The Source

by James A. Michener

  He was a man devoted to Makor. When younger he had served as general of the army in days when a force of four hundred well-armed men could be put into the field. Twice the Egyptians had chosen him to serve as their field commander of contingents requisitioned in the area, and he had roamed as far afield as Carchemish and Damascus, but always he returned happily to Makor. It was he who initiated the practice of having the governor live adjacent to the main gate so that any merchant entering or leaving town might find him easily to consult on matters involving taxation. His home was a large fortified building wedged into the western wall of the gate, with two entrances, one for his family leading into the town and the other an official door that led from his office directly into the zigzag passage. He was so concerned with the administration of Makor that he often perched himself on a three-legged stool inside the gate, chatting with anyone who passed and gossiping about the government of the town. Under Uriel’s leadership Makor had prospered. Outside the walls many farmers produced food surpluses that were sent by caravan to Akka, while inside the town other men operated a sophisticated economic system based upon the manufacture of pottery from clay found in the wadi, the weaving and dyeing of cloth, and the casting of bronze implements of a high quality: the copper required was brought north by donkey caravan from mines south of the Red Sea; the tin came to Akka by ship from ports in Asia Minor and the finished ware went out to many towns and cities. In Makor no one used flints.

  The primary producers of pottery, cloth and bronze were supported by middlemen who provided funds for bringing raw materials in and who undertook the risk of shipping the goods out. They also supplied local shops, which sold not only things manufactured in the town but also objects imported from specialized centers as far away as Cyprus, Greece and Crete to the west, and Damascus and India to the east. The people of Makor ate well, dressed well, prayed to an organized trinity of gods who protected them efficiently, and enjoyed as secure a form of government as any known in the region between Mesopotamia and Egypt.

  If on the one hand they had not yet discovered the concept of coinage, they did have a well-tested system of money-by-weight, whereby gold and silver could be sent long distances to pay bills; and if they did not have an organized system of posts they had messengers who moved regularly back and forth between the rivers, Uriel could write in three languages: the Akkadian cuneiform of Mesopotamia, which was the principal language for all diplomatic or business transactions; the hieroglyphs of Egypt for governmental reports; and the new form of writing used in northern Canaan, from which the alphabet would ultimately develop. On his desk he kept a set of scarabs carved in Egypt which he used to sign his clay tablets or to stamp the handles of jugs used to measure wine and grain. He had no books, but he did have collections of clay tablets on which important ideas were codified, and he knew by memory many rhymed legends from Mesopotamia and Canaan, especially the local epic dealing with Baal and Astarte in the nether world. He did not realize that this poem was a recapitulation of adventures in which his ancestors had been involved, and if someone had informed him of that fact he would have been embarrassed, for he was a man devoid of vanity or any desire to compete with the gods.

  At forty-one Uriel was a judicious administrator who found personal pleasure when his fields produced more wheat or his olives a better press of oil. The only point on which he could be considered vain was his son Zibeon, twenty-one years old, dark-haired and handsome. For a while it had looked as if the young man might get into trouble by trying to force his attentions upon girls whose parents did not wish their daughters to marry at fourteen, even though peasant families permitted this; but as a result of pressure from Uriel, his son had taken a Hyksos mistress and that crisis had passed. In the meantime, the governor had been reviewing the families of his friends and it seemed probable that soon his son would marry.

  On the spring day in 1419 B.C.E. when Zadok and his Hebrews were approaching Makor from the east, Governor Uriel perched on his three-legged stool, so situated that he could inspect anyone coming up the ramp and at the same time look into town to see what was occurring there. In the latter direction he could view a complex society consisting of Hyksos soldiers who had left the battlefield, Egyptian settlers, a few Africans, a handful of Hebrews who had straggled down from the north, and half a dozen other kinds of people from the sea and the desert. Even those who were properly called Canaanites were of a grandly confused background, but all lived together in a kind of tolerant amalgam. A short, swarthy young man with a sharply hooked nose detached himself from the crowd and walked toward Uriel.

  “Would the governor care to inspect?” the young Hittite asked. His parents had reached Makor during a raid by mercenaries from the north.

