Джеймс Миченер - The Source

It was not surprising that Makor so easily accepted the strangers, the forerunners of a mass immigration that would come centuries later, for in the past thousand years many isolated families had drifted into the outlying fields and then into the town itself, accommodating themselves to Makor, its customs and its gods. The Habiru, even upon careful inspection, gave no evidence of being different from the others, and the priests had a right to assume that within a relatively short period the newcomers would be absorbed as their altar under the oak tree became incorporated into the worship of the monoliths in front of the temple. Such assimilation had always occurred in the past and there was no reason to suppose that it would not happen again. They were impressed with Joktan as a powerful man with sturdy sons, and they were pleased to welcome him as part of their town.

Having been accepted by the community, Joktan was now free to visit inside the walls, where the luxury of Makor astonished him. He had never lived in a house nor had he seen many, but here were more than a hundred jammed together and their effect upon him was startling. The shops were crowded with goods that excited his envy: wine and oil, crockery and cloth. Especially compelling was the temple area, where the four monoliths bespoke authority. When the priests introduced him to the ancient statue of El he said quietly, “The god I worship is also El,” and the priests nodded in satisfaction.

Timna, in the tents of the Habiru, learned what a robust race they were, fond of eating and singing, quarrelsome when drunk and close-knit to face all strangers. Boy babies were marked by the rite of circumcision, and girls were married young—frequently to their cousins. To the Habiru the rude altar of El was not so important as the temple was to the town of Makor, but it was treated with a greater reverence, and Timna went there often, finding votive flowers or the feathers of a pigeon. The god who inhabited this holy place did not require first-born sons nor did he desire to see naked girls lying with farmers. Timna was especially impressed when Joktan, who had moved her in with his wives and who was accepting her unborn child into his camp, went to the altar alone to pray in silence, with no drums beating, no trumpets and few words.

“Who is your god?” she asked one day.

“The one god,” he replied.

“Then why did you accept the baals, as the priest required?”

“In any land I enter, I worship the local gods.”

“I believe that among the many gods there is one who counts, and the others do not merit worshiping. What is your god named?”

“El.”

“The one who lives in the little stone in front of our temple?”

“El has no home, for he is everywhere.”

This simple idea reached Timna’s inquisitive mind like sunshine after storm, like a rainbow after a fall of cold rain. She recognized Joktan’s explanation as the concept she had been groping for: a solitary god of no form, residing in no monolith, with no specific voice. With Joktan’s permission she began placing each day upon the altar of this transcendent god a few spring flowers—yellow tulips, white anemones or red poppies.

It was Timna who showed the Habiru the road to Akka, where Joktan took his donkeys on a trading expedition, for Habiru meant donkey driver or one who was dusty from the roads , and when the caravan returned, laden with goods from the seaport, Joktan sent his sons to the olive field while he went through the zigzag gate to consult with the priests: “In Akka I found much trading to be done. I should like to live within your walls and I shall bring Urbaal’s wife with me, for she is now my wife,” and the priests assented. But when Timna walked nervously past the house of mirth which she had done so much to destroy, she remembered that day when she had first stepped over its threshold as Urbaal’s wife. On the stones Amalek had broken a ripe pomegranate, crying, “May you have as many sons as this fruit has seeds.” Now Joktan led her to a mean shed which the priests had assigned him along the eastern wall, but soon Timna transformed it into a place of dignity with an altar to the one god, and she found consolation when a son was born whom she insisted upon naming Urbaal, that his line might continue. But her joy in this son was tarnished when priests came to the shed, saying to one of Joktan’s slave girls, “Your baby is a first-born of Joktan, and his wrists we shall mark with red.”

In the anguish of this bereft slave girl Timna relived her own grief, which gnawed at her heart as rats gnaw wheat, and she felt more sorrow for this poor girl than she had for herself, for now she was able to see infant sacrifice as the incomprehensible cruelty it was. Leaving the shed with its red-marked infant, she fled disconsolately into the streets, past the house of Amalek, where she had stood guard one night, past the house of mirth, where Matred now ruled in bitterness, up past the monoliths who would never again have power over her, and down along the western wall till she reached the secret spot where the four Astartes lay buried with their ridiculous phallic stones. Over their heads she stamped her feet, crying, “You sleeping down there, you contain no life. You are corruption. Life lies in the womb of the slave girl.” And she wept for Urbaal, for the slave and for the red-marked infant lying in its crib; in this deep humility of spirit she leaned against the wall and became the first citizen of Makor to pray of herself, with no altar and no priest, to that formless god whom the Habiru had introduced to this vicinity.

In the morning, when drums called worshipers to the place of sacrifice, Joktan was bedazzled by the power of these new gods. Fiery Melak fascinated him, a deity of immense potential, and when his child was lifted into the air and thrust down upon the stone arms, he experienced a sense of religious awe unknown before, and when the festive part of the celebration began, with music and soft singing, Joktan guessed that something exciting was about to happen.

Leaving Timna and the slave girl mourning at the altar of the fiery god, he moved into a front position among the crowd and saw for the first time the tall priestess Libamah appear through the temple doors, a living goddess moving with more than human grace. In her spun robes she was lovelier than any woman he had encountered in the desert, and when the priest finished undressing her so that she stood fully revealed, he gasped with a delight he had not imagined possible.

Timna left the weeping slave girl and moved into the crowd just as her husband realized that some man in the audience was about to be nominated to lie with the dazzling priestess, and she watched with incredulity as Joktan leaned forward, his mouth agape, staring like a small boy as the lithe prostitute completed her dance. With her feet apart Libamah waited for the priests to indicate her mate for that day, and in that moment of hesitation Timna saw with horror that Joktan’s lips were moving and he was praying, “El, let it be me!” And when a pottery maker from the town leaped onto the steps to fulfill the demands of the rite, Joktan stared at the proceedings with such intensity that Timna, who had seen that look before, could guess what heated imaginings were racing through his mind. And the solitary altar under the oak tree was remembered no more.

LEVEL

XIII

An Old Man and His God

Two clay pots thrown on a potter’s wheel and fired at 880° centigrade at Makor, 1427 B.C.E. Bodies light red in color. Left pot decorated on inside with dark red and yellow stripes in slip. Right pot on outside with slip in same colors. All colors darkened by absorption of ash laid down during a conflagration in midsummer, 1419 B.C.E.