The Source

by James A. Michener

  “Place the burdens on me, great El, that the gods may be free.

  Let my back bend, that theirs may be straight.”

  Thus was the song of Urbaal as he sweated at his press, striving to squeeze out the last drops of oil.

  The priests, watching the diligence of the free farmers, were satisfied with the stratagem their predecessors had devised thousands of years earlier: by giving the owners of free land an incentive to work hard the temple could establish standards for judging what its slaves should be expected to accomplish. But at the same time the priests were canny men, and although they held up to their slaves the examples set by men like Urbaal and Amalek, they knew that they could not enforce such quotas, nor did they try; for on the one hand the temple slaves did not own their land, and on the other they had not the powerful attraction of a living goddess like Libamah luring them on. It was remarkable, the priests reflected as they observed the sweating Urbaal, what men could accomplish under proper enticement, and it was reassuring to see that his example permeated the community, even though few could match it.

  In these midsummer days, when the quality of Makor’s harvest was being determined, Timna was led to review the principles by which she lived. She was now twenty-four years old and had come a stranger to Makor, so that some of its customs she could not comprehend, but she had never believed that life would have been much better in her home city of Akka. True, in Akka the god Melak would not have grabbed her first-born in his fiery arms, but other gods would have exacted other tribute, so she had few illusions; on balance, life in Makor was as good as it could have been in any of the neighboring communities. From time to time, however, she heard rumors in merchant circles of a much different manner of life in distant areas like Egypt and Mesopotamia. One year an Egyptian general, much harried and suspicious of everyone, had stopped in Makor, spending three days with the king, and he seemed a man who saw enormous distances beyond the confining walls of one town. On passing Urbaal’s house he had stopped out of natural curiosity to inspect the place, asking through his interpreter a series of intelligent questions. It was from this experience that Timna had first entertained the concept that beyond Makor there was another world and beyond it another, and she wondered what authority cruel Melak enjoyed in those worlds, or to what extent half-buried El could dominate those communities. Watching her husband report to the baals of his fields, one after the other—olive grove, olive press, oil vats, oil jugs, highway, beehives, wheat, barley—she deduced that these must be very puny gods indeed, no better really than extended men, and that if one god went down or were lost it could not matter much. Now, as she found herself pregnant again, she was delighted to think that her lost son would be replaced. But when she went in to give thanks to the new clay Astarte and saw that seductive body and the enticing smile, she felt a most serious contradiction: her pregnancy had coincided with the arrival of this winsome little goddess, and perhaps Astarte had been directly responsible; but on the other hand why should anyone assume that Astarte was any more powerful or extensive in her realm than the pitiful little baals that her husband worshiped were in theirs? It was a perplexing question, but on the day she told her husband that she was pregnant again Urbaal was so delighted that when he carried her into the god-room and placed her gently on his bed, crying, “I knew that Astarte would bring us children,” she stifled her skepticism and concurred, “Astarte did it.”

  But as soon as she had made this surrender she had to look at her foolish husband and say to herself: He’s happy that I’m pregnant, but not because of me. And not because of my future son. But only because it proves his new Astarte is powerful. He thinks that she will give him the right to stay with Libamah. And thus was born the contempt that she could never thereafter stifle.

  As the month of harvest approached, it was obvious that Astarte had blessed not only Urbaal and his wife, but the town as a whole. Herdsmen reported record growth amongst their cattle, weavers piled bolts of cloth on their shelves, and the wheat crop was plentiful. Urbaal, at the olive grove, had riches unmatched and was already supplying oil and honey to donkey caravans from Akka, where boats were putting in from Egypt and Tyre for the surpluses. The military threats from the north had subsided, as the god Melak had predicted, and there was bounty in the air.