  “Are things prepared?” Uriel asked. The young man nodded, whereupon the governor directed a guard to take the stool back into the office while he joined the Hittite and walked along the broad main street that cut directly across the mound from the main gate to the postern. As he went he inspected the shops that lined the thoroughfare: the pottery shop that sold beautiful ware from the Greek islands; the cloth shop that had more than two dozen kinds of fabric; and the metal shop that had swords and daggers and jewelry highly burnished. As always, he checked the grain silos and the water cisterns to see that they were in good order, then proceeded to the area east of the postern gate where the potters threw clay upon their wheels and shaped the vessels that would be sold next month. Here kilns burned slowly, baking the better clay until it rang like glass, while at the bronze forge teams of young apprentices blew through long pipes bringing small furnaces to a blaze, or worked bellows to achieve the same effect in the larger furnaces.

  Today, however, Governor Uriel was not inspecting his craftsmen. His guide led him to the section west of the Watergate to the point where the wall of Makor bulged northward, and there, in a series of low wooden buildings, the young Hittite showed Uriel the ultimate weapon on which the defense of Makor rested, a device so terrifying that it would probably make future sieges unprofitable.

  “Is everything in order?” the governor asked.

  “Yes,” the young man said, calling to attention a group of Hittites assigned to the low buildings.

  “Are these men able to act quickly?”

  “At your command,” the Hittite assured him.

  Satisfied that the defenses of Makor were secure, Uriel returned to the postern gate, where he went some distance into the dark waterwall until he reached the first guardhouse, from which he looked ahead to the well where women were gathered. Then he returned to the town, where he walked back along the line of shops, nodding to his townsmen, until he came to the gate and there he called again for his three-legged stool. Before it could be brought, his son Zibeon ran up the ramp accompanied by a young farmer. They bore exciting news.

  “An army is marching down the road.”

  Instantly Governor Uriel thrust out his hands, one toward Akka, one toward Damascus, as if he were once more in command of troops. “From where?”

  “There,” Zibeon indicated, and Uriel turned his whole attention to the east.

  His first thought was of the cisterns, and he had just satisfied himself that they were filled. Grain was also plentiful and he had seen that the waterwall was in good repair. He next thought of the five hundred peasants who lived outside the walls, and his first inclination was to sound the bronze trumpets used to summon them to the town, but as he was about to give the order he visualized the rich fields awaiting their spring planting and the vines about to mature and he was reluctant to interfere with the normal processes of the land. It was in that moment of indecision that he determined the fate of Makor.

  He was certain that some kind of truce could be arranged with whoever was marching down the road, so he took his son by the shoulders and asked, “Zibeon, why did you say it was an army?”

  “It’s not a handful. There are hundreds of men.”

  “But did they have sheep?”

  “
Yes.”

  Uriel was relieved. Nomads had been straggling through Canaan for centuries and nine times out of ten the walled cities had experienced no trouble—that is, if no trouble was initiated by the townsmen. The strangers usually took one look at the walls and the protecting glacis and were quite happy to wander on, unless they decided to settle outside the walls, where they formed little villages which in time helped to enrich the cities. Uriel was satisfied that once more the traditional pattern would be repeated.

  He therefore did not cause the trumpets to be sounded, but he did alert his soldiers to man their positions and he sent guards into the waterwall. He ordered the gates to be closed, then climbed one of the towers in order to study the approaching horde. At first he saw only the empty road, resting in spring sunshine and obscured some distance to the east by the flank of the mountain on which stood the altar to Baal. The road looked as it had for centuries—a narrow, rocky, dusty path winding through the countryside, silent and waiting for the next footfall, indifferent as to who might be approaching. Now Uriel saw a flurry of dust as if a breeze incorporeal and unreal had swept across the road, foretelling events of great moment. It was an ominous passage and Uriel drew back, but then a donkey appeared, followed by two children, small and brown and almost naked, who came running ahead to see which could first detect the waiting town. When Uriel saw them he broke into a relaxed laugh.

  “Behold the army!” he cried, and the children, seeing the mighty walls and towers, stopped in the middle of the road, stared at the town, then rushed back to tell their elders.

  Governor Uriel was still laughing when the first Hebrew appeared. He was a tall old man, covered with dust and clothed in rough-spun garments, bearing a staff and nothing more. He was bearded, and his white hair fell to his shoulders. He wore a rope about his waist and heavy sandals and walked with a determination that was not going to be interrupted until he reached the main gates of the town. If this old man shared any of the surprise shown by his children at seeing the stout walls of Makor, he did not betray it. On the other hand, Governor Uriel observed, neither the old man nor the men following him paid any attention to the peasants whose fields lined the road, and this was a good sign. Had the newcomers been set upon ravaging the countryside they would have started by now.

  Nevertheless, Uriel was unprepared for the number of nomads who kept appearing from the east. This was not the ordinary Hebrew family he had met with in the past; Makor had often absorbed such units and had easily inducted them into Canaanite cults. Some families had arrived with as many as twenty children, but this group was different. It was, Uriel saw, a congregation of families, a veritable clan, and its conspicuous feature was not children but grown men of military age. The governor was not afraid, for he saw that the newcomers had few metal weapons, but the order in which they marched made it impossible for him to disregard his son’s earlier report. This was indeed an army, whether bent on military objectives or not, and Uriel climbed down from the tower a much-sobered man.

  Custom of that age required the ruler of a city to stay within his walls when a stranger approached, awaiting a formal visit from messengers who would advise him of the intentions of the men gathered outside, but in this instance the nomads were apparently unfamiliar with diplomatic procedure, for no messengers were forthcoming. Instead, the stalwart old man who led the group stalked up to the gates alone, beat on them with his staff and shouted, “Gates of Makor, open for Zadok, right arm of El-Shaddai.”

  It was a strange command, unlike any the town had previously heard, for it assumed that the gates were going to open without the application of military force. People on the wall began to laugh, but Governor Uriel went to the gates, peered out through a slit and reassured himself that the men around Zadok were not armed. “Open,” he told the guard, and when a small door in the gate was only slightly ajar the old man thrust his staff through the opening, pushed the door aside and stepped boldly in to confront the governor.

  Of the two men who thus met for the first time, the Hebrew was the taller and the elder. He was the more thoughtful, the more dedicated in his spiritual life, and the one better adjusted to nature. The Canaanite was by far the more civilized and the better educated. His service with the Egyptians had also given him a better understanding of contemporary society. As judges of their people, the two men were equal in their appreciation of justice, and as practical heads of their religions, equal in their respect for the sanctity of gods. Neither man was intemperate, nor boastful, nor cruel. Their principal difference lay in the fact that Uriel accepted his trinity of gods as useful but not essential, whereas Zadok lived personally within the bosom of El-Shaddai and could visualize no existence outside that all-encompassing deity. But the opposing leaders were alike in two remarkable characteristics: neither wished to impose his gods on the other, and each was dedicated to the idea that two people as different as Canaanite and Hebrew could live together in harmony. Zadok was repelled by war, and Uriel, who had been an imaginative general for the Egyptians, had no desire to sacrifice his own people in battle. If trouble were to develop from this fateful meeting of nineteen hundred Canaanites and seven hundred Hebrews, it would not come because of anything Uriel and Zadok initiated, for they were men of peace.

  When Zadok entered the gate he was awed by the maze in which he found himself and by the gray-green towers which seemed to press down upon him. He was confused by the quick turn to the left which brought him up against a blank wall and then by the turn to the right, where guard rooms were joined together by chains of hammered bronze. No man could easily storm his way through this gate, but it was not this military foresight that impressed Zadok most. Beyond the chains the patriarch saw for the first time a Canaanite town, with its crowded streets, its tempting shops, its people of many faces and varied derivations. He was bedazzled by the wonder of this place, yet instinctively suspicious of it, for he could feel the oppressive weight of the walls and the confusing manner in which one house crowded in upon the other, so that no man or house had much space to itself. In his first moment of looking into the mysterious town he longed for the freedom of the desert and wondered again if his clan was making an error in coming to such a settlement.

  Governor Uriel, flanked by guards in leather armor, moved forward to greet the old man. “I am Uriel, governor of Makor,” the Canaanite said.

  “I am Zadok ben Zebul, right arm of El-Shaddai, seeking a place for my people.”

  “Are you prepared to pay taxes?” Zadok nodded, and the Canaanite said, “Along the roads the fields are taken. But beyond them lie rich pasturelands and areas where vines will grow.” His words were more conciliatory than he had intended, but the old man had spoken with such simplicity that the governor intuitively liked him, and judged on the spot that Makor would prosper with such a man as part of its complement.

  “Which fields do you speak of?” the Hebrew asked.

  “Beyond the olive grove. Beyond the field of oaks. All the area leading down to the swamp.” Then he turned from the empty fields and pointed to the mountain. “But on this land you may not dwell, for it belongs to Baal.” The old man nodded, for wherever he had taken his people during the past forty years certain places had been sacred to certain gods, and although he did not worship such gods himself he understood when others did so.

  “We respect the gods of all high places,” he said. He, too, felt that the meeting was going well, and the apprehensions reported by his sons found no echo in him. Obviously Makor was a town of wealth but its distant fields were lying waste, and it was only sensible for the town rulers to welcome strangers. One point however had to be clarified: “We worship El-Shaddai, he of the mountain.”

  Uriel frowned and drew back, for this was a matter on which he could not compromise. “The mountain belongs to Baal,” he repeated.

  “Of course!” Zadok agreed, and the Canaanite breathed more easily. “The mountain will be sacred to Baal, for the mountain that El-Shaddai occupies is not that pile
of rocks nor the one beyond, but the other mountain that no man ever sees.”

  “Then there is no conflict?” Uriel asked with relief.

  “None,” the patriarch said honestly, but Uriel noticed that the old man’s eyes glowed with an intense fire such as he had never seen before—the passionate fire of zealotry—and at first the Canaanite was inclined to draw back from the Hebrew, as one might from a thing unknown, but then the fires subsided and he saw only Zadok, a reasonable petitioner.

  “I will go with you to the fields,” he said. Summoning his Hittite guards Uriel led the way from the town and walked among the Hebrews, who had clustered near the walls awaiting the outcome of the meeting. The Canaanite noticed with respect their manly bearing, the tall, straight sons of the leader and the others who waited easily, ready for either peace or war, but hoping for the former. He saw clear-eyed women and their children, silent and wondering. It was a much better group than the usual rabble which came down that road, and he treated them with appropriate respect.

  “The olive grove is mine,” he explained, “but according to our custom you are free to pick the fallen ones and any left on the trees after the harvest.” The Hebrews nodded, for such was the law of all lands. “No one must tamper with the oil press,” Uriel said. In a thousand years of warfare no one, not even the Hyksos, had destroyed the three stone pits; in the lever socket of the press, nearly two hundred different poles had been worn out during that time, one replacing the other, but no invader had ever harmed the press or cut down an olive tree, for whoever occupied Makor required the trees and their press. In fact, without the olives and the well …

  “Water?” Zadok inquired.

  And here the fundamental problem of Canaanite and Hebrew sharing the same land came to focus. In the swamp the water was brackish, as women who had run ahead were already discovering, and it could not be used; while the waterwall constructed by Uriel allowed no outside contact with the well of Makor. If the Hebrews wanted water their women would have to climb the ramp, pass through the zigzag gate, walk down the main street, exit by the postern gate and walk along the dark corridor to the well. Daily they would pass to and fro, and Hebrew would become intimate with Canaanite and each would come to know how the other lived, and how he prayed, and in time there would have to be marriages—it simply couldn’t be avoided when beautiful Hebrew girls passed handsome Canaanite men day after day—and before long the superior culture of the town must inevitably conquer the rude vitality of the desert. The Hebrew must succumb, not in defeat or humiliation, but in a kind of quiet surrender as he allowed himself to be lifted to a higher standard of civilization and a new system of values. It was this battle that would engage the Hebrews and local residents for a hundred generations, with the outcome never clear and with victory favoring now the townsmen, now the Hebrews. It would involve people like Delilah and Samson, Jezebel and Elijah, Sanballat and Nehemiah, and long after they were dead similar perplexities would confuse men in such places as Moscow, Witwatersrand and Quebec. The problem of how Canaanite and Hebrew should share the same land but not the same religion would never be wholly settled.