main points—and the inspirational message—always remained the same.
“Acres of Diamonds” has a central theme: everything you need is already within you. Like Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz, the reader learns that you don’t need to travel to faraway places in search of riches or opportunities. Rather, the metaphorical diamonds are there—in abundance—right where you are, waiting for you to use them.
The “Acres of Diamonds” lecture was so popular that the income Conwell made delivering it was used in a variety of meaningful ways, including the founding of Temple University in Pennsylvania. This one speech, later published as a slim volume, helped to create a university that has taught and educated countless people, and continues to do so to this very day. After Conwell’s death, the proceeds from “Acres of Diamonds” were given to a homeless shelter in Philadelphia. What an amazing legacy.
You have before you two timeless tales to teach you, urge you forward, and help you create a lifetime of riches. The messages in these books not only transformed the lives of the authors, but they have transformed the lives of millions of people all around the world for all of these years.
And now you have the opportunity to be inspired by these stories to create your own dreams come true.
Joel Fotinos
1
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, 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 was 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 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.
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. 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.
The Babylonians were skilled in the arts. These included sculpture, painting, weaving, gold working and the manufacture of metal weapons and agricultural implements. Their jewelers created most artistic jewelry. Many samples have been recovered from the graves of its wealthy citizens and are now on exhibition in the leading museums of the world.
At a very early period when the rest of the world was still hacking at trees with stone-headed axes, or hunting and fighting with flint-pointed spears and arrows, the Babylonians were using axes, spears and arrows with metal heads.
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.
Babylon was never entered by hostile armies until about 540 years before the birth of Christ. Even then the walls were not captured. The story of the fall of Babylon is most unusual. Cyrus, one of the great conquerors of that period, intended to attack the city and hoped to take its impregnable walls. Advisors of Nabonidus, the King of Babylon, persuaded him to go forth to meet Cyrus and give him battle without waiting for the city to be besieged. In the succeeding defeat to the Babylonian army, it fled away from the city. Cyrus, thereupon, entered the open gates and took possession without resistance.
Thereafter the power and prestige of the city gradually waned until, in the course of a few hundred years, it was eventually abandoned, deserted, left for the winds and storms to level once again to that desert earth from which its grandeur had originally been built. Babylon had fallen, never to rise again, but to it civilization owes much.
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.
INTRODUCTION. Copyright © 2021 by Joel Fotinos.