  In the regions around Makor there had developed a tradition that would later be observed in many nations: thanksgiving for such a year of fruitfulness; and as the harvest ended, music began to sound and people prepared themselves for the forthcoming celebrations. The men who might logically aspire to winning Libamah grew nervous as the priests came to review their year’s operations, and Urbaal heard with some dismay that Amalek had done wonders with his cattle. At home Urbaal grew irritable and Timna, satisfied with her pregnancy, looked at him with a gentle condescension. It seemed ridiculous to her that a man with two wives and adequate slaves should drive himself to nervous distraction over the prospect of spending some time with a girl who, after some months of serving as the chief attraction at the temple, would gradually subside into being one of the ordinary prostitutes who were served out in batches of three and four at the conclusion of celebrations, ending at last as an unwanted old woman given to slaves in hopes that an extra child or two might be lured from her womb. In no way did she resent Libamah; the girl was pretty and Timna could understand why a man might want her, but that Urbaal should take the matter seriously was disgusting. Furthermore, the wise wife could guess at the other apprehensions that must be tormenting her husband as the time for choosing Libamah’s mate approached: there had been a year when the man chosen had been so excited and nervous that he had made a pitiful spectacle of himself, throwing the whole ritual into confusion and bringing disgrace upon Makor, so that Astarte was annoyed and refused to make the ensuing crops bountiful. One night as Timna sat brooding in the courtyard, she heard her husband praying to Astarte that he might be the chosen one, then praying a second time that if he were chosen he might be equal to the task—for it would be ridiculous to celebrate a fertility rite in which fertility was obviously impossible.

  All these matters the priests took into consideration as they approached the day on which to make their final selection of the year’s representative. Amalek and Urbaal were each strong men and each had proved himself by having numerous children. The fact that Timna was pregnant again aided Urbaal’s claims, but the unusual fecundity of Amalek’s cattle was equally impressive and the priests wavered between the two.

  The climax of thanksgiving began with three days of feasting in which enormous banquets were provided by the temple priests, drawing upon stores of food accumulated by their slaves in the preceding year. Cattie were slaughtered and wine from temple jugs was liberally distributed. There was dancing and tumbling and juggling. Musicians played long into the night, and passing traders were encouraged to lay up their caravans and share in the celebration.

  Then, on the fourth day, the entire town and its surroundings—something over a thousand people—congregated at the temple, where appetites were whetted by having one of the prettiest of the older temple prostitutes dance nude, after which she allowed herself to be led off into one of the chambers by a youth of sixteen who had been fortified with wine to prepare him for the ritual. There was other dancing of an erotic nature, adoration of both the male and female figure, and finally the presentation of the young priestess, Libamah, who was again ceremoniously undressed by the priests. A hush fell over the crowd, and the men who might be chosen leaned forward as the enchanting girl began her final dance of the year. It went far beyond what she had done before, and as she drew to a conclusion, any man in the audience would have been a capable partner; but the priests assembled and their leader cried, “Urbaal is the man!”

  The farmer leaped onto the steps and stood with his feet apart, staring at Libamah, who turned to accept him while the priests quickly stripped away his clothing. He stood forth as a powerful man and the crowd cheered as he strode forward, gathered the
young priestess in his arms and carried her into the hall of Astarte, where he would lie with her for seven days.

  Timna, still grieving for her son, watched the performance dispassionately and muttered, “What folly! The fertility is in the soil. It is in me.” And while others celebrated she walked slowly homeward, seeing life in a new and painful clarity: with different gods her husband Urbaal would have been a different man; and she went into his god-room, looked with abhorrence at the four Astartes, and methodically smashed the first three along with their phallic companions. She then lifted the fourth goddess and would have smashed it, too, except that in the moment of doing so she was struck by the atavistic suspicion that perhaps this Astarte had indeed caused her present pregnancy and if destroyed might end it. She couldn’t be sure, so she took the figurine and the fragments to an empty spot along the wall, where she buried them deep in earth, ridiculing as she did so both the goddess and the man who had so disgustingly committed his life to her.

  • • • THE TELL

  The archaeologists had rigged a shower in back of the administration building, and when anyone used it he must afterward hurry along a footpath to return to his tent for dressing. One evening as Cullinane was returning, he came upon Dr. Eliav headed toward the shower, and the Irishman said, “When you’re finished, would you clear something up forme?”

  The Jew nodded, and after Cullinane had rubbed down and slipped into his shorts and sports shirt he waited on the edge of his bed until Eliav appeared. “The other day,” Cullinane reminded him, “we were speaking at lunch and I described Israel as part of ‘the fertile crescent.’ You started to make some observation but we were interrupted. What did you have in mind?”

  Eliav leaned against the tent pole and remarked, “To me the phrase sounds old-fashioned.”

  “I picked it up in Chicago. Breasted used it for the land between Mesopotamia and the Nile.”

  “It was a useful cliché,” Eliav granted, “but no longer.”

  “The land’s still fertile,” Cullinane argued.

  “But if you conceive of Israel as being merely passive, the arable fields over which people walked on their way to other arable fields, your thought remains passive. You miss the dynamism of our history.”

  “How do you think of the land?”

  Eliav took three of Cullinane’s books and laid them casually on the bed, their corners touching and with an empty space in the middle. “Asia, Africa, Europe, and this empty area—the Mediterranean. Leakey’s discoveries in Kenya last year pretty well prove that man originated in Africa at least two million years ago, plus or minus. He wandered into Israel rather late, possibly from Asia, more likely from Africa.”

  “I don’t see how this relates to the fertile-crescent concept.”

  “Since the area’s a natural highway, it’s always been a focus of forces. Even in geology. We’re a fracture point where continents meet and twist. Many earthquakes and violent storms. You remember what Stekelis found along the River Jordan?”

  Cullinane recalled the discovery that had startled the archaeological world some years before: an area where rocks that had once been horizontal was torn apart and tilted vertically in the air. Such fractures were common throughout the world, but imbedded in his tilted areas Stekelis found parts of a skeleton and unmistakable tools of men who had been living before the upper soil had been laid down or the area tilted … say, a million years ago. “Imagine the earthquake those characters went through,” he said.

  “Point I’m trying to make,” Eliav insisted, “is that even the first men in this area were caught up in violence. Ever since, it’s been the same way. Down here mighty Egypt. Up here the Mesopotamian powers. As these great forces pressed against each other, the point where they usually met was Israel. When we stand out on the tell, John, we shouldn’t visualize fertile fields but dusty Egyptians thrusting up from the south with mighty armies, and the Mesopotamians swinging down from the north with equal strength. It was in this cauldron, this violent marching of many feet, that Israel was born.”

  “You think this has been the permanent characteristic?”

  “Yes. Because after the Egypt-Mesopotamia struggle came the Sea Peoples arriving from the west”—with a broad sweep of his hand across the Mediterranean he indicated the coming of the Phoenicians and the Philistines with their chariots and weapons of iron—“opposing the Syrians moving in from the east. More fractures, more violence, then the Greeks from the west locked in mortal combat with the Persians from the east. Then Romans on their way to fight Parthians. And Byzantines thundering against the Arabs. Most dramatic, I suppose, were the Crusades, when Christians from Europe smashed against Muslims from Asia. This was always the battleground, the focus of forces. In recent times we’ve had Napoleon here battling the Turks in Acre, and lately the Germans of Rommel trying to capture Jerusalem and Damascus.”

  “You think the focus-of-forces concept more meaningful than the old fertile-crescent idea?”

  “Yes, because it reminds us of the conflict and the intellectual confrontation we’ve witnessed.”

  The manner in which Cullinane sat on his bed caused his left hand to represent the armies of the west and his right the east. Bringing them together with a bang over Israel, he recalled the struggles Eliav had summarized: Egypt versus Babylonia; Greece crashing against Persia; Rome vanquishing the east; Crusader fighting infidel; and finally Jew battling Arab. “All right,” he conceded, “this is where violence met violence. What am I supposed to conclude?”

  “I don’t rightly know,” Eliav confessed. Then tentatively he added, “But I do know that if you visualize Israel merely as a stopping place along a fertile crescent where placid farmers rested on their way to Egypt, you miss the whole point. It wasn’t like that at all. It was a meeting place of dynamisms. And because we Jews were at the focus of forces we became the most dynamic of all. We had to. To stay alive. We were spun in a terrible vortex, but because we were Jews we loved it. On the faces of our kids at the kibbutz, don’t you sense a kind of radiance? ‘We stand where the fires are hottest. We’re at the focus of forces.’ John, don’t you sometimes see it on their faces?”

  He stopped, embarrassed by his unusual display of vehemence, and replaced the books, but as he did so he saw Schwartz climbing down from the tell, where he had been inspecting the day’s dig. “Eh, Schwartz!” he called, and when the dark-skinned secretary entered the tent, Eliav asked, “From here, how far north to the enemy border?”

  “Ten miles.”

  “East to the Syrians?”

  “Twenty-three.”

  “West to where Egypt tried to invade us?”

  “Eight.”

  “With the enemy so close? The threats you hear them make over the radio? Aren’t you scared?”

  The tough Israeli snorted. “Since I’m living in Israel no week passes without at least one story in the newspaper how Egypt is going to wipe us out with rockets made by their German scientists. Or Syria massacre us. Or some Arab army push us into the sea.” He thrust his jaw at Cullinane and said dispassionately, “If I scared easy I wouldn’t be here. I feel a lot more relaxed right now than I ever did in Germany.”

  • • •

  The customary procedure when a man had lain for seven days and seven nights with one of the ritual prostitutes—for that is what Libamah was, no matter how often she was termed a priestess—was for him to go back to his regular wives and forget the girl, who often became pregnant with a child which was upon birth sacrificed to the fires of Melak; but this year the outcome was to be different, for Urbaal left the temple at the end of his performance inflamed with a permanent infatuation for the priestess. He had found her an enchanting, ingenuous girl who enjoyed telling in broken accents of her life in the north and of the manner in which her crafty father had defrauded the men of his region. She had a gift of mimicry and pantomimed the soldiers who had captured her in the various battles leading to her slavery, and with intriguing insight summarized their
attempts to seduce her while others were not looking. She was especially amusing when she described in a husky voice, which Urbaal relished, how the local priests had coached her to look shy: “Keep your fingertips close to your knees and your eyes lowered. When you look sideways try to press your chin into your shoulder.” She also demonstrated how they had taught the erotic dances, and Urbaal found her capable both in her evaluations and in her love-making. It was not surprising that he became infatuated with her.

  For her part, she recognized the sturdy farmer merely as an average man, more tender than most who had tried to make love with her, and certainly more honest than her father. One morning she said casually, “I admire you because you are not vain of yourself, nor too exalted in your opinions, nor overly bothered with mean thoughts.” The words excited him and he began wondering; he laughed noisily at her stories and was not offended when she pulled gray hairs from his head or mimicked the manner in which he had leaped onto the steps to take her; at the moments when she made believe she was Urbaal she became an awkward, likable farmer, and he conceived the idea that she was acting so because she desired him, an impression that was fortified by her ardent passion in love-making. Could the priests have spied into the sacred room during the hours that Libamah and Urbaal occupied it, they would have been distressed, for here there was no lofty sense of ritual, no male principle fructifying the handmaiden of Astarte; here were merely two uncomplicated human beings who enjoyed each other and who laughed a good deal while doing so. When the day of parting came, it was understandable that Urbaal could not accept it as final, for under the auspices of the goddess of love he had fallen in love, and when he kissed the enchanting girl good-bye he surprised her by making a dramatic promise, delivered in quivering voice, “You are to be mine.”