Book one: The Richest Man in Babylon

Scott Pape put it on his reading list, which is how it reached my bookshelf, where it has sat for years. Last Friday I took its opening cure on its own and today the rest of it gets my verdict.

I read it with my eyes open. George S. Clason was a white American man writing in the 1920s about a Mesopotamian city he built out of his imagination. Slavery sits in the stories as ordinary furniture. Men own men and trade them at market, and two of the best parables turn on that.

I went looking for the women and I found goddesses and men's wives. The Goddess of Good Luck carries a chapter, a master's wife hands a runaway his escape and a wife leaves for her father's house after her husband is ruined. Readers on StoryGraph flag the book for slavery and misogyny. I found those flags after I finished it, and I agreed with both.

The question I keep coming back to opens The Five Laws of Gold. "A bag heavy with gold or a clay tablet carved with words of wisdom; if thou hadst thy choice; which wouldst thou choose?" My copy answers it at page 91. Without wisdom, gold is quickly lost by those who have it, and with wisdom, gold can be secured by those who have it not.

The parable of Arkad's seven cures for a lean purse read as instructions to a Babylonian audience, so I report them as he wrote them. Start thy purse to fattening. Control thy expenditures. Make thy gold multiply. Guard thy treasures from loss. Make of thy dwelling a profitable investment. Insure a future income. Increase thy ability to earn.

I was struck by the simplicity of the five laws of gold. In plain English they run like this. Money grows for the person who keeps 10 per cent of every pay. Money earns its keep when somebody puts it to work. Money stays with people who take advice from someone who does this for a living. Money walks out on anyone who buys into a trade they barely understand. It runs fastest from the person chasing a return that sounds too good, or taking a tip on a fast money scheme.

The parable I sat with is The Camel Trader of Babylon. Dabasir makes saddles, falls into debt, runs from it, joins a band of robbers and lands in Damascus as a slave. His master's wife, Sira, asks whether a man carrying the soul of a free man goes home to face what he owes, or whether the soul of a slave keeps him running. She gives him camels, he rides back to Babylon, and then he does the part that made me sit up.

He goes to every person he owes, one at a time, tells them what he can pay, and pays it. His clay tablets carry the arithmetic. Ten per cent stayed his, 70 per cent covered his living, and 20 per cent was divided for the people he owed until the last of it cleared.

I recognised that shape, and recognising it was uncomfortable. On Day 1, I wrote about the payment plans I negotiated after speaking with a financial counsellor, which ran from 6 weeks to 88 weeks. Dabasir was me, minus the banditry.

People answer you when you turn up with a number and keep to it. Some of his creditors scoffed at him. Most of mine thanked me, because a slow repayment reads better than silence.

I found the psychology in the last parable, The Luckiest Man in Babylon. Sharru Nada, a merchant prince, tells the grandson of his dead business partner that he was once a slave. A fellow slave named Megiddo taught him to work a field properly, because good work rewards the doer. Sharru Nada worked his way to his freedom, bought his partner's freedom in turn and grew rich.

Clason's argument runs underneath the chapter. A man can carry the soul of a slave while he walks around free, and the soul of a free man while somebody owns him. I take the 1926 framing off and what stays is a claim about how much life a person believes they deserve. Clason also asks whether work is a sentence you serve or the thing that gives your day a spine.

My verdict. The book holds up on the mechanics and it has aged into a period piece everywhere else. Its oldest rule, 10 per cent out first, survived a fortnight in Port Moresby for me, and the 20 per cent beside it is the part that cleared what I owed.

Clason's Babylon settles a man's worth by what he owns and by who owns him. I held that in one hand and took the numbers in the other. A few days' read, and time well spent.

Best

Amanda

P.S. What’s your view on today’s newsletter? Did I miss something out that you’d like to share? Write to me, [email protected]. I may not get back to you, but I will try to read what you send in.

Wild Money is general information only, drawn from my own experience and research. It isn't financial advice, and nothing in it is a recommendation to buy, sell, hold or manage money in any particular way. What worked for me won't necessarily suit you. Please seek advice from a licensed financial adviser before making decisions about your own money